loved the movie, read the book?

A reverse on the usual question of "I loved book xxx, should I see the movie?" Someone comes up to you with absolutely no experience with written SF and says "I just loved :some movie adaptation:. You know that stuff. Should I read :original source text:?"

A few examples of books and stories I think a lover of the movie would enjoy:

Lord of the Rings
A Scanner Darkly
The Time Machine (George Pal version)

Cases where the lover the movie would NOT enjoy the text, even if the text is better

I, Robot
Minority Report
The Time Machine (most other versions)

Not sure:

Blade Runner / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
Total Recall / We Can Remember for You Wholesale

I'm particularly interested in those cases like I, Robot where there's no way someone who liked the movie will like the original material.

OP: I love I, Robot (the movie version) and I, Robot (the book). I watched the movie before I read the book (I was 12/13, and had yet to engage in my 'I shall not watch it until I've read it' ideology), and yet I love both. So, the movie may only be very loosely based on the source, does that make it bad? No.

The same with Minority Report tbh, though the film isn't all that good.

I don't see where you are getting at with the comment that there's 'no way someone who liked the movie will like the original material' - it's just wrong

I realize it's not science fiction, but the Princess Bride. Loved the movie, liked the book.

Not so sure about your categorisation of Minority Report.

I find We Can Remember it for you Wholesale a better ending than the film. In general, I find the film versions of PKD's works only use the ideas rather than the detail of the story. This means that the film and the book can be considered as two totally different entities and enjoyed in their own right. I find this to be the case with Minority Report, Blade Runner, and Total Recall.

2> "I don't see where you are getting..." The I, Robot movie is a special-effects laden adventure with crashing busses and a plot about a plan to take over the world. Aside from a few names and the presence of robots, there's nothing in the movie to tie to Asimov's short stories and the whole thriller aspect isn't close to what the stories are about. Clearly someone could enjoy both, but it's coincidental, not because the text expands on ideas in the movie.

3> Yes, I would definitely send any lover of the movie version of The Princess Bride to the book. That's the order I followed, and the book did exactly what I hoped, which was go beyond what the movie showed.

4> I debated Minority Report. Which order did you encounter the story and the movie? If you've read the text first, you focus on how much of the material makes it into the movie. MR carries over some of the main items. But that's a very different experience than seeing the movie first, then going to the text looking your favorite scenes. Most of the parts that stand out for me in the movie appear not at all in the story.

I guess I think in most cases these are really different experiences--I'm thinking about books/movies in general, and one issue I have is that if I read the book first and love it, I'm looking for the movie to be a faithful adaptation. So, for example, most of the Jane Austen books have at least one good adaptation out there; in my opinion, The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Count of Monte Cristo, not so much.

Maybe a related question is simply whether it's a good movie or not? I'm thinking about 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was a brilliant movie.
And then there are the various versions of Dune, which I think have fallen far short of the book.

Regarding The Princess Bride, Goldman's intelligence is more evident in the book. I'm not knocking the movie, which I like a lot, but the book is bloody brilliant.

Even when a fine job is done in the movie, or, well, 99% of the time, the book is the better media, at least in my opinion. For those who loved the movie, I ALWAYS recommend the book... especially when the book and the movie aren't really tied together like I, Robot. Movies are too condensed and much of the time ruin the story almost entirely because cuts are made in the wrong places and too much material is cut... but I honestly can't think of any SF movie that's better than the book on which it was based. I could probably think of a whole bunch that are terrible films though.

John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) is fairly faithful to the original text of "Who Goes There" by John W. Campbell. Other movies are loosely based on this story too, but the best of them - so far - is the 1982 version. There's a new version being filmed which is scheduled for release in 2011, and, of course, not having viewed the new film, I can't speak for how good it is (or will be).

Some extreme examples of too much being cut from the book to make the movie; These movies make absolute hash of the plots:
Dune (1984)
Eragon (2006)

There are other examples, but those two above are among the worst...

>>>I'm particularly interested in those cases like I, Robot where there's no way someone who liked the movie will like the original material.

IMHO there is little or no chance of that ever happening, aside from coincidence.

ejj1955 wrote:
Maybe a related question is simply whether it's a good movie or not? I'm thinking about 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was a brilliant movie.

In the case of 2001 it was not an adaptation of the novel but was written concurrently with the screenplay.

