Reading the book after the movie?

[joeranger]

I never read LOTR because the movies were so good.
Most people hate movies when the book was good.
I am going to buy Enders after enjoying the movie. It seems like this might be the right order.
Have you guys done this with other books\movies? Enjoyed the book after the movie?

 

[Curmudgeon]

After Fellowship of the Ring came out I went and read through the trilogy. Most people hate LoTR books after seeing the movies but I think that just comes from the density of the writing compared to say Harry Potter. I think whether or not people like movies just depends on if the movie sucks and then there the people who are just stubborn.

I bought Ender's game because I wanted to read it before I saw the movie. Unfortunately I haven't had time to read it or go see the movie, so I think I'm just going to wait until I get around to reading the book to see the movie.

 

[Wes R]

I actually enjoyed the novel version of Water World more than the movie, it shows you how much stuff they cut out of the final version since novelizations are usually based on early script drafts. I didn't like LOTR in book or movie form but that's just me.

 

[dbuck]

After Fellowship of the Ring came out I went and read through the trilogy.

Me too. I remember starting the LOTR books forty years ago but I couldn't get into it. After seeing the Fellowship with my brother I asked him how accurate the movies as to the book and he remembered it as pretty accurate all this considered.
I bought the super thick supposedly 'fixed' and annotated trilogy and enjoyed the heck out of it.

The two mediums are so different that I normally separate the book from the movie.....especially anything adapted from Stephen King.

Sometimes the book can 'fix' a lesser movie, or steer people to an excellent book even though the movie disappointed.

 

[Malphas]

I enjoyed Jurassic Park and TLW after I seen the movies because it added I think a lot to the movies. I also listened to the LotR audio books instead of reading the books and they were pretty great.

 

[CB2001]

I grew up watching the John Carpenter adaptation of the Stephen King novel, Christine. Even now, I still enjoy it. I read the novel just prior to go into high school, and it prepared me for what the high school experience might be for me, and it being my first adult-oriented novel (no, not sex stuff, but reading something that was mainly done for adults). I like the novel in its own way and was even better than most of the stuff I read prior to it (i.e. Goosebumps novellas by R.L. Stine).

 

[SSgt Burton]

Starship Troopers the movie encouraged me to (re)read the book. I first read it in the mid eighties in high school, but remembered little of it before watching the film. So I bought the book (now updated with the film's poster art for a cover) shortly after, and read it again.

The book was 1000x better. I don't dislike the movie because of this, but they are definitely two seperate entities.


Kevin

 

[OldSkoolEffects]

I usually always prefer the book to the film; Fellowship actually made me angry when I saw it in theaters, and I still stand by the idea that LotR was meant to be read, regardless of how good the movies are as films.

 

[JD]

Never could make it through Fellowship of the Ring. Tolkien is just way too wordy for my tastes - I understand why people like him and his work, it just doesn't work for me (at least all the time). That said, Jackson could've shaved some time off of his films, too.

There's a film by John Carpenter called Vampires starring James Woods. The movie is (much) less than amazing - it is based on John Steakley's Vampire$, which I guess few have heard of or read. I'm not too sure if the book has stood the test of time, but I remember enjoying it immensely, it was a great (and quick) read.

 

[Goonie]

Jurassic Park got me hooked on Michael Crichton. saw the movie first then I was trying to figure out who the author was. First Crichton book I read was Sphere, then Andromeda Strain, and the Jurassic Park. And I was hooked on Crichton.

 

[Roland]

I read a lot. But most of those books were never filmed. So my only example is Harry Potter: I read the books before I watched the movies. The books are a whole lot better than the movies. The movies aren't bad, but the books have much more depth.

 

[joeranger]

The book is always better or they would not make a movie. That is a given.
My point is that if you watch the movie first you can enjoy both.
This doesn't help you if they are about to make a movie out of your favorite novel.
Like Kevin said, if you liked a movie, go back and read the book.

The dilemma is whether you should race to read a book before the movie comes out.
I am reading Enders now and it is enjoyable but in my head I see the movie playing with some "added details".

 

[ApophisV]

The book is always better or they would not make a movie. That is a given.
The dilemma is whether you should race to read a book before the movie comes out.
I am reading Enders now and it is enjoyable but in my head I see the movie playing with some "added details".

I started reading Fellowship of the Ring only a few days before I was going to see the movie (my grandparents gave me the trilogy for christmas back then). I finished the first half (untill the Rivendell chapter), so I got a good impression how different a book/movie can be perceived depending on the order you read/view it:

While I enjoyed the first half of Fellowship very much, filling in all those little details that weren't shown in my mind, I just "consumed" the second half of the movie without of "expanding it in my mind".

Until today the second half of the first movie is my least favourite part of the whole movie trilogy and it simply feels incomplete in many aspects.

I can't really explain why and how, but I regret not reading the whole book before going to the theater. This is at least my own view of this topic, maybe because I like this ridicolously detailed way of storytelling Tolkien uses which a movie simply can't show (which is not necessarely bad!).

