I'm against it. It encourages people to read instead of watching pixelated things on a tv.

Wait, you're against books being made into movies, because it makes people want to read?

o...k...a...y...

Me I don't mind it. Sometimes the adaptations are hilarious, and if I knew it was a book first, if I'm interested, I'll usually read the book before or after and compare the two, then compare the movie to my own imagination's version of how I visualized everything.

If the movie... is actually up to par, fine. But there's been so many unoriginal book-to-movie ideas lately that barely any movie isn't based on a book. =/ So I don't really like it, personally.

Actually I think it encourages people to read the books. Movies are much more well-known as they are all over the media, so many people notice it. There are so many books that unless you are looking for it specifically, you probably won't read it. For example, "The Lovely Bones" and "The Time-Travellers Wife" are examples of movies which are based on books. People who have heard of/watched these movies have been inspired to read the books and so they have become very popular around the time the movie is out and afterwards. If the movie had never been released, then people would not know of these books and won't be inspired to read them.
Although I agree that it gives people the undesired privelege of watching the film instead of reading, I think that unless books are fed through some form of media (movies, magazines, celebrities) then alot of books will go unread. The media has the most influence on people.

Methinks you may have misworded your post. But I understand what you mean, so no problem :P I personally don't have a problem with it, because I don't see the value in simply reading. I mean, certainly, you should be able to read, and you should practice, but you can do that using billboards and and restaurant menus. And most of the books that get made into movies are worth about as much, to be honest. The really meaningful books that have a chance of affecting someone's life or worldview are rarely made into movies, and likewise, the movies with major impact rarely start out as books. And if we're discussing writing style, isn't that something best figured out by the person herself? Modeling oneself after a certain author's style of writing makes everything less original, and I can speak from experience on how difficult it is to break away from that style and develop your own unique voice.

All that aside, I disagree with the suggestion that it makes people abandon the original book in favour of the movie. The Lord of the Rings trilogy (and Tolkien's other related books), for instance, was not exceptionally popular reading, especially among children and teens, until the movies came out. The same is true of the Chronicles of Narnia. It's common knowledge that movies rarely do books justice and sometimes completely change important details, so many are motivated by seeing a really great movie to read the presumably even better book.

Well you know the saying.
The book is so much better then the movie..
So if the movie was good..
THEN THE BOOK WAS BE AWESOME...

or thats how i tend to think.. and then read

Personally I don't mind if they do make a movie out of a book, but I'd prefer to read the book before I watch the movie, simply because most of the time when they make a movie, they always have to leave out details that makes the story really good, no matter if the details are small or big.

Sometimes movies can be almost as good as the books they are based on but most of the time I always find the books to be better. Maybe simply because I like it when I'm allowed to imagine for myself rather than watching what is someone else's imagining of the book.

And I think it depends on the person whether they read the book after watching the movie or not. Some people like reading, so they probably will read the book a movie was based on, especially if they liked the movie. Others dislike reading, so they just settle with watching the movie.

I find it annoying that nearly evreything coming out of holliwood these days is a remake of a book, old movie, or a children's tv show
But if I read the book before the movie it's sometimes fun to rip on the movie about missing scenes or lost plots, etc (like SPEW in book 4 of Harry Potter not being in the movie)
I do dislike how the movies destroy the imagination of the book. It seems to take away from the beauty of the storyline and the author's words, but again in some cases the movie is better than the book (like in julie and julia)

NO. JUST NO. -Curls up on the floor and starts rocking back and forth-

Originally Posted by FatlinMara

I do dislike how the movies destroy the imagination of the book. It seems to take away from the beauty of the storyline and the author's words.

I agree with this!

I'm both for it and against it.

For it because... when author's write the book, it's obvious they dream of seeing it as a movie. They want to see what their characters would look like and the effect on how things happen. :) Take it from someone who knows! :D

Against it because... I agree that it encourages people to waist their life watching tv (which could be bad for you...) rather than to learn a lot from reading a book.

"To read makes English-speaking good."