#5. I agree with much of what you said, but as a huge Asimov fan and someone who loved I,Robot as a kid, I actually thought the central theme of the movie plot -- once you strip away all the special effects and action -- was one that Asimov would have applauded. Many of his stories centered on logical puzzles brought about by the 3 laws, and certainly the 3 laws loomed large in the majority of them. The movie took the first law to its logical extreme, and I thought it gave the viewer much to think about -- that humanity needed the greatest protection. . . from itself. Asimov might have argued that such coddling, while safer, would lead to stagnation and decline; a point he made powerfully in his book The End of Eternity. Anyway, overall, I thought Asimov would have approved of at least the central tenent of the movie.

Doug

Hard to say whether the written story or movie of 2001 is better. The written version certainly explains more. For example, it explicitly states that the monolith makes changes in the protohumans' brains to make them more intelligent, instead of leaving the audience to infer this. But the movie has a certain charm of its own. (To be sacriligious, though, its pacing is not great. It could stand to have a good 15 minutes cut, in little 30-second snippets here and there.)

Expanding on several comments above, I think

"Cases where the lover (of) the movie would NOT enjoy the text, even if the text is better"

would be more useful if changed to

"Cases where there is no reason to assume the lover (of) the movie would enjoy the text, even if the text is better".

The book of 2001: A Space Odyssey is a novelisation that was written as the film script was written. The actual source text is a short story, 'The Sentinel'.

Anyone who enjoys Verhoeven's "Starship Troopers" is unlikely to feel the same about the book. I happen to think it's an excellent adaptation of a crap book.

As for Dune... Lynch's film looked fantastic but buggered up the plot. The Sci-Fi miniseries was faithful to the book but looked rubbish; and it was a bit dull too.

#5 I debated Minority Report. Which order did you encounter the story and the movie?

I can't quite remember. I know I read the story as a result of the film coming out, but I may have seen the movie first.

Either way, by the time I read the story and watched the movie, I was already of the opinion that PKD story based movies only used key concepts, so I treat the two entities as two entities, and don't get too worried about differences. With the movie I was fascinated by the iris recognition technology. At the time I was head of technology for a chain of department stores and was investigating biometric recognition. I had looked into iris recognition and was interested in the use it was put to in the film. A lot of the "in-context" marketing was not that far from what is capable at the moment (not with iris recognition, but with your self-scanning technology in a store).

I was also interested in the concept of having the seers predicting crime. At the time I was also deeply involved in loyalty card data analysis to predict, and subsequently influence, purchasing behaviour. I felt we were basically doing the same as the authorities in Minority Report, but without the psychics. (At the time the movie came out, the authorities in the US were using loyalty card data and library records to help identify potential terrorist suspects.)

Oops! Did I stray off topic there?

PS I saw Total Recall before reading We Can Remember if for You Wholesale. I enjoyed both; again, they were two totally different entities. I thought the ending of the short story better than the ending of the movie.

13> Anyone who enjoys Verhoeven's "Starship Troopers" is unlikely to feel the same about the book. I happen to think it's an excellent adaptation of a crap book.

As with most of the claims made in the thread, this is another one ripe for someone popping up and saying "my experience was completely the opposite." Allow me to be that popper-upper.

I quite enjoyed both the movie and the book and experienced them in that order. I enjoyed the movie on two levels as an effects-laden action film and as a cleverly (though somewhat ham-handedly) made parody of Nazi propaganda.

But again, I think this is where the original subject of the thread is the key. Had I read the book first, I might have been annoyed at the changes. This kind of thing happens all the time. For whatever reason, our gut reaction is to hate it when books have to be edited (and sometimes, completely reinterpreted) to work in the movie format. We want a movie version of the events in the book, no matter how much that wouldn't work.

Another example to follow ian's Dune one - The Shining. There's the good one (that takes only its bones from the book) and then there's the faithful one (that is boring as hell). I'm only glad I didn't read the book before seeing the movie on that one. Weird isn't it how we can often quite enjoy the books after having seen the movie first, but not the other way around.

#13 & 15 "Starship Troopers"
So far I have only seen the movie but I do have and intend to read the book.

I thought the movie was enjoyable. It wouldn't be on my, "OMG You must see it" list, but it was good.

What I didn't like was what I presume to be the TV spin-off series, "Space, Above and Beyond", which, thankfully, lasted for only one season.

I will move "Starship Troopers" up my TBR pile so see if I can provide another sample point for this discussion.

(Of course, as I didn't, "Love", the movie, perhaps my sample point will not be suitable.)

