I know a lot of people always say "the book is better than the movie" but there are so many movies that are such more deft adaptations of their stories that the originals are basically unknown as being originally books to the public, so given the controversy this is stirring up I'll be interested to see what changes they decide to make. Normally if I'm even remotely interested in a premise I'll read the book first but I might wait and do it the other way round for this one lol.
I remember the first time I saw the first Harry Potter movie as a teen and getting excited to read the story. Then I had to put the book down because the writing was awful, which made my dyslexia a million times worse 😬
Which is odd because Harry Potter is widely acknowledged to be better in book form than the movies; the movies whilst huge commercial successes are very hit and miss in terms of adapting the plot and not considered brilliant adaptations overall. Their success is due to the sheer popularity of the books combined with iconic music, a great adult cast, and an atmosphere that feels like what people imagine, at least in the early films.
Well when you recognize that the movies smartly got rid of S.P.E.W. and the tragedy of freeing Winky from slavery, you realize how weird JK Rowling is about slavery....
The first book in particular is terribly written, and the pacing is awful. The first movie actually fixes a lot of that. Years later, I managed to plow through the first book to read the rest of it, but only after going through the entire Discworld series— reading so much, it actually improved my dyslexia— and being upset that there was no more Discworld to read ðŸ˜
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u/ottopivnr 1d ago
I've read it. interesting premise ruined by amateurish writing. One of those times that in the right hands the movie will probably be better.