Books vs. Movies

I am a great fan of reading.

I am a great fan of movies.

Sometimes these complement each other, but most times they don’t.

Don’t push me!

I’ve just finished reading First Blood by David Morrell. Most of my generation will recognise the title as the subtitle of the 80’s movie Rambo – First Blood (as it was released in the UK).

Once again the book blows the movie away, and once again I’ve made the mistake of reading the book after the movie. In my defence the book was written before I was born, I first saw the movie over 15 years ago, and I didn’t know the book existed until recently.

David Morrell’s book is an intense story of a man-hunt, survival, and revenge that is dumbed down to a mediocre action movie. The movie was notorious at the time for the ‘stitching his own arm’ sequence which simply doesn’t happen in the book. The book is bloodbath of carnage and murder with a high body count. If I remember correctly, the movie was more like an episode of the A-Team with lots of gunfire and explosions, but very little actual death¹.

Stifling Imagination

Which brings me onto the main reason for this post… Having watched the Rambo movie as a kid, I could not help but picture Sylvester Stallone as Rambo whilst reading it, even though the description was completely different.

I remember reading Jurassic Park shortly after I saw the movie and enjoying the book far more, but my mental picture of the characters and locations was permanently tainted by the movie.

On the flip side, I read both Firestarter and The Stand before seeing their respective movies which then never quite matched my mental images that I’d created whilst reading. The same holds true of the Harry Potter books and movies, except that this time the movies almost matched my imagination, yet large chunks of the books had been ignored for sake of ‘pacing’.

It would seem that seeing the movie before reading the book impairs my potential enjoyment of the book, yet reading the book before seeing the movie means that the movie will never live upto my expectations.

A solution?

I’ve not read any of the Bourne books, but I have seen The Bourne Identity and plan to see The Bourne Supremacy soon. Someday I may read the books, but for now I’m going to steer clear of them and enjoy the movies for what they are. I may do the same for I, Robot although I think I would prefer to read the book for this one…

Exception to the rule

There has to be an exception, and that is The Lord of the Rings. I never read the books until after I saw The Fellowship of the Ring and Peter Jackson’s vision was so close to that of the books that it helped me enjoy them more. Unfortunately, having now read the first and second books, I find the films distinctly lacking (similar to the Harry Potter films).

¹ It’s been a few years since I saw it so forgive me.