I kind of hate it when they turn books into a movie. Sure it's nice because you can actually see the events of the book before you, but something is always left out. Also the world created in the movie is not going to be the same as the world you created in your head. Unless, of course, you are directing the film. Personally, I have to see the movie first before I read the book.When we read the book first we have a set idea of what the movie SHOULD look like. Because of this, we get very upset when the movie ends up not being what our imaginations pictured. Movies are like a win-lose situation for a book. A movie is win because it isn't limited to what they can do. A movie can literally take you to the world of a book. It can suck you into the story 3 dimensionally instead of just 2 dimensionally. However, a movie is lose because it is so limited. In order to have every little detail from a book put in a movie the movie would have to be never ending. Take Stephen King's "It" for example. They made it into a mini tv series and then released it on dvd. If you watch the dvd, it is 2 discs long and like 3 hours. And yet it still leaves out huge amounts of detail (so my boyfriend has told me) One could argue this is because it was made for tv but my point is even at 3 hours long huge detail chunks had to be cut.
On the other hand, sometimes the movies based on books can be really good movies. For example, take the Harry Potter movies. If you can get your mind to forget the massive amounts of detail left out you'll find that these movies are actually done really well. For another example take Ian McEwan's "Atonement." I saw the movie of Atonement before reading the book. (Got to meet James McAvoy too omg) Atonement is by far one of my favorite movies and favorite books. The movie was done beautifully, the score was amazing, (thank you Dario Marienelli) the acting was superb, and I got hooked in right at the beginning. The book of course is a lot more fantastic and amazing. When I read the book though I was shocked to find the ending was a hell of a lot different from the movie. I understand why they did that ending for the movie, but the book's ending was far better. Had I read the book first I would have hated the movie purely because of the ending change.
So what's my point with all this? The book will always be better than the movie, so watch the movie first so it at least stands a chance. And if you've already read the book, then (try) to watch the movie with the frame of mind that you haven't read the book yet. This way its a win-win! You get to see a decent movie and then read a superb book! Unless of course that movie/book pair is the Twilight series....then both movies and books are both terrible....but I'll post a rant about that another time :)
