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`Books and movies, is it even possible to compare the two? Those who love to read say that the books are so much better. Passionate movie goers say that the movies are better. We are entitled to our own opinions.
“Dear John,” a best seller written by Nicholas Sparks in 2006 was turned into a number one movie “Dear John,” directed by Lasse Hallstrom in 2010. Which is better? Who’s to say? They both are both about a young man, John Tyree, who is a soldier and is home on leave. During his two weeks home he meets and falls in love with a young woman, Savannah Curtis.
The book starts with Tyree getting ready to graduate high school, and all the trouble he kept getting himself into. Once he enlists in the Army, that all changes. While home on leave he meets Curtis. The book goes into great detail with the time the two spent together. It talks about the first instant he laid eyes on her and how he felt. It describes her initial reaction and her emotions when he walked out of the ocean with her belongings. You can feel the love between the two.
The words Sparks use makes you feel as if you are part of the story. As if you were one of the characters overlooking the relationship between Tyree and Curtis. When he has to leave Curtis, you feel the pain she goes through when she is forced to say goodbye to the man of her dreams. The letters they write to each other express their feelings. “I love you, not just for now, but for always, and I dream of the day that you’ll take me in your arms again.” They promise each other that they will write. Then 9/11 happens, and everything changes.
On the other hand, you have the movie. It starts with Tyree on the boardwalk and Curtis walks up with her friends. The movie skips the first few chapters of the book, the ones describing his past. It jumps right into the relationship between the two main characters. One of Curtis’ friends [Tim] has a son, but in the book it is his brother. It changed the dates that they had. In the book Savannah meets his dad on the second or third date. In the movie she meets him on their first. The movie swaps things around and changes things.
With movies although you can see the emotion, you can rarely feel it, however, if you read a book you feel it one hundred times more, as if it were your own emotion.
Even though the book and movie have their differences, they are still similar in some ways. The first scene in the movie that follows the book is the scene where Cutis’ purse falls into the ocean and Tryee jumps in after it. Another scene that follows the book is the scene in the frame of the house where they share their first kiss.
“And when her lips met mine, I knew that I could live to be a hundred and visit every country in the world, but nothing would ever compare to that single moment when I first kissed the girl of my dreams and knew that my love would last forever.” The third scene that follows the book is the scene when Tyree comes home and Curtis meets him at the airport. She jumps into his arms. The last scene that follows the book is about five minutes from the ending of the movie. So the book and the movie have different endings.
What is the reason you cannot compare a book to the movie? There is not enough time to fit everything that is written in a book into a movie, unless you want to sit through a 10 hour movie. There are too many details to fit into a movie. That is why directors change or get rid of some scenes in the book. They adjust the book to a movie format. In some cases it might make the movie better than the book, but in some it might ruin it.