Hot take: Movies are better than books. This statement will make your average English teacher suffer an aneurysm and cause them to beat you with the rusty pipe of a B-. Try not to get too angry with them; the truth can sometimes be hard to handle. A dissenter might first say, “What about Percy Jackson or the numerous other books that have been turned into absolutely terrible movies?” And to that, yes, there are lousy film adaptations of books. Still, there are also excellent ones, like “The Shining,” “Die Hard,” “The Godfather,” “Jurassic Park,” and many others, titles which, when most people hear them, usually first think of the film version. I ask you, have you ever seen a book adaptation of a film? They exist, but they aren’t exactly what I would call good. Why aren’t there many movie novelizations? Why would you make an inherently inferior version of superior work?
Movies are books that get the job done better than books. A good book immerses you in the setting, in the scene, if you will. We are constantly taught in English to use descriptive words to put the reader in the situation. This alone makes the argument, “books let you imagine more,” completely dilatory given that the hallmark of a good book is that it describes the scene so well that you can picture it exactly, like you’re watching it play out on a screen before you. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and there are no words that will describe a scene as well as a 24fps (amount of pictures/frames on screen per second) scene from a film will show you. Movies are more immersive by definition (they also have music; do books have music?) and, therefore, by the transitive property, are superior, beating books at their own game. This is not to say that books are necessarily bad, but it’s like a Chick-fil-A sandwich: why would you get regular when you can go deluxe? Why would you waste countless hours reading when you can watch a 2-hour movie with friends, get the same takeaways, and be more immersed?
This leads me to another point: Movies can bring people together. People frequently watch movies at parties on family nights. Have you ever seen a group of people get together to enjoy an enthralling night of reading? If I called up the boys and said, “Wanna pull up later and read Die Hard?” I would probably get rightfully bullied. However, if I asked if the boys wanted to pull up and have a Die Hard viewing party, that could be fun, and my social life wouldn’t die faster than the Chapel when Dirty Durdy got up and freestyled. Anyway, I digress.
Movies are the upgrade, the storytelling method of the new era. Movies are progress improvement, and where would humanity be without progress and improvement? We could ride horses, but we drive cars. We could wear togas, yet we wear modern clothes. We could save our meat in salt, but we use the fridge. We could read books, but we watch movies.
