BOOKS OR MOVIE?

HARRY POTTER

JK Rowling’s tales of the boy wizard were already a pop culture phenomenon by the time the eagerly anticipated first film Harry Potter and the

Philosopher’s Stone was released in 2001.

It was a monster hit, as were the seven films that followed and the lead actors have become synonymous with their characters, but inevitably some of Rowling’s richness and subplots were lost in paring down some of the doorstopper books for the big screen.

Verdict: Books – by a width of a phoenix feather

THE LORD OF THE RINGS

Aside from an uneven, unfinished animated version in 1978, J.R.R Tolkien’s towering trilogy about a plucky hobbit tasked with destroying a magical ring remained unfilmed, and to many unfilmable, for almost half a century. While the books, and the accompanying meticulously crafted mythology of elves, orcs, dwarfs and men, remain bestsellers and revered by nerds and non-nerds the world over, Kiwi director Peter Jackson’s bold and brilliantly executed vision of filming all three chapters at once stands as one of the most astonishing achievements in movie history and won 17 Oscars between them.

Verdict: Dead heat – so precioussssss

TWILIGHT

Stephanie Meyer’s bafflingly popular young adult vampire romance novel about a surly 17-year-old schoolgirl who falls for a sparkling-skinned bloodsucker was always bound for the big screen after it climbed to the top of the New York Times bestseller list in 2005. Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart (left), both excellent actors who have done far better work elsewhere, battled gamely with the industrial-strength brooding and the dodgy dialogue, but you just can’t polish a turd. Verdict: Movies – but both suck