The case for reading books in the age of movie adaptations

The first book I ever read was “Thomas the Tank Engine” which my sister borrowed on my behalf from the British Library. Growing up we did not have a television at home because my parents believed that it corrupted the mind, destroyed the eyes and was just pure evil. So to keep up with the playground cartoon gossip, I read the books.

Reading the book first has become a force of habit for me. I read Harry Potter, ASOIAF, Hunger Games and even Gone Girl before I watched the movies. And for every one of these, the book was better than the movie. The only series that has a good rep for its movies is Lord of the Rings and that has more to do with Tolkien’s dense writing style, which makes the movies more accessible. 

In most cases when I make these statements, I get accused of being an elitist and gatekeeping. Of course, there’s a sense of moral superiority that I feel for having read the book first, which is a much greater time investment and can’t be equated to waking up at 6am IST to catch the latest episode of GOT before spoilers flood social media. But if you can ignore the disdain in my voice for the screen adaptations, the larger point I’m trying to make is that a good book transports you into the author’s imagination, allows you to inhabit your favorite character’s head and, even when it ends, continues to live on within you. 

I recently read Misery by Stephen King and it is hands down the best thriller I have ever read. I literally finished the book in two days and the ups and downs affected my heart rate so much that I got notifications from my Apple Watch asking if I was okay! I managed to intrigue A enough to research it and he found that there was a 1990 movie adaptation. So last weekend we hunkered down, drew the curtain blinds and watched the movie. While the movie was decent, I have a list of complaints.

The hobbling of iconic scenes

Kathy Bates’ portrayal of Annie Wilkes won her an Oscar, so I was excited about the movie. But given all my previous experiences with movie adaptations, I was hedging my excitement by anticipating the disappointment of “okayness”. And disappointed I was. Iconic scenes were cut, unnecessary characters were introduced for comic relief, Paul’s addiction to Novril removed, and Annie’s horror diluted. William Goldman, the award-winning screenwriter who adapted the book to the screen, wrote in his book “Which Lie Did I Tell” about the time his editors cut out one of the most iconic scenes.

“I scrreeamed. I got on the phone with Rob and Andy and told them they had ruined the picture, that it was a great and memorable scene that they had changed, it was the reason I had taken the job. I was incoherent (they are friends, they expect that) but I made my point. They just wouldn’t buy it. The lopping scene was gone now, forever replaced by the ankle-breaking scene. I hated it but there it was.”

As a fan of the book, I hated what they did too. But his explanation later where he says “What makes a movie a hit is not the star and not the advertising but the word of mouth” makes sense. A gory hobbling scene would have been too much in 1990 and would have severely restricted the potential audience. But by cutting that part out, in my opinion, they cut off the legs that the movie could stand on (no pun intended)!

One-dimensional concreteness

One of my biggest issues with adaptations is that watching it completely hijacks your imagination. Now I can’t think of Annie Wilkes without Kathy Bates immediately popping up as a mental image. King discusses it in Misery as well when Paul receives fan mail where a fan recreated his fictional world and sent him polaroids. His thoughts echo that of every booklover. 

“It had been like looking at photographs from his own imagination, and he knew from that moment on, whenever he tried to imagine Misery’s little combination parlor and study, Mrs Roman D. (Virginia) Sandpiper’s Polaroids would leap immediately into his mind, obscuring imagination with their cheery but one-dimensional concreteness.”

Watching vs inhabiting the character

The best part about books is the detail they go into. Misery gives you a front seat into Paul’s shifting mental state — from initially thinking of himself as an exotic African bird doomed to die in captivity, to Scheherazade from the classic “One Thousand and One Nights.” 

Scheherazade is the new bride of a Persian king who had a history of executing his new wives the morning after marriage. She starts telling the king stories every night and stops at a cliffhanger to ensure that her execution is postponed. Paul Sheldon is caught in a similar situation where his captor (his number one fan) forces him to bring her favorite character back to life. So he thinks of himself as Scheherazade to Annie, and eventually realizes he’s playing Scheherazade to himself as he can’t think of dying until he knows what happens. And that is his only motivation to strive to survive! 

King’s writing makes it extremely easy to inhabit Paul’s head for the duration of the book and it’s quite an adventure. I was panting with anxiety every time he left the room, hoping against all odds for things to work out for him. Movies on the other hand are extremely passive formats. Jump scares and graphic effects don’t compare to knowing the inner workings of your favorite character! 

Unrelatable trivia

In the book, Paul Sheldon is extremely addicted to Novril (a fictional codeine-based drug) that Annie uses as leverage to control him. King pulls heavily from his struggles with his own addiction and it translates quite beautifully on the page. Also, 10 years after he wrote the book, King was hit by a truck and came very close to getting his right leg amputated. A freakish similarity to the book he wrote, and his nurses joked about calling Kathy Bates if he misbehaved. All of this would be unrelatable trivia if you just watch the movie adaptation. 

Despite my big list of complaints, I will masochistically continue to watch movie adaptations. Probably because every adaptation is a creative byproduct of another fan. And it provides another medium to explore a fictional world I really love. But I don’t think I could ever ditch the book for the movie, no matter how good the adaptation is. And hopefully after reading my rant, you’ll consider picking up the book too!