Books and Movies

I love books. I’ve loved books ever since I began reading at 2-and-a-half years old. There is a recent trend in which famous books are being made into movies. (Case in point: The Hobbit, which is currently playing in my living room.)

What I can’t figure out is why they bother naming the movie the same as the book, when it is obviously “loosely based” (at best) on the book, and not an actual depiction of the actual events and characters in the book. The Hobbit and its predecessors, The Lord of the Rings movies, are the closest to the book of many, but even these are more their own stories than they are J.R.R. Tolkien’s. Much is left out (obviously, it would be impossible to include EVERYTHING or it would be a six- or seven-movie series rather than one movie) and, more unfortunately, things are added.

Most of these books are SO GOOD in their own right, that adding things is really not necessary to make a good movie. We don’t NEED extra violence, or extra stupidity, or extra humor. What is already there is fine!

Of course, there is also the fact that there is no way that a movie can compete with the human imagination. Sometimes I wonder if the movie makers have ever even READ the book. The layouts are often incorrect, characters have the wrong hair color or style, the wrong eye color, maybe even the wrong skin color!

This is not to say I dislike movies, nor that I think they should stop making movies of books. I just think they should either try to match the book better, or stop saying that the movie is the story in the book, when it so obviously is not.