7 minute read
NOVELS VS MOVIES
by Feeds
Penning down thoughts and ideas into prose and poetry has been present since time immemorial. The medium of text is celebrated for its intricacies, allowing the reader a newfound freedom to imagine their worlds. Another medium, albeit more recent, is the moving pictures or cinema as referred in the modern times. While reading involves one of the primary sense organs, the eyes, and the mind in tandem to decipher the texts, sometimes alien due to rare usage; cinema, on the other hand, is easier to interpret. Using sight and sound to understand actions portrayed doesn't employ the mind as much as reading. However, both have contributed a fair share to the development of society as a whole.
Without the advent of technology, it was the books and novels that captured details, narrated tales and spoke volumes, passing down information, among generations, classes, races, countries and diversity. As cinema grew, storytelling became shorter and to many, more fun. The differences between the two media and the dependence on each other was what accumulated a massive audience, that drooled to escape into the fictional world.
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Novels and movies serve the same purpose, at the end of the day: to help us escape the mundane reality that is our everyday experience, to transport us to worlds that are enticing, spellbinding and unlike anything we have ever seen before. However, this goal is achieved in fairly different ways and this is precisely what sets the media apart.
In the case of novels, the written medium allows for a more open-ended experience, with the writer painting a picture in the reader's mind using just the power of their vocabulary. Grandiose castles, looming spectres, a host of characters - a canvas that comes alive with colours through the author's effortless expertise.
What makes this medium particularly entertaining for those who prefer it is the fact that you - the reader - are in a sense, as important to the experience as the storyteller. Your interpretation, your imagination, your impressions - they all matter. The story you read, the images it evokes, they are all unique to you. This aspect makes the entire exercise deeply personal, which is what makes people enjoy reading in the first place. Reading novels gives you freedom, and this isn't just the freedom to escape reality, it's the freedom to create your own.
On the other hand, movies provide you with a fuller, richer experience. Movies are a veritable sensory overload (what with so-called 5D experiences being advertised as well these days) that immerse you into the world they are set in. Through visually stunning panoramic shots establishing drama, moving cinematic music enforcing said drama and engaging dialogue being the icing on top of this dramatic cake, they help draw the audience into the story. Although not very open to creative interpretation like novels, they do use the tools that they possess to their advantage, and they do so exceedingly well.
When a book gets made into a movie, as we all know, certain changes have to be made so as to appease the commercial nature of the movie. One of the first things that comes to mind when talking about books and book adaptations is The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Peter Jackson’s version of the LotR, a work of art on its own, is rife with deviations and not all of them make sense. Starting with the exclusion of jolly ol’ Tom Bombadil, excluding Glorfindel, diminishing Faramir, the scouring of the shire, Making Gimli the butt of jokes and, well, a lot more. The movies also leave a lot of loose ends, like Saruman’s death, the famed “Why didn’t they take the eagles to Mordor?”. Most importantly, almost all the songs and poems were excluded.
It would only be fair to extend to the other trilogy, ‘The Hobbit’. The necessity of the explosion of a brisk and small book into three movies each almost 3 hours long and in essence the commercialisation of the story itself is questionable. Although the visual effects gave a whole new perspective of (and insight into) the literature, supersizing the story, at instances, alters its source material itself leading to blatant plot holes to a work of art.
In the movie adaptation of Rick Riorden’s Percy Jackson series, the characters have great inaccuracies in their portrayal, along with changes to the plots of the books themselves. Annabeth becomes a brunette; she lacks her storm-grey intense eyes, and Percy’s eyes are blue instead of sea-green which is supposed to be an added factor to his son-of-Posiedon look.
The Harry Potter series is probably one of the better-made movie franchises, with plots and characters nearly resembling the ones in the book. The same can be said of the Pirates of The Carribean series, which has been immensely popular due to the excellent portrayal of characters, especially Captain Jack Sparrow played by Johnny Depp. The Narnia series too is noteworthy for its gripping storyline in both text and films.
Apart from series which manage to capture public attention, some stand-alone books have also been impactful enough to be made into films that move people deeply. The retelling of books like The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky into movie format has been greatly appreciated due to the fact that these novels have a unique tale to tell. These tales are fresh, vivid and moving, while dealing with the lives of common people and their everyday lives, stressing upon their uncommon conditions or inner thoughts. On the side of fantasy and magic, the book, The Wizard of Oz, by Frank Baum, was also remade as a movie, one which brought delight to those who watched it. Even the movie Mean Girls is said to have been inspired by a book called Queen Bees and Wannabes.
All of them visual extravaganzas(on their own), not only originate from the books but also end up becoming the faces of the books.
When we think about how famous a book or a book series gets, we realise that there is a saturation point which very few books can cross. The exceptions are generally the books that are backed up with the support of a movie series, or a TV series. Take a few well-known examples that were discussed above, say, Harry Potter and GoT.
The Harry Potter books would probably be nothing if Bloomsberg had not published it. Several publishers had rejected it, and yet it is now one of the most celebrated book series in the world. The movies were definitely more famous than their paperback counterparts. But the sales for the books increased exponentially after the release of each movie.
The same goes for the latter example. The series is a famous example of adaptations of a young adult novel series such as A Song Of Ice And Fire. Contrary to the previous example, ASOIAF is a novel series whose fame was not noticeably affected by its digital equivalent.
Another example, The Inheritance Cycle has an adaptation that is notorious for not just being unjust to the books but also being a boring movie in general. Some might argue that the movies probably diverted potential readers of the books. This being the case, the influence that an on-screen parallel has on a novel series is entirely dependent on the movie as much as it does on the books.
Both novels and movies have been instrumental in shaping the thoughts and views of the society. Apart from being sources of entertainment, they have also helped to shed light on some important issues plaguing the society. Telling a story in an engaging manner is the crux of both media, and it’s just that the tools used by the storytellers are different. Novel-Movie duos like the Harry Potter have proven that, in the hands of efficient and competent artists, the same story can be delivered successfully in vastly different avenues of entertainment. But the translation from literature to cinema has not been so smooth in movies like Eragon and Ender’s Game showing that adaptations require skillful treatment to work effectively. With a wide array of advantages and disadvantages, these two influential media will continue to enthrall and stupefy audiences for generations to come. That, my friends, is something we can be confident about.
