Watching the Adaptations First Makes for a Better Experience— Week 2
This week, I watched The Maze Runner trilogy for the first time. While I had found the premise fascinating, I never went out of my way to watch it in theaters. In fact, it took my seven years until I finally watched it.
When I shared that I finally watched the first movie, a friend of mine commented:
“I personally think the good way to go about then whole series turned movies is to see the movie first always. It’s nice to see how others imagined while working with the restraints of it being a movie.” — RoninReggie (Twitter)
That got me thinking if what he said was actually true. Would I have enjoyed an anime adaptation or movie/TV adaptation more if I didn’t read the source material first? In this post, I want dive into my experiences on whether this is true or not.
Reading the Source Material First
I’m not much of a reader to be honest. There have been a few times where I’ve read the source material first before watching the adaptation. These includes books, manga and light novels.
One book series I want to specifically note is of course the Harry Potter series. I started reading the series when I was only 10 years old, a few months before the first movie was released. My parents bought it for me in their attempt to get me to read more. It took me awhile to get into it but once I was able to get a few chapters in, I was hooked. I remember when I finally binged through the first 4 books, I had to wait for a new book every other year. Being a huge fan of the book series, I was excited to learn that there was going to be a movie series. Overall, my experience for the movie series was mostly positive and I enjoyed them. But I did catch myself referring to the book handling some things better. I noted how some characters and scenes that were more fleshed out in the book like Ginny and Ron meanwhile their movie counterparts were watered down. Sometimes I would go on a rant about how some scenes were handled.
I had this same reaction to the movie adaptation of The Hobbit. I enjoyed it but I felt that it didn’t need to be 3 movies long. There are movie adaptations that were just objectively bad, regardless if you read the source material or not like Eragon and Artemis Fowl. We won’t really dive into those too much.
Light novels and manga being adapted into an anime series or anything else adapted into a TV show is a little different. Because of a long running nature of a TV series, there’s more room for the show to be more loyal to the source material. I read Rising of the Shield Hero before the anime series was released and for the most part, the anime followed the light novel very well. However, it’s possible that there could be differences for many reasons: writer’s decisions, not slated enough seasons, or the source material was not finished yet. For the most part, I still enjoyed the anime. The only time I really criticized an anime adaptation was because of the animation. For example, I read Air Gear before watching one episode of the anime. Disclaimer, I never finished the anime. The art style in the manga is amazing and the anime didn’t do any of it justice.
Watching the Adaptation First
Watching the anime or movie adaptation before reading the source material is more common with me. Like I said before, I’m not much of a reader. So let’s discuss my experiences of watching the adaptation first.
To be honest, I had a hard time remembering any movie I’ve watched where I ended up reading the source material after. But I did remember one: Edge of Tomorrow. If you don’t remember Edge of Tomorrow was a sci-fi film starring Tom Cruise where his character would go back to one point in time after dying. Edge of Tomorrow is actually an adaptation of a light novel titled All You Need is Kill. Now I’ll be honest, I didn’t read the light novel; I read the manga adaptation of it. It’s up to you if you think this counts, but I’m going to count it. Edge of Tomorrow is a decent movie. So long as the movie is good, it’s nice not having something to compare it to and just enjoy it. There’s no doubt that there are a lot of differences between the manga and movie but I didn’t have that mindset when I watched the movie.
In regards to movies being adapted from books, I don’t think I’ve ever watched a movie and then read the book after. Because this is something I’ve never done, I can’t really comment on this at all.
There are plenty of times where I watched an anime or TV series and then read the source material. The most recent title is Sweet Home. Sweet Home was adapted into a live action TV series aired exclusively on Netflix. I watched the entire first season first before reading the Webtoons. I’ve also done this with anime like School-Live and Death Note. For the most part, I subjectively found the manga better than the anime. However, just like Edge of Tomorrow, not having something to compare the anime to made the anime enjoyable.
Final Thoughts
“The book/manga/comic was better” is something that’s been thrown around and will continue to be uttered. To an extent, I will agree. The source material in general will be better because it came from the creator themselves. It’s their vision. There’s no shame on just watching the movie or TV adaptation. Visual media is an artform in itself and can be appreciated for different reasons. There are limitations that they can achieve when adapting but so long as it’s done well, it can still work. It does make you appreciate the movie or TV show more without having to compare it to the original source. And because for the most part the source material is better, you’ll still enjoy it when you read it.
So yes, I do agree with RoninReggie’s comment.