16> Not only was SAAB not a spin-off, it actually pre-dated the movie by a couple of years.

I saw the movie The Relic and then I read the book. This may not be the only time for me that the order was movie/book rather than book/movie, but it stands out for me as one of the few times I thought the movie was better than the book. The movie was fairly fast-paced, and good. The book, The Relic, drifted off the plot point so often, causing the pacing to slow to a crawl. I don't think I would have read all of The Relic if I had not first seen the movie.

#16 The spin-off TV series from "Starship Troopers" was an animated series called, er, "Starship Troopers". As brightcopy points out Space Above & Beyond is completely unrelated. It was, IIRC, written by two of the writers from The X-Files.

#19 "The spin-off TV series from "Starship Troopers" was an animated series called, er, "Starship Troopers"."

The animated series is called "Roughnecks: Starship Trooper Chronicles", or "Roughnecks" for short.

I knew it had "Starship Troopers" in the title...

#21

I'm such a Roughnecks: STC fan girl. :)

19-22> Of course, there were also the straight-to-dvd sequels, which could also in a way be considered spin-offs.

The second was dire, but the third wasn't too bad - although let down by crap acting.

I think crap acting was a problem with the SF miniseries of Dune--the guy who played Paul was so uncharismatic that I can barely remember him in the role. Lynch's version had some moments but I was really put off by the over-the-top grossness of Baron Harkonnen. Ugh. More farcical than fearsome.

While I don't think it was brilliant, I did enjoy Space Above and Beyond.

25> I was only slightly aware of SAAB, so I went and double-checked it before posting about it not being a spin-off. I got sucked into reading the article and I have to say it looks like a damn good show, on paper. Lots of awesome ideas that you never see in a dumbed-down-for-mainstream series, even one like BSG.

You can say this for Lynch's production of Dune: It's exactly what you'd expect from "David Lynch does Dune." It's definitely Dune, but... weird.

It's a shame Jodorowsky never got to make his version.

18> "I saw the movie The Relic and then I read the book."

That reminded me of "Mimic," which I find an interesting case. I saw the movie first:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119675/

and noticed that it said it was based on a Donald Wollheim story. I found it in his collection Two Dozen Dragon Eggs. The story is just a few pages and the *only* thing in common in the basic idea of the mimic, which isn't even that critical to the movie plot. But I would still send anyone who liked the movie to the story, because it's an interesting alternate take on the idea.

12> anglemark: "Cases where there is no reason to assume the lover (of) the movie would enjoy the text, even if the text is better".

Yes, that's a much better way to phrase the question.

Oh, God, the movie version of Mimic! Bleagh! Apparently, evolution leads to gross morphological changes in biology and associated changes in behavior in a matter of days. GAAAAAAAAHHHHH!

Edit: If this is where people get their notions of evolution, no wonder so many think it's a bunch of nonsense!

Yes, but it shouldn't be where people get their ideas about evolution!

Kind of reminds me of something else - did you know that Shrek is "based" on a book? Yes, Shrek!, in fact. But the differences are so major and the similarities so minor, that...

I'm sorry, I can't keep typing this. I made the mistake of going to the Shrek! book page and looking at the CK. It's riddled with movie data. I think I'm going to be ill...

One thing in favor of having movies different from the book--it's one way to catch kids who base their book reports on having seen the movie.

>32 ejj1955: Of course not!

>35 Carnophile: But given that something appalling, like maybe 50 percent? more? of US citizens don't "believe" in evolution . . . looks as though that may be the source of the information instead of, oh, crazy thought, school?

Creationism: It's Hollywood's fault!
:)

LOL!

#25
"the over-the-top grossness of Baron Harkonnen. Ugh. More farcical than fearsome."

Oh, that reminded me of National Lampoon's Doon, and the character Baron Hardchargin's immortal words, "Have sent to my chambers two young boys, a pumpkin and the schnauzer." LOL!

#29
I did not know that about Mimic. Two Dozen Dragon Eggs is now on my Wishlist.

Anyone who enjoys Verhoeven's "Starship Troopers" is unlikely to feel the same about the book. I happen to think it's an excellent adaptation of a crap book.

I think the movie Starship Troopers is an awful movie without reference one way or the other to the book. As an adaptation of the book, it is atrocious, but that is independent of what makes it a bad movie. The book on its own is good for what it is.

15> "Weird isn't it how we can often quite enjoy the books after having seen the movie first, but not the other way around."

And allow me to say that it never happens that way for me. The version I like is the one I'd love to see replicated in either media... and I usually do not like both versions.

