I LOVE Alfonso Cuarón’s sci-fi action movie Children of Men. I’ve watched maybe six times and every time, the ending always almost brings me to tears. So when I learned it was adapted from P.D. James’ book of the same name, it was a no-brainer deciding what my next book would be.
After finishing the book, it wasn’t difficult to reach to the conclusion that I enjoyed the movie better.
While James’ book gives a more in-depth look at how human infertility and humanity’s slow death march towards extinction affects the sexual dynamic between men and women and almost demented ways humans try to cope with a world without children or a race of dead men walking, I feel the book dedicates WAY too much time describing the failing of human civilization and the Regrets and guilt of Theo Faron. It’s not even until after 2/3 through the book where it feels like the plot and story are properly paced and stuff of consequence actually begin to happen.
The film’s adaptation by, comparison, feels consistent in its pacing and the world building and woe-is-mes of Theo feel more compact a take up less of the audience’s time.
What books do you feel were worse than its film adaptation and why?
I’m going to get eaten alive, but Lord Of The Rings…
I know, I know, they’re classics, they basically defined the genre, if you like fantasy you have to understand how LOTR made it… but my god, are they dry. I remember being so excited for the Helms Deep scene that was so incredibly cool and drawn out, intense battle in the films. The book was not that.
You do deserve to be consumed by a cave troll for this take.
This was my first thought too. Like I can absolutely respect the impact the books had on the fantasy genre, but if I disregard that and judge them solely as books… they were kind of boring and so drawn out.
The movies are absolute gold though.
How are you with other classic stories? Do you like Three Musketeers? Treasure Island? Count of Monte Cristo? The Once and Future King? War of the worlds?
Movies and then television influenced the pace of novels.
But I love Lord of the rings. It is a subtle sophisticated book. And if your characters are going to hike across the world, there should be scenes of walking.
I also had issues with the Lord of the Rings books, but it wasn’t a pacing issue, I read and quite enjoyed the Three Musketeer, so draw out pacing is far from a deal breaker for me. No, my problem is that the prose in those books is dense, it gives the whole affair a mythic feel, yes, but it also makes it quite easy to zone out while reading the third paragraph describing a single ruined field.
Ooh Three Musketeers is actually an excellent example! I wanted to love that book so much!!
My impression of the Three Musketeers was that it was a fun (and reasonably accessible) ride, sort of…but was thoroughly laced some very dated morals, in a way that seemed more severe than most classics I’ve read. I felt certain it would turn off a majority of people (or Americans at least) my age and younger.
Nope, not wrong. The movies are my favorites of all time. I’ve tried to start the fellowship on multiple occasions and put it down like 1/3 of the way through the book. It’s fucking boring.
I agree, the books were very slowly paced and I preferred the movies. I would have liked to have seen more of the Ents and the Hobbits defeating Wormtongue in the movie.
I’m not going to downvote you because you’re not a jerk about it, just stating how you feel. But I’m gonna be a little bit of a jerk lol.
I thought they were dry and a really dense read when I was 12, but I still got some enjoyment from them. By high school they were quite good to me and easier to read. As an adult they’re an incredibly stimulating read. So it’s hard for me to hear how they’re dry or put you to sleep as someone else replied…and not see it as childish I guess
I think even people who love lotr should be able to admit how dry Tolkien’s writing is if they’re considering it in good faith. His strength was as a world builder and story constructor, but he was not a good storyteller.
When I start reading LotR, I find it hard to put down until the end. Outside of some segments (I admit to skimming Bombadil… I love the idea of Bombadil, I don’t like the execution much), it flows smoothly. People might facetiously throw around “Descriptions of every leaf and twig”, but I never found his descriptions to take away from the flow.
The songs on the other hand…
I def skim the songs lol, I’ll admit that.
Now this one is a genuinely bad take. Have you read The Hobbit? After 86 years and plenty of changes in convention and language, it remains one of the most pleasant and approachable fantasy novels available. Even if you don’t enjoy LOTR…there’s nothing “good faith” about a blanket claim that his writing is dry or boring, or that he just wasn’t a good storyteller.
LOTR is long, both expansive and detailed, (mostly) serious, written in language that isn’t as familiar today, and layers a lot of subtlety into the prose. I found it a dense read. As a child. The same would have been true for a lot of popular contemporary fantasy had I attempted it at 12…in fact the more praise an author receives specifically for their prose, the more difficult and boring I would have found it. There’s nothing wrong with accessible Sanderson directness, but there’s plenty of room for other styles and they aren’t inherently bad just because they’re a little more challenging and require some focus.
I’m not a Tolkien fanboy, LOTR not in my personal favorite top 5 book series, and I’d have to think a while about who would round out top 10. This is the most I’ve spoken or written about his work in several years. But I cannot “in good faith” call it dry, or agree that the movies are better.
