Game Of Thrones... This may be a TV Show based on a novel... but trust me when I say that the rule still applies![/caption]I was talking with a buddy of mine recently about, 'Game Of Thrones' in both the book and TV series... And I got to telling him basically about the fact that, 'The book is almost always better than the movie...' (Before I go on, I should say that this metaphor is applicable to TV as well,) either way I really got to thinking... Well why is that? And this is what I could come up with:
1. In movies oft times filmmakers tend to take creative liberties with the the casting for a specific role, (an example is that in the original novel, 'Psycho' which was written by, 'Robert Bloch', Norman Bates is a bald pudgy guy... In the movie he was played by Anthony Perkins (Edge Of Sanity) who as it turns out was a tall skinny guy with a full head of hair... Another example of this is that in the original novel, 'The Stand' by: Stephen King, one of the prominent characters by the name of, 'Harold Lauder' is a fat pimply faced kid that is infatuated with, 'Franne Goldsmith', in the movie, 'Harold Lauder' is played by: Corin Nemic (Sand Sharks), who is thin... (although in the movie he is still pimply faced...)
2. Another thing is the time frame that most filmmakers have to work with in regards to the story... What I mean by this is that most novels tend to take place over days, months, or even years (although in, 'Gerald's Game' the story is a detailed example of a women who is held after a particularly rough sexual event kills her husband, while she is handcuffed to the bed...) And so I got to imagine that, that has to be at least one of the reasons why they take certain creative liberties with the story line... A great example of this is the movie, Queen Of The Damned (2002)....
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Queen Of The Damned... A great movie, but an even better book![/caption]Now Queen Of The Damned, took other creative liberties between the movie and the book (considering the fact that this movie is based on the book, 'Queen Of the Damned' and, 'The Vampire Lestat'), but the book itself takes place over centuries, and so while they heavily accented certain elements of the present day as seen from the original novels, they seemed to primarily focus on, 'Lestat' and how he became introduced to, 'Enkil' and, 'Akasha'...
All of that is good, the problem is, is if they had done it right, that particular movie would never have had to gloss over a lot of the rich tapestry that Anne Rice painted in the books for what would have been considered to be the present... And I think that because of the timeline for trying to fit 2 particularly meaty books in to an 1:40 minute movie was just plainly impossible!
And then last but certainly not least, there is another reason that I think that the book is better then the movie... And that is when certain movies try to take artistic liberties with the big screen adaption that they are trying to do... I mean Hollywood was a little bit more like that in the 90s and beyond but it is still happening all of the time! Now I don't mean taking artistic liberties with a novel to make the story fit in to a 2 hour movie...
No I am talking about when they just start cutting out, or adding in elements to the movie that had never been part of the original novel!
I found that when this is done, not only does it change the vision of what the author had originally intended, but I also have found that when I have later started reading the novel, that the way the author had written the novel the way it had originally been intended was actually better!
In the end, I am not saying that all big screen adaptions suck, as a matter of fact, I have that I have really liked a lot of them... But in the end, what I mentioned above is: 'A Couple Of Reasons Why, 'The Book Is Always Better Than The Movie'!
http://youtu.be/y9klJA1JMbM
http://youtu.be/qsMp2pZK-Cw
http://youtu.be/2Gu9HtN05sc
