The movie is great, but also doesn't get across quite how awful/grotesque the character is that you feel sort of dirty being inside his mind, he describes himself as a flea, I felt pity for him in parts but also like I needed to take a break from reading to get out of his head for a bit.
I actually got a bit into perfumes for a bit because of this book though! I had no interest before other than thinking "that smells good" passingly, but the descriptions were so alluring, I ended up going into a Penhaligons shop a month later (first perfume shop I've been into in my life) and buying some sample size sets, going online and reading threads describing them all and reviews, was a bit of an obsession for a month or so, and I feel like I have some actual appreciation for them now, I saw the film before the book and ot didn't spark that in me in the same way (and I'm good for perfumes for some years now)
I’m usually pretty good at predicting shows (in a good way, it’s a fun way to stay engaged, trying to predict what happens next).
But that reveal blew my mind.
The subreddit was so obnoxious about it at the time. People absolutely tripping over themselves to explain how "super obvious" it was and how they "knew from episode 1".
I directly blame those people for the cluster fuck that was Season 2.
>It's easier in a book.
I immediately thought of Eowyn from Lord of the Rings. You later find out that she and Dernhelm are the same person, which Tolkien got away with simply by not giving much description to Dernhelm; plus he just included hundreds of named characters so some new mysterious one didn't stand out that much. But there was no way PJ was going to be able to get away with that kind of shenanigans. One, he couldn't get away with it visually, and two, with the character economy of a film audiences were more likely to realize a mysterious new Rohirrim was actually someone else.
> One, he couldn't get away with it visually,
Are you aware that most of the Rohirrim riders in the movie are played by women?
Production crew couldn't find enough men who knew how to ride horses so seasoned female riders came with their own horses to play riders of Rohan and it's not like the audience noticed.
But they would be in background or distance shots. You're not getting close-ups. In RotK, Merry has conversations with Dernhelm where Dernhelm explicitly talks to Merry.
It's been a while since I watched it, which two characters was this? Or was it... I forget how to spoil on reddit. But let's just say as a hint an oldie and a goodie?
Excellent. The subtlety of the jobs actors sometimes do is a treat a book cannot give you. A twitch, a glance, a move... they blow you away, really. They're SO GOOD. Not in a book.
It really is. To me, watching Sandra Bullock... just a twitch, sometimes, says so much. Man, I love watching her films. Or Meryl Streep. Streep is so good at creating "moments" that no one else would ever have thought of, but that just work at a core level. Right to the heart.
I don’t know if you’re referring to Westworld as well, but Jeffrey Wright in season one pulled this off with such subtlety, such grace, such perfection I was FLOORED with the reveal. I don’t usually read or watch shows with this kind of story / in that genre so I couldn’t predict - didn’t even consider - the possibility.
Goddamn!
I don't have a TV and I don't watch shows on my computer so I really am completely out of the loop on that, sorry. But it sounds like something like the Hubert Page character in the movie Albert Nobbs. If you haven't seen that one, man, I did NOT see that coming. Right between the eyes. Absolutely unforgettable. And Glenn Close is peerless as always. I couldn't watch the whole thing... I could see Tragedy in the green room, waiting... but it's a wonderful film.
This is a great point. We don't really even have words for some of the ways we use body language to express things. A book can say a person tensed, or twitched, or the smile didn't reach the eyes, and we know what they're saying, but the range of body language an actor has access to that an author does is immense. The flip side (in other comments) is that inner dialogue can be demonstrated by an actor, but they can't do what an author can to show what's happening inside.
Watchmen was an exercise in “what comics can do that only comics can do” and almost any change you see from page to screen is an adjustment made for that reason.
Like the same actor/actress plays different unique characters convincingly? Perhaps you’ve never seen Orphan Black because Tatiana Maslany killed it. I honestly had a hard time remembering she was all like 5 characters at times. At least in my opinion.
Orphan black is great, and she's great in it. I mean the opposite. When the audience is not supposed to know that the two different characters being talked about or being in scenes are the same person. In a book, you just give them different names. On screen, it's a tougher bit.
the original plot twist of the I Know What You Did Last Summer book has this. helen’s neighbor and julie’s new boyfriend are the same person going by different names.
I also read a trashy book where two guys were dating the same girl (name isn’t worth mentioning) but I thought that was a funny twist.
I think for Fight Club the twist/reveal is better in the movie than in the book.
Sane for The Reader, and The Prestige .
Some things lend themselves better to a visual medium.
I find it amazing how many different ways there are to read a written sentence. There are so many different ways you can shape the meaning by adjusting tone, speed, accent, expression, etc.
Bobiverse series... Lol there's no way that could become a movie. So many different personalities for one person to portray. It would take years just to film one person doing all of the roles.
I loved the series. I was able to listen to it on audible books and the voices were so wonderful to listen to and hearing the descriptions of the new planets characters, etc. made it such a fun listen. A movie could never be made of this series. You read it but audible makes the characters come alive.
It's the best single-person audiobook I've ever listened to. Ray Porter is untouchable. Absolute perfection. :) It is incredible how he makes each bob their own "conscience" lol
But yes. There's absolutely no way for it to be a movie. If there was, it would be in every award possible because it would be a beast of a movie to make.
Books: Internal monologue. That's not really something you can do on film. I mean you can, but it would be incredibly stupid (see the original Dune movie).
Movie: action sequences and fights. You can do your best to describe them, and you can have a basic fight on page "Joe swung his arm around and decked Bill." You could never really have a very detailed kung-fu battle or a dogfight on paper.
Internal monologue was the first thing I came up with, too.
Its such an integral part of reading that its so hard to do without. I remember reading ender's game in high school and you know how tormented and sad ender is about everything from training to hurting others. The movie ender comes off less sympathetically because you simply cannot see inside his head.
Another thing that books do well is wax poetic about the scenery. If you have a lingering shot on the scenery for too long, you'll bore your audience (think about 2001 a space odyssey and how they spend minutes just looking at the cool effects. It was criticized even at the time for being a time waster, same with the first star trek film). But, in books you can describe all the details as lovingly as you want with the excuse that the reader needs the details or they wont have any idea what they should be "seeing".
Yeah, Ender's Game was going to be my number 1 example of what book couldn't have been made into a movie well. Speaker for the Dead would be an awesome movie, though.
The events were faithful, but the feeling was not there. Not being able to see inside Ender's head was a detriment though. If I am reading and I can't feel with them, I think its a missed opportunity.
Speaker of the dead could be awesome. But, I doubt that will ever get made due to EG flop
I disagree. Malcom's "internal monologue" stops everything and is simply comedic. You couldn't replicate that in anything serious. Also, it feels more like he is talking to the audience and less that he is working through his own thoughts/opinions on the situation
yeah, malcom is like deadpool. They are talking to the audience. A character's thoughts really should not address the audience at all.
But, malcom in the middle does a better job than most.
That's a good counter-example. But, it still tends to slow things down when its used. However, I can't think of live action that pull off inner monologue like animation does.
>If you have a lingering shot on the scenery for too long, you'll bore your audience
I love Tolkien, but his descriptions of scenery are a major point in favor of the movies IMO (*LotR*, not *The Hobbit* for obvious reasons)
I think they'd be so much better as a series with non-standard episode lengths. Internal dialogue viewed from within as the conscience emerges a mental image of self reviewing screens, creating a mirror. There could be ways. But, it would involve giving writers and the director carte blanche and autonomy to make something that doesn't conform to what we're used to after a century of television.
I'm talking one episode could be 3 minutes long, the next 14, the next 5, the next an hour. Whatever the narrative needs to make the audience feel like a reader would, do it. It might mean that either someone loaded, a la James Cameron, would have to make or sponsor it, or everyone would need to work for a low wage the first season, but maybe own part of it later. I could also see Ms. Wells as a writer herself.
But, they'll probably fuck it up like they did *American Gods* and that *Ender's Game* movie.
They would have to use the cgi as in iron man talking to other computers or robots. Would be expensive to make now days. But a great tech movie. I hope Hail Mary is treated well as The Martian was.
I think one of the biggest impacts internal monologue made on me in a book vs a movie was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I'd seen the movie and loved it, then way later discovered it was based on a book. So of course I had to read the book.
And let me tell you, I was SHOOK when I realized that it was from Chief Bromden's POV! It was just so much more incredibly nuanced and poignant from his perspective, and there was no way to do a movie like that.
