The adage goes that you should always read the book before you see the movie. You don’t want to spoil your (or the author’s) vision of the characters; you might not want to invest hours, days, or weeks into a book if you already know within reason what the outcome will be. But what about ruining the movie?
I once had a friend say to me that she didn’t want to read a certain book before she saw the film because she didn’t want to spoil the movie. I was shocked. And for a moment felt supremely superior. I was clearly the wiser of us and knew better.
But then it got me thinking…every adapted book I’ve seen at the theaters I have thoroughly enjoyed. This can’t be because they are all great movies, but simply because of my knowledge of and connection to the characters.
Take the (in)famous Twilight. Literary masterpiece? Hardly. Catchy, page-turning, goes-after-your-inner-13-yr-old sob story? Yes. Worth a read? Yes! The movies were horrible. Objectively and unabashedly horrible, yet I still loved them. While it took about 15 minutes comprised mostly of uncomfortable constipated stares for Edward and Bella to fall in love on the silver screen, I (pun intended) read into them what I already knew from the book, filling in the grand canyon-sized gaps in the storyline.
Well, this happened again today. Dear John, by Nicholas Sparks.
Sidebar: If at this point you are thinking you’re reading the thoughts of an intellectual midget due to my selection in books, please don’t judge me by my cover. I am completely capable of understanding and appreciating fine literature (I’ve even been forced to do so on several occasions), but where’s the fun in that? Books to me are like reality TV, but slightly more respectable. I like to “veg out” to them. I get emotionally caught up in them, and I love it. The end.
That’s when the lightbulb turned on. I knew while watching the movie that it wasn’t great, yet all the while I was enraptured by it, nearly in tears in portions that weren’t really all that sad.
The summation of my thoughts on this whole scenario is this: You can’t un-ring a bell. I can’t read a book and remove what I know about it from the movie. But, as books are always longer and more detailed than their cinematic counterparts, perhaps it would be better to see the movie then add information to my experience of the story by reading the book. Yes, I am going against everything I was raised to believe, not to mention the snobbery of bookworms everywhere. With no preconceived notions or character attachment I will walk into a theater to see a movie and then read the book. I dare you to do it too.
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