Books vs. Movies/TV Shows Adaptations: Why People Hate The Film Versions of Books

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If you love reading books and watching TV shows and movies as much as I do, then you know how excited one gets when they hear that one of their favorite books is being made into a movie or a TV series. You can’t wait to see the characters you’ve only ever imagined and events you only visualized come to life on screen.

Why then are there always mixed reactions toward a majority of movies adapted from books? You always hear people say they prefer the book when reviewing movie and TV show adaptations.

If you’re asking yourself questions like, Why do people hate film adaptations of books so much? and Why are movies based on books so bad?, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we shall examine the cause of the books vs. movies/TV shows adaptations debate among fans, and why the film versions of books are often so disappointing.

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Why People Hate The Film Versions of Books

• Casting choices

When reading a book, you create an image of what the characters look like and how they act or talk. This could be based on the descriptions given in the book or from your imagination. When the book is adapted to film, you expect the cast to be similar to their descriptions or your imagination. But this is rarely the case.

Getting cast members who have the exact qualities as described in the book is one of the biggest problems with book to film adaptations. Often, one or several things about the actors are off. For instance, they might differ from their book counterpart in race, accents, eye or hair color, height, weight, overall appearance, age, or even gender.

Such changes in the cast can result in mixed feelings towards the movie and the character among the book fans. For instance, when The Vampire Diaries books by L.J. Smith were adapted into a TV series, many book fans had an issue with the character of Bonnie Bennett being cast as a black girl and not a white redhead, as in the books.

The book fans also had problems with the main character Elena Gilbert not having pale blonde hair and blue eyes as described.

Another example is in The Hunger Games movie, based on the novel of the same name written by Suzanne Collins. A black actress was cast to play the character, Rue, and she received the same negative reactions as Bonnie, with a lot of people leaving racist remarks.

A more recent example of these mixed reactions to cast changes happened with the Bridgerton TV series because Michael, a fan favorite straight white male character from the books the show is based on, was gender swapped and is now Michaela, a queer black female character, in the TV show.

The casual watcher, who hasn’t read the books, might not even notice anything wrong with the casting choices in movies and TV shows based on books. They may only care about the story and whether the actors do their job well.

For the diehard book fans, the cast change can be a turn-off and one of the reasons why people hate the film versions of books so much.

Even when the cast does look the part, their interpretation of the characters might be wrong.

As a book reader, you are privy to the inner thoughts of the characters and what motivates their actions. If the director, actor, and script don’t do a good job of conveying them, they can be lost in translation from book to film.

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• Faithfulness to the books

‘It wasn’t like that in the book.’

Most book readers already visualized how events occur, and they expect book-to-film adaptations to stay faithful to the source material.

However, this is not always possible, and, most times, the movie/TV show writers and directors change how things happen, the pacing, the chronological order of events, and the dialogues in some scenes, thus resulting in film adaptations that differ from the books.

But why do filmmakers change things in movies based on books even though they were successful as books? You may ask. This could be because some dialogues, wordplay, and metaphors work well in written form and do not translate well on screen.

Additionally, since most movies are restricted to 1.5 to 2-hour time slots, including all the aspects of long books might be a challenge. The movie will not be like the book it is based on because some scenes may have to be cut, especially if they are not that important or when they are controversial.

Some characters and storylines might also be added to create more drama or omitted if they are not that important.

Books that involve a lot of internal thinking or monologues do not translate well on screen and often require the addition or omission of material for them to make sense.

Books and their movie/TV show adaptations could also differ when changes are made in order to create suspense or raise the stakes. For example, the TV show Pretty Little Liars had to stray away from the books it is based on to create suspense.

Book fans don’t always appreciate these changes and may feel like the movie adaptations ruin the books for them, especially if they deviate so much from the source material that they become unrecognizable.

For instance, if you look up the reviews of the Percy Jackson & the Olympians movies, you will find hundreds of book fans complaining about how much the movies deviate from the books or saying things like ‘the books were better than the films’.

• High expectations from book fans

Taking on the task of adapting a popular book into a movie or TV show is very risky. You have to satisfy the expectations of the book readers and create a world that even the casual watcher will comprehend.

However, no matter what you do, there are always those who will say the book was better and hate the film versions of the books.

The book lover is the biggest critic of its movie counterpart. They place very high expectations for how they want the adaptation to be, which could be unrealistic. As these are different mediums, movies can never be exactly like the books they are based on.

Authors, especially in the fantasy and sci-fi genre, have the freedom to create worlds with whichever sceneries, scenarios, and rules they wish. Even with CGI and other visual effects, the imagery might not be easy to translate accurately on the screen, resulting in bad book to movie adaptations.

The final product might have worlds, characters, scenes, and sceneries that do not match the book’s descriptions or what the reader conjured up while reading, making some people hate the film version of the book. Also, the emotions, tone, and mood set by a book might not be conveyed well in the film adaptation.

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• Adaptations of incomplete books

In my opinion, unfinished books should not be turned into movies or TV shows. They set the adaptations up for failure because they often require a different writer to complete them or, as happens in most cases with TV shows, lead to cancellations when the source material runs out.

The reason why people hate the TV show and film versions of unfinished books is that a new writer might have different ideas for how the books should have ended, or their quality of writing may not match the original writer’s.

A good example is the HBO series, Game of Thrones, adapted from George R.R. Martin’s series of novels, A Song of Ice and Fire.

The show started with intricate plots and complex characters. But as soon as all the available books were adapted, the quality of the show declined in seasons 6 to 8. The showrunners had to come with original storylines and rely only on a plot outline for future novels that was provided by the book author when they ran out of source material. However, the new stories weren’t as interesting or complex as those in the earlier seasons.

The last season of Game of Thrones was particularly the most disappointing to both the book and TV series fans and got a lot of criticism for bad writing.

• Low budget

Not all book to film adaptations are made by big production companies. Some are done by small film studios and production companies with smaller budgets.

A low-budget movie adapted from a book will most likely have limited access to a talented cast and crew, elaborate costumes, good visual effects, and expensive sets or props. As such, the movie may end up with stiff actors, poor picture quality, choppy editing, and cheap, unappealing settings that ruin the movie-watching experience for the book fans and casual watchers alike.

An example of this can be seen in some works by the streaming and production company, PassionFlix, which adapts romance novels into movies.

No matter how much we all want to see our favorite characters come to life in book to movie adaptations, we would prefer well-done movies to poorly acted/directed/produced ones.

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Final Thoughts

You now know why people hate the film versions of books so much.

Since most book to film adaptations are often unsuccessful, does this mean books should never be turned into movies? The answer is NO!

Not all film adaptations of books are bad. When done well, TV shows and movies based on books can have commercial success, and in some cases, people might even prefer the film versions.

Some of the best movies and TV shows are adapted from books in various genres, including comics, fantasy, romance, thrillers, and dystopia. Examples of book-to-film adaptations that were done well include the Harry Potter franchise (2001-2011), the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003), some movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Call Me By Your Name (2018), YOU (2018-present), Outlander (2014-present), The Handmaids Tale (2017-present), His Dark Materials (2019-2022), and Heated Rivalry (2025-present).

The TV show or movie adaptations don’t have to be 100% faithful to the books they are based on. Most people will love them as long as the changes made in the film versions don’t take away from the quality of the source material.

Is the book always better than the movie? The answer to this is subjective because different viewers will have different opinions regarding the book versus its movie version. As long as books continue being adapted, the books vs. movie adaptations debate will continue to exist.

Books vs. movies/TV shows adaptations; Which one do you prefer? Have you ever been disappointed by TV shows or movies adapted from books you love?

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