 

[AdamNightmare]

I saw the first Percy Jackson movie before I read any of the books, but I did read all the books after. The same is true for the "Cirque du Freak" books. This happens a lot with teen fiction. It's a guilty pleasure, and they're usually very fast and easy reads. (I read a lot of junk, but I still refuse to read or see Twilight, and I won't read 50 Shades)

I read the Hunger Games trilogy after the first movie came out, but before I watched the movie.

I began reading the Harry Potter series around the time Book 5 came out, which was well into the movie series, but I'd seen only the first movie at the time.

I watched the first season of Game of Thrones before I read all the novels.

I read most of Micheal Crichton's books after I watched the movies. My favorite of his books is one of the worst movie adaptations - "Timeline." I still enjoy the movie for what it is, but it was not a great movie.

I didn't know half of Nick Hornby's books WERE books until well after I watched their adaptations (Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, About a Boy).

There are probably a ton I can't recall right now, but those are the ones that stand out to me.

 

[Probe Droid]

The book is always better or they would not make a movie. That is a given.

Usually, but not always.

 

[kristen jones]

For most of the familiar ones I had read the book before seeing the film. This has been true for the vast majority in my case.

BUT... with The Hunger Games I actually decided to do the opposite on purpose to see what the difference might be. After always having read the story before it coming to the screen, I invariably fell into the trap of nitpicking the movie too much (even if I liked it) and therefore had a very hard time just letting myself take the film(s) for what they were.

In the case of The Hunger Games, I came to the film with zero knowledge, and as a result I was able to easily take it as it was, and I enjoyed it very much. After, I went straight out and got the book and reading it was almost like seeing a directors' cut of the film because now I had all that i'd seen in the film to form the framework, and was able to have so much more added to the narrative from the book. It was a bit like deleted scenes.

Of course in this case the film was Very faithful to the book, and there wasn't a lot of major variation from the story. but still, the overall principle seems true enough... if you see the film first, it won't be overshadowed by what is almost certainly going to be a much better novel (IF it existed before the film, and isn't simply a novelization of a film).

I had planned to hold off reading Catching Fire and Mockingjay until their films were released, but after finishing the first book I HAD to have the rest of the story so I went right out and read them as well.

It will be interesting to see if my theory holds up this next week when Catching Fire comes out. I'll be able to make the exact opposite comparison that I did with THG.

K.

 

[Bigdaddy]

I never read LOTR when I was younger, even though I was heavily into fantasy books in my teen and twenties. So I went into the 1st one with almost no info on the story other than it was about a magic ring. After I saw fellowship I HAD to know the rest of the story, so I read the Hobbit and the trilogy in the few weeks after seeing the 1st film. I think seeing the movie 1st probably helped me get into the story. I very rarely read fiction anymore but I might give the Hunger Games a try this winter, I've been told the books are very different from the movie.

 

[cpltony]

I always try to read the book BEFORE seeing the movie.
The whole 'you envision the settings' rather than 'this is how the movie looked' to me is much better.

That being said once I've seen the movie unless I REALLY loved it I don't read the books...because the magic has already been put on screen and it's tough for me to get away from that and picture it myself.

- - - Updated - - -

I always try to read the book BEFORE seeing the movie.
The whole 'you envision the settings' rather than 'this is how the movie looked' to me is much better.

That being said once I've seen the movie unless I REALLY loved it I don't read the books...because the magic has already been put on screen and it's tough for me to get away from that and picture it myself.

 

[kristen jones]

I really didn't find the movie Hunger Games to be vastly different than the book. There were a few minor changes and some small things left out, but other than that it matched up VERY well. In fact once I had it at home I went back and read a chapter-viewed a chapter-read a chapter, etc... and it matched up quite nicely.

I do see what cpltony is saying about letting yourself envision vs. letting the movie do it for you. And when I have read first in the past that has been the root of the problem in terms of my disappointment and nitpicking, because the film didn't look like *I* envisioned.

But what should be remembered is that just because *I* envisioned it a certain way doesn't make that way right or the way the film does it wrong. This is why I've been saying that from my experience it's been better to watch first and read second because you avoid that whole problem and are able to just take the director's vision as is. Then when you go back and read you *may* be stuck with that vision as you read.... but if you've got a healthy imagination (as I do) that can be replaced with your own vision as you read.

 

[Riceball]

I, personally, much prefer to read a book after seeing the movie, especially if I know a given book is being adapted into a movie. Whenever I've read a book before a movie I inevitably find myself anticipating every scene or nitpicking each scene which keeps me from just relaxing and just enjoying the movie. This is not to say that I try to avoid books that I think might be made into movies but if I hear of a movie that's been adapted from a book or a book that's about to be adapted and it seems like the kind of book I'd enjoy reading I'll stay away from it until I've had the chance to see the movie first. Then there are movies that may have been based on a book that while I may have enjoyed the movie I'd have no interest in actually reading.