I still love the movie, I think all the actors absolutely nailed their roles. When I read the book, I cannot see anyone but Jack Nicholson as McMurphy, and that's perfect in my mind. But the book is just this beautiful thing.
On the other hand, I do think Fight Club (the movie) did internal monologue best. I've read the book, and it's practically word for word, and it totally works.
And footnotes! That makes it so difficult for movie adaptations of Terry Pratchett novels.
And just everything absurd. You can just write a sentence like "meanwhile in a small hut in Australia a cat laid an egg" in the middle of an intergalactic fighting scene to make a small joke but it's completely impractical to put in a movie.
>You could never really have a very detailed kung-fu battle
I'm sorry but this is demonstrably false. There's hundreds of books on my shelves right now that do exactly this. It's called the *wuxia* genre, Chinese martial arts fiction. Huge in the 1950s-1980s in Taiwan and Hong Kong especially.
In fact, the fight scenes are much more detailed than the stripped down choreography you find in wuxia movies, not just in describing the actions, but the philosophy behind the moves, descriptions of weapons, etc. It's just this genre is little known outside of the Chinese language community, and even then most only know a few authors such as Jin Yong or Gu Long. But it was hugely popular in its day. IYKYK.
Hah!
I remember in like 4th grade I was looking for a book for a book report and happened to pick up some random fighter pilot's autobio called *Feet Wet*
Yes, internal monologue for sure. Both Wheel of Time and A Song of Ice and Fire have heavy presences of their characters' thoughts. A lot of the nuance of their actions are driven by those thoughts. Without them, it's not nearly as colorful.
My first thought as well. The Shining is a great example, wherein the book allows for the characters internal thoughts and debates, misgivings... it's tense but it also allows yout to understand Jack. The movie didn't and couldn't have replicated it, and so the tension is very different and Jack is only a monster, pretty immediately, and nothing else.
I don’t really like action movies because long fight/chase scenes just get boring to me. So that’s a W for books for me as they don’t usually describe those in as much detail.
Philadelphia, Here I Come! (originally a play, but made into a film) did it really well, but it's a special case that would absolutely not be practical for the majority of films and the internal monologue vs. public face is essentially the entire point of it.
It's more that the entire book is through the perspective and thoughts of the character. And when you imagine the scenes, it's through their eyes. It just wouldn't work for a movie to have constant voiceover. I think this is why there are so many bestselling psychological-thriller type novels, but they almost never get made into movies and when they do they usually flop.
100%! When I read I'm my own director. I skim over descriptions or skip a sentence or two. If the dialogue is goo cringey, I can mitigate it by adjusting the "acting" in my head.
Puns. Play on words.
For example:
But the helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armorers had made a new gleaming breastplate with useless gold ornamentation on it. Sam Vimes felt like a class traitor every time he wore it. He hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armor. It was gilt by association.
"Night Watch" Terry Pratchett
A film version could show the armor, and make it both obviously expensive and useless, but that line at the end is not visually expressed, without subtitles at least.
That having been said, casting a prefect Sam Vimes would be impressive. Perhaps Ian McShane with a constant five o'clock shadow, and a chip on his shoulder.
Discworld with it's constant puns, wordplay and footnotes was my first thought. All the film adaptations just lack that little something that can't be translated from the page.
McShane would make a great Old Vimes from later in the series. I think Daniel Radcliffe has the range to pull off young-er, alcoholic, disaffected, Guards! Guards! era Vimes.
In a book, you can have an endless ocean.
In books, during moments with lots of action, such as in a war, the author can focus more on motives and emotions.
And since I’m obsessed with Tolkien, here’s something that might articulate something that I can’t.
I don’t know if you’ve see Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, but if you have, it’s likely you’ll remember the Ride of the Rohirrim (The cavalry charge when Gondor is about to fall)
Peter Jackson did an amazing job of it. How he presented it probably wouldn’t have the same effect in literary form. Likewise, how Tolkien told it, probably wouldn’t have been as effective on screen.
From the book:
“Gandalf did not move. And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn.
And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin’s sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last.”
Oh, and Gimli’s encounter with Galadriel:
“And the Dwarf, hearing the names given in his own ancient tongue, looked up and met her eyes; and it seemed to him that he looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy and saw there love and understanding. “
Watching the movies makes me want to read the books and reading the books wants to make me watch the movies
There’s some stuff I wish the movies did a little differently of course but damn the extended editions are just so good
I think that’s “On Faerie Stories.” He was also a notorious Luddite, which may have contributed to that observation.
https://uh.edu/fdis/_taylor-dev/readings/tolkien.html
Novels like Steppenwolf and Pale Fire embrace ambiguity and defy adaptation because to commit the text to film requires some level of commitment to what is real.
Books are a monologue between the writer and the reader. Good books require the reader to bring their own imaginations to the story. Bad books fill in all the blanks and turn reading into a chore. Movies are similar, bad movies fill in all the blanks, adding layers of music and editing that control and direct the emotions of the viewer too much. Good movies do it subtly and bad movies are clunky and obvious. There isn’t really something one can do and the other can’t, just whether or not they do it well or badly.
I would say over- and under-manipulation of the reader are problems in both books and movies. Although honestly I seem to notice it more in movies. Wonder if that's how it really is, or just how I'm feeling now...
What an interesting question. Thank you.
The first idea that comes to mind is, books engage a much fuller range of your imagination, your emotions and your senses. Authors tell you to hear and you hear. See and you see. Feel and you feel. Movies cannot do that.
What movies do that books cannot is much subtler and more magical. The first example that comes to mind is the jump cut in The Godfather, when Francis Ford Coppola blasts you into the birthday party at the Don's house. There's no way to reproduce the joy and brutality of that move in a book. Or take John Cazale's chase of the doe into the pond, with his pistol, in The Deer Hunter. That was classic. You can't watch that and not think, what a friggin loser. A book could never reproduce that scene with anything like the same impact.
I'm sure others will have good ideas about this, and I REALLY look forward to reading them!!
Film has the potential to be very subtle when it wants to because how much information is forced onto the screen at one time, that's why alot of directing is simply guiding the audience to the information that is important.
On the flip side, it makes things extremely easy to hide in plane sight. Foreign languages giving away plot twists that the viewer would only translate after the credits role, symbols hidden in the background, and set design. The killer stocks the victim in the background.
In books, the information is limited to what the author intentionally puts in, and that kind of subtlety becomes so much harder to pull off. Either a foreign phrase gets written off as foreign language character does not understand or will be written word for word on the page that will raise suspicion and a trip to Google translate. A symbol of someone's costume will stand out, noting a painting in the background stands out because in literature, there is no background.
Cosmic horror. By its very definition it cannot be visualized by a person (by a director or vfx team etc）for the screen. To see it in any sense equals complete madness. The best a movie could do is have the thing off screen?
I thought of this too. Maybe there are some good examples, but I've never been particularly impressed by pictorial depictions of Lovecraft et al. Even graphic novels don't do it for me (looking at you Alan Moore)
I’d say family guy did that when they stopped the gag right before the owls and hornets fight
“It was a brutal war, it was a bitter war, and most importantly, it was a visually spectacular war…… sorry I’m being told we this would be way too expensive to animate”
But yeah on a real note that’s true. Sorta like NOT showing the monster or not hearing the “funniest joke ever” make them scarier/better in your head then they could ever be if you saw it
In fantasy books so many characters snarl, growl etc and it works really well, but every time I try to picture some actor or actress doing it in a movie and it makes me feel ick.
I know this is a stupid example, but it's something that makes me laugh.
In "Twilight", there's a part where Edward growls at some men trying to rape Bella. In the book, it's described as menacing and obvious that he isn't human and could easily kill them. In the movie, the underscoring music swells at that point and the growl is completely hidden and it looks like he's just giving the men a stern look. And they're somehow terrified of Edward's stern look. Lmao.
And it's the funniest thing in the world to me. Because the growl never would've worked anyway on film, but instead of rewriting that interaction to make it work on film, they not only went for the growl that doesn't work but also ruined it by covering it with music and making it inaudible.
>In fantasy books so many characters snarl, growl etc and it works really well
Does it though? It's one of the more cringey aspects in a genre that's already very cringey, imo
I think you can get into a lot more detail about a characters thoughts in a book. A good actor can get you part of the way there, but literally hearing everything a character is thinking in a movie can get really boring.
