[OT] A dark day for Kai Lord....

[Wayside]

Books are several hundred pages long, you just can't fit everything into a movie. Fellowship of the Rings is a good example. They literally cut out hundreds of pages of story, they changed the story up, they changed characters around and eliminated at least a dozen of characters, and that was just the first book. Yes the movie was wonderful, it was just brilliant but it wasn't a complete telling, it was a stylized version. They tried to stay as true to the book as possible but it isn't the 100% story it's a edited version. Another one? try Dune, the movie or the mini-series, neither were 100% on the money, matter of fact both drifted pretty far off the books path. Both were good for their own reasons but neither matched the book.

Books and movies are two different mediums, sometimes movies based on books are actually better than the book was, but there will always be differences.

Wow, this looks like the GRE Analytic Writing Section. Whether or not any movie made from a book has actually been as good as, or better than, the book from which it was made is irrelevant to your feeling that movies don't do books justice. Fact is, if a director wanted to, they could make a 6 hour movie version of Fellowship and recreate everything exactly as it was in the book. If the director wanted to he could even have a narrator read aloud everything that wasn't dialogue so the entire text of the book was recreated in the movie, which would then be about the equivalent of Gustav Dore's Illustrations for Dante, only animated. In other words there is nothing inherent in the medium of film that makes it inferior to the medium of text. For the record, though, that is one movie I would not bother seeing.

That much sort of agrees with your last bit, but the large part before that doesn't tie in, which is what I'm nitpicking. Actually, let's just skip all that and move on to "sometimes movies based on books are actually better." I have to go with most here, since most books made into movies are fairly new, and most of them are written by bad writers (generally predicative of bad thinkers). The days of Flaubert and Rilke are gone I guess. Can a movie do Finnegan's Wake? The answer is a freakish NO. Not at all.

Can a movie do LotR better than Tolkien did it? Yup.. especially if it cuts out the clunky prose and streamlines the spastic plot. I have no problem with writers that throw the unities to the wind and Aristotle be damned.. but Tolkien, while I liked LotR enough to read each book in a day or two when I was 9, I cannot stand anymore. The movies are the only way I will have any further contact with *that* story.

 

[Jeph]

The first few chapters of Two Towers are sooooooooo borring . . . you can probably read those, I doubt they'll be in the movie.

 

[tleilaxu]

Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG YOU CAN"T BE SERIOUS!@!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[hong]

Re: Re: Re: [OT] A dark day for Kai Lord....

Nowhere near as major a spoiler as Vader's revelation earlier in the movie

"No, Luke, I am your mother!"

 

[jdavis]

Wow, this looks like the GRE Analytic Writing Section. Whether or not any movie made from a book has actually been as good as, or better than, the book from which it was made is irrelevant to your feeling that movies don't do books justice. Fact is, if a director wanted to, they could make a 6 hour movie version of Fellowship and recreate everything exactly as it was in the book. If the director wanted to he could even have a narrator read aloud everything that wasn't dialogue so the entire text of the book was recreated in the movie, which would then be about the equivalent of Gustav Dore's Illustrations for Dante, only animated. In other words there is nothing inherent in the medium of film that makes it inferior to the medium of text. For the record, though, that is one movie I would not bother seeing.
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Actually the fact is that if a director wanted to make a six hour movie about anything he would be told to take a hike by the production company. Thus the popularity of Directors cuts for video release. I am not stating a case for movies being 6 hours long, nor am I stating that movies are better or worse than books, just that they are different. Movies are not in any way inferior to books, but movies are a compleatly different experience than books are. When you are reading a book you imagine what you are reading in your head, when you see a movie you see what the Director/scriptwriter imagined in his head while he was reading the book. As far as Fellowship goes some of the clunk that was cut was actually sort of important in the book (barrow wrights? sting? Bill the Pony?), and we got Arwen shoved down our throats so they could justify Liv Tyler. Was this a bad move? did it ruin the movie? no and no, but it does make it different. Thats why they say adapted from the book___by so and so, movies are adapted, they are worked and rewritten so they can be presented visually and fit into the generally accepted 2 hour time block.

Maybe I shouldn't of used the term "do Justice to" as what I meant was movies always give a edited and slanted view of a book. Some of the Directors are better than others and some movies end up with such a slanted view they don't even resemble the book they came from anymore. I love movies and I love good movies based on books, LOTR was a wonderful movie but I can assure you when the trilogy of movies is over there will be tons of book that is left by the wayside.

 

[Dr Midnight]

I'm arguing against the idea that a film can't do justice to a book.

I think that's ridiculous. If you cited all the horrible book-to-film adaptions in existence, you still couldn't convince me.

Moving pictures is/are a new storytelling medium. The written word is far older than I could give a value to here. As a storytelling medium, which offers more potential? Movies give you sound and moving images. Books leave pretty much everything to your imagination.

Some people would say that's better. Think about this- a movie allows you to see the writer's/director's vision, as THEY imagine it. A book has to describe it for you and leave the imagining to you. This works well for some, certainly. However, not all of us have fertile imaginations. I say if you prefer to imagine how the watcher in the water looks instead of seeing someone else's interpretation on the screen, that's a matter of taste.

There are advantages to both media, but I don't think you'll find more in books than you will in moving pictures. As a STORYTELLING MEDIUM, moving pictures can and do tell more all at once, and convey imagery, scenes, dialogue, and action without having to translate the teller's story through the written word.

 

[jdavis]

Yes books and movies are completely different storytelling mediums. Thus the reason for my statement. That is the whole end all be all of my ramblings here. I am not in any way putting down either medium and I am defiantly not putting down LOTR the book or the movie. I do believe you need to read those books instead of just going by the movie. One of the reasons LOTR wasn't made into a movie sooner (not counting the cartoons) is the fear that it would not be like by the fans of the book. The Tolken estate is very touchy about the LOTR property, if they didn't believe in the movie then it wouldn't of been made. The movie is wonderful but as far as the amount of information conveyed, guess that's why the director felt the need to add thirty minutes of extra footage for a special edition. For that matter I have never heard anybody talk about how a movie had more scenes in it that the book it was taken from, it's always talk about what scenes from the book were left out.

Which do you like better books or movies, well that's a matter of taste. I won't argue what anybody should like because everybody has their own opinions. Actually I love movies, because I'm lazy.

I do stand by reading LOTR, if Tolkien hadn't of written it in 1954, then there is no telling where the fantasy genre would be today, it laid the basic framework for modern fantasy writing. I also wonder if D&D would exist, but that is way off on another topic.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

A couple of you have asked what was spoiled.

After reading that spoiler, trust me on this one - that's a minimal shock compared to what you'll see. Don't worry yourself over it.

 

[Victim]

That spoiler is nothing compared to the spoilers in the trailers. One clip gives away a major suprise in TT.

 

[DanMcS]

After reading that spoiler, trust me on this one - that's a minimal shock compared to what you'll see. Don't worry yourself over it.

Seriously, that was it? I was expecting something huge, like that thing that happened at that place in the second book, or the way they did that other thing to that villain in the third book, or even how that guy unexpectedly did that third thing at the end. But the one you posted? If that traumatized you, Kai, you had best just avoid all geeky news and media for the next 13 months, cause so much more important stuff happens than that.