Bluntly stated, Stardust the film was a billion times cooler than Stardust the novel – and I say this with great disappointment. I have a bias towards literature and I am almost always on the side of the novelist in the tacit battle between pen and picture. I very rarely watch a film adaptation of any novel that I am interested in reading, before having read the novel. I hate having character, plot and context dictated to me on screen. I love to read and let my imagination run wild, and then see what brilliant acting and directing can contribute to an author’s mastery. At least if a novel is destroyed by a poorly crafted film, I still have the written word to cling to. That said, I broke my own system by watching the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust before I read the novel, and it was a really bad idea. Although, I have a sneaking suspicion that I still would