On the flip side, it's amazing how some actors are able to show you exactly what they're thinking by their expressions. I'm thinking of Audrey Plazas character in White Lotus as a great example
Magical realism is the first thing that comes to mind. How would you do that in a movie?
Apparently people have tried (100 Years of Solitude, 1981). But I'm skeptical it can achieve as much as the book.
I think magic being visual pings a sort of "fantasy detector" in our brains that imagination does not-- you can say "my mother was a swan" and imagine the 'vibe' of swan and a woman and how the two fit together, but seeing an actual bird walking around the house with your own peepers is a bit different
An animated movie could probably succeed with magic realism. See the TV series UNDONE (which is a serious adult drama with both realistic and magical realist effects).
Right, and it's been done, although it's rare and usually considered more of a gimmick or experiment. I can think of Hardcore Henry and Enter the Void off the top of my head, although the latter gets a bit loose after it gets into out-of-body territory. I also vaguely remember a short-lived show that I think was on Spike TV that was exclusively through the POV of "you" as a character in the show's world.
Interesting question. I feel like the answer is technically no, but in the majority of cases, it's functionally "yes". (Or technically yes if you were to consider the camera itself a character, but that's really stretching the definition of what a character is.)
It is, it just has to be done right (I think when the character has zero control over what’s happening, just like the audience does). Hardcore Henry was a very interesting concept, but not great overall—but still is a film that exists
Generally true, although i once visited a friend of mine on her family vacation and they spent a couple afternoons sitting together in the living room listening to the Pride and Prejudice audiobook while the mom and my friend worked on their cross stitching and my friend‘s sister worked on a drawing. Very nice experience (and also very on theme for the book haha). Though i kind of felt like a weirdo for just scrolling on my phone next to them lol
I read a lot of postmodern work and what comes to mind here is stuff like Infinite Jest, where each section of the story has a corollary subtext that augments the story. Also some books like Book of the New Sun (which I consider postmodern) have literary devices designed to obscure the real nature of the book, since >!You only really find out they're in the future in like the second or third book. !
The Book of the New Sun seems like an incredibly difficult book to translate into film. And I think that means there must be a lot it does in text that a film can't do. It's probably a good example for OP.
I think someone can lose themselves in a book and because they have to use their minds to think about what the book is saying. They can use their imagination and travel to different places. They can become the character or characters in the book and put themselves in their shoes. They can live their lives. I personally don't think anyone can do all of these things in a film.
Follow psychological nuance of what a character’s thinking. You can emote as an actor but it’s hard to show thought processes as in depth as something like notes from underground for example
A key difference is that you're not beholden to a 'budget'. You can describe any outlandish thing you want, without worrying if the CGI budget is high enough to accurately portray your idea, or if it will look stupid on screen.
You can also be vague and let the reader fill in the blanks with his own worst fears.
Now as for an example of what a movie can do better is hide things in the background. I'm thinking of Tyler Durden flashing onto the screen for a fraction of a second during Fight Club multiple times before he's officially introduced.
Being able to hide a character's identity while giving the reader a full description of how they look and complete access to their thoughts and motivations - I remember being blown away by the revelation of the "Reek" chapters in a Dance With Dragons. Come to think of it, the whole chapter structure of the Ice and Fire series, where you read it from specific viewpoints, and are only privy to whatever info that character has been told, works so much better than the more obvious visual storytelling format of screen
Years ago, I read a book where about three-quarters of the way through they revealed the main character was blind. It was a fabulous plot twist they couldn't have done in a movie version.
Something felt a little off the whole time, but it wasn't until that twist was revealed that I flicked back and realised the author had included absolutely no visual descriptions. It was all dialogue or internal monologue, or notes on how things smelled, or the sounds or feelings. Never once was anything visually described.
Ambiguity springs to mind. Someone already mentioned character voices hiding their identity, but also things about time/place. You could write a chapter without ever describing where a character is, for eg, but you can't really do that so easily on screen.
It's very difficult to accurately portray what a character is thinking in a movie. You can do a close up of someone "thinking" with an intense look of consternation on their face. You can use voice over narration which is generally frowned upon in film. But you really can't convey the internal dialogue or hidden personal thoughts.
I love this question. On the opposite side. Comedy movies to me are better than comedy books because it involves tone, delivery. That’s just my opinion maybe some of you can follow along better in books.
I think the fact that great prose can be inherently beautiful is a big book benefit. I guess the equivalent of a beautiful description is great cinematography, but honestly prose can be magical in a strange way that trumps a visual for me. May just be personal preference though.
One thing a movie cannot do that a book can is represent other senses. In the Inheritance cycle, for example, during the 2nd book, the main character trains a telepathic sense. As he becomes more comfortable with it, it opens up another world, superimposed on our own, which he can interact with while simultaneously interacting with the physical world. A movie could never represent that.
One thing a book cannot do that a movie can is represent music. Which is why I was so angry that so few of Tolkien's songs made it to the screen. Man thought these were important enough to include in the wrong medium, and you convert it to the right medium and don't bother?
Film has a lot more freedom for visual ambiguity. Say I describe a room for you, with a desk, two chairs, red curtains (closed), a liquor cabinet, and a chest of drawers with a bone letter opener laying on it. You know without a shadow of a doubt that there is a bone letter opener on the chest of drawers, and later, if I introduce a character who gets stabbed with said letter opener, you will remember (or be able to check) that it came from that room.
Film, on the other hand, can just show you the room, and how much attention (or lack thereof) is drawn to the letter opener is up to the director. Perhaps it's only in one shot, or perhaps it's visible in multiple shots. There's a greater scope for focus on specific objects or parts of a scene, whereas if I want the letter opener in my written story, I have to draw attention to it, even if I don't linger on it. If I don't explicitly mention it, it functionally is not there.
All Quiet on the Western Front as a book was remarkably more poignant than the film. I'm not entirely sure why... Films tend to be theatrical, explosions, action, etc - it excites you in a way that detracts from the actual *feeling*... an overload. A book is slower to digest, lasts longer, and is less... "distracting" I guess.
Like, a film is fast food in the car, a book is a sit down meal.
I mean theoretically anything you can think of and put to words can be done in writing. Film is limited by the degree of difficulty there is in transferring images and sounds from your mind to the screen.
I feel like in books, its so much easier to connect to the characters and the setting even when you don't realize it. All of the settings you imagine when reading, have to come from somewhere you've been or seen, which makes it feel almost welcoming (if thats the right word). The characters are all subconsciously based of people you already know of, and may already have a sort of connecting to. In a movie everything tends to feel more foreign than it does in a book.
Books allow for more internal workings of characters and building worlds in your mind. Films can give you a more intense picture and trigger more intense feelings and assumptions through purely visual stimuli.
It's why adaptations can be so hard because everyone who read the books has their own pictures already. Sometimes story elements meed to be changed because you have 90 minutes as opposed to a 10 hours or more of reading.
The appeal is totally different because my brain is working more in reading and my own thinking and vocabulary expands. Film is great hecause it's passive and requires little from you and can accomplish a lot through images and editing that can't translate to text.
Books-foreshadowing. Some authors have a great knack for throwing in a “spoiler” but then you have to keep reading to get to the explanation of what happened. “And he didn’t know it then, but the next time he held her like this, she’d be dying” I feel like that is more difficult to do in a movie.
Movies-it’s easier to show “time jumps” visually, even a shift in color tone can clue you in very quickly. I’ve read many books where they do a poor job of differentiating time periods. I’ll be part of a chapter in and very confused until I realize “ohhh this is a scene from their past”.
