I preferred the movie better because I could visualize what was happening instead of imagining the scenes while reading. That’s because when I read books I’m busy concentrating on what I’m reading that I don’t imagine what’s happening. Therefore I don’t understand the story. Although the Outsiders book was good and detailed, unlike the movie, I didn’t visualize what was happening unless it was explained. Sometimes books can be exciting but most people are not bothered to read thus they wait for the movie instead.
Most parts of the movie were very different because they were restated by the screen adapter. Some were even skipped. The rewriting also had scenes that weren’t mentioned in the novel, just because the director wanted to make things clearer or replacing the skipped scenes. An unnecessary scene was when pony boy’s parent’s car was apparently crashed by a train. That wasn’t mentioned in the novel but I think they placed it in so it made things clear for the people to understand, if they haven’t read the novel, that his parents had passed away. Another totally random and out of the blue scene was when Dally saw the little kid’s playing cards and chased them, just because he disliked little kids. Yet again the screen adapter or the director maybe wanted to present the characters and their personalities. I think that maybe instead of most useless scenes they could have replaced them with more important events. Such as: the court scene where the judge has to decide whether Ponyboy and Sodapop could stay with Darry or get sent to foster homes. After all scenes were expected to be left out since it’s a movie. The part I got confused at the most was when ponyboy started and ended the movie by writing his story. If we haven’t read the book in class, we would have thought that the director wasn’t bothered to explain why he did that. I think that just before he ended the movie, he should have mentioned something about his bad grades in English. Therefore he had to write this story.
Other than the differences, there were some similarities. Most similar scenes that were adapted from the novel weren’t detailed enough. A scene that was true to the novel was when Dally was being flirtatious with Cherry V. at the drive “open air” theater. Another scene was when cherry talked to ponyboy and said that she has never seen him before and when she told him he was quiet young for high school. These two scenes were the same as the book. There was also a scene in a different setting with Ponyboy and Cherry Valance as well and she told him that “things are rough all over”, even if it was with the Socs or greasers. These were some examples of the similar scenes.
I enjoyed reading the book with the class because it was more interesting. If I had to read it on my own, I would have taken it back to the library, or wherever I got it from, after reading the first few pages. I would have also watched the movies 1st if I have heard about it before the book so I could compare them both. I liked it when our teacher forced us to read it as a class novel so I could have learned about some of the troubles young people and poor people had to go through years ago. Especially the poor kids without parents to be there for them, support them, take care of them and show them that they really love them. Unlike the Socs whose parents just bought them what they wanted because they thought that that meant loving them. Although money can never buy love, people have to show love by caring about others and maybe sometimes being harsh on them for their benefit. Like what Darry was doing to Ponyboy because he cared about him and wanted him to grow up and have a future.
