Books Vs. Movies: Which Version Should You Experience First? | Book Discussion

Hey Guys! I am Max and we will be composing the age-old debate on “Books Vs. Movies: Which Version Should You Experience First?” today. The introduction to book discussion topics is always the hardest for me to manufacture because I do not know how to dispense a puissant sentence after “Hey Guys” so, do not judge me so hard alright? I am attempting to make everything fall like a cascade of water – smooth and crystal-clear. 

Oh, and it’s currently raining outside, what a transcendent time to blog and read!

I had researched this topic on myriad websites and I will link the ones that gave me solid ideas on what I will be conversing on below to give them commendations for their crafts. Moreover, I will (maybe?) take quotes from the websites that I have mentioned and assert my own opinions on this topic as well. In addition, I will furnish you with statistics on the sides that people had placed their coins on. So, without further ado, let us get into today’s topic!

First of all, I would fancy conceiving a contrast between the time and length of a novel to the time and length of a movie. The time necessitated watching a film is normally more succinct than the time required to read and complete a full-length novel unless you are a remarkably agile reader. This happens due to the fact that a movie can only fit in so much important detail and discard the rest to fit a normal movie-length whereas a book can furnish the readers with character depth, developments, intricate details, sub-plots and a plethora of characters to encompass the readers with a more recondite desire to know the world and politics or the magic system in the novel work. However, movies are sometimes better than books because of certain repudiated information that nobody particularly enjoys and the metamorphosis of bad writing in the novel into something astounding in the film can be obfuscating to view but that is a sporadic sight as we are proffer with bad book to movie adaptations most of the time. For example, The Fifth Wave, Allegiant, Paper Towns & City Of Bones (2013) are not the most pleasant movies to watch but they are so much better to read about.

*The paragraph below is a little out of topic but it’s somehow related to the next, so don’t dismiss it!*

Secondly, I would like to announce that movies sometimes portray as a synergist for certain readers similar to me to accumulate novels that we have not hearkened or noticed before we watch the film adaptations of the novels. If the film adaptation is gallantly stunning to watch, it will give us an excuse to grab the novel(s) from the bookstore and start reading it/them or if the film adaptation is horrible, it will also coerce and motivate us to pick the novel up to perceive with our own eyes to judge whether or not the novel is as bad as the film which most of the time, is not. This paragraph, in turn, leads us to the next point.

Reading a full-length novel gives you a better insight into the intricately crafted plotlines than watching a film systematise the plot and the connections between the characters. Due to an overabundance of sub-plots, tension and drama in the characters’ lives, (provided that the author has given a detailed layout of their lives and carefully embedded their personalities and traits in the cleft of their skull) films are unable to render an effect the same as novels could. Therefore, films have to trim the edges and monopolise the critical points furnished from the novels to provide us with a coherent storyline instead of expediting a plethora of plotlines at the screen viewers and making an incongruous hodgepodge with plotlines. I think it’s more restorative to accommodate you with an example: The Harry Potter Movies made advancements towards certain topics that were sequentially left undiscussed in the movies but they were well explained in the novels. Thus, in order to watch the films, you must first read the novels to understand a wider scope of the world and its system.

Speaking of explanations, books make you think and visualise the settings in your head and the plot twists in them can be even more influential than the twists proffer to you in the movies. Unlike films, you have the freedom to decipher the author’s words in any way you want and it also capacitates your imagination to go beyond the wildest corners of your brain. The plot twists may be harder to decode in novels than in films due to a plethora of plotlines blemishing the truth. However, there may be exceptions. For example,  I thought the television series for Sharp Objects obscured the truth better than the novel ever did but I enjoyed both of them nonetheless. 

Lastly, you would exhume more dreamy words or capricious vocabularies from novels than you would in films. The reason behind this is because novels tend to explain and provide you with every little detail of an object or architecture that the protagonist lands his/her eyes on and that requires a lot of words to describe which will most of the time, lead to flowery language and gorgeous purple prose. In contrast, a film could not perform such an act as we are perceiving the surrounding of our protagonist in the film with our bare eyes while the film regurgitates information to its viewers – in other words, spoon-feeding the information to us. 

Well, in conclusion, both of them are for entertainment purposes (or educational purposes) and it is unmistakably up to you to select whichever material you want but I would highly recommend you to pick up the novel before you see the film to experience the vastness of the world, the flowery language, etc. that the author has to offer to you. 

I will now prescribe you with a few “book-to-film or TV series adaptations” that I personally enjoyed for you to chew on during the weekends:

1. The Handmaid’s Tale (TV series)
2. Big Little Lies (TV series)
3. Call Me By Your Name (Movie)
4. Before I Fall (Movie)
5. Shadowhunters (TV series)
6. YOU (TV series)
7. The Fault In Our Stars (Movie)
8. The Hunger Games Series (Franchise)

STATISTICS: I am not going to draw a graph because this is not a maths class so you are going to see a rough percentage here: Film – 11%; Books – 74%; Both – 15%. 

Websites that I gained several ideas from:

• Quora
• Vocal Media

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This is the end of my ‘Books Vs. Movies: Which Version Should You Experience First?’ bookish discussion article!  I hope you all enjoyed it and let me know what genre you tend to go for down in the comment box below! Follow me with your email/WordPress account to get notifications when I post a new article! Bye!