Mind Coffee: Comparing the book to the movie...just don't

Black coffee in cup mug isolated on a white background
Black coffee in cup mug isolated on a white background

A couple of weeks ago, I started re-reading Stephen King's "It," gearing up for the release of "It: Chapter Two," on Sept. 6. The film is a continuation of "It," which came out last summer and earned a cool $700 million.

It (or "It") was OK, one of the better adaptations of a King novel, choosing to focus on the parts of the book when the main players were kids fighting the evil clown Pennywise. It wasn't scary so much as intense. "Chapter Two" picks up 27 years later, the kids are now adults and having to fight Pennywise again.

I first read "It" about 20 years ago and, while finding that I don't recall a lot of what I read before, plunging back into the book again could be dangerous. First of all, the hardback version is more than 1,100 pages, so dropping it on my foot is always a painful possibility. From a less physical damage point of view, though, it could also set me up for disappointment when I see the new movie.

We've all heard it: The movie wasn't nearly as good as the book. It's almost a given, especially for fans of whatever book is now a film. You can dive into a book, savor it slowly. A novel can take pages and pages to build up a character, to give depth to personality and motivations.

A movie doesn't have that luxury. In about 2.5 hours or so, it must give you enough information to understand a character. It could be a single facial expression or line of dialogue, but it must be done quickly. That brevity doesn't mean the movie version of a book is slipshod or lacking, necessarily; it's simply a different medium with different rules and capabilities.

Even with a total of more than four hours, the two "It" films cannot possibly include every aspect of the novel (which definitely is overwritten, a common King issue). But it can hit the high points and give you enough to let you fill in any subtext that may be available.

With Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and other streaming services creating their own content, novels can be turned into multipart series that adhere more closely with the original material. Like a book, character development can be stretched out, offered in tiny bits over time.

HBO will release its "Watchmen" series this year, based on the 12-issue comic/graphic novel from the 1980s. Amazon is working on a series based on the massive "The Wheel of Time" series of books. Hulu is developing a series based on "Interview With the Vampire" series by Anne Rice.

Going into a single movie trying to relive the book is an exercise in futility. It will almost never happen and, when it doesn't, you may have missed the fact that you've just seen a pretty good film.

Now excuse me, I have several hundred pages to read before "It: Chapter Two" comes out in six months.

Contact Shawn Ryan at mshawnryan@gmail.com.

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