It is heard over and over: the book was better than the movie. Hollywood has turned novels into movies for decades and continuously fails to exceed book fan’s expectations.

When a book turns into a movie, major characters and details tend to be left out. There is little character development, if any at all. Movie watchers do not have as long to fall in love with the characters or care about the situation they are in. Readers create images in their head of the characters and scenes. When an actor does not match the character in one’s head, it could be hard to accept the actor as the character they are playing.

Books are better than movies because books do not have a limit to how long they can be. Movies can only be about two to three hours long while books do not have a page limit. Because of this, authors can add more detail to the story while movies have to take out all unimportant details to meet the time limit.

Sure, some movies are not total failures like “The Princess Bride”. Mix in great characters, a quotable and hilarious script, sword fighting and rodents of unusual size and viewers get the movie they have been longing for. But sadly, very few movie are able to achieve greatness.

Very few movies have turned out better than the book. According the huffingtonpost.com and sparknotes.com, movies like “Jaws”, “How to Train Your Dragon” and “Jurassic Park” were better than their books while “Gulliver’s Travels”, “Ella Enchanted”, and “The Cat in the Hat” books are better than their movie counterparts.

Because of better character development, more background information and allowing the reader to create their own pictures in their head, books are definitely better than the movies.