“The book’s better than the movie.” is something I hear all the time and often say myself. I sometimes wonder if scriptwriters even read some of the properties that they are asked to transcribe to the big screen. I can’t blame them though. Some concepts, descriptions, or character personalities are impossible to describe adequately in a script.
But sometimes actors, directors, and writers create something special, something memorable. I can’t say that they’re better than the book but they are in their own way special.
“Gone with the wind”, “The Shining”, “The Godfather”, and one of my favorites “Blade Runner” are all good examples. In the case of “The shining”, Stephen King hated the movie but most fans acclaim it as one of the greatest horror movies ever. I would like to take a look at a scene from one of these in particular.
“Blade Runner” became the standard for sci-fi movies in the 80s and 90s. Some consider this to be the most beautiful scenes in science fiction movies. I think it displays very well what I mean about actors contributing significantly to a work. In the scene below, Roy Batty, an android, is dying as Rick Deckard looks on. Both of them are sitting on a building roof in a pouring rain storm. Roy briefly explains his life to Deckard and accepts his imminent death.
Roy gets a dreamy expression on his face as he describes “C-beams gleaming in the darkness” As the audience you don’t really have to know what C-beams are to get an impression that they are impressive looking.
Roy continues on and gets a mournful, regretful expression as he concludes “all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain”. Rutger Hauer, the actor that played Roy Batty, actually came up with this line right on the set.
Finally comes the coup de grace as Roy dies and releases a dove that he was holding to fly away into a blue sky. A seeming allegory of his soul leaving his body and ascending to heaven affirming that the android really was human in his own way. Deckard clenches his eyes shut finally realizing that his job deactivating these droids for all these years has been tantamount to murder.
Many people consider the film to be superior to the book, “Do androids dream of electric sheep”, that it was based upon. Most of this can be attributed to the director, Ridley Scott, however as can be seen above actors can also make these movies and even add value to the material.
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