Why Should You Read The Book before You Watch The Movie

How many people here have read a book and later watched the movie to discover that it is completely different than the book? How many people thought the movie was bad just because it just did not show your favorite parts of the book? So today I want to talk to you about a few of the reasons I think everyone should read the book before you watch the movie. It is important to read the book before you watch the movie because movies often change or remove scenes due to how much time it will take up in the movie or how interesting that scene will appear in the movie, the actors starring in the movie might simply change your opinion of the story, or the screen writers could choose to remove a character completely or either change a minor character into one of the main characters.

One of my all-time favorite stories is “The Time Traveler’s Wife” so I will be using this book for some of my examples. I have read the book three times and I could not even count the number of times I watched the movie. Both stories are great, but they just aren’t quite the same. For time purposes movies will sometimes change the beginning of the book to make it easier to get straight into the explanation of what is happening in the beginning scene of their movie. In “The Time Traveler’s Wife” the movie opens with Henry riding in the car with his mother, the car starts to spin out of control on the icy road and then suddenly Henry is standing on the side of the road naked, watching his mother crash her car. Out of nowhere an older version of Henry appears to tell him what is going on and explain that he had just time traveled.

This story of Henry’s mother passing away due to a car crash does happen in the book, but it is not the first time he travels and there is no older Henry at the scene of the wreck. The book shows that the first time Henry travels he is in his room one night and he suddenly finds himself in his favorite museum, there is an adult version of himself waiting for him there and the adult Henry shows the confused younger version of Henry around and explains exactly what is going to happen to him with his travels and tries to prepare him for the future. The director may have chosen to change the beginning of the story not only because of the time it would have taken to show both of those scenes in the movie, but also because a car accident is much more interesting than a walk through a museum. Movies often show a different story line than the books due to what will appear more interesting for the viewers. In the books we are not bored due to all the information we are given from the author about each scene but those details we are reading about in the book that interest us aren’t going to be as interesting while watching it in the movie. In the book the author will go into detail about specific features in the character’s looks and we will learn special traits in each character’s personalities but those must be shown in the movie only by the looks of the actor chosen to play the role and how they present their character.

Since the actor plays such a big part in how we create an opinion on that character if you watch the movie before reading the book it may affect your whole thought process about the story itself. If the actor doesn’t portray the character just right, then you might think something completely different about the story being shown than you would have if you would have gotten the story in the way it was supposed to be presented to you. Things as small as the way the actors are dressed or how strong or frail they look can be obvious differences from the book. This reminds me of “The Hunger Games”, while reading the books you learn the characters have very specific features and in the movies the actors chosen do actually fit some of these characteristics but things like the height of Katniss or the eye color of the character can be important details to someone that read the book.

Some things the screenwriters choose to change can also be things as important as how in the book Peeta loses one of his legs in the first game, but he had no problems like that shown in the movies. Sometimes the screen writers even chose to go against what the author wrote and replace the scenes they think aren’t as important and write their own scenes that they think will add to the visual aspect of the story. In some cases, the directors create a whole new story just using the same characters. Even though it is a TV show and not a movie this makes me think of “Pretty Little Liars”. The whole first book is shown in the very first episode of the show but somehow the show continued for seven full seasons. The differences between the book and TV show are too long to begin to list. The show even completely erases the death of Toby and he becomes one of the main characters in the show. Due to time, movies sometimes remove characters because they don’t seem important enough to waste screen time on but while doing that they are taking out details you learned about other characters in the book.

In “The Time Traveler’s Wife”, the movie never mentions a character named Ingrid Carmichael even though the book tells you multiple things about her. Ingrid was Henry’s ex-girlfriend that later commits suicide and we first read about her when Clare finds a tube of her lipstick in Henry’s medicine cabinet. The scene of Clare finding the lipstick is shown in the movie, but you never see who it belongs to or learn any more information about her. It seems minor to only take out one character that committed suicide before you even meet her, but the book explains things about her relationship with Henry which helps you have a better picture of the type of character Henry is.

Due to all the changes the screenwriters and actors choose to make the story just is never quite as good as the original story told in the book. I always choose to read the book before watching the movie, so I can get every part of the story and not only the pieces that the directors of the movie thought were interesting or chose to make up for themselves and I can form my own opinion on the character of the story without any persuasion from the actor playing the role.