There was a point in time, when I was excited to see that a favorite book of mine was being made into a movie. I remember heading to the movie theater right after getting off the school bus to see “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” on opening day and missing school to see “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” for its first showing at the local movie theater. Even now, I still love the books and movies.
More and more, I find myself saying something along the lines of “oh look another book turned movie” after seeing a commercial for the latest soon-to-be blockbuster. As quite the book lover, I do not even need to necessarily have read the book to know of its existence and cringe when seeing the commercial for the movie version. It’s worse when it is a book I have read, but for some reason I still get excited about the news.
Though there have been times when I have seen the movie and never read the book or vice versa, there are quite a few others when I have read the book and drag myself to the theater and there have even been times when I saw the movie and then decided to read the book.
I am a big supporter and fan of seeing the movie and then reading the book. Obviously, this cannot always be the case, but it makes the whole experience better in my opinion. There are two cases when this was a great decision on my part.
The first happened while I was still in school and was watching just about anything that actor Colin Farrell was in. “Hart’s War” was released in 2002 and was not my typical movie, but one that I ended up enjoying anyway. The movie focuses on a law student (Farrell) who becomes a lieutenant during World War II. After he is captured and place in a POW camp, he is asked to defend an African American prisoner of war who is falsely accused of murder. After seeing the movie (and later buying it), I received the book (1999) by John Katzenbach as a Christmas gift and began reading it right away. When I finished the book, I was so glad that I had seen the movie before rather than after. The movie version was so watered down and missed some of the best parts of the book. It made me realize why the movie received such poor ratings.
The second happened much more recently. I was one of those people who avoided “The Hunger Games,” both the book trilogy and the movies. Previously, I had given young adult novels a try and was having a hard time connecting to them the way I had earlier at that age. That all changed when I caught a playing of “The Hunger Games” (2012) on television and decided to watch it. The day after, I rented a copy of “Catching Fire” (2013). Then I used a Christmas gift to see “Mockingjay: Part 1” (2014). After learning that part 2 would not come out until the end of this year, I had to know what happened. This is one of the plus sides to watching the movie or television series first and then reading the book so you can, hopefully, get answers to your questions.
That night, I bought the iBook version of the trilogy (also my first electronic book purchase). Starting at the beginning, I believe it took my less than a week to make it all the way through. Then I re-read the trilogy after buying the paperback books. Though I enjoyed the movies, the books I fell in love with. There was so much more in the books compared to the movies and I liked all but two of the characters much more after reading the books. A few weeks ago the first movie was played again and I was able to see just how much was left out.
I will spare you my thoughts on the movies that I have seen after reading the books first, with the exception of “Lord of the Rings” since I believe the movies were done quite well. Having grown up on “The Hobbit,” I have avoided seeing the movies based on my dad’s critique.
My advice, if you want to enjoy both versions of a story, is to see the movie first and read the book second when you can. If that is not possible, try to view each as a separate story. There is much less frustration that way.
Shea Singley is the editor of The Hamburg Area Item. She can be reached at ssingley@berksmontnews.com.