You’ve probably heard someone say “the book was better than the movie” before. You rarely hear it the other way around (although I know there are examples). Maybe it’s because they seldom make movies out of sub-par books in the first place – there’s a lot to live up to. And maybe it’s because of vision. Great directors are actually quite hard to come by, and it’s the director who’s going to capture the vision of a book. A lot has to be left out, and a lot will conflict with how any one of us saw the story unfolding. Then there’s the fact that the director feels the need to change details of the story so completely that fans of the book can’t help but think, “The whole plot revolved around that detail! How could he leave it out!”
Face it. The deck’s pretty much stacked against the movie from the start.
As for my favorite sci-fi series, The Expanse on Amazon Prime (of which I’ve written a few times before), you might expect a “but” here. I thought it was so well done, and watched many of the episodes more than once (as a matter of fact, I might just go back and watch season 5 (it’s final) again soon).
But…there is no “but” here. I’ve finished books 1 – 6 (out of 9) — as far as the TV series went — and they’re so much better than what ended up on the screen. That doesn’t diminish the series at all. It’s still great. But the books fill out so much that made the story line so much better. They developed the characters quite well, made the bad guy so much worse than the Prime series did, and gave you a deeper look into what things were and why they were happening. Everything you would expect from books.
And, having read the books, I can see exactly where this is going (already started on book 7).
So here’s a double recommendation: The Expanse. The series on Prime, or the books. Or both. You can’t go wrong either way.
