Films verses Books

I enjoyed "The passion of the Christ" but the book's better.

Don't you just hate it when you've read a book and they make a movie of it and it's awful? When I heard (nearly 12 years ago now, where the does the time go?) that they were going to make The Lord of the Rings into a film I nearly cried but, fair play, Peter Jackson and his team did very well. But the Lord of the Rings apart, I could give you a long list of books that I love that have been made into films that I hate. So here are some of them, in no particular order;

The Princess Bride

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (REALLY bad film)

The Da Vinci Code

A couple of the Harry Potters (one or two were ok though)

The Bone Collector

Dracula (choose any version you want,  none of them are as good as the book)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (both the Swedish and the English films are weaker than the book)

The Great Escape (Now don't get me wrong I love the film but the book - wow what a story of true heroism and ingenuity)

The Colditz Story (Same as the Great Escape)

All Ian Flemming's Bond stories with the exception of Daniel Craig's Casino Royale.

I could go on - (Most of the Sherlock Holmes stories, especially the Hound of the Baskervilles) but I won't.

Other people tell me that the Twilight series is quite bad and so is the Hunger Games (I haven't read them so I can't really comment.)

There have also been quite a few films about the life of Jesus - everything from Jesus of Nazareth to the Life of Brian (although not strictly about Jesus of course, it was about the Messiah. "He's not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy!") . One of the most recent is The Passion of the Christ. Now I found the Passion of the Christ to be a good film. It is well done, I really like that the dialogue is in Aramaic, the acting is good and the way it tells the story of the last few days of Christ's ministry is excellent. But again, its not as good as the book.

The Bible story is brilliant. Tension, build up, excitement, torture, execution, love, betrayal - everything a good story should have, AND we have four versions of it so we get four times the 'enjoyment'.

We're in the run up to Easter, the time when this story takes place, and as we get closer we, in the Church, start to think more and more about what Easter means. Why was Jesus betrayed? What is Good Friday all about (and why is is it Good)? What does the resurrection mean to us in 2013? The film tells the story and tells it well but it doesn't go behind what it all means. As you read the book you can do that.

Now I don't claim to have all the answers, just as I don't claim to know why Dobbie the House Elf was killed (oops, spoiler alert!) but I do know where we can explore these themes more fully.

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