Although the world is full of meaningful and entertaining literature, we are still faced with the challenge of trying to make non-readers into readers. There is so much to gain from reading stories. It helps people to gain emotional intelligence and empathy, it helps strengthen memory, and it adds significant assistance to life skills such as writing and critical thinking.
Despite all these benefits of reading, there are still a lot of people who just don’t enjoy reading, and part of the reason behind this is the fact that people are able to use the excuse of “I’ll just watch the movie.” While the availability of a movie adaptation of popular books is great for people who already spend some of their free time partaking in reading, it creates yet another way to avoid reading for the people who don’t.
When there’s a movie version of books, that pushes people who don’t like reading away from sucking it up to learn the story, as there is now an easier way to consume the information. It feels almost like cheating.
Additionally, one of many people’s favorite things about reading is being able to visualize the story and the world in which it takes place in their mind. However when people are just automatically resorting to watching the movie version, it takes away all the creativity of enjoying a book. When you read, you get to make the decisions. Descriptions of scenery and characters are more like gentle suggestions rather than a concrete kind of thing.
Watching the movie adaptations of books completely takes away the imagination aspect of the storytelling experience. Movies don’t leave as much up for interpretation as books do. When you watch a movie, you don’t get to visualize anything you do when you read. Everything on the screen is set in stone, and you don’t have the creative freedom to think of what you want the story to be.
Reading also promotes more investment in characters and the things that happen to them. When you watch a movie, you’re not going to feel as connected to characters, which will lead to not caring as much about the way that character is feeling, whereas when you’re reading a book, you know exactly what the character is thinking. You develop a sense of empathy for the characters since their thoughts are being showcased, and the impact of everything is being shown much more clearly.
Some movie adaptations of books are really good. For example, The Outsiders is an amazing book with an equally amazing movie. The Hunger Games series and The Fault In Our Stars are also good examples of books with good movie adaptations. But then there are also really good books with movie adaptations that don’t do the story justice, like Percy Jackson and The Giver.
And when the movie versions of these stories aren’t good, that in turn makes the books look equally as bad. Take Twilight for example. The books are an absolute work of art. They’re amazing, as they tell a beautifully dramatic love story. The books show a kind of angst that just can’t be replicated. But when the movies came out, they were widely hated on because let’s be honest— they were garbage. But because of this, the books have a bad rep as well.
Making movie adaptations is honestly just a lazy way to retell a story over and over again. Instead of remaking already perfectly decent books into movies, we need to just start writing new stories. What we’re really lacking is originality.
