Rabid Reads

I don’t think there are. But the reason I don’t there are is complicated . . .

I don’t much like going to movies based on books. Especially if the book said movie is based on is a book that I L-O-V-E-D.

Take the Harry Potter movies—I don’t think I’ve seen them after Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I know I haven’t seen them beyond Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Why? Well, for a multitude of reasons, but all of those reasons can be boiled down to:

Fred and George.

Fred and George Weasley are one of the consistent highlights in Harry Potter (the books). They’re mischievous, they’re hilarious, they are NOT TO BE MISSED.

But missing them is exactly what happens in the movies.

If you’ve never read the books, then you don’t know what you’re missing, but if you have read them . . . the movie versions of Fred and George who occasionally stick their heads into a scene with a snarky comment is not going to cut it.

And Dobby. I’ll bet you that not a single person who had not read the books shed a tear when the Bad Thing that happens in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows happened.

But I did.

Last year, I read the entire series out loud to my husband who had never read it. It was the first time I’d read them since the last book came out, and I was a bit fuzzy on some of the things towards the end.

I had actually forgotten about the Bad Thing.

Until it happened.

Then I remembered. And I SOBBED. Like a baby.

And no one who hadn’t read the books is going to feel anything from the movies that intensely. It’s not possible. Too much had to be cut, too many personal thoughts that readers alone are privy to can’t be translated onto the big screen.

BUT.

That being said, there are people in the world—people who completely boggle my mind, but people nonetheless—who will NEVER read the Harry Potter books. Even if there wasn’t a movie they could easily watch, they still wouldn’t read the books. So for those people, better the movies than nothing at all.

And the same basic principle can be applied to any based-on-a-book movie.

What do you think?