the first time i ever did so was lord of the rings. i had heard about the movies coming out in 2001 and read it in 2000. more fan of the book than the movies. do you do something similar?
example is right now i'm reading I, Robot because of the Smith movie. now i know that the Smith movie doesn't have anything to do with the book, except some themes. it's been on my list for some time. just the movie sort of forces you to read the book. that's just me... you?
For me it's not always the book that comes first. Sometimes I've watched the movie and then read the book but usually I'm trying to read the book before the movie.
Yep, I picked up The Illiad (almost finished, whew) because Troy was coming out. And I did read Wings of War/War and Remberance before I saw the miniseries. In that case seeing the miniseries first would have ruined the books for me. Bad casting, why on earth would you cast Robert Mitchum as Pug? I don't get it :rage:
I usually end up seeing the movie first and that leads me to the book. I tried reading The Langoliers but couldn't finish it, then I saw the movie and went back and was able to finish it.
It depends. If the movie is based on a book (even if I know this or not) I've never read, I don't. Then, if I liked the movie, I may try to read the book (e.g. The Name of the Rose, Red Dragon, Fight Club). If a movie based on a book I liked is about to come out, I usually reread that book before seeing the film (the Iliad, Lord of the Rings).
Um...I read "Babe" before I saw the movie. :D It's better, as most books are.
as a rule, i go into a movie, having already read the book. and also as a rule, i am totally dissapointed in the movie, even though i tell myself going in, "dont expect it to be like the book, you'll only be dissapointed".
the only scene from any movie that i remember doing justice to the book, was in the movie 'dreamcatcher' (which was not even that great a movie). i loved the way that they set up the guy's memory as a big dusty library with file boxes everywhere, all labelled and cross filed. i liked how he would rearrange the memories and had a big trolley that he would move the file boxes around on it, putting older ones up higher and adding new ones all the time.
fight club was a pretty trippy adapation =).
In answer to the entitled question: Hell no!
If I am fully aware that the movie is based on a novel, and I can actually find the book before I see the movie, then yes. If not I tend to read the books after the movies if I really liked the movie.
The first I did that with was "Cider House Rules". I had tried to read "Garp" many years before, but decided that life was too short, so I went on to something else. With all the hoopla "Cider" was getting, I decided to give the book a try before seeing the movie. I loved it! I then went on to read "Prayer for Owen Meaney" because I knew it was the favorite of so many people; I love that one, too!
My mom loves John Irving too. She had me read Piggy Sneed when I was like 10. I wasn't such a fan, but then again... I was 10. :p I should try reading him again sometime.
Mostly i got dissapointed after reading the book then seeing the movie version (LOTR is an exception), i often think that the book version is always better than the movie one, but i never really read something in advance just cause the movie version is coming. most of the time my book of choice is determine by my mood
I prefer to watch the movie first in cases in which the book is harder to read such as Dickens or Tolkien. I use the movie as an aid to understanding the book.
For the most part, I believe that people who are book lovers (like myself *smiles*) see movies that are based on books want to read the books. I know that I want to read the books after I see a movie that is based on a book because I want to see how the book and movie differ. Also, I want to see what the director did to make the movie into the book and how his vision is captured by his or her own imagination of how the movie should be made into the book. I watched "The Hours" yesterday. I thought that the movie was astounding, yet if I would've read the book first, I would've "murdered" the movie by comparing it to the book. That's why I believe that it is better to watch films that are based on books first than read the book. Universal truth is that books are better than the movies even though the movie maybe good, the book is always better (in my opinion). Also, I believe that movies introduce books that most people do not know about (I didn't know about "The Hours" until they made a movie about the book).
~Sophia
i did it once
with
The Object Of My Affection
and it was a different story
different ending
i lived the book more
Well I watched Van Helsing and then read the novelisation... but that's not really the same thing! :D
regarding book/movie, there have been very few cases where the movie is almost like an improvement upon th original book. in chuck's audio commentary on fight club DVD he said several times to jim uhls (screenwriter) why chuck himself did not think of that.
imho fight club is better than the book because the book is kind of loose, without much of a 'narrative'. the movie brought the themes home and there were parts in there that needed to be in movie-form to truly understand, like the film-splice thing. it's one thing to read it but to see it is awesome.
of course for this particular work, both the movie AND the book worked out marvelously. the other work that i found to be very synonymous with one another is 2001, cause kubrick+clarke worked on the story together. i thought both cannot exist one without the other.
as for other works of art like lotr compared to the movies, i really luv the book so much more. i mean think about it, the movie was only 1/2 the stories in the book!!!! they could have made 6 movies each 3 hours long. the only prob is the long expositions of character-character scenes. for example in House of Elrond chapter the speeches made there would make the audience woozy... but then i luv that kind of performance, it's very shakespearean.
yeah i did
(lord of the rings and the prefume)
Oh, was that any good? I just read a review of that movie and it sounds really intriguing.Quote:
Originally Posted by THX-1138
I do try to read the book before the movie although I have no doubt I would enjoy the movie better if I did it the other way around, movies never live up to the books.
