this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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Trippin' Through Time

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Tripping' Through Time

A Lemmy community for historic art pieces overhauled into modern memes.

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[–] MidsizedSedan@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

I recently finished Project Hail Mary. Then I saw the trailer for the upcoming adaptation. So annoyed they spoiled

TitleThe alien reveal. Trailer also implied that he volunteered for the mission. Book Grace obviously did not.

In the trailer.

Yet all the comments were overwhelming positive. Not sure why. I didn't even like the book that much, but that trailer pissed me off.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 points 12 hours ago

Can we just appreciate art regardless of the medium?

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 4 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Oh, your hard drive has the whole movie series on it? Well I got the whole series right here!

[–] Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 8 hours ago

Wow that's a really cool installation. Is it supposed to be a display of some sort or does it have something to do with the word press in the background?

[–] tio_bira@lemmy.world 8 points 20 hours ago (4 children)

Ready Player One being the exception for this rule

[–] blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works 2 points 14 hours ago

The book told a better story

It just wouldn't have made for a very compelling movie, as a lot of it is in Wade's head

So they ended up changing it drastically

So, which one you like better will depend a lot on whether that ^ bothers you

[–] LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I really liked the book! I really like the film too though

[–] ouRKaoS@lemmy.today 2 points 19 hours ago

I think they're too different to compare, really. Kind of like World War Z.

[–] bramkaandorp@lemmy.world 3 points 19 hours ago

Yeah, but it had its own awfulness, like the Iron Giant used completely inappropriately.

[–] MehBlah@lemmy.world 2 points 20 hours ago

and forest gump.

[–] jjmoldy@lemmy.world 43 points 1 day ago

People who like both

[–] Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

Can we not establish an anti-intellectual tradition here on lemmy like the rest of the fucking world? Can we just have one place?

[–] Enkrod@feddit.org 10 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

I love the The Expanse books to death, but holy shit, the series was so incredibly good. I love love love the TV Camina Drummer oh my god, she and Ashford defined the Belt for me.

I'm sore that the show was canceled, but I thoroughly enjoyed what we got from it.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 4 points 16 hours ago

The Expanse is one of the very few series that did justice to the source material.

I don't know that the show was cancelled. It ended at a natural point in the books, the subsequent books had a major time skip, and would have required an entirely new cast and practically no continuation of the old plotline. It would have been effectively a new series in every way that mattered.

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[–] state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de 26 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I hate this stupid take. Books and movies are very different mediums, with very different rules for storytelling. The chance that a director captures what you see in your head is so abysmally small, that you will always be disappointed. Just see the stories as abstract things, with books and movies being different interpretations of it. There are cases where I prefer the book over the movie, and cases where it's the other way around. It's all fine.

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 6 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah moviemakers are artists aswell. It’s impossible for an artist like a director and screenwriter to not leave their own artistic fingerprint on the work.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I see it like this. Books are the work of a single individual. That one person will have broad authority to write their story however they please. So range of book quality is very large. There are great books and there are truly awful books. And in fact, the vast majority of books are total rubbish. But the dregs get forgotten and the good stuff rises to the top.

Movies are made by committee. This reduces the spread of quality. Many hands tends to move things towards the average. So you have a much lower portion of total crap, but you also don't have as many true masterpieces. The quality of most movies tends to be pretty mid.

But because books don't go through as much of an averaging out of quality through being created by many hands, when they go well. They go WELL. Sometimes a master author will sit down, truly be in their element, and create their greatest work. And their vision will carry through and arrive to the reader undiluted. But movies? You can be the greatest director or screen writer on the planet; you're still not going to be able to make a movie without the help of hundreds of other people. You could write the world's greatest movie, but your vision will inevitably be worn down quite a bit before it reaches the audiences in theaters.

Or, expressed graphically:

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Yeah that’s true and also movies are expensive as hell. Many in that production line of producers and artists have to make concessions on their artistic vision simply to keep the movie within budget.

Exceptions are the few successful auteur directors like Tarantino and Miyazaki or even Christopher Nolan who probably just gets a blank check to do whatever he wants.

Yes. And let's not forget that making a movie is infinitely more complex than writing a book. For a book there's usually a single author. Sure, they might get feedback from editors and friends, but ultimately it's just the author. A movie requires a load of talented people and their artistic vision and abilities need to align. Script, director, photography, editor and so many other departments need to come together to create something good or sometimes even great.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 4 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

Film made from books tend to not even tell exactly the same story and that's my main issue with why movies are commonly not as good as the book. The movie tells a different god damn story than the one it was based on. Or at least significantly change things that didn't need to be changed just because of the medium.