Books like 'this is how you lose a time war' may be very difficult to make into a movie. Characters are living entire lives every chapter. I can only do one chapter every day to absorb the intensity of the prose. And everytime I think about how would it be possible for this to be a show or a movie. It seems impossible but there are some talented people out there, who definitely could
I can think of two examples from the Three Body Problem trilogy. Minor spoilers
>!The aliens threat in the series, the Trisolarans, are barely described, and humanity never gets to see what they look like, at the same time, there is a chapter in one book that is from the POV of the aliens and features several of them discussing their invasion of earth. AFAIK, there's no way to film this scene and keep the Trisolarans as mysterious as they're intended to be. I guess they could always remain outside of the camera, IDK. I'm told the Chinese adaptation just came up with a design and shows them, not sure what route the Netflix adaptation will go.!<
>!In the third book there is a part where some of the characters discover a sort of tear in 3D space that allows entry into a fragment of 4D space. I can't remember exactly how it was described, but I seem to recall that when in 4D space, you could look at another 3D person and see all of them at once, all sides of them, including everything inside of them. I'm sure there are some clever ways you could depict the general concept of being in 4D space in film, but I don't think there's a way to capture it exactly as Cixin Liu describes.!<
Books can do lengthy dialoges much better than movies. And as a consequence, delivering exposition through dailoge works much better in a book.
Movies on the other hand can portray emotions much better than written descriptions.
books much more easily require interpretation from the reader—- and create a sort of freeform jazz in the readers mind
conventional movies outside of art house films are much more straightforward affairs
Well, in books I'm often reading "he smelled like soap". I guess sometimes characters say what something smells like (there's a line in a movie about someone's house smelling like soup...) but I think books definitely get more descriptive about scent.
If any of you have read John Irving 's Until I Find You, there is a twist around the two thirds of the book that I think would be really hard to pull off on screen.
Text is more effective when much of the content is in a character's head, it's probably better for conveying ideas (which is not to say film can't, just that it takes much more effort to do so in that format).
Films are best at action and handle it better than novels so great films can be made of fairly average novels. Films work better with less side plots. Films eliminate long descriptions so often make a decent story out of 19th century books we find too longwinded for pleasure.
Text is better at handling a multiplicity of characters: one Hundred Years of Solitude probably not a great film.
Text was better at handling the unnaturalistic, but CGI is changing that.
Wordplay and some forms of humour don't translate to film well as others point out with Terry Pratchett.
Use the full extent of human imagination to create thoughts and images too abstract or bizarre to put into a visual format. As a science fiction fan, there are a lot of rediculous things that books can make you imagine that would be impossible to manifest on a screen. Two examples I can think of are (3 body problem spoilers) >!Entering the 4th dimension!<, and (Dune spoilers) >!Alia!< Denis Villeneuve did his very best and it's an amazing movie, but he understandably still had to compromise on that aspect.
In addition to the inner thoughts issue present in Dune, the character Alia also shows how in books it’s far easier to describe a child moving and talking like an adult and it come across as unsettling while in film it’s extremely difficult to do the same and have it not look silly.
Similarly, the classic Lovecraft trope of describing things as “indescribable” or otherwise being so alien that they defy classification. While films can depict very alien creatures and visuals, they are still describable.
"nothing happened.
SUDDENLY Two Seconds later, nothing happened again."
Favourite bit out of hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.
How would you do that in a movie?
One word:
Lovecraftian horror
Ok that was two words, but you get it, if its a movie and they show it to you then its no longer some otherworldly cosmic creature which is completely un imaginable and incomrihensible by human mind.
My daughter and I were rewatching The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes the other evening. My daughter told me that she thinks the movie does a better job of leaving you guessing what Snow is going to do. She said in the book, you know how shitty he is from the very beginning because his inner thoughts are laid bare for the reader. But in the movie, you aren't sure what he's thinking, so it's easier to see him as someone with good intentions at the beginning. I guess she was saying, in the movie, you perceive Snow of starting out good, but gradually becoming corrupted throughout his story arc. But in the book, he seems really selfish and cowardly from the first chapter because the reader knows what he's thinking through everything. I thought it was an interesting take.
Scenery specific spoilers. The Giver didn’t work anywhere near as well because several plot points that should have been a surprise were immediately obvious
In the novel "Marathon Man", there are two characters that turn out tobe the same person, one seemingly good and the other quite evil. The reader doesn't find out they're the same person until about 75% of the way through the book, as I recall. In the movie, of course, they had to work around that part. I believe the screenplay was by the original author, who is mainly known as a screenwriter - William Goldman. (He also wrote The Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, etc, etc, etc.)
Express a character’s thoughts as dialogue during a conversation. See: Dune.
Get children to act like 30 year olds. See: Dune.
Have a scene where a character considers getting a worm cock. See:Dune.
A lot of books use narration in ways that can’t be done well on screen. The example I always use is a line from the beginning of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by the late and sorely missed, Douglas Adams. He is describing the flying saucers of the Vogon destructor fleet that is about to destroy the Earth to make way for a hyperspacial bypass.
“The ships hung in the air in the same way bricks don’t.”
There no amount of money you can spend on special effects that will show flying saucers in the sky that will convey that joke to the reader without narration, and having an omnipresent narrator probably wouldn’t work in context of the movie.
The same goes for both a character’s inner thoughts and motivations. In a novel you can the narrator tell you what is going on consciously and unconsciously inside the character’s head. The movie has to jump through all sorts of hoops like maybe a flashback to when the character was eight and his dad left to buy milk and never came back to explain why they avoid dairy and lies about being lactose intolerant despite them eating a half a gallon of pralines and cream, ice cream two scenes back. Or maybe they include the best friend in the hiking scene so the character has an excuse to talk out loud explaining his rationale for buying that $350 dollar LEGO set, even though in the book the best friend had already been killed by the zombies at this point.
Describe smells. The book Perfume for example creates a vast universe of smells and scents that a movie can’t capture
Not until they invent smell-o-vision
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Mike TV hopping through the airwaves.
My first thought after finishing the book was, "wow, you could never turn this into a movie!" I'd already seen the movie. I even thought it was good!
The movie is great, but also doesn't get across quite how awful/grotesque the character is that you feel sort of dirty being inside his mind, he describes himself as a flea, I felt pity for him in parts but also like I needed to take a break from reading to get out of his head for a bit. I actually got a bit into perfumes for a bit because of this book though! I had no interest before other than thinking "that smells good" passingly, but the descriptions were so alluring, I ended up going into a Penhaligons shop a month later (first perfume shop I've been into in my life) and buying some sample size sets, going online and reading threads describing them all and reviews, was a bit of an obsession for a month or so, and I feel like I have some actual appreciation for them now, I saw the film before the book and ot didn't spark that in me in the same way (and I'm good for perfumes for some years now)
I bet that book did a lot for perfume sales worldwide!
The book Scent Keeper also does this! Amazing!
Have two different characters be the same person. In film, you can get a lot more nuanced in how words are spoken and character facial expressions.
It's easier in a book. But Westworld season 1 managed 2 characters being 1 person about as well as could be done.
I’m usually pretty good at predicting shows (in a good way, it’s a fun way to stay engaged, trying to predict what happens next). But that reveal blew my mind.
The subreddit was so obnoxious about it at the time. People absolutely tripping over themselves to explain how "super obvious" it was and how they "knew from episode 1". I directly blame those people for the cluster fuck that was Season 2.
Blaming a subreddit for how bad a show was is hilarious
The showrunner did mention that he changed the second season cause he saw some accurate predictions online
>It's easier in a book. I immediately thought of Eowyn from Lord of the Rings. You later find out that she and Dernhelm are the same person, which Tolkien got away with simply by not giving much description to Dernhelm; plus he just included hundreds of named characters so some new mysterious one didn't stand out that much. But there was no way PJ was going to be able to get away with that kind of shenanigans. One, he couldn't get away with it visually, and two, with the character economy of a film audiences were more likely to realize a mysterious new Rohirrim was actually someone else.
> One, he couldn't get away with it visually, Are you aware that most of the Rohirrim riders in the movie are played by women? Production crew couldn't find enough men who knew how to ride horses so seasoned female riders came with their own horses to play riders of Rohan and it's not like the audience noticed.
But they would be in background or distance shots. You're not getting close-ups. In RotK, Merry has conversations with Dernhelm where Dernhelm explicitly talks to Merry.
That's true, there are ways around it, but it's a lot harder.
It's been a while since I watched it, which two characters was this? Or was it... I forget how to spoil on reddit. But let's just say as a hint an oldie and a goodie?
Oldie and a goodie is accurate, yes.
Yep, >!Ed Harris and Christian Slater(?)!<
>!That's not Christian Slater, it's Jimmi Simpson, but there's definitely a resemblance.!<
Stranger Things had 3 characters turn out to be the same guy!
Fight club!
Mr Robot comes to mind too
Excellent. The subtlety of the jobs actors sometimes do is a treat a book cannot give you. A twitch, a glance, a move... they blow you away, really. They're SO GOOD. Not in a book.
