Infinite Brain Magic

Among all the reboots and remakes and sequels being made these days there is an escalating problem. Its always been a thing, but its getting worse. "The book was better." I hate this shit. Not because its necessarily untrue; the experience you had reading the book (in your own time, on your own terms, and with your own mind active) was undoubtedly better than the time you spent forty bucks on concessions and got to sit in a kinda smelly, dark room with between ten and eighty other people. No, I hate this phrase because it shows a lack of respect to the creative process and because it demonstrates a mind-blowing, ego-maniacal, ignorance.

First, we must take the book and the movie as absolute, independent experience. I know this is counter-intuitive, but stick with me. Any novel you've ever read is essentially made by one or two people. I'm talking writers, direct creative control, editors and inspirational people come into it, but the writer should always be in the driver's seat. This makes a novel the clear vision of one person, movies are a different beast. Even the most conscientious and charitable production company is a hundred competing visions for the same story, all the worse when that story is "based" on an established story. After a studio compensates for all of these different visions (director, writers upon writers, producers, lawyers, corporate sponsors, actors), time constraints, and budget; we're talking about a different story entirely. And that's okay. There's a reason there are so many pics out there where someone has taken a synopsis of a known movie, changes some names and its the story of another movie.

There is nothing new under the sun. People have always been moved by essentially the same tropes, that's how they become tropes. I will admit that its a bit washy for people to "reinterpret" an established story but it has been known to do well. As long as the audience realizes that it is blatantly someone else's take on an established story, not some kind of memetic cloning process whereby the story lurches deeper into the collective unconsciousness. The movie and the novel it rips off are different things, and that's fine, lets get over it.

The second point in this little tirade, and perhaps the less popular, is that by saying, "the book was better" you are being an egotistical douche-nozzle. For a good many people the reason to complain about a movie over a book comes down to either casting choices or storyline, and here's the problem with that. You don't fucking know. You don't know who was available for the film, you don't know what they could or couldn't shoot, you don't know what bits of story were important to the director or the studio. You likely have no fucking clue any of the context or capacity of the people who made the movie. By resorting to saying the book was better you are essentially saying that your imagination portrayed the story more enjoyably. Yes, congratu-fucking-lations you did better with infinite brain magic and leisure than a bunch of stressed out narcissists trying to work watchable material out of monetary constraints and producer overreach. 

So yes, the book was probably a better experience overall, but that's like saying that an good meal is better than an orgasm. They meet different needs in different ways.