You read a book? CONGRATULATIONS! *pops you one in the face*

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
I agree with whoever was the first person to point out that books and films are fundamentally different and can't be judged by the same yardstick.

Fair enough, but I would say that they are fundamentally the same story and that comparing them is natural and inevitable.

[Immortal Wombat]

Comparing is fine and good and useful, but as soon as judgment terms like "better" are brought in, it becomes meaningless.

[FrustratedPoet]

That's true I suppose. Both of them are products of an artistic medium anyway, which automatically disqualifies them from objective comments such as "better". I always try and say "I prefer the movies to the book", rather than "the movie is better than the book" in these instances, but I guess that I sometimes forget to be that precise.

[lord of the mark]

Ok

1. Most books are "better than the movie"
2. There are many glaring exceptions to the above rule, the most glaring of which was "The Godfather" (I never read "Gone with the Wind" thats supposed to be right up there with the Puzo trash that got turned into cinematic gold)

3. Civ2 was definitely better than "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" and made essentially the same points.
And it was alot less pretentious then "The End of History and the Last Man"

4. Gladiator was better than Caesar 3 though.

[JohnT]

In conclusion, Gladiator was better than the book "Godfather," no matter what Fukuyama* argued.





*spelling?

[Uncle Sparky]

I was disappointed with the Grinch movie made a couple of years ago; I fear that The Cat in the Hat might also disappoint.

I first read LOTR when I was about 13. I do remember having to refer to the maps (conveniently located at the front of the book) to keep track of things.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Comparing is fine and good and useful, but as soon as judgment terms like "better" are brought in, it becomes meaningless.

Not at all. Better here can function in three useful ways:

1) As somebody already pointed out, most adaptations are primarily concerned with the narrative of the original text. Moreover, for most of us the reason to go to the movies is to be engaged by the story. Therefore, the question of whether the movie or book is "better" at telling the story is very much relevant.

2) "Better" is not necessarily a judgment about the quality of the book/film; it could be a judgment about the quality of one's aesthetic experience. I'm one of those people who find the films of LOTR "better" than the movie, because I found the films very engaging and the books horribly dull. Obviously, somebody who found the opposite to be true would have a different sense of which was "better," but the comparison would still be valid.

3) "Better" might also refer to what the book/film achieves on its own terms. Comparing books to films is a little like comparing ice cream to hamburgers -- but it's still easy to say that Ben & Jerry's ice cream is better than McDonald's hamburgers, since what B&J achieves as ice cream is better than what McDonald's achieves as a hamburger. In that way, the book Ragtime is better than the movie, because what the book achieves as literature is more impressive than what the movie achieves as cinema.

[MikeH]

Hamburgers are much nicer than ice cream.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by MikeH
Hamburgers are much nicer than ice cream.

You may think the two are completely different, but if you're talking fast food burgers, than their taste both comes from artifical flavouring and you could actually make a fair comparison between the quality of taste.

[MikeH]

Savoury is better than sweet therfore burgers are better than ice cream.

[duke o' york]

Originally posted by MikeH
I can read 10,000 pages in 17.64 seconds.

Mike is Google!

Which might explain his deficiencies in his taste-buds.

[Sarxis]

I'm a little confused.. is the 'read' in the thread title past or present tense?

[Jac de Molay]

With the exception of the Exorcist, Lord of the rings, and LA Confidential, I've liked just about every book better than the movie.

Books take their time developing, and I like to take my time reading them, especially with characters I really get into. There's time and space to develop characters and their background, whereas in movies I always get the sense of things whizzing by too fast.

Dune is a good example of this phenomena, as well as Name of the Rose