Case in point (sorry to get off the Science Fiction track here, but I can't think of another relevant example off the top of my head) The Wizard of Oz (1939) film - the one probably ALL of us have seen about a million times - is nearly nothing like the book. The screen play writer(s) took the characters created by L. Frank Baum, who wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and wrote an almost completely different story, eliminating much of the darkness in the original tale.

I'm so used to the story - movie version - from having seen it so many times and for so many years before I was able to locate a copy of the book that I view the two media entirely as separate. I didn't enjoy the book nearly as much because I saw the film version first. But, to be fair, I was about 8 when I saw the movie the first time, and 14 when I read the book. By then, I'd seen the film about 7 times... Since then, I've seen the film about 30 more times.

And that doesn't mean I like the film better, just that I've had lots more exposure to it because my family has (through most of my life, anyhow) always had TV... Sadly, I've not had opportunity to own any of L. Frank Baum's books.

Thereafter, I have always tried to read the book first and then view the film... and often entirely skip the film version of my favorite stories, because I feel there's nothing that can be done better on film than was done in most books. When I do see a film first, I like to let many years elapse between seeing the film version and reading the book. I don't want to make comparisons in my mind, and that's what always seems to happen if I view a movie before I read the book or short story on which it is based.

Once in a very great while, I will say that Hollywood manages not to totally fubar a good story by making it into a movie... but I can just about count all those instances using the fingers on one hand... and no, I don't have extra fingers... They're not all Science Fiction, but are relevant examples of a good film being made based on an original short story or novel

The Thing (1982)
The Green Mile (1999)
To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)

and -maybe- a couple more in the back of my mind that won't come foreward right now...

34. > I can agree with that!

40. > Agreed.

I think it's amazing they ever get it right. I know a picture paints a thousand words, but novels can capture people's innner thoughts, which don't translate to the screen (that's why in book that have the main character working by himself and thinking a lot, they usually add another character for him to speak with). I think the HOLES movie did a good job of capturing a complex plot. But look at Battlefield Earth, widely considered a horrible movie. I read the book as a kid and it was great fun -- wouldn't win any Hugo's but it was great adventure and really had you rooting for the hero. When I heard about the movie, I was thinking: how in the world can you condense over 1000 pages into a two hour movie? It turns out that you can't.

Doug

42> Well, you especially can't when you have idiots at the helm. Some of the decisions they made that were so dumb had nothing to do with the length of the source material. They were just dumb for the sake of dumb.

41> Does your definition of "good" include films that aren't "faithful" in the plotline/characters of the book? I'm thinking of ones like The Shining or Blade Runner, where the original story is more of a launching point than a bible for the production. But either way, it's definitely the exception that proves the rule, and I think most real booklovers will agree. I think most anyone who loves books will agree that books are a superior form than films (I'm thinking if posed in terms of "if you were on a desert island and you could only carry" type scenarios). I love good movies, but I could live without them far easier than I could live without good books.

Plus, there's the fact that movies, in general, are made for the mainstream audience. Very few movies, especially with the structure of movie production and distribution these days, are targeted at a narrow, small market. That's especially anathema to science fiction. And if all that isn't enough, you have the factor that science fiction requires visual effects that are as believable as the ones your imagination can provide. It also requires that any exposition be cut out that doesn't work with the pacing of a film. These two aspects alone doom most movies based on scifi books.

42> Interesting you should bring up HOLES. It was while reading that book this week, having seen the movie first, that the question occurred to me. I liked the movie, and I think anyone who liked the movie would like the book. But it's one of those rare (to me) cases where the book doesn't add anything not in the movie. The author crammed it all into the screenplay and the director caught the flavor very well. I like the book a little better because the movie expanded some things too much, but it would be odd to say "read the book, it has less!"

Another interesting example (again, straying out of sf and into fantasy) are the Harry Potter movies. I watched the first three without having read the books yet. Then I started reading them (with the first one). After that, I can't fathom how you could watch them (especially Prisoner of Azkabahan) and not be floored at how much they left out. I started thinking, "How did this movie make SENSE to all the people who haven't read the book. How did it make sense to ME?"

I saw the movie Holes, (or most of it, anyhow) and I liked it. Interestingly enough, though the book Holes was written for the YA market, my Dad liked the movie too... in fact, Dad was the one who got me interested in Holes... anyhow, I've never had the opportunity to read that book.

