I recently saw there were novelizations of the Alien movies, as well as the movie The Thing. Those are 2 of my favorite movies ever. I was wondering, for those who have read them, if they would be worth my time, or if they are "if you saw the movie, you already read the book" situations. I don't want to spend time or money reading the novelizations if they are just carbon copies of the movies.
Are novelizations worth the read?
by thatboi219
4 Comments
Can’t vouch for The Thing, but the Alien novels are superb and improve on the films. Also, there’s Mad Max novelisations that are worth a read and a novelisation of Speilberg’s Hook that’s on my tbr list.
The only novelization I’ve read was some book about aliens that was written from a TV show’s screenplay. Had to read it in high school and then watch the show after…
Both were atrocious. Can’t even remember the name of the book/show.
If they’re done like that? No, I wouldn’t recommend it.
I love movie novelizations, especially ones from the 70s and 80s. Some of them draw material from earlier drafts of the final screenplay or concept art, so they’re usually pretty interesting.
One of my favorites is the Gremlins novelization, because we get a ton of Mogwai lore and backstory. I also love the Goonies book, because it mentions Mikey (Sean Astin) having “Hobbit-sized footprints,” which is quite the piece of foreshadowing lol.
No. Novelizations were what we settled for before we had DVDs.
Plus, they’re usually padded out from the screenplay, and the screenplay is usually a far more relevant and important thing to read.