Let's face it, NOTHING quite beats the original: Join the Warren Adler Page-to-Screen Book Review Bonanza and Read the Originals Before they Hit the Screen discussion

Do you think movies ever truly capture the original book they are based on?

If you've read the book first it can be very distracting watching the movie. Are the characters as you pictured them? Did you pronounce names/places correctly? Are they sticking to the book? What chapter does that happen in?

If the movie stays true to the book and does not stray too far or add extraneous characters it can be very enjoyable. Movies can capture books, especially if the author participates. Devoted readers have very high expectations and can be any movie`s toughest critic.

Movies rarely capture novels accurately, so in my opinion there are two ways to go. One: the movies that capture novels accurately. No need to talk them over, I guess. Sometimes movies and novels merge seamlessly, like The Lord of the Rings. There is no telling which is better, the movies are long enough to put much of the novels to the screen, turning them into a colored xerox. Enough of that, because this genre offers basically more of the same. No doubt, at some point in time the general audience will be unable to say which version was created first. With the Harry Potter franchise this seems to be already happening, with Dame J.K. Rowling emerging as the mother of all versions. Two: the movies who completely misinterpret the novels. Apart from the ones that sink at the box office and with critics alike (no need to discuss them) there are the movies that take the novel and turn in into something completely different. Stanley Kubrick's The Shining comes to my mind. So does Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice. These are movies that stand next to their original novel as separate works of art (I'm freely quoting Visconti). I think that is the essence of good movie making from novels: a novel is a different medium. Stuff that works in a novel does not always work on the big screen, and vice versa. Consider merely the use of sound and music in a movie and you have something no novel has ever had, but it's stuff that has a profound impact on the spectator. A movie is something else; therefore moviemakers MUST make up their own minds about the story. A novel is not a script.