42. > "When I heard about the movie, I was thinking: how in the world can you condense over 1000 pages into a two hour movie? It turns out that you can't."

Too bad Hollywood hasn't learned that lesson yet. 1,000 pages would be at least three 2 hour movies... and I doubt the studios would want to invest that much money in one story.

43. > Not necessarily. A good movie has a plot that makes sense to the majority of the viewers. Films that aren't faithful often do not make sense - reference the movie Dune (1984) There's more, but I don't have time to explain my POV right now.

46> That's okay, I think I get where you're coming from. But weirdly enough, the opposite of that last statement is also true! Sometimes films that try to be too faithful to the source material also don't make sense. There are very few novels that can be condensed to a movie. Typically, only short stories can be truly faithful and fit into the length of a feature film. So frequently, they try to be faithful to the book but wind up having to cut for time. So the stuff that stays in may be very close to what's in the book, but as a film it doesn't make sense because of the parts they cut out.

And actually, I feel like Dune (1984) suffers from both problems. Sometimes, there's stuff in it that's incomprehensible if you haven't read the book. Other times, it goes off on it's own journey into stupidity.

Of course, I saw the movie as a kid and as such loved it. But as a kid, two of my favorite tv shows were Manimal and Automan. The adult me rightly has a very skeptical opinion of kid me's taste level.

The idea of considering the book and movie as two separate entities does work for me in some cases--take Gone with the Wind. Great book, great movie. Yes, the movie (even at 4 hours!) left out huge sections of the book, including two of her children. But it still worked.

I agree that the Harry Potter movies leave out a lot of stuff and in some cases make changes that don't make much sense. There was one scene in Dumbledore's office (when he vanished rather than being arrested and taken to Azkaban) that was much cooler (but not any longer) in the book than the movie. And there were many scenes in which Dobby helped Harry in which his acts were given to other characters--why?

Sorry for all the non-SF movie references . . .

47.> The trouble with Hollywood is that they try to make a movie out of every book they read; usually ending up with (at best) a B film for their efforts, and far too often trashing the story. As you say the book length story is too long for a two hour film so cuts must be made. More often than not, the cuts are made in the wrong places and transitions - if any - are badly done.

What most novels need is a talented screen writer; someone who knows just where to cut so the story still makes sense but stays faithful to the book as much as possible too. Transitions are difficult. As I said earlier, To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) was very well done. They made the right kind of cuts - where most viewers don't even notice the missing material - and the right kind of transitions, so the story still makes sense... and the feel of the story is the same whether you read the book or see the movie. Another thing they got right is the actors chosen.

On the other hand, some novels - and I believe Dune was one of those - just never translate well into film, no matter who writes the screen play.

48.> I own Gone With the Wind in both DVD and book formats. I've only looked at the movie previews and only read a sample of the book. My book is a hardcover, 1936 printing that's not in the best possible shape, so if I ever get around to reading that novel, I'm going to probably end up mooching a paperback to save on the wear and tear of the old book...

Now, Harry Potter... I could probably watch the films and never know what they left out because I have not read the books... In films, the screen writer often condenses minor parts from two or more characters into one. This makes the single character more important to the film and saves money because they only hire one actor instead of two or three.

They have read these books?

Kidding . . . I think. I agree that To Kill a Mockingbird was a great version of a great book. Maybe some books just lend themselves better to film versions, also--SF may be inherently difficult in that it often deals with things that can't be shown by actors and a little scenery or location shooting, although technology seems to have caught up with that for the most part.

I'm pretty sure Dobby was a CGI character, for example, so no need to pay an actor for other than his voice, although I don't know the relative cost of CGI characters versus those who breathe. The problem with the Harry Potter stories is that he pops up later and what happens with him makes more sense in light of his previous actions. It's hard to believe he'll be left out of the remaining films.

I highly recommend reading Gone with the Wind--one thing that rarely gets discussed about the story is how much detail there is about the Civil War. Of course, the characters are pretty memorable.

I keep feeling guilty about straying from the SF topic, even though I know that happens a lot on LT!

CGI characters are far more expensive. Just think about it. Even if one character is in every scene of a movie, the total amount of time they spend acting isn't going to be that much more than the length of the film (adding time for extra takes, footage that gets cut out, etc.) But for CGI characters, you have a team of people working on it for months. Plus all the software and hardware. And it's not like you're usually replacing a big-money star with a CGI character. You're typically replacing what would be a cheap part for most roles. Think of how cheap it would have been to get a little person to play Dobby, or to get Andy Serkis to play Gollum in the flesh.

