reception - How is the relationship between the reader and the story affected by movies that are released prior to the completion of a book series?

The Harry
Potter movies are clearly intended for people who have been reading the books but unlike
situations where a single movie is made from a single book, these movies were released
prior to the completion of the book series. This means that most readers were aware of
the movie interpretation of events as they continued with the series.

Given the success of the Harry Potter books and movie
series, this multimedia model of of storytelling is likely to become more common.

How does this multimedia exposure to a story affect the
relationship between the reader and the story in ways that differ from past models where
the reader experienced the book and movie separately?

Answer

For
starters, it might help to think about some of the differences that we experience when
viewing a single movie made from a single
book:

• Appearance/attractiveness of
  characters. Especially for those characters to whom we're attracted, the change of blond
  hair to brown, or dark skin to light can be jarring. This is always going to happen
  because film creators are limited by the set of actors who actually exist, whereas of
  course characters in books are not limited at all. (Eg. Brad Pitt plays the attractive
  guy, regardless of whether he matches the character's
  description.)


• Ethnicity of characters. In Western
  literature, non-white characters are going to be made "ethnically explicit" much more
  often than white characters. Seeing a character whose race is different than expected on
  screen might entirely shift the ways in which readers identify with that character. (Is
  Harry Potter ever explicitly identified as white in the
  book?)


• Tone of characters or settings. Perhaps you
  imagined a particular setting as a very dark place, while it's filmed very brightly. Or
  maybe you see the evil character as darkly serious but the film portrays her as careless
  and apathetic.


• Emphasizing of different portions of the
  story. Did anyone else miss Tom
  Bombadil?

The general effect is one
of discordance. What we expect is slanted, mutated or sometimes flat-out
untrue.

When we're talking about movies and books being
intermingled in the way Harry Potter has, we get two competing
effects:

• the discordance of bouncing
  between multiple interpretations, and


• a synergizing of
  the content such that the books will provide subtext for unseen portions of the movies,
  while the movies will gradually shape how we interpret the
  books.

The quality of the adaptation
determines the extent to which we move from the former to the latter over time. If they
complement one another, then alternating between book and movie can be an enriching
experience. If the films are of bad quality or offend your interpretation, obviously the
experience will be less pleasant.

The films overshadowing
the books can be another problem, depending on your point of view. This can result in
some practical concerns, like:

• They
  provide a sort of objective interpretation. When friends quote the characters, for
  instance, they'll likely quote the film version simply because everyone will recognize
  the reading - even if the line is exactly the same in the
  book.


• Some readers may ignore remaining books entirely,
  knowing that the movies will be easier to consume and not too far
  off.


• The story may not be "done" until the last film,
  which puts the books in an oddly secondary position in spite of being source
  material.

Note that similar
phenomena can happen outside the book/film context. The toys released in advance of each
new Star Wars movie rather ruined some of the fun, for instance.