Last Saturday night, my husband and I had a date night. We’d
had the babysitter lined up for weeks. And we had a plan, or so we thought.
Dinner. Grand Budapest
Hotel. Home.
But, as it turns out, show times for the delightful film
we’d planned on seeing didn’t jibe with our babysitter’s timeframe and I wasn’t
about to shell out even more moolah to make her stay later.
So, we adjusted. And ended up seeing a huge blockbuster on opening
weekend. Which is extremely rare for us, given we tend only to see a handful of
movies per year and we usually stumble into the theater when they’re a hair’s
breadth away from extinction-til-DVD.
The movie? Divergent.
As in the movie based on book one of a very popular series.
A series I haven’t read.
A series I’ve never been particularly interested in reading,
to be honest.
I have plenty on my to-be-read list that I’d put ahead of
something bleak and dystopian. Basically, I loved The Hunger Games, but after that I was kind of done thinking about
different ways we’d live after the world was pretty much destroyed. Call me an
optimist.
However, it ended up being our date night movie of choice
because:
1. We were going to a theater with assigned seating and a
minimum age of 18, and thus, didn’t have to deal with crowds. (Thank God for Alamo Drafthouse.)
2. The movie was already getting rave reviews by critics and
just plain moviegoers alike.
3. Even if it sucked, I’d get to look at Theo James (aka the
man who died in Lady Mary’s bed in the first season of Downton Abbey) for two hours, thus the scenery would be pretty.
Yes, that’s him above.
So, we went.
And you know what? I really liked it. Great stakes, tension,
etc. Though, pretty, pretty Theo James really was the highlight for moi.
That said, I was wondering if it would’ve been different if
I’d read the books.
I often try to read the book before I see the movie version
(e.g. Hunger Games, as mentioned
above), because I want to support the authors and gain some perspective on what
was really intended.
Though, I’ve noticed that sometimes this leaves me let down
by the movie version. With The Hunger
Games, I actually thought the first movie was really tough to follow if you
hadn’t read the book. The second movie did much better with this, but I’m not
sure if people who hadn’t read the book and saw the first movie would’ve come
back to the second movie unless they were just there to ogle Jennifer Lawrence
the same way I’d planned on ogling Theo James on Saturday night.
Other times, I’ve only found out the movie was a book after seeing the movie. Actually, this
happens a lot. The Oscar darling of 2013, Silver
Linings Playbook, is the prime example in my mind. Saw the movie and loved
it, then found out it was a book and ordered it.
Would I have liked Silver
Linings Playbook so much if I’d read the book first?
I’d like to think so, but it’s impossible to tell.
Do you find reading a book before seeing the film version
affects your experience?