I usually read a book after watching the movie; I almost always prefer the book to the film.
Exceptions:
LOTR (film as good as the book, each one told the same story in its own way, both great)
Forrest Gump (the book is interesting, but the film is a totally different story, more emotionally told; a great movie, to me it´s better than the book)
Wuthering Heights (version with Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes; the movie captured the dark atmosphere of the book, and the actors are fantastic; besides, the script is true to the book)
No, I usually read the book then find out a movie based on it is coming out. And more than a few times I have been disappointed by the movies. They change them too much and ruin the storyline and plot.
on the off chance I might be able to resurrect an old thread....
I read the girl with the dragon tattoo many years ago. recently, I watched the girl in the spider web and liked it well enough where I thought I would dive into the series more formally. I read the second book the girl who played with fire and watched the movie of the first book. I have the 2nd and 3rd movies en route via interlibrary loan and after I watch the 3rd movie, the girl who kicked the hornet's nest im going to read the book.
i could possibly hunt up a book and read it before the movie version comes out, but my preference is to read it afterwards. i think a few folks above indicated that also.
its seems like a lot of times i'll watch a movie and because of the movie, i find out there is a book, and then i'll hope to find it.
as an aside, sometimes the movie is better than the book.
I was going to answer before, bounty, but had to change my browser again.
With me it is generally the other way round. I got interested in several movies because I had read the book. Usually I prefer th book but sometimes the film is better.
I liked The Barn Burning by Murakami but I found the movie very slow.
I think if you read the book first, and then watch the movie afterwards, there seems to be a lot of room to complain. oh they left this out! oh they changed that! oh I don't like the actor they picked to play so and so (looking at tom cruise as jack reacher, and willam Dafoe as jack clark in one of the tom Clancy movies).
but if you read the book after the movie, the differences seem to just take on a more neutral academic perspective, and rather than complain about them, you just identify and take note of them. plus, as someone said above, the movie sometimes help with visualizing the characters in the book.
a few famous "the movies were better" than the books come to mind:forrest gump, the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. the princess bride and the fault in our stars. all good reads, all great movies.
I imagine somewhere, someones made moby dick into a movie, and without even seeing it im going to guess the movies better than the book because the book was terrible!!
that said, the "true story" that inspired the book, in the heart of the sea: the tragedy of the whaleship Essex by Stanley Philbrick was both good reading and good watching. ironically enough, the author put out a small book called why read moby dick.
Yes thatīs true. If you read the book first you have a kind of movie of the story in your head. If you see the movie first the book sort of completes the film.
I liked Moby Dick. I didnīt think before I would like a entire novel, and a doorstopper at that, about a whale hunt. But it gotme by itīs intensity.
I read the girl with the dragon tattoo many years ago, and just recently watched the movie. the gap between the two was so large I didn't remember the book well enough to complain in the least about the movie. recently I read the second book, and I just finished watching the second movie. im partway through the third movie now, and im about to start the third book today. its fun to compare them. I think what you said is a nice way to put it---the book completes the film.
one thing of interest is that the first movie was done in English. the second and third were done in Swedish. I wonder why, especially (at least I think so) given how popular the first movie was. so im watching with English dubbing and I think somethings lost in the mix.
another thing of interest, related to this thread, is in reference to what I guess id call "primacy." I think Lisbeth salander is a fascinating and incredibly sympathetic character. there is a different actress playing her in the second and third movies than in the first one. I liked the first one a lot. its taking the second one awhile to grow on me. how much of my preference for the first one is due to her being first, as opposed to my liking that particular casting better.
it makes me wonder if sometimes we like the book better, because it came first.
ack danik! laughs....I remember that if one wanted to read a treatise on whaling, then maybe the book would have been an okay read but I went into it looking for high adventure on the high seas and that didn't occur until the very end, after too many pages of your doorstop being built up. I think moby himself didn't appear until something like 95% of the book had been completed. what the heck?
Arrg! I liked Moby Dick for the old timey sailor lingo.
You know, I do sometimes read a book that’s about to show up in the theater, not because I’m particularly tuned in to what’s happening in LaLa Land, but because I like to browse bookstores, and bookstores tend to promote the titles of books that are about to come out as a movie, and put those books on the table at the front of the store. Three that immediately come to mind are: The Good Lord Bird, Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil, and The Gunslinger. I haven’t seen any of the associated movies.
I have noticed that just before a new release is about to hit the theaters, earlier versions in the series will start to show up on tv.
it makes sense bookstores would do a similar thing.
dag nab double posting!