Books and Movies

This is maybe a stretch, but this entry will explore the connections between books and movies. Recently I've noticed that I am someone who enjoys reading books before or even more than a movie-remake. For example, I absolutely loved the book The Great Gatsby, but when I saw the movie version I was really disappointed. In my mind, I'd created an entirely different image of everything and a different style of mannerisms and gestures. In the movie, a lot of the symbolism was omitted as well. The full experience of a book and the creative process you take into the way that you perceive the elements cannot happen if all of the "open-ended questions" are answered by a director instead of its audience.

Likewise, I am really curious to see how movies such as ''Where the Wild Things Are'' will turn out. This is a children's book and I was brought up having this read to me as a bedtime story. I am really intrigued about how they plan to bring this to the screen when much of the basis for the book is imagination and the boy imagining the monsters and everything almost as if they are his escape. I just don't know if works like this and the Great Gatsby, even though they are ENTIRELY different, should ever be brought to the screen. The imagination of a child isn't something that can be broadcast through a film. In the same way, the symbolism behind Gatsby's green light and the beautiful lines written by F. Scott Fitsgerald is taken away and replaced with dialogue.








Another movie I am greatly anticipating is Angels and Demons. This is one of my favorite books ever but I liked it because I created the entire events as I read it and I was drawn to the fact that I felt like I was studying this stuff as much as the characters in the story studied their case along their adventure. I do hope that printed books are not being replaced with movies or audiobooks because I feel like one loses so much as they pull information in from another medium. I feel like this is relative to creativity because it is one's imagination and one's unique perception of something...the creative ways one looks at the world from the things they absorb from books and stories. I hope that both of these movies are amazing, but I don't think the experiences of reading the books will ever compare to the movies.