Book Blogger Hop
This prompt was submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer:
Do you watch film adaptations of books before reading them?
Almost always I read the book first. I want my imagination to be the dominant vision in my head. For example, I don’t want to put up with Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb in my head when I read a Herron novel, as fantastic as he was (or as Dracula, or as Sirius Black). Having my mental image and the character’s voice firmly established, I can watch Slow Horses and enjoy Oldman’s take on the character.
This has backfired on me a few times, mostly when the adaptations are so divorced from the source material that it hurts the experience. take The Water Horse. I read that to/with my kids before the movie came out because we all wanted that experience. And boy howdy, could that movie have been more different from the book? I think it was perfectly nice and we’d have probably enjoyed it more had we not known the book.
Sometimes, I don’t care enough about the book based on what I’ve heard/adaptation trailer I’ve seen to care, and will watch the show/movie first. Occasionally, actually seeing the adaptation will make me reconsider and grab the book (I can’t come up with an example at the moment to use here, which is a shame).
Rarely, I think an adaptation looks so good that I don’t want to know what the novel is like. For example, Game of Thrones. You knew that the writers/producers were going to have to make changes from the novels for that, and I didn’t want to be one of those guys sitting there watching saying things like, “Well, actually Khal Drogo should have bells in his hair and…” After having seen season one, I could read the books and keep the two worlds separate in my mind. Sure, that seems to be the opposite of what I said in that first paragraph. It’s rare that an adaptation looks that good to me.
There’s always the stuff that I end up watching for one reason or another and don’t know it’s an adaptation until I’m watching/have watched. That usually inspires me to read it afterward, just to see.
So basically, the book first, but it’s not a hard and fast rule. I didn’t realize I had so many exceptions to the rule, though. Guess you learn something every day.
What about you, readers?