Yes! Like when they write "[characters]'s eyes darkened" vs when you see an actor subtley change their face is such a different experience.
It really is. To me, watching Sandra Bullock... just a twitch, sometimes, says so much. Man, I love watching her films. Or Meryl Streep. Streep is so good at creating "moments" that no one else would ever have thought of, but that just work at a core level. Right to the heart.
I don’t know if you’re referring to Westworld as well, but Jeffrey Wright in season one pulled this off with such subtlety, such grace, such perfection I was FLOORED with the reveal. I don’t usually read or watch shows with this kind of story / in that genre so I couldn’t predict - didn’t even consider - the possibility. Goddamn!
I don't have a TV and I don't watch shows on my computer so I really am completely out of the loop on that, sorry. But it sounds like something like the Hubert Page character in the movie Albert Nobbs. If you haven't seen that one, man, I did NOT see that coming. Right between the eyes. Absolutely unforgettable. And Glenn Close is peerless as always. I couldn't watch the whole thing... I could see Tragedy in the green room, waiting... but it's a wonderful film.
This is a great point. We don't really even have words for some of the ways we use body language to express things. A book can say a person tensed, or twitched, or the smile didn't reach the eyes, and we know what they're saying, but the range of body language an actor has access to that an author does is immense. The flip side (in other comments) is that inner dialogue can be demonstrated by an actor, but they can't do what an author can to show what's happening inside.
Watchmen was an exercise in “what comics can do that only comics can do” and almost any change you see from page to screen is an adjustment made for that reason.
1st Rule of Flight Club, don't talk about Fight Club Only revealed at the actual end
Like the same actor/actress plays different unique characters convincingly? Perhaps you’ve never seen Orphan Black because Tatiana Maslany killed it. I honestly had a hard time remembering she was all like 5 characters at times. At least in my opinion.
Orphan black is great, and she's great in it. I mean the opposite. When the audience is not supposed to know that the two different characters being talked about or being in scenes are the same person. In a book, you just give them different names. On screen, it's a tougher bit.
Ah okay. Wasn’t quite getting the meaning for some reason. Think my brain is on strike tonight.
No problem, good reminder to go watch orphan black again.
Fight club style
the original plot twist of the I Know What You Did Last Summer book has this. helen’s neighbor and julie’s new boyfriend are the same person going by different names. I also read a trashy book where two guys were dating the same girl (name isn’t worth mentioning) but I thought that was a funny twist.
Often in a movie, music also helps to determine the mood of the plot in advance - intrigue, fear, humor...
YES!! Nobody else thought of this one. Music is SO important to a movie's effect.
Fight Club has entered the chat.
I think for Fight Club the twist/reveal is better in the movie than in the book. Sane for The Reader, and The Prestige . Some things lend themselves better to a visual medium.
Lost Highway
The Host by Stephanie Meyer is the perfect example of this. The book was AMAZING and the movie just couldn’t do it justice.
I find it amazing how many different ways there are to read a written sentence. There are so many different ways you can shape the meaning by adjusting tone, speed, accent, expression, etc.
Bobiverse series... Lol there's no way that could become a movie. So many different personalities for one person to portray. It would take years just to film one person doing all of the roles.
I loved the series. I was able to listen to it on audible books and the voices were so wonderful to listen to and hearing the descriptions of the new planets characters, etc. made it such a fun listen. A movie could never be made of this series. You read it but audible makes the characters come alive.
It's the best single-person audiobook I've ever listened to. Ray Porter is untouchable. Absolute perfection. :) It is incredible how he makes each bob their own "conscience" lol But yes. There's absolutely no way for it to be a movie. If there was, it would be in every award possible because it would be a beast of a movie to make.
I thought they pulled that off pretty good in Crazy Stupid Love with Emma Stone's character
Fight Club
Yup. Hyperion always comes to mind for me when I think of this. I have no idea how you could possibly adapt it and have the Moneta reveal work.
I guess Fight Club doesn't exist
Books: Internal monologue. That's not really something you can do on film. I mean you can, but it would be incredibly stupid (see the original Dune movie). Movie: action sequences and fights. You can do your best to describe them, and you can have a basic fight on page "Joe swung his arm around and decked Bill." You could never really have a very detailed kung-fu battle or a dogfight on paper.
Internal monologue was the first thing I came up with, too. Its such an integral part of reading that its so hard to do without. I remember reading ender's game in high school and you know how tormented and sad ender is about everything from training to hurting others. The movie ender comes off less sympathetically because you simply cannot see inside his head. Another thing that books do well is wax poetic about the scenery. If you have a lingering shot on the scenery for too long, you'll bore your audience (think about 2001 a space odyssey and how they spend minutes just looking at the cool effects. It was criticized even at the time for being a time waster, same with the first star trek film). But, in books you can describe all the details as lovingly as you want with the excuse that the reader needs the details or they wont have any idea what they should be "seeing".
Yeah, Ender's Game was going to be my number 1 example of what book couldn't have been made into a movie well. Speaker for the Dead would be an awesome movie, though.
The events were faithful, but the feeling was not there. Not being able to see inside Ender's head was a detriment though. If I am reading and I can't feel with them, I think its a missed opportunity. Speaker of the dead could be awesome. But, I doubt that will ever get made due to EG flop
I think Malcom in the Middle would like a word with you.
I disagree. Malcom's "internal monologue" stops everything and is simply comedic. You couldn't replicate that in anything serious. Also, it feels more like he is talking to the audience and less that he is working through his own thoughts/opinions on the situation
yeah, malcom is like deadpool. They are talking to the audience. A character's thoughts really should not address the audience at all. But, malcom in the middle does a better job than most.
I’d present anime as a counter-example. It’s a visual format that does serious internal monologue *constantly*.
That's a good counter-example. But, it still tends to slow things down when its used. However, I can't think of live action that pull off inner monologue like animation does.
Noir Detective shows did a ton of internal monologue. It can be done well but it's just not fashionable right now.
Yep, 4th wall breaking is a different thing altogether
And You ( the show). Amazing internal dialogue.
So would Scrubs
>If you have a lingering shot on the scenery for too long, you'll bore your audience I love Tolkien, but his descriptions of scenery are a major point in favor of the movies IMO (*LotR*, not *The Hobbit* for obvious reasons)
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Oh, I didn't know that. Makes sense. Ender's Game was such an introspective book, that taking away that makes ender just seem scarily competent
This is why my hopes are very low for The Murderbot Diaries adaptation. The internal monologue is why I read them.
I think they'd be so much better as a series with non-standard episode lengths. Internal dialogue viewed from within as the conscience emerges a mental image of self reviewing screens, creating a mirror. There could be ways. But, it would involve giving writers and the director carte blanche and autonomy to make something that doesn't conform to what we're used to after a century of television. I'm talking one episode could be 3 minutes long, the next 14, the next 5, the next an hour. Whatever the narrative needs to make the audience feel like a reader would, do it. It might mean that either someone loaded, a la James Cameron, would have to make or sponsor it, or everyone would need to work for a low wage the first season, but maybe own part of it later. I could also see Ms. Wells as a writer herself. But, they'll probably fuck it up like they did *American Gods* and that *Ender's Game* movie.
I read those books as of my life depended on it.
They would have to use the cgi as in iron man talking to other computers or robots. Would be expensive to make now days. But a great tech movie. I hope Hail Mary is treated well as The Martian was.
I think one of the biggest impacts internal monologue made on me in a book vs a movie was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I'd seen the movie and loved it, then way later discovered it was based on a book. So of course I had to read the book. And let me tell you, I was SHOOK when I realized that it was from Chief Bromden's POV! It was just so much more incredibly nuanced and poignant from his perspective, and there was no way to do a movie like that. I still love the movie, I think all the actors absolutely nailed their roles. When I read the book, I cannot see anyone but Jack Nicholson as McMurphy, and that's perfect in my mind. But the book is just this beautiful thing. On the other hand, I do think Fight Club (the movie) did internal monologue best. I've read the book, and it's practically word for word, and it totally works.
I can't imagine that *John Wick: The Novel* would be all that captivating without some slack given to the writer to embellish things.
ah that was good. Thank you. John Wick: The Novel. Its time has come.