Yeah, it's not about the money. If it were, every character would be CGI and Angelina Jolie et al would have to get real jobs.

52

There already is a CGI version of Angelina out there, and for my money, the CGI version was not without its appeal (it must have been the good acting). (Beowulf, 2007)

Case in point - Jolie got still got $8 million for doing the voice/motion capture in Beowulf. Her usual feel runs $10-15 million but apparently she did it "cheap" because it was quick to film.

Ok, ok, but the point is, there's not a general shift to CGI characters (let alone fictional house dwarves or whatever) on cost grounds.

Sometimes even the author is not the best person to adapt a book. Just look at the film of John Fowles' The Magus. Michael Caine said it was the worst film he ever worked on because no one knew what it meant. Yet Fowles wrote the screenplay. OTOH, Pinter did an excellent job of adapting Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman.

Two films which are much better than their source texts are The Commitments and Marnie. On reflection, many of Hitchcock's films were adaptations of novels, and I suspect most of them were better than the original books...

A key thing about Hitchcock's films is that he worked with the viewer's imagination, like a book does. He led the viewer to imagine the terror and didn't rely on special effects to show the detail. This is a key element of his success and the enduring quality of his movies.

I remember seeing part of "The Fly" (not the old version, but one made in the last 20 odd years (and some of them were very odd)). A man stumbled and his head was under a descending lift. As the lift descended it was obvious his head was going to be crushed. I thought, "They're not going to show his head being pulped, are they? They don't need to."

Well, they did. IMO that took away lots of the effect of the movie. It was totally unnecessary. Hitchcock would have cut away just before the crush and it would have been much more effective than what they showed. I admit, I did replay the piece in slow motion, and yes, it was very easy to spot where the live actor war replaced by the dummy that was crushed and showed the contents fo the skull being splattered about. Totally unnecessary.

Well, it is the opening post has an interesting question, but I think the answer to it is " Books are not movies ".

Just because you like a movie , doesn't preclude you liking the book. Also, disliking the movie doesn't mean you will dislike the book.

I wonder if ChrisRisebeck could have meant something like,

" are there movies that have been dumbed down, or made "Popular" to the point where, someone who liked it, would probably not like the more Thoughtful or intellectually stimulating book ? "

In which case I would say, "yep, tonnes".

anglemark, back in #12, was closer to mark (no pun intended). While often movies are dumbed down or special-effected to the max, that wasn't my main point. Rather, I was asking about cases where a movie is popular or good (either) because of X, and X isn't a feature in any way of the book.

>59 ChrisRiesbeck: My take would be something like, "where the book and the film are quite different"--and less whether one thinks one is better than the other, although a wide divergence in quality does affect one's advice.

#59
I see. That is a different question to the one I thought you asked.

I can't think of a case offhand, but I do see how there could be one.

Bladerunner doesn't seem to exactly fit, because the Movie is a masterpiece of feeling, style, it doesn't have much radical added ingredients as such, just infinitely better written script ( quite different in how the plot elements are laid out, but the same basic story told really ), and the Book is just more of PKDs misanthropy and mental illness, like all his work.

41>
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was one of the (many) books I really loved as a kid. I know large parts of the Swedish translation of the first book by heart; I owned the first and third books in the series and repeatedly borrowed the others from the library. I first saw the movie when I was in my 20s, I think. I didn't dislike it, exactly, but I wasn't particularly enchanted by it either. For one thing, Dorothy is a completely different person, a sort of damsel-in-distress type rather than the feisty, independent girl from the books. And I was very, very disappointed in the ending - that ruined the story completely! I mean, come on, Oz isn't a dream, it's an actual place (which is why Dorothy is able to go back there in later books, and eventually moves there!)

There are certainly things I like about the movie, to be clear, but it's just taken too many liberties with a book I loved for me to love it. I have seen it again once or maybe twice, and I wouldn't mind watching it again, but just as with the Lord of the Rings movies I have to get myself in a "this is a different story about different people, with incidental similarities to the books" frame of mind.

So, yes, it's definitely possible to have different experiences of Wizard of Oz depending on whether you experience the book or the film first.

-Néa

A lover of the movie The Road would (except for one scene in the book) feel like they already read the book. I would probably vote it most faithful movie adaptation...ever.

I had to click on your link to make sure it wasn't On the Road. What a movie that would be!

If I hadn't been paying attention it would have touchstoned that book.