A few years back, the inevitable movie adaptation of bestseller “Fifty Shades of Grey” came to the silver screen. I was one of the few out of my friends that read it. And the conversation always seemed to be the same.

Friend: “You read the thing right? Tell me the book had at least SOME merit.”

Me: “I wish I could, but all I did with the book was go nuts with a red pen and send it back to the publishers.”

Friend: “Well, I’d be willing to say the book was probably better than what I had to sit through last week.”

Me: “Isn’t it always?”…

Movies these days are almost all remakes or originally a book. Sometimes it’s both. It’s bad enough not to have original ideas, but what’s worse is that (in my experience anyway) the movie is NEVER as good as the book.

So why is that?

According to many fans, a lot of it relates to the casting, scenery, and other things that they so clearly “pictured differently” when reading the book. But there are plenty of other reasons I personally feel that the book is always ALWAYS better than the movie adaptation.

The movie is almost never completely accurate. Granted, movies have a small time slot of around 90 to 180 minutes of film. But still, there are so many things that aren’t captured on screen. One huge thing the movie often misses little details that become more important later on in the series.

For instance, in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," they were doing some cleaning during the summer at Sirius’ house before returning to school for the fall. During this time, they found a locket which no one could open, deemed it worthless, and tossed it.

Now for anyone who may not know, later on in the series, Harry must find several parts of Voldemort’s soul called ‘horcruxes’. Without destroying them, Voldemort can never die. The locket ended up being one of these horcruxes.

A second point that movies get wrong is the characters. The movies have an omniscient point of view. In the book, the reader is allowed insight into the character’s minds and therefore they understand the character better. In the movie they have two options: you can either make the characters thoughts painfully obvious, or you can ignore how they are feeling and make due with simple actions and hope the point gets across, sometimes destroying the image of the character all together.

Most times they dramatize it. For instance; in the book version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Dumbledore asks Harry calmly if he nominated himself. In the movie

…it’s a bit more spirited.

Dramatizations are some of the worst things a movie can do. The special effects and computer animation is hard work, no doubt. And it’s usually amazing, but it’s so often unneeded. In the final Harry Potter novel, Voldemort’s dead body falls to the ground, that’s it, he’s gone. The movie makes “gone” so much more literal.

All in all, there is a simple reason the movies just don’t match up. They’re called adaptations for a reason. They make changes, they interpret, and they physically can’t show the entire picture. Casting and directors can’t predict what the author will do next. Books are proof that humans are capable of magic. As Stephen King has said of writing: “We fall in love with all the story, more than any film or TV program could ever hope to provide. Even after one thousand pages, we don’t want to leave the world the writer has made for us, or the make believe people who live there.”