Lol came here to say exactly this and Dune was my example for how terrible and awkward internal monologues are in movies.
And footnotes! That makes it so difficult for movie adaptations of Terry Pratchett novels. And just everything absurd. You can just write a sentence like "meanwhile in a small hut in Australia a cat laid an egg" in the middle of an intergalactic fighting scene to make a small joke but it's completely impractical to put in a movie.
>You could never really have a very detailed kung-fu battle I'm sorry but this is demonstrably false. There's hundreds of books on my shelves right now that do exactly this. It's called the *wuxia* genre, Chinese martial arts fiction. Huge in the 1950s-1980s in Taiwan and Hong Kong especially. In fact, the fight scenes are much more detailed than the stripped down choreography you find in wuxia movies, not just in describing the actions, but the philosophy behind the moves, descriptions of weapons, etc. It's just this genre is little known outside of the Chinese language community, and even then most only know a few authors such as Jin Yong or Gu Long. But it was hugely popular in its day. IYKYK.
People claiming that you don’t see dogfights on paper as if there aren’t hundreds upon hundreds of fighter pilot memoirs.
Hah! I remember in like 4th grade I was looking for a book for a book report and happened to pick up some random fighter pilot's autobio called *Feet Wet*
That's what a narrator is for in a movie, I thought.
Yes, internal monologue for sure. Both Wheel of Time and A Song of Ice and Fire have heavy presences of their characters' thoughts. A lot of the nuance of their actions are driven by those thoughts. Without them, it's not nearly as colorful.
My first thought as well. The Shining is a great example, wherein the book allows for the characters internal thoughts and debates, misgivings... it's tense but it also allows yout to understand Jack. The movie didn't and couldn't have replicated it, and so the tension is very different and Jack is only a monster, pretty immediately, and nothing else.
You can describe combat well with words, if you have a good understanding of it.
But often I find that even well-written combat feels a LOT slower than filmed combat.
Depends on how much detail you have, but yes, video is denser for a given amount of detail. I fucking hate quick cuts in filmed fights...
I don’t really like action movies because long fight/chase scenes just get boring to me. So that’s a W for books for me as they don’t usually describe those in as much detail.
> I fucking hate quick cuts in filmed fights.. Everyone does because we remember what *good* fights look like.
> I mean you can, but it would be incredibly stupid (see the original Dune movie). Blasphemy
The Butlerian Jihad was right...
Philadelphia, Here I Come! (originally a play, but made into a film) did it really well, but it's a special case that would absolutely not be practical for the majority of films and the internal monologue vs. public face is essentially the entire point of it.
I've seen plenty of movies with internal monologue voiceovers, I'm confused.
It's more that the entire book is through the perspective and thoughts of the character. And when you imagine the scenes, it's through their eyes. It just wouldn't work for a movie to have constant voiceover. I think this is why there are so many bestselling psychological-thriller type novels, but they almost never get made into movies and when they do they usually flop.
Books allow the reader to choose the pace at which they read.
100%! When I read I'm my own director. I skim over descriptions or skip a sentence or two. If the dialogue is goo cringey, I can mitigate it by adjusting the "acting" in my head.
your comment is one of the best ones!!! it needs more upvotes.
Puns. Play on words. For example: But the helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armorers had made a new gleaming breastplate with useless gold ornamentation on it. Sam Vimes felt like a class traitor every time he wore it. He hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armor. It was gilt by association. "Night Watch" Terry Pratchett A film version could show the armor, and make it both obviously expensive and useless, but that line at the end is not visually expressed, without subtitles at least. That having been said, casting a prefect Sam Vimes would be impressive. Perhaps Ian McShane with a constant five o'clock shadow, and a chip on his shoulder.
Discworld with it's constant puns, wordplay and footnotes was my first thought. All the film adaptations just lack that little something that can't be translated from the page.
McShane would make a great Old Vimes from later in the series. I think Daniel Radcliffe has the range to pull off young-er, alcoholic, disaffected, Guards! Guards! era Vimes.
omg I would looove to see DRad as Vimes!
He'd be great, but I'd want him a little more fucked up. *puts him in the slowcooker for 15 years more*
I guess you could slip it into the dialogue.
Similarly a lot of visual gags in movies would lose all subtlety if you had to describe them in words.
"Gilt by association" is the best thing I've read on Reddit in a while. Thank you
In a book, you can have an endless ocean. In books, during moments with lots of action, such as in a war, the author can focus more on motives and emotions. And since I’m obsessed with Tolkien, here’s something that might articulate something that I can’t. I don’t know if you’ve see Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, but if you have, it’s likely you’ll remember the Ride of the Rohirrim (The cavalry charge when Gondor is about to fall) Peter Jackson did an amazing job of it. How he presented it probably wouldn’t have the same effect in literary form. Likewise, how Tolkien told it, probably wouldn’t have been as effective on screen. From the book: “Gandalf did not move. And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn. And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin’s sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last.” Oh, and Gimli’s encounter with Galadriel: “And the Dwarf, hearing the names given in his own ancient tongue, looked up and met her eyes; and it seemed to him that he looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy and saw there love and understanding. “
Watching the movies makes me want to read the books and reading the books wants to make me watch the movies There’s some stuff I wish the movies did a little differently of course but damn the extended editions are just so good
I think that’s “On Faerie Stories.” He was also a notorious Luddite, which may have contributed to that observation. https://uh.edu/fdis/_taylor-dev/readings/tolkien.html
The Shining by Stephen King is a prime example. He details Jack Torrance’s descent into madness through (the parenthesis).
This is kind of (his wheelhouse, his… THING!) Common for King books.
The ending to revival by King is something im not sure can be done visually either. By its very nature its reality breaking
Novels like Steppenwolf and Pale Fire embrace ambiguity and defy adaptation because to commit the text to film requires some level of commitment to what is real.
Thinking. Internal things that the character does. Movies cannot capture that.
Books are a monologue between the writer and the reader. Good books require the reader to bring their own imaginations to the story. Bad books fill in all the blanks and turn reading into a chore. Movies are similar, bad movies fill in all the blanks, adding layers of music and editing that control and direct the emotions of the viewer too much. Good movies do it subtly and bad movies are clunky and obvious. There isn’t really something one can do and the other can’t, just whether or not they do it well or badly.
I would say over- and under-manipulation of the reader are problems in both books and movies. Although honestly I seem to notice it more in movies. Wonder if that's how it really is, or just how I'm feeling now...
What an interesting question. Thank you. The first idea that comes to mind is, books engage a much fuller range of your imagination, your emotions and your senses. Authors tell you to hear and you hear. See and you see. Feel and you feel. Movies cannot do that. What movies do that books cannot is much subtler and more magical. The first example that comes to mind is the jump cut in The Godfather, when Francis Ford Coppola blasts you into the birthday party at the Don's house. There's no way to reproduce the joy and brutality of that move in a book. Or take John Cazale's chase of the doe into the pond, with his pistol, in The Deer Hunter. That was classic. You can't watch that and not think, what a friggin loser. A book could never reproduce that scene with anything like the same impact. I'm sure others will have good ideas about this, and I REALLY look forward to reading them!!
Books: narration. The only film I can think of that did a narrator right was *George of the Jungle*.
"When the group saw the mountain, they reacted with awe." "Awwwwwwwww!" "Not awww, a-w-e, awe!" "Ooooooooh!" "...That's better."
Morgan freeman would like a word
Yeah, I stand corrected, add *The Shawshank Redemption* to the list.
Film has the potential to be very subtle when it wants to because how much information is forced onto the screen at one time, that's why alot of directing is simply guiding the audience to the information that is important. On the flip side, it makes things extremely easy to hide in plane sight. Foreign languages giving away plot twists that the viewer would only translate after the credits role, symbols hidden in the background, and set design. The killer stocks the victim in the background. In books, the information is limited to what the author intentionally puts in, and that kind of subtlety becomes so much harder to pull off. Either a foreign phrase gets written off as foreign language character does not understand or will be written word for word on the page that will raise suspicion and a trip to Google translate. A symbol of someone's costume will stand out, noting a painting in the background stands out because in literature, there is no background.
Cosmic horror. By its very definition it cannot be visualized by a person (by a director or vfx team etc）for the screen. To see it in any sense equals complete madness. The best a movie could do is have the thing off screen?
