Last evening, on World Book Day, a realization suddenly struck, that many writers these days are taking up writing books as their profession, only hoping that their stories are adapted to make a movie. Well, given the number of series and movies and shows we have today based on books, the above mentioned move is not a foolish thing to do! However, in majority of the times, I have seen people ranting about the changes in plot and characters that have come about in the movie adaptations, which made them hate the movie version, even if they loved the book. How about seeing the whole thing the other way round? Would you feel the same, if you watched the movie first and then read the book? Here’s what I feel from personal experience.
Image Credit: books.google.co.in, Movie – Gone Girl
Like many of you, I did not quite like the movie adaptation of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, and like you can already guess, I had read the book a couple of years before the movie was made and it’s a favorite till date. However, with Gone Girl written by Gillian Flynn, it was a completely different experience. I absolutely loved the 2014 movie version by David Fincher, and after that I decided to read the book. And it was a great experience to say the least. To be able to relate to the course of action and to be able to find out the small details and lesser significant characters that were left out in the movie was fun. Well, I’ll be honest here, that I liked the book better, but this time it was a win-win situation. The movie aroused the interest to read the book, and the book allowed me to delve deeper into it and explore the story in detail.
However much we may rant or complain, it is a known fact that it is humanly impossible to add every detail that we get in a book into the movie version of it. So, for those of you who are wondering, whether you should read the book after having already watched the movie, I would say – “go ahead!” If you have already loved the movie, it will have acted as a prelude to the book, which is a more complete and detailed version of something you already loved. Well, it might happen after reading the book that you would want certain changes to be there or certain characters or moments to have existed in the movie version. However, you would not be complaining that the movie has ruined your favorite character. And if you are a book-lover, you would have some added collections on your book-shelf!
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