-Buffy

I personally don't think that's a very good reason for being against it. I doubt that not making books into movies would encourage people to read if they just don't like reading. They would just never read the book or even know about the book if the movie wasn't made. They would probably just watch whatever other movies are made that aren't based on a book. Sure, it might give some people an excuse of not needing to read the book because they saw the movie... But as I said, those people probably would not have read the book anyway. And like some other people have said, sometimes movies actually encourage people to read the book they are based on. For example, a few months ago I went to the theater to see a movie and I saw a trailer for a movie coming out later this year... I keep forgetting the name of it but it's about owls. Legend of the Guardians or something like that. Apparently it's based off of books, but I hadn't heard of these books. I have a friend who really loves owls, so I told him about this movie. He looked into it, and ended up reading the books. So, that's one example of that. The only complaint I have about books being made into movies is that the movies usually aren't quite as good as the books, or they change things or leave out a lot of stuff. I understand they can't put entire books into a movie because no one is going to want to sit there for like four hours to see something that comes out of book several hundred pages long. But I really don't like when they completely change certain things, like putting in scenes that weren't in the book at all.

I don't like the misuse of books-to-movies, it's like all the remakes, no imagination! I'm all for books-to-movies, if it's not being used as a crutch. "oh look that's new and original lets do that!":headdesk: Also ever now and then, you do get a good one, but now they're too few and far between.

Preeetty sure her reasoning in the first post was a joke, people...

I'm going to take the standpoint of profiteering capitalist: if people are willing to pay to see a movie based on a book, why shouldn't people be allowed to make book-related movies, as long as they have the rights to it. lulz.
In any case, film adaptations commonly bring attention to otherwise looked over books. For example, if it weren't for The Lightning Thief coming out in theaters, I would have never been introduced to the books (which I loved). Some adaptations are totally awful, but that's always a risk you have to take with movies. Some just don't turn out as well as you might hope.

I don't really care if they make books into movies, because I would rather read than watch the movie to begin with... But I will see the movie after i've read the book and then I will compare the movie to the book and nitpick about the difference that i notice....

Example:(I knoe that this isn't a book to movie conversion but it sorta will explain itself)
Ok I went and saw the last airbender.. I noticed differences between the anime and the movie.. Like how they pronounced Aang, Sokka, during the whole movie I actually started saying their names right.. it peeved me for some reason.
End example.

So yeah they can make books into movies... Besides if someone watches the movie first and likes it they just might pick up the book and read it!!

My newest case is the Lightening thief. (I'm torn by this so I'm going to give examples instead) The movie was an interesting movie. Lovely special effects, interesting story line, etc. But it really did not have much to do with the book. It has more to do with the book than "the frog princess" did, but the two existed kind of seperately. But the lovely thing about the movie is that kids were suddenly reading the book! They thought "wow this movie is awesome!" and ran to get the book. That's why I'm torn. It works both ways.

What I am adamantly opposed to is watching the movie of a book instead of reading it for a school related project. That seems just plain lazy to me.

I usually don't like books being made into movies because they usually leave way too much out and don't do the books half the justice they deserve. I guess if they did movies would be four to eight hours a piece most likely. Kind of like Lord of the Rings, I hate that they left the chapters out that had them in the Old Forest with the encounter of the willow tree and then Tom Bombadill along with the whole encounter with the Barrow Downs-- by the way that would have been really cool to have seen in the movies. Of course the end of the series when the left out the whole Scouring of the Shire. That would have been epic.

Originally Posted by tanektoshni

My newest case is the Lightening thief. (I'm torn by this so I'm going to give examples instead) The movie was an interesting movie. Lovely special effects, interesting story line, etc. But it really did not have much to do with the book. It has more to do with the book than "the frog princess" did, but the two existed kind of seperately. But the lovely thing about the movie is that kids were suddenly reading the book! They thought "wow this movie is awesome!" and ran to get the book. That's why I'm torn. It works both ways.

What I am adamantly opposed to is watching the movie of a book instead of reading it for a school related project. That seems just plain lazy to me.

I raged at that movie, I read the books first, I grabbed them because I work in a library and the kids were just grabbing them left and right. There were so many holds on them some people gave up and just bought the books because of the wait. I fell in love with them. So I thought I'd give the movie a try...I didn't even finish it.

If its a good book I don't care if I have to sit through a movie that is 3 hours long, broken into multiple movies...just as long as its true to the book as possible. I just want justice done. I don't want important parts left out or completely redone because it ruins it.

Originally Posted by lillian90005

I'm both for it and against it.

For it because... when author's write the book, it's obvious they dream of seeing it as a movie. They want to see what their characters would look like and the effect on how things happen. :) Take it from someone who knows! :D

Against it because... I agree that it encourages people to waist their life watching tv (which could be bad for you...) rather than to learn a lot from reading a book.