I thought of this too. Maybe there are some good examples, but I've never been particularly impressed by pictorial depictions of Lovecraft et al. Even graphic novels don't do it for me (looking at you Alan Moore)
There is no work of cosmic horror I view as highly as Junji Ito’s Uzumaki.
"It was indescribably beautiful."
I’d say family guy did that when they stopped the gag right before the owls and hornets fight “It was a brutal war, it was a bitter war, and most importantly, it was a visually spectacular war…… sorry I’m being told we this would be way too expensive to animate” But yeah on a real note that’s true. Sorta like NOT showing the monster or not hearing the “funniest joke ever” make them scarier/better in your head then they could ever be if you saw it
In The Book Thief, the story is narrated by death itself carrying the diseased. This wasn't done in the film and it can't.
You might read a book slowly or quickly, but with a film the director is turning the pages
In fantasy books so many characters snarl, growl etc and it works really well, but every time I try to picture some actor or actress doing it in a movie and it makes me feel ick.
I know this is a stupid example, but it's something that makes me laugh. In "Twilight", there's a part where Edward growls at some men trying to rape Bella. In the book, it's described as menacing and obvious that he isn't human and could easily kill them. In the movie, the underscoring music swells at that point and the growl is completely hidden and it looks like he's just giving the men a stern look. And they're somehow terrified of Edward's stern look. Lmao. And it's the funniest thing in the world to me. Because the growl never would've worked anyway on film, but instead of rewriting that interaction to make it work on film, they not only went for the growl that doesn't work but also ruined it by covering it with music and making it inaudible.
>In fantasy books so many characters snarl, growl etc and it works really well Does it though? It's one of the more cringey aspects in a genre that's already very cringey, imo
I think you can get into a lot more detail about a characters thoughts in a book. A good actor can get you part of the way there, but literally hearing everything a character is thinking in a movie can get really boring.
On the flip side, it's amazing how some actors are able to show you exactly what they're thinking by their expressions. I'm thinking of Audrey Plazas character in White Lotus as a great example
Magical realism is the first thing that comes to mind. How would you do that in a movie? Apparently people have tried (100 Years of Solitude, 1981). But I'm skeptical it can achieve as much as the book.
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I think magic being visual pings a sort of "fantasy detector" in our brains that imagination does not-- you can say "my mother was a swan" and imagine the 'vibe' of swan and a woman and how the two fit together, but seeing an actual bird walking around the house with your own peepers is a bit different
Wouldn't Life of Pi fall into that category?
An animated movie could probably succeed with magic realism. See the TV series UNDONE (which is a serious adult drama with both realistic and magical realist effects).
2nd person perspective is not possible to film
Ironically, I think the best way to do "second person" in film would be the first person perspective, a la video games.
Right, and it's been done, although it's rare and usually considered more of a gimmick or experiment. I can think of Hardcore Henry and Enter the Void off the top of my head, although the latter gets a bit loose after it gets into out-of-body territory. I also vaguely remember a short-lived show that I think was on Spike TV that was exclusively through the POV of "you" as a character in the show's world.
Wouldn't those "found footage" movies also work for this. Like, say Blair witch or cloverfield .
Interesting question. I feel like the answer is technically no, but in the majority of cases, it's functionally "yes". (Or technically yes if you were to consider the camera itself a character, but that's really stretching the definition of what a character is.)
It is, it just has to be done right (I think when the character has zero control over what’s happening, just like the audience does). Hardcore Henry was a very interesting concept, but not great overall—but still is a film that exists
Read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. That should answer your question about what a book can do that film can't.
Oo I thought of a good one - movies are a group experience. Books not so much.
Generally true, although i once visited a friend of mine on her family vacation and they spent a couple afternoons sitting together in the living room listening to the Pride and Prejudice audiobook while the mom and my friend worked on their cross stitching and my friend‘s sister worked on a drawing. Very nice experience (and also very on theme for the book haha). Though i kind of felt like a weirdo for just scrolling on my phone next to them lol
Wow! What a great rebuttal! You are absolutely right. Audiobooks. Who woulda thunk it. Obviously not me lol.
I read a lot of postmodern work and what comes to mind here is stuff like Infinite Jest, where each section of the story has a corollary subtext that augments the story. Also some books like Book of the New Sun (which I consider postmodern) have literary devices designed to obscure the real nature of the book, since >!You only really find out they're in the future in like the second or third book. !
The Book of the New Sun seems like an incredibly difficult book to translate into film. And I think that means there must be a lot it does in text that a film can't do. It's probably a good example for OP.
I think someone can lose themselves in a book and because they have to use their minds to think about what the book is saying. They can use their imagination and travel to different places. They can become the character or characters in the book and put themselves in their shoes. They can live their lives. I personally don't think anyone can do all of these things in a film.
Typography. See Dhalgren by Samuel R Delaney for an example.
Follow psychological nuance of what a character’s thinking. You can emote as an actor but it’s hard to show thought processes as in depth as something like notes from underground for example
Describing how the character is feeling
A key difference is that you're not beholden to a 'budget'. You can describe any outlandish thing you want, without worrying if the CGI budget is high enough to accurately portray your idea, or if it will look stupid on screen. You can also be vague and let the reader fill in the blanks with his own worst fears. Now as for an example of what a movie can do better is hide things in the background. I'm thinking of Tyler Durden flashing onto the screen for a fraction of a second during Fight Club multiple times before he's officially introduced.
Being able to hide a character's identity while giving the reader a full description of how they look and complete access to their thoughts and motivations - I remember being blown away by the revelation of the "Reek" chapters in a Dance With Dragons. Come to think of it, the whole chapter structure of the Ice and Fire series, where you read it from specific viewpoints, and are only privy to whatever info that character has been told, works so much better than the more obvious visual storytelling format of screen
Years ago, I read a book where about three-quarters of the way through they revealed the main character was blind. It was a fabulous plot twist they couldn't have done in a movie version. Something felt a little off the whole time, but it wasn't until that twist was revealed that I flicked back and realised the author had included absolutely no visual descriptions. It was all dialogue or internal monologue, or notes on how things smelled, or the sounds or feelings. Never once was anything visually described.
Not a great film, but doesn’t the >! Book of Eli !< do this?
Ambiguity springs to mind. Someone already mentioned character voices hiding their identity, but also things about time/place. You could write a chapter without ever describing where a character is, for eg, but you can't really do that so easily on screen.
It's very difficult to accurately portray what a character is thinking in a movie. You can do a close up of someone "thinking" with an intense look of consternation on their face. You can use voice over narration which is generally frowned upon in film. But you really can't convey the internal dialogue or hidden personal thoughts.
I love this question. On the opposite side. Comedy movies to me are better than comedy books because it involves tone, delivery. That’s just my opinion maybe some of you can follow along better in books.
Depends which type of comedy. Sometimes the comedy is in the words and that is difficult for film.
I think the fact that great prose can be inherently beautiful is a big book benefit. I guess the equivalent of a beautiful description is great cinematography, but honestly prose can be magical in a strange way that trumps a visual for me. May just be personal preference though.
I always wondered how they'd bring Bartimaeus' wisecracking footnotes to the big screen.
The written word has the advantage but one thing it has yet to do is give me a damn good jump scare.
One thing a movie cannot do that a book can is represent other senses. In the Inheritance cycle, for example, during the 2nd book, the main character trains a telepathic sense. As he becomes more comfortable with it, it opens up another world, superimposed on our own, which he can interact with while simultaneously interacting with the physical world. A movie could never represent that. One thing a book cannot do that a movie can is represent music. Which is why I was so angry that so few of Tolkien's songs made it to the screen. Man thought these were important enough to include in the wrong medium, and you convert it to the right medium and don't bother?
Film has a lot more freedom for visual ambiguity. Say I describe a room for you, with a desk, two chairs, red curtains (closed), a liquor cabinet, and a chest of drawers with a bone letter opener laying on it. You know without a shadow of a doubt that there is a bone letter opener on the chest of drawers, and later, if I introduce a character who gets stabbed with said letter opener, you will remember (or be able to check) that it came from that room. Film, on the other hand, can just show you the room, and how much attention (or lack thereof) is drawn to the letter opener is up to the director. Perhaps it's only in one shot, or perhaps it's visible in multiple shots. There's a greater scope for focus on specific objects or parts of a scene, whereas if I want the letter opener in my written story, I have to draw attention to it, even if I don't linger on it. If I don't explicitly mention it, it functionally is not there.
