Most posts on this forum i read is "this movie sucks" or "book was better". Not that i don't disagree with the opinion regarding the quality of this film, i'd like to know what was so great about the book, without, off course, me reading it.
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Alot more information is provided about the nature of the sphere, it's origins, the ship, it's mission and how it ended up where it was, and IMO the characters were much better developed.
shareThe story is a thinking man's story. It was never a visual story so there wasn't much to see when they translated the excellent novel into that crap movie. Sphere is my favorite novel of all time.
shareI liked both the book and the film. I just finished reading the book and have to say, as usual, the book is much better.
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I thought the book and movie were pretty comparable myself. Some things may have been explained a little better in the book, but I don't think the movie deviated from the source material at all. It's been 15 years or so since I read it, so my memory may be hazy, and maybe a few details were changed. But for the most part they stuck to the book. I saw the movie and read the book around the same time, and I didn't really think one was better than the other personally. It's usually only when a movie and book have significant differences to the story that I have an opinion one way or the other, not so much in situations like this where the film is basically a slightly condensed version of the book.
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If there was a book preceding a movie, it's always better. It's why they made the book into a movie in the first place. Crichton's work is especially good. I've read them all. Love them.
shareCrichton's work is especially good.I agree that some of his stuff is great. Some of it though is drivel. State of Fear for instance...OMG! share
I just ordered the blu ray of Sphere and knew I had a week or so until it arrived so bought the book and read it first.
It was the fifth book I read by the excellent Michael Crichton but I have to say I found it the weakest of them.
Some of the ideas and imagery in the book were hard to put on screen so whoever adapted it as a screenplay did a good job.
I'd say that the both the book and film are fairly average.
Some of the ideas and imagery in the book were hard to put on screen...I agree with you there. The book worked better for me than the film. Whilst not up there with his very best work, Sphere IMO is far better than stuff like "State of Fear", which thankfully I don't see ever being adapted for the screen. share
The book is very good. I'm one of those few who did enjoy the movie though but it may be because I'm biased since Crichton is my favorite author. The book is still much better though. The same can be said for Congo.
shareI read the book a long time ago and loved it. I'm revisiting it now by listening to the audiobook... You know the parts when "Jerry" starts communicating with them via numbers on the monitor? We read the book and register that there are a crapload of numbers, and move on. Maybe look for a bit and see if we see a pattern or something. The narrator of the audiobook has to read each and every digit aloud. We're talking 6-8 minutes of number reads every time a message pops up. It's hilarious. You can hear the frustration in the narrator's voice.
You saw Dingleberries?
Wow, that is definitely overkill. I wonder who made that decision for an audiobook. Like, they read the binary numbers aloud and everything? "Zero-zero, dash, one-one, dash, one-zero-one-zero-one..."
The paperback version has a couple awkward spots where they have to cram in those illustrations into a smaller space than the hardcover, so the keyboard diagrams get squished horizontally. Thus the numbers spiraling out from the middle of the keyboard aren't represented very accurately and it makes less visual sense.
The narrator of the audiobook has to read each and every digit aloud. We're talking 6-8 minutes of number reads every time a message pops up. It's hilarious. You can hear the frustration in the narrator's voice.
Oh it does. But then it gets funny again. For a while I listened in amused disbelief. After about the 4th instance, I started to skip ahead.
Here are some examples
https://youtu.be/-SAMlA7h2Hg?t=4h28m31s
https://youtu.be/-SAMlA7h2Hg?t=4h39m59s
You saw Dingleberries?