-Buffy

Considering that millions of books that have been made into films were written before movies even existed I think that's a very naive comment. :)

For me personally I generally do not enjoy films made from books, because, as others have already stated, they are altered/edited far too much. If I love a book then I do not want to see some other person's butchered visualisation of it. I CANNOT watch Lord of the Rings because of this. I've tried but it just pisses me off way too much.

On the other hand if I see a film and enjoy it, and find out that it is a screenplay of a book, then I'm likely to try and got hold of that to read it one day. I went out and bought Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier after seeing the 1940 film of that one wet Sunday afternoon.

In general only short books work perfectly when turned into films as nothing needs to be cut out. Consider the first Harry Potter film, the only bit they missed out of that was the revelation that Snape was trying to protect Harry in the end, and tht was clearly intentional.

The longer a book the more of the soul of the story that will get discarded to make the film's watching time acceptable.

I've also never liked how parts of a story will be "Hollywooded up" for the film. Take Shawshank Redemption, that does work well as a film, but it was still altered quite a bit, and stuff that never happened was put into the film just to add "cinematic appeal". But maybe part of Shawshank's success as a film was again because it was a short book, so the majority of the story remained...

Can't say the same for the Green Mile of course as that's a lot longer, but that survived the cinematic chop ok. I suppose a huge amount of it depends entirely on the director and the screenplay writer and so on. Silence of the Lambs is an excellent film, but mainly because it's full of suspense and tension, not all slam-bang explosions and chaos. Directors are often too scared to not pander to the norm and will fill a film with over-the-top effects because they feel no-one will like it otherwise, and it's often that which ruins what was a fabulous book.

I like that when I read a book, I can basically let my imagination run free. I can see the characters the way I picture them and the scenes play out in my mind.
If I watch a movie before I read a book, the movie plays through my mind. I don't like that, myself. I want to be able to see everything happening, not the way a director saw it since everyone sees is differently.
I don't MIND people making them into movies because if I intend on reading the book I won't be watching it before, but when someone goes and ruins one of my favorite books, it irks me to no end.

I like movies based on books. It's fun for me if I've already read the book, and if not, I go out and read it.

On the other hand, I get really miffed when the film creators take too many liberties with my favorite stories. Like when they changed which sister is which in The Last of the Mohicans from 1936(?) and then reused that plus added that annoying romance with Hawkeye, aka, Daniel Day Lewis for the newer version. Or, the new War of the Worlds movie. Or Troy. Not that they make bad movies, but to use the phrasing of one of my professors, it's in the hubris that the writers have in not having enough respect for classics. Then, when people don't actually read the books, they think that the movie is a true adaptation (I have seen it a lot with The Last of the Mohicans, but that's one of my favorite books ever, so I'm very defensive about it and its symbolism).

I actually like it. As much as I complain about the Harry Potter movies because they left this out or they added this that wasn't needed, I'm glad they made it into a movie because it's awesome to see the book in action. Sure imagination is cool, but seeing it in movie form is just AWESOME! Sure they never are as good, but the reason books are made into movies is because people ask to see them in movie form. I always want to see the movie form of a book I read, even if it sucks. Sometimes it can be really bad like Dear John, but other times it's alright like Twilight, or awesome like Harry Potter.

For me, I don't like when they do it, because they don't tell everyting that does in the book, and make weird adaptations, like in Harry Potter and the Phylosofal Stone - the way Harry meets Draco is way different in the movie.
Also, i hate when they tottaly modify books, just like what happened in Alice in Wornderland - it was a bloody mess, and then they modified it into a childish bedtime story. And the worse is, that it's rare to someone read the original book, they don't even get interested on the earlier versions only by watching the Walt Disney Pictures movie, so yeah I'm against it, unless if it gets cool.

I don't fully agree with that it depends on the person. Some people are just lazy and if they have the choice between reading it or watching it, they'll watch it. But that isn't always the case, because some people like the books better. The books go into more detail and further build your understanding of the plot line and gives you the full experience. Movies often skip some things and leave out a lot in order to fit what could be hundreds of pages in the novel into the durations of a 90 minute film. It is also interesting to be able to watch the movie version of what you read and get a better idea of what you thought the character or scenery look like.