Movie VS Book

There has always been a huge debate between books that have been turned into movies. 9 out of 10, people's views and opinions would always be the same: "The movie sucked!!","The book is soooo much better", "They missed out on one of the key scenes!" Oh yes, the after-math of viewing the film is sometimes even more dramatic than the actual film itself...so I thought I'd analyze the controversial issue of Book VS Movie, question why novels have been altered to suit the film world as well as find out what people REALLY prefer. And just because I'm so passionate and fanatical about my work, I may as well do some exploring as to what possesses the film industry to attempt to bring the books to life.....more often than not, with failure.

Firstly, I decide to go with the 2008 film that drove all hormonally wild teenage girls even crazier than they already were: Twilight, book one of four books in the series which are written by Stephenie Meyer about a 17 year old girl who moves to the small town of Forks and falls in love with a vampire. When I look up "books v.s movies" in Google search, already there are youtube video links coming up :

* Twilight : Book VS Movie (List of Differences)

* Youtube - Twilight: Book Vs. Movie Changes

One of the most dangerous things about turning a book that has gained so much popularity (not only with the teenagers, middle aged-women are even into it - not to mention the dudes!) into a film, is that there is so much criticism that is to be expected. After watching Twilight with my friend that had never read the book, her opinion about the movie was obviously not even half as open as to what mine was. Throughout the movie I would make small points in my head: "That's not how I imaged him to look like!", "Where the hell did that scene come from?", "They totally changed the line!".
Thankfully, I soon learnt I wasn't the only psycho in the cinema that was analyzing every single detail of the film.
"I was extremely disappointed in the movie, i loved the book. They left out major scenes and i was disappointed in the fact that they didn't follow what happened in the book, things were done out of order or not at all" said an anonymous girl on a yahoo discussion board.
Overall, 95% of the girl's comment's were negative, all of them making points about the acting skills, directing, scenes and change in script.
One girl even went to the trouble of listing every single difference between the novel and the book but then slightly contradicted herself through her last sentence: Overall, i found it very well done". Errr......right.

If you were to ask anyone who has seen the movie version of their favorite novel which they preferred, the answer will usually be, "The book was better." That's because readers of a novel have already made their own perfect movie version. They have visualized it, imagined the locations. They even imagine who would play which character and cast it themselves. So what actually makes a good interpretation in regards to a novel being turned into film?
The thing is, people usually don't have a problem with the setting. It's always more satisfying when your vision and imagination matches the actors/actresses looks, the costumes and depending on the genre of the movie, side effects. People generally hate it when the plot of the book is changed to suit the film, sometimes it's inevitable, but then why change it? Why attempt to make it into something its really not? If the director changes the synopsis entirely but keeps the characters then it's not really a version of the novel is it? So why bother?
On the other hand, although I get severely disappointed if something I enjoyed is left out of a movie, if they left everything in, most book-based movies would be 10-hours long. And unless they change the seats in movie theatres to beds, no-one is going to watch a film that long.

The whole Twilight mania doesn't exactly help things either. Because of it's massive fan base, it's much more open to criticism than any other novel. The same thing goes with the Lord of the Rings Triology, The Notebook, The Da Vinci Code and basically any children's book written by Roald Dahl. At the end of the day people are emotional beings and when we read novels we become attached to the character's. We become somewhat protective over them and when we find out that our favorite novel is being turned into a film we freak out majorly because we have simply invested too many feelings into the novel. Any adaption or version results in something new, so people get custodial and automatically call it shit because it's being compared to the original.

So what type of qualities does a book need to possess in order to be made into a film? According to website Superfastreader.com, a book "generally has to have a strong forward-moving plot line, and a premise that you can easily picture on a poster or in a TV ad campaign". However, there are deal killers which includes the story being done before, the concept being too long too explain and can only be done by a best-seller and lastly if the story is small and obstacles seem "easily surmountable".

Perhaps an easier way to see what makes a book film-worthy is to simply look te 2008 list of books that have been turned into movies. According to www.bestsellers.about.com, the number one movie is 'The Reader', followed by 'Slumdog Millionaire', 'The Curious Case of Benjamin' Button, Twilight (surprise) and 'Marley and Me'. Perhaps the website is merely looking at the popularity of the films in regards to the large money they made. But just because something is a blockbuster hit at the cinemas, doesnt mean people still prefer it over the novel.

From the hundreds of films that I have watched over the almost nineteen years of my existence, I've personally learnt that movies are very rarely better than the books they were based on.
Perhaps the best thing to do in this situation is to watch the movie first - and then read the book - that way you have a chance of saving yourself for a let-down and disappointment !