Should People Read Books Before Seeing The Movie? Teshale

Stephen King is one of the few authors whose books I have not secretly ghostwritten for fun. King's output is almost as impressive as his net worth, having maintained a successful career for thirty years amongst multiple platforms-- novel, short story and film. King is best known, most likely, for his horror and supernatural writings-- It, The Shining, The Dark Tower and so on-- but he has also written more realistic fiction, such as a short story dealing with 9/11 ("The Things They Left Behind"), baby boomers (Hearts in Atlantis), etc.
The latter novel brings me to my topic today.

The book-to-film adaptation is a long-heralded Hollywood tradition. Stephen King is no stranger to it, and his novels have, on the whole, fared well when translated (The Shining an obvious example, but Hearts in Atlantis was not bad). This is probably for reasons of economics; Stephen King is rich enough, and powerful enough, that he has the luxury of being choosy with whom he options film rights to. In any case, many adaptations have not been so lucky.
In fact, many adaptations of books suck ass. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, for instance. A great idea, a perfectly filmable story, is turned into a series of explosions occasionally punctuated by Sean Connery phoning it in. A Series of Unfortunate Events was a series of bizarre and unnerrving and clever novels, rich and dark as any Victorian melodrama, and were robbed of their bite by a gurning Jim Carrey in a series of disguises.
I have not seen Cold Mountain, but then again I have not read it. Screw that.

There are three reasons a crappy adaptation is unfortunate. One, if people are not aware of the book until after the film comes out, they are under the misguided apprehension that the book is equally crappy. (It is painful to me that many great books are being made into films which usually remove whatever made the book interesting in the first place, and then are subsequently blamed for resulting box office failure.) Two, if people are aware of the book, they are disappointed that its adaptation sucked so much balls. Three, in the case of literary adaptations it allows vaguely pretentious people to brag about how they had read the novel before the film was made. For these reasons, I advise against reading a book before seeing a movie, no matter how much a bookish friend may plead with you.

The solution, rather, is to read the book after watching the movie. This benefits authors, in that they might get an extra print run and publicity. This benefits filmgoers, who have an interesting story to read. There's no direct benefit for filmmakers, who have already taken peoples' money, but they are still happy. Take, for instance, There Will Be Blood, which I believe is the Great American Film. How many people, for instance, had read Oil! before 2007? How many people (who are not history teachers) had even heard of it? I certainly hadn't-- I'd just heard of The Jungle in American History in high school. But now I want to read it. Maybe I will even learn something, although I know a lot of things already.
Or, note the case of The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. Many bookish people read it when they were young, myself included. Most people enjoyed it. It was an interesting take on Arthurian and Welsh mythology, with kids that had problems and argued and acted like real kids, even if they were unwilling Chosen People. Filmmakers decided, hey, to hell with that characterization BS! To hell with different! We'll make the main kid American, because it's hard for American kids to identify with British kids. We'll give him cliched superpowers like stopping time or whatever, because kids love cliched superpowers. We'll make his main problem getting some girl, because what kids like watching is some douchebag with stupid hair using superpowers to impress a girl. (Actually, maybe that is what people want to see.) One could very easily advise a person exiting the theater after watching this tripe, tearing their hair in grief and anger at its crapitude, to read the book as it's better. It may even be slightly cheaper, depending on if a used bookstore is within walking distance.

Even if the adaptation is pretty good, like V for Vendetta or The Shining or even extremely good in its own right, like The Godfather, the film usually loses compared to the book. Overwhelmingly it's a step up to read the original, and people don't read enough anyway. Reading the book afterwards allows you to wash the bad taste of a crap film out of your brain, and occasionally, it may even pleasantly surprise you, like in cases where the ending of the book is completely changed for seemingly no real reason. (Not like I'm bitter, or anything.) Instantly lives are improved; reading comprehension increased; and instead of a nation of sluggards with myopic eyesight, we will create a nation of sluggards with myopic eyesight, that have now read some sweet-ass books.* A vast improvement.


















*There is one exception to this rule. That exception is people who have read Eragon by Christopher Paolini, and/or have seen the film.