Brave take, but I think I agree. There’s so many dry and slow sections of the books, whereas the movies are paced so well. If you want to get deep into the lore, then the books are great. If you want to see the plot move and not read another poem or song about dwarves, then the films are better.
The movies are so bad compared to the books. Every important moment in the movies had zero importance because of terrible writing. Pelennor fields was so epic in the books. Literally had zero meaning in the movies since ghosts just kill everyone.
Oh thank God, someone else said it! I agree. It had to give it three tries before I finally plodded through those books. I swear, every time I got somewhat interested, the books knew that somehow and went back to Sam and Frodo sitting around.
The movies just took out everything unnecessary and gave this epic adventure a kick in the ass.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I’ve found Return of the King to be one of the most dramatic, exciting, tense, action-packed books I’ve ever read. Fellowship of the Ring, however, is one of the least. A gazillion different descriptions of grass and green and nature and WIZARD YOU SHALL NOT PASS and more green and scenic beauty and Boromir carks it and additional green.
Moria, though! The movie had nothing on the atmosphere of that sequence in the books. The movie’s focus on keeping the action moving there took something away from it.
Normally you get downvoted into oblivion for criticizing Tolkien here on Reddit, glad that isn’t the case here. I did finish the books but it was a chore. Ok believe it was the book that taught me that I don’t have to finish reading something just because I started.
They do different things, IMO. The movies are cinematic masterpieces and are designed specifically to keep you entranced for every single moment. A lot of the slower slice of life moments and less intense character interactions are cut out. They’re also made for our era’s audience.
Tolkien was from a different era of authors, books from previous generations sometimes feel difficult or challenging to read because our languages evolve rather rapidly. Pride and Prejudice was the pinnacle of the trendy everyman’s novel back when it first came out and now it’s prestigious classic literature that many people find boring. Canterbury Tales was entertaining court poetry when Chauser wrote the stories and now they teach entire semester long courses on how to just comprehend that era’s vernacular. This dissonance between our modern vernacular and the vernacular of the time of writing can make older books feel slow, dry, and difficult to read because we have to take slightly more time to comprehend it. It’s like trying to read your grandma’s shopping list. It’s words you know but the handwriting back when she was young was just so different and it takes a little bit more effort to read it than if you or your friend wrote it. When I was in elementary school we learned cursive and never wrote in print.
LOTR in 1937 is kinda like today’s Witcher novels, or maybe Game of Thrones or Outlander or Mistborn. Once you get used to Tolkien’s writing style and your brain stops stumbling over the language they’re incredibly vivid, immersive books. In a movie all that work of imagining what’s happening during battle and what the imposing castles and expansive magical forests look like is done for you and you just have to sit there. Of course watching chopper footage of a police chase is going to be more immediately stimulating than reading about it in the newspaper the next day.
I’ve seen a few people call Tolkien dry, and I just cannot understand it. His writing is, as far as I’m concerned, the complete opposite of dry: it’s lush and vivid and rich.
Thank you for being brave lol. Don’t get me wrong, I love the books too, but they don’t inspire the same sense of epic scale and awe in me that those sweeping, climactic sequences on film do. It just hits different. I also prefer movie Aragorn having an arc where he’s coming to terms with being worthy/accepting the mantle of king, whereas in the books Aragorn is pretty much just like, “yeah I am that guy” from the jump. He has his sword almost the whole time iirc instead of it being reforged at the end.
I kind of half-agree with you. I don’t think the books are too dry. Though I did have an issue with the numerous very long and elaborate visual descriptions of locations and things, some of which I found very hard to follow. Overall they are amazing and I read the trilogy twice, but the movies are even better, maybe because they could show all the things that the books were describing and they managed not to mess up any of the good stuff.
I tried reading the Hobbit years before it was a movie. Couldn’t get through the first chapter. Even tried watching the cartoon Hobbit movie that was made in the 70’s. Hated it.
Fast forward. Saw the movies and thought, “Ok. I REALLY like this, I think I’ll try reading the books again”. I ate them up. Couldn’t read them fast enough.
I like both the movies and the books. This is the first time I liked both mediums equally. (I’ve gotta read the books again.)
I agree, glad someone else posted it first. Tolkien was an amazing world builder but there are so many drawn out plots that dont really advance the story. Peter Jackson’s streamline of it is perfect imo.
It’s ok to be wrong.
But seriously you might not like them but you seem to recognise they have literary value. I think people would be pissy if you said “they are objectively badly written boring trash”, but not so much them just not being your thing which it seems is what you’re actually saying.
You mean the Oxford proffesor obessesed with languages and mythology wrote a beautiful piece of art instead of an action blockbuster? Sorry couldn’t resist teasing you a bit, I love the books.