Ready Player One, for example. The movie is absolutely terrible compared to the book and one of the things that really sucked about the movie was the lackluster way it did every single visual reference made in the book. The protagonist's avatar in the game of the book was basically an amalgamation of like 10 different popular fictional characters. They had a fucking additional race scene in the movie but didn't even use the car he was described to have had in the book (a mix of the ecto1 and back to the future delorian).

It should be pretty easy to match what people imagine reading the book here, since everything was just a clearly described video game or movie reference. Hollywood still managed to fuck up the visuals in their visual medium version of the story, while also changing the story in a lot of places in ways that didn't need to be changed.

See, that's the great thing about art. Different people like different things. I found the book for RPO terrible, really awful. The movie however was quite entertaining. Spielberg knows his stuff and can polish a turd. For The Martian, I really enjoyed both the book and the movie.

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[–] RedFrank24@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago

In the case of The Boys, the show is objectively better than the comic book.

[–] illi@sh.itjust.works 27 points 1 day ago (9 children)

I watched and loved the movies before reading the books so my opinion may be biased, but I think Lord of the Rings movies were more enjoyable than books.

I see how the books were great in their time and the worldbuilding of the books is amazing - but the movies do great job at streamlining the story and making it fun.

[–] Visstix@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

The battle of helm's deep is way better in the movies at least. Battle of gondor.. some parts are better in the books, the whole "ghosts killing everyone" in the movies was a bit cheap. But either way both are great.

Oh and frodo in book > frodo in movie

[–] sucoiri@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago

Hot take, the battles in the book aren't great because Tolkien doesn't want to glorify violence. Half of the fights are like two pages in the books before the point of view character passes out. After realizing that I was kind of disappointed in how "campy early 2000s action movie" the battles in the films are.

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[–] Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 day ago (3 children)

The Martian is one example where they're about equal.

It helps that it was a short book, so very little had to be left out.

[–] jballs@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago

I'm super stoked for the Project Hail Mary movie. But I was super disappointed in the trailer, because it shows the WHOLE freaking movie. If you haven't read the book, you're far better off skipping the trailer and going in blind.

[–] cygnus@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

It also helps that Andy Weir is not good at writing prose, so his books work better as screenplays.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 5 points 23 hours ago

Reading it made me feel he wrote it specifically to be made into a movie.

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 5 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (2 children)

The only movie I can think of that is as good as the book because it is, like, 99% identical to the book is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

I was shocked when I found and read the book and felt like I already knew every line because the dialogue is word for word exactly the same, and the movie even includes a lot of narration ripped directly from the book.

[–] AoxoMoxoA@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago

I remember watching "Bonfire of the Vanities" and thinking , this is great they nailed it then Tom Hanks gets off scot free . 🗣Boooo! HISSSSS! FUCKING COWARDS! FUCK YOU!!! 🍅 🍅 🍅

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 3 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Was it a movie first then the book adapted from the screenplay? I read one like that before, it was just the movie written down

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 4 points 21 hours ago

No it was a book first. The book came out in 1971, the film in 1998.

[–] lessthanluigi 4 points 21 hours ago

I feel like the movie Fight Club is at least more fleshed out than the book was.

[–] tankplanker@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Blade Runner, Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me?

[–] Underwaterbob@sh.itjust.works 1 points 16 hours ago

Haha! Poor Stephen King. True, though.

[–] Honytawk@feddit.nl 7 points 1 day ago

No, books generally give more information, but that doesn't make them better.

They are different media with completely different aspects that shouldn't be looked at in the same way. The only similarity is that they both tell a story.

I'm always in favour of watching the movie. Since you get the story in 1.5 hours instead of spending multiple evenings to essentially get the same information. And I like visual media in general.

Of course, if no movie exists then reading the book is also a good option. Looking at you Terry Pratchett.

[–] NABDad@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] NABDad@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Even King says so. They fixed the ending in the film.

[–] SirSamuel@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

In the words of Jim Gaffigan: You know what I liked about the movie? It took me two hours, then I took a nap.

In all seriousness, I really enjoy watching the show/movie first, and then reading the book. I'm not disappointed about the things the show left out, which are often necessary exclusions for pacing or limitations in visual storytelling vs internal narration. And then, when I read the books, it's like I'm getting the director's cut with commentary. It adds depth to characters and sometimes has deleted scenes.

Of course this isn't universally true. I will say it worked spectacularly for The Expanse

[–] MITM0@lemmy.world 3 points 22 hours ago

Agreed wholeheartedly

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