What happens when I watch movies after reading the book

[trenchkamen]

What is this crap?

I'm watching Contact, finally, on Netflix, after having read and loved the book. (Carl, the world is still so much poorer for losing you.) One of the things I loved so much about the book was the slowly building relationship between Dr. Arroway and Palmer Joss. They start out at odds, slowly come to understand each other through seemingly irreconcilable viewpoints, and, at the end of the book, there is the promise of a relationship. The possibility. Sagan wrote about Joss, a fundamentalist Christian preacher, with such depth, respect, and humanity, and the interplay he had going with Arroway was amazing. They started out wary of each other, circled each other for a while, finally came to understand each other. It took the entire (thick) book to develop, and it was beautiful.

I just paused the video at 18 some-odd minutes in, and they're already in bed with each other.

*flips a table*

What is this? That was a significant portion of the book's characterization and suspense you just threw out the window like 24 hours after they met each other.

Go fuck yourself, Hollywood.*

I'm probably going to find more stuff to bitch about as the movie goes on (18 minutes in a 2 hour 24 minute movie). I should resist the urge to write about it and just watch the damn thing, but there is nobody here for me to bitch to.

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*Except for casting Jodie Foster; I can never disagree with that.

Comments

[kitschaster.livejournal.com]

Wow, I haven't watched Contact in forever. And I've never watched it before the last half of the movie (which is a shame, I know). Now I want to buy yet another book. I cannot stand the movie adaptation of a lot of books, because books last for so many pages, and movies just can't fit all of that in there. They even messed up Coraline (in my opinion, by adding an entirely new character purely for the sake of interaction), and that was a short book. The book was so creepy, because she was doing those things by herself. I'd be creeped the hell out if I were alone. Adding an additional character that tags along takes away the creep factor.

Bah. Fucking Hollywood. =\

[fabula-umbrae.livejournal.com]

I actually liked the addition of another character. A lot of what made the book good was the style of the writing. It gave a lot of interest to her being alone. I don't think it would have directly translated to film very well.

I didn't like the way they broke the plot down into what amounts to a video game in layout. But I thought the second character was a good choice. There are other ways they could have done it. However it was a good movie and I don't think it was ruined in any particular way.

James and the Giant Peach on the other hand made me sad.

[kitschaster.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I disagree. The addition of another character took away from the story what I actually liked. I really just wish they'd stop making movies out of Gaiman books, because Stardust was so bad I only watched a small part, and avoided the rest.

I guess we just saw it two different ways. Then again, I did also watch the movie right after watching The Golden Compass, so I was probably very critical of the movie to begin with.

[fabula-umbrae.livejournal.com]

Heh. Wait till you get to the end of the movie. I look forward to how many tables will be flipped.