The Word vs The Screen

Started by Echidna September 18th, 2013 11:11 PM
  • 669 views
  • 9 replies
  • Public Poll

Which do you prefer?

Echidna

i don't care what's in your hair

Age 29
Male
Illinois
Seen April 27th, 2021
Posted May 22nd, 2019
2,077 posts
12.8 Years
Ok so it's come to my attention that the world of today is torn between two forms of story-telling, two forms or research documentation and documentaries... etc, books and films.

So which do you prefer? Do you like reading, or do you prefer to watch movies/TV shows? Both, perhaps?

Also, for the pole, choose the one you prefer. None of us are actually exclusive to one or the other.
but my taste in music is your face
Honestly, I prefer the movie over the book anyday. You hear most people say, "you have to read the book before you watch the movie!", but that just isn't me. Personally, I get a much better experience out of actually watching events unfold on screen rather than reading it off of paper because I am just more into it that way. Not saying that I don't enjoy reading, but I just would much rather sit down and enjoy a nice movie whilst relaxing as opposed to reading a book.

Hiatus

Seen 6 Days Ago
Posted July 24th, 2021
12,283 posts
10.8 Years
I rarely read books. The last time I've read a book was about three months ago. The book was called The Blade Itself. It was an okay book, but I just didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I read a lot of news and articles online, though, so that kind of makes up for my lack of book reading. I also don't watch too many TV shows either, maybe except a few sport shows. As for movies, I watch one every week or two. I mostly watch comedy, adventure, and action movies. I'm not a big fan of horror though, because they always make me feel nervous. D:

Nolafus

Aspiring something

Age 27
Male
Lost in thought... again
Seen March 3rd, 2018
Posted March 11th, 2017
5,722 posts
10.9 Years
Despite the fact I love to write, I have to say I like movies better. I guess it's just nice to tune out your brain and enjoy a show. Don't get me wrong, I love a good book, but movies just beat it out by a tiny bit.
PairPC sister

Crux

Evermore

Age 27
Male
青い世界
Seen October 10th, 2014
Posted August 21st, 2014
1,302 posts
10.7 Years
Movies:


Books:
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has—or rather had—a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever.

This is not her story.



Both are amazing, so long as you read/watch the good stuff.





{Never and Forever}

Tees | Coming Soon | Coming Soon

Flushed

never eat raspberries

Seen November 4th, 2017
Posted May 18th, 2017
2,301 posts
9.7 Years
tl;dr pretty much sums it up for me. Movies offer an adequate representation of a story, without a lot of perhaps unnecessary detail (that some may enjoy in a book, I don't). A good movie can tell the same story a book does in a fraction of the time it takes to read the book, which I think is valuable.

I prefer books. I feel sorry for people who don't read or prefer visual representations fed to them over engaging their mind and using their imagination, which is a lot better than what a movie can produce.
I completely disagree with this, but I can't exactly offer a direct counter. I mean, a movie is a manifestation of the creators' "imagination," a piece of art that you're left to interpret. It's not taking away from you the imagination aspect.

Esper

California
Seen June 30th, 2018
Posted June 30th, 2018
While I don't live under a large rock, I do often vacation there. There are good things about both and I like both. Movies can give you lots of subtle visuals (think mystery movies) and very visually emotional scenes very easily and quickly while books can be a lot more internal and heady and can convey things that wouldn't work visually. Not to say that you can't get great visuals from books or introspective thoughts in a movie, just that those are differences that each medium is well-equipped to handle. Obviously a talented artist can do pretty much anything with either format.

But yeah, I like books because you get to know them better, so to speak, since you spend more time with them. I like movies because they're like the roller coaster version: quick and intense.