Books Are Better Than Movies

Yeah, yeah. I know. It's usually true. But, why?

And, in many cases, they don't really need to be much better.

Take, for instance, "Starship Troopers" which I just finished last night. Even if the movie had cut out some of the portions of lesser importance, it still could have been faithful to the book and even updated some of the very dated concepts to be a truly great movie. But the one that was produced was just. . . just. . . just fucking awful. The whole social/political philosophy behind the book was distorted into being Fascism in the movie. In the book, the Terran Federation was a peaceful, democratic and free society with one exception: the right to vote was earned by those who did a term of service. Anybody could serve, and no matter how incapable they were of serving, the Federation had to find a way to allow them to serve.

But in the movie, you got. . . bullshit. Utter and pure bullshit.

And even the cool concepts--ones that were relevant--were left out: power-suits that enhanced a fighter's ability, various weapons and camaraderie between soldiers.

~String

 

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In a book there are two points of view: the author's and the reader's.

In a movie you have to take what you get, which often falls short of your imagination as well as the author's. There is only the viewpoint of the director.

 

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I get that. But that part doesn't bother me. I expect to miss out on a lot of details.

Some books are extremely difficult--almost impossible--to effectively translate to movies. "Dune", for example, presents a number of these nearly insurmountable obstacles. There is a lot of internal dialogue (people talking/thinking to themselves) that is extremely necessary to the narration of the story, but is all but impossible to bring out in a movie without annoying "whisper thoughts" as shown in the Lynch version. In the Scifi version, they were left out, but whole themes had to be abandoned in the process.

Then there's the missing "narrator" who often times sets the mood or pace, that cannot be included effectively in movies.

So, yeah. I get all that. But sometimes a director changes the theme so much that the movie--to me--falls flat. I guess this comes from the fact that a producer/director feels obligated to put his/her stamp on the thing. More often than not, lowering the work in the process.

~String

 

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Actually the Starship Troopers movie originally had a different title and was not intended to have anything to do with the book. But the executives had the rights to Starship Troopers, and decided to slap the name on the movie to try to bring in a little extra income by capitalizing on the name. The script was very hastily edited at the last minute so that the names of the characters, planets, etc would (somewhat) match the book. Since it was already a story about a guy who joins the military out of highschool to go fight alien bugs, it didn't take that much adaptation to (sort of) make the stories match. The director was pretty pissed about it. He had originally set out to make a sci-fi parody movie of all the WWII-era propaganda movies. Especially since the book was basically a pro-war, pro-military tract, which was exactly the sort of thing he was planning to make fun of. You can still see some of the original intent in the movie, like all the "news reel" style segments.

So in answer to your confusion about how they could set out to make a movie version of the novel Starship Troopers and end up with that movie, the answer is: they didn't. That being said, a faithful adaptation of the book would have had an hour of people standing around delivering questionable lectures.

 

Some books are good, some are poo. Same with movies.

I think there is value both in reading about something and having to imagine it for yourself, and in taking in highly concentrated sensory information by itself.

 

Wait, there's a Starship Troopers book?

 

There are plenty (as I peruse a list. . .)

• "2001" - As good as the book.
• "LOTR" - Better than the ultra-boring book, IMHO.
• "The Bourne Saga" - I only read the first book, and was surprised that the movies were an improvement.
• "Casino Royale" - I attempted to read the book after the movie and found it dry and unreadable.
• "Harry Potter" - I couldn't stand reading the books, though, I only liked a few of the movies.
• "Minority Report" - Movie was better.
• "Capote" - Only skimmed through the book, but it seemed long and borrrrring.
• "A River Runs Through It" - Never read the book, but hard to imagine it could be better than the movie.
• "The Green Mile" - King's lame "installment" attempt fell short. The book was good, though. Movie was way better.
• "The Hunt For Red October" - I read the book after the movie and found it slightly better, but the movie was still amazing.
• "Charlie & The Chocolate Factory" - the Depp version, I hated the book.
• "The Silence Of The Lambs" - Attempted to read the book after the movie and found it to be less satisfying.
• "Planet Of The Apes" - Read after movie and, again, didn't like it.
• "The Last Of The Mohicans" - The only direction the movie could go was UP after how unreadable the book was (Hawthorne was required reading in school).
• "Misery" - I read the book in slightly more than a day (I faked being sick to stay home from school so I could finish it). Though the book was slightly better, the movie was nonetheless great.
• "The Shawshank Redemption" - Never finished the book. Found it too depressing. But the movie should have gotten the Oscar instead of "Schindler's List".

So. . . I guess it happens. But it's not that often.

~String

 

Yes. And it's pretty good. The movie totally warped it into being. . . well, you probably saw the movie.

~String

 

Which would have been okay to edit out. There's still a lot of good "stuff" in the book to translate into a more respectable movie.

And. . . um. . . what questionable lectures?

~String

 

I absolutely hate it when they do that. Its the same thing that they did for "I Robot". Make bank on an author's good name and then drag it through the mud by making the antithesis of the book.

At least the promos for "I Robot" gave it away and I never bothered to see it. All I heard about "Starship Troopers" beforehand was how it was "true to the book". I remember that as we were walking out, a couple of younger guys were following us out and one said to the other "That won a Hugo?". I had to apologize to my wife, who was wondering why I drug her to see this piece of crap; explaining that despite what the reviews said, this movie did not resemble the book.

 

There's a fair amount of weirdness in the lectures that the various characters deliver, usually whenever Rico is sitting around in the classes that he has to take in high school and officer school. None of the arguments for why only veterans should be allowed to vote seemed particularly convincing to me, and he ignored the many obvious potential drawbacks.

 

I don't necessarily buy into the philosophy, but one of his teachers did make a good point on voting. . . and that point escapes me right now. Gonna' have to look it up.

~String

 

I would be curious to hear it if/when you look it up.

 

Goddamnit. . . okay.

I'll get the book out.

Hold on a sec.

~String

 

I liked Mystic River too, although they did chop off large portions of the book. Gone With the Wind was not too bad and Thorn Birds was pretty close to what the book intended

 

Too much to retype. Looking for a downloadable PDF.

Your patience is appreciated!​

~String

 

around the world sci fi fans have splitting pain in the heads and don't know why. Not only is a book it is a book by one of the greatest sci fi authors Hienlin

 

I hope you appreciate this. I just had to type five pages from the book just to get the text.

I will state, again, that I don't accept the aforementioned argument in its entirety. But there is a certain appeal to limiting the right to vote to those who have demonstrated character, ownership and concern for how the government acts, rather than those who show up, voting for the impossible and hoping for policies that are next to impossible to deliver.

~String

 

It's hard to object to that sentiment per se. But I would want to see some sort of hard evidence that veterans would be less likely to "vote for the impossible and hoping for policies that are next to impossible to deliver" than the average voter. It's not at all clear to me why someone who was in the military would be any less likely to get duped or confused by stupid promises, unethical campaign techniques, unsound rhetoric, etc.

It would be interesting to compare the voting patterns of veterans with those of non-veterans. I don't think that simply looking at average veteran statistics would suffice, since a disproportionate number of US veterans today served in WWII/Korea/Vietnam, making them a lot older than average. Many of them were also drafted, rather than volunteering. If controlled for age, income, geographic location, etc. it would be interesting to see how the stats broke down.

One potentially depressing statistic is that apparently 71% of veterans voted in the 2008 election, vs. the 64% average. That's a difference, but not a huge one - if veterans were significantly more likely to take political responsibility seriously, I would have expected more than a 7% difference. Especially since as already mentioned most veterans are older, a demographic that's already more likely to vote...