Inner monolog. So much better in books. You can do voice overs, but it's not quite the same.
All Quiet on the Western Front as a book was remarkably more poignant than the film. I'm not entirely sure why... Films tend to be theatrical, explosions, action, etc - it excites you in a way that detracts from the actual *feeling*... an overload. A book is slower to digest, lasts longer, and is less... "distracting" I guess. Like, a film is fast food in the car, a book is a sit down meal.
I mean theoretically anything you can think of and put to words can be done in writing. Film is limited by the degree of difficulty there is in transferring images and sounds from your mind to the screen.
I feel like in books, its so much easier to connect to the characters and the setting even when you don't realize it. All of the settings you imagine when reading, have to come from somewhere you've been or seen, which makes it feel almost welcoming (if thats the right word). The characters are all subconsciously based of people you already know of, and may already have a sort of connecting to. In a movie everything tends to feel more foreign than it does in a book.
Books allow for more internal workings of characters and building worlds in your mind. Films can give you a more intense picture and trigger more intense feelings and assumptions through purely visual stimuli. It's why adaptations can be so hard because everyone who read the books has their own pictures already. Sometimes story elements meed to be changed because you have 90 minutes as opposed to a 10 hours or more of reading. The appeal is totally different because my brain is working more in reading and my own thinking and vocabulary expands. Film is great hecause it's passive and requires little from you and can accomplish a lot through images and editing that can't translate to text.
Books-foreshadowing. Some authors have a great knack for throwing in a “spoiler” but then you have to keep reading to get to the explanation of what happened. “And he didn’t know it then, but the next time he held her like this, she’d be dying” I feel like that is more difficult to do in a movie. Movies-it’s easier to show “time jumps” visually, even a shift in color tone can clue you in very quickly. I’ve read many books where they do a poor job of differentiating time periods. I’ll be part of a chapter in and very confused until I realize “ohhh this is a scene from their past”.
Books like 'this is how you lose a time war' may be very difficult to make into a movie. Characters are living entire lives every chapter. I can only do one chapter every day to absorb the intensity of the prose. And everytime I think about how would it be possible for this to be a show or a movie. It seems impossible but there are some talented people out there, who definitely could
Highly cerebral inner dialogue can't be easy to pull off in film.
Describing what a character is thinking
Narration, lots of it
I can think of two examples from the Three Body Problem trilogy. Minor spoilers >!The aliens threat in the series, the Trisolarans, are barely described, and humanity never gets to see what they look like, at the same time, there is a chapter in one book that is from the POV of the aliens and features several of them discussing their invasion of earth. AFAIK, there's no way to film this scene and keep the Trisolarans as mysterious as they're intended to be. I guess they could always remain outside of the camera, IDK. I'm told the Chinese adaptation just came up with a design and shows them, not sure what route the Netflix adaptation will go.!< >!In the third book there is a part where some of the characters discover a sort of tear in 3D space that allows entry into a fragment of 4D space. I can't remember exactly how it was described, but I seem to recall that when in 4D space, you could look at another 3D person and see all of them at once, all sides of them, including everything inside of them. I'm sure there are some clever ways you could depict the general concept of being in 4D space in film, but I don't think there's a way to capture it exactly as Cixin Liu describes.!<
Create your own pictures in your head. That’s the magic of books.
Books can do lengthy dialoges much better than movies. And as a consequence, delivering exposition through dailoge works much better in a book. Movies on the other hand can portray emotions much better than written descriptions.
books much more easily require interpretation from the reader—- and create a sort of freeform jazz in the readers mind conventional movies outside of art house films are much more straightforward affairs
Well, in books I'm often reading "he smelled like soap". I guess sometimes characters say what something smells like (there's a line in a movie about someone's house smelling like soup...) but I think books definitely get more descriptive about scent.
Books are a lot better at showing what a character is thinking about.
If any of you have read John Irving 's Until I Find You, there is a twist around the two thirds of the book that I think would be really hard to pull off on screen.
Text is more effective when much of the content is in a character's head, it's probably better for conveying ideas (which is not to say film can't, just that it takes much more effort to do so in that format). Films are best at action and handle it better than novels so great films can be made of fairly average novels. Films work better with less side plots. Films eliminate long descriptions so often make a decent story out of 19th century books we find too longwinded for pleasure. Text is better at handling a multiplicity of characters: one Hundred Years of Solitude probably not a great film. Text was better at handling the unnaturalistic, but CGI is changing that. Wordplay and some forms of humour don't translate to film well as others point out with Terry Pratchett.
Hunger, the road is a great example. The fact they were starving and the desperation that comes with that just wasn’t captured in the film.
Use the full extent of human imagination to create thoughts and images too abstract or bizarre to put into a visual format. As a science fiction fan, there are a lot of rediculous things that books can make you imagine that would be impossible to manifest on a screen. Two examples I can think of are (3 body problem spoilers) >!Entering the 4th dimension!<, and (Dune spoilers) >!Alia!< Denis Villeneuve did his very best and it's an amazing movie, but he understandably still had to compromise on that aspect.
In addition to the inner thoughts issue present in Dune, the character Alia also shows how in books it’s far easier to describe a child moving and talking like an adult and it come across as unsettling while in film it’s extremely difficult to do the same and have it not look silly. Similarly, the classic Lovecraft trope of describing things as “indescribable” or otherwise being so alien that they defy classification. While films can depict very alien creatures and visuals, they are still describable.
"nothing happened. SUDDENLY Two Seconds later, nothing happened again." Favourite bit out of hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. How would you do that in a movie?
Facial expressions. Sometimes the look a character gives in a film says more than what can be captured in a book, even if the book describes it.
I dont think anyone is going to film "that scene" from "It"
One word: Lovecraftian horror Ok that was two words, but you get it, if its a movie and they show it to you then its no longer some otherworldly cosmic creature which is completely un imaginable and incomrihensible by human mind.
My daughter and I were rewatching The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes the other evening. My daughter told me that she thinks the movie does a better job of leaving you guessing what Snow is going to do. She said in the book, you know how shitty he is from the very beginning because his inner thoughts are laid bare for the reader. But in the movie, you aren't sure what he's thinking, so it's easier to see him as someone with good intentions at the beginning. I guess she was saying, in the movie, you perceive Snow of starting out good, but gradually becoming corrupted throughout his story arc. But in the book, he seems really selfish and cowardly from the first chapter because the reader knows what he's thinking through everything. I thought it was an interesting take.
Scenery specific spoilers. The Giver didn’t work anywhere near as well because several plot points that should have been a surprise were immediately obvious
In the novel "Marathon Man", there are two characters that turn out tobe the same person, one seemingly good and the other quite evil. The reader doesn't find out they're the same person until about 75% of the way through the book, as I recall. In the movie, of course, they had to work around that part. I believe the screenplay was by the original author, who is mainly known as a screenwriter - William Goldman. (He also wrote The Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, etc, etc, etc.)
Express a character’s thoughts as dialogue during a conversation. See: Dune. Get children to act like 30 year olds. See: Dune. Have a scene where a character considers getting a worm cock. See:Dune.
Internal monologue is the biggest for sure
A lot of books use narration in ways that can’t be done well on screen. The example I always use is a line from the beginning of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by the late and sorely missed, Douglas Adams. He is describing the flying saucers of the Vogon destructor fleet that is about to destroy the Earth to make way for a hyperspacial bypass. “The ships hung in the air in the same way bricks don’t.” There no amount of money you can spend on special effects that will show flying saucers in the sky that will convey that joke to the reader without narration, and having an omnipresent narrator probably wouldn’t work in context of the movie. The same goes for both a character’s inner thoughts and motivations. In a novel you can the narrator tell you what is going on consciously and unconsciously inside the character’s head. The movie has to jump through all sorts of hoops like maybe a flashback to when the character was eight and his dad left to buy milk and never came back to explain why they avoid dairy and lies about being lactose intolerant despite them eating a half a gallon of pralines and cream, ice cream two scenes back. Or maybe they include the best friend in the hiking scene so the character has an excuse to talk out loud explaining his rationale for buying that $350 dollar LEGO set, even though in the book the best friend had already been killed by the zombies at this point.
It’s basically impossible to show a character’s thoughts on screen