Books VS Movies | The Debate

Hello, guess who’s back from the dead? That’s right. Me. Now, some people might say that I haven’t posted in 4 months and 19 days but I think we should look at the positive side…do tell me what the positive side is because I can’t come up with a good enough reason. But I’m back and that’s all that matters. I know all of you missed me, or probably didn’t because you don’t care whether random teenager posts on his subpar blog about boring books that nobody has read. I get it. I haven’t posted anything mainstream since my “Comparing post-apocalyptic novels” post last year. Therefore this post is going to be my very desperate attempt at getting more viewers by talking about an important topic that everyone seems to care about.

Firstly, let me get this out of the way, I don’t care much about this controversy, I believe in the powerful ancient quote that states, ‘Live and Let Live’. BUT I also care a lot about people reading my blog and seeing as how my last “VS” post (the fiction vs non-fiction one) blew up and was loved by everyone (because I maintained a very neutral stance at the end, doing nothing to contribute to either side of the debate), I am going to write about this. So let’s get into the minefield that is this topic.

This age-old question of whether books are better or movies stems from our nature as humans to compare everything and our need to decide what is better even when nobody, and I mean literally nobody, asked. To diplomatically tackle this debate while trying to not offend either side, I will consider a common theme. Because comparing the Avengers movies with Shakespeare’s work is neither fair nor do I like Shakespeare (🤫). Let’s talk about a story that has both a book and a movie based on it. The problem with comparing these two mediums in such a way is that maybe the director was just bad and it’s not even the fault of the movie but I digress. A good example to start with though is the Harry Potter Series based on JK Rowling’s work.

The major difference between such books and their subsequent movies is the personalisation. To explain this better, consider the example of the dragon in Harry Potter’s Goblet of Fire. While reading the book I could imagine the dragon with horns, red eyes producing green flames but in the movie the dragon is green with sharp spikes protruding from its scales producing actual orange fire. Even now while reading these descriptions your brain is producing imagery while consuming my words. People who have actually read Harry Potter know that these descriptions are wrong but you still imagined the dragons the way I described them, but there were things I didn’t describe, I didn’t talk about its claws, I didn’t talk about its teeth. For all I know some of you may have imagined it having flat teeth like a cow. What I’m trying to say is while reading this post what you imagined wasn’t my dragon. I gave you suggestions but the full picture in your head was supplied by your own self, you filled in the details. It was your dragon. And that is the major difference between movies and books. What you imagine while reading a book is your own story with your own characters in there. But while seeing a movie, you don’t imagine those characters, you look from the director’s perspective. You are seeing the director’s characters based on how they viewed it and how they could portray it.

I feel like most of the hate movies get from readers is based on a snobbish idea of “I put in more effort to enjoy the story, which means I did the better job”. But I don’t believe that’s true. Yes, readers get to enjoy much more of the story as compared to people who watched the movie but that doesn’t mean the books are better than the movies. Both are just mediums for the story and both readers and watchers are doing the same thing at the end of the day, consuming a story. The only difference is the scale at which we are consuming. I feel like focusing on the beauty of the story instead of the medium is what matters. And yes, I agree a lot of movies have ruined the story that the books portrayed, Percy Jackson was ruined because of the movies but that’s not the movie’s fault, it’s the director’s. Instead of debating whether movies are better or books in a generic way, do the same thing, but for specific stories. Discuss whether the Hunger Games books were better than the movies, whether the Divergent movies were better, but not about whether movies are better than books or not. At the end of the day both are forms of art, mediums of presentation and as a creator myself I would hate it if someone trashes any form of art.

You know what? I am going to talk about originality in another post, that I am posting today itself. I have a lot of content regarding it so I’m going to make another mini-post out of it to milk more views 😁. No goodbye’s or conclusion for this post because I want you to think and come up with your own opinion regarding this topic. No goodbye’s or ‘thanks for reading’ though because the next post is a continuation of this one and I want you to go read it right now.