Many popular books that have been released recently eventually got turned into a movie: Harry Potter, Twilight, and even Percy Jackson have been turned into movies with varying success, but are the movie adaptations really better than the original material?

Twilight

For some, Twilight is the classic book-to-movie adaptation that they think of. While the books were widely praised, the movies themselves have average ratings. Though there are some loyal fans of the series who love the movies, the general consensus from the book fans is that the movies were average at best.

Divergent

Divergent, a dystopian, YA (young adult) series that was and still is very popular, has a very mixed rating when it comes to reviews. Some moviegoers loved the movies, while others disliked the way the movies portrayed their favorite character. One fan said, “Tris was supposed to be a strong female character like Katniss in The Hunger Games, but it was a disappointment. She always needed someone to save her, and she wasn’t that independent…I was expecting Peter to be harsher, because in the book he was actually kind of interesting. In the movie he just said a few mean lines.”

The Hunger Games

As for The Hunger Games, one fan said that “the movies were good and had the general idea of the books but they did miss some things, and the casting could have been better.” Generally in The Hunger Games movies, the things the creators missed were small details  that many casual readers could have easily missed or that they just had to leave out. Some book fans think that the casting of mostly adults rather than accurately-aged teenagers and children ruined the major aspect of the books–children being forced to fight each other.

Harry Potter

The Harry Potter movies, for some, are a staple in their lives. Many Harry Potter book fans actually agree that they have it good when it comes to movie adaptations. The movies themselves even introduced many fans to the books. The movie adaptations were fairly accurate to the source material, and the casting was perfect; if the actors were any older it would’ve been almost impossible to set up the movies to become a series.

Percy Jackson

The Percy Jackson and the Olympians series was held dear in the hearts of many loyal fans, and when it was found out that the beloved book series would be turned into a movie, many fans were ecstatic. However, the movies severely undersold to its already large audience that was guaranteed to watch.

The movies almost entirely deviated from the books and Greek myths they were based on, even though only two were released before the rest got canceled. The author of the series even said this to the producers before the first movie was released, “The script as a whole is terrible. I don’t simply mean that it deviates from the book, though certainly, it does that to the point of being almost unrecognizable as the same story. Fans of the books will be angry and disappointed. They will leave the theater in droves and generate horrible word of mouth. That is an absolute given if the script goes forward as it stands now. But the bigger problem is that even if you pretend the book doesn’t exist, this script doesn’t work as a story in its own right.”

Sometimes book fans need to remind themselves that when their favorite book gets turned into a movie it will never be the exact same, and many movies that have book origins are good on their own but can sometimes fall short when compared to the original.