Popular books, whether old or new, that have been turned into movies seem to be a trend in today’s society. Renowned books such as “The Great Gatsby,” “The Book Thief,” “The Hunger Games,” “12 Years a Slave,” and many more have been ruined for the people that then watch the movie and it also ruins the opportunity for people who’ve never read the book to read it.

Movie producers change many things, including the thematic structure, order of events and important messages and concepts when turning a novel into a film. When reading a book, people are able to create their own image of characters and allow the figurative language, style, and textual imagery to invoke mental films in their minds, but movies can take this pleasure away from reading.

“When I watched ‘The Hunger Games’ after reading the book, my memory was pretty destroyed afterwards,” said junior Isaac Levan. “The movie started from chapter three then back to chapter one, so it was hard for me to put things together myself.”

“The movie ‘The Great Gatsby’ left out numerous scenes,” said senior Molly Paterson.  “For example, when Gatsby told Nick about his past, it was bleak and not as important like it was in the book. The movie also ruined the picture I already had of Gatsby in my mind; Leonardo Dicaprio is a great actor, but I couldn’t see him as Jay Gatsby.”

More importantly, books are filled with words that the average person probably will not use every day. As teens advance in education, their vocabulary needs to increase, and movies take this away as well. When a teen is reading a book and they come across a word that they do not know, they’re more likely to look it up than they are if they hear it coming out of a TV screen.

“It’s easier to just put the book down and look the word up rather than missing a scene in the movie,” said junior Kayla Donald.

Not only do movies appear to create mental laziness, but it also appears that when Hollywood and other movie producers can’t come up with a good idea for a movie to save their career, they take stories from books, causing people to lose interest in them, therefore creating more mental laziness.

“When I saw ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ I didn’t even know there was a book, but there is no point of reading it now; I know what happens,” said freshman Damonique Robinson.

Clearly, movies and books lie on different spectra. Movies sometimes only produce some aspects of a book but leave out a numerous important details that lie within the actual text.

“Bad movies that are made from really good books makes you want to go back and read the whole book over again,” said sophomore Erin Ward.

And bad movies may prevent a person from reading a book if they haven’t already.