I was just perusing Amazon and came across a novelized version of the currently playing film, After Earth. I did not purchase it because of the following: I've only read two novelizations of films and both were nothing more than exact renditions of the film in book form. There was nothing extra, nothing new, nothing different. Both were Science Fiction. AVP and the original Stargate film. Clearly two examples does not a fair assessment make, but I'm wondering, if they are in fact all this way... what's the point?
Perhaps they're trying to appeal to a different audience. Some people may like reading sci-fi but not like watching sci-fi shows. I don't know. This is purely a guess. Money could be part of it, too.
Money is the only point I can think of if they are all that way. I've never read a novel that was based off a film. It just never appealed to me. Probably because I've heard precisely what you've said above when people spoke about them.
I've always found the idea of novelizing a film a bit suspect. It tells me they wanted to put into the novel things that didn't go into, or just didn't work out well in the film, which in turn also tells me the films isn't very good - at least in a few respects. It's not a good indication anyway.
I have heard that The Dark Knight Rises book adaption takes it all in a slightly different direction, but I don't really see the point in it. In book turned to films, at least they edit and change and add to make it all their own.
A novel can go into far more depth than a film can, because it is freed from the constraints of an approximately three-hour limit, and because there are narrative options in writing that do not translate well to film. All too often, the novelization of a film is a waste of trees. But there are exceptions. The one which springs to my mind is Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Oddysey. The movie was visually stunning and brilliant, but was also profoundly confusing. Everything that takes place after HAL is lobotomized makes great LSD cinema, but is not particularly enlightening. The novelization, also written by Clarke, was much more satisfying, and quite thought-provoking. On the other hand, one could legitimately argue that the novelization was Clarke's true expression of what he wished could be conveyed on film. It was therefore not a novelization of the film; rather, the movie was a novel adaptation that happened to be published before the novel.
Wow, my parents own the Stargate novel and I always just assumed that the movie was based on that book. Interesting. I've never read a novelisation of a film because honestly, I'm too lazy. I've committed to the movie and have too many unread books to read a story I've come across before. Having said that, if I hear about a great book, I'll always add it to my reading list.
An odd one for me was the recent Hobbit film. Obviously a film based on a book, but as they are stretching it to 3 films there is a lot of additional content that was added which is not in the book, therefore there has been a movie adaptation book written. In all honesty I do not want to read it, it isn't Tolkien and it won't be the same as the original book. Why can't people accept that the book is different to the film, why then write a book to match the film. For me it almost ruins the memory of the original book when I think of some young kids perhaps reading this new version and thinking that it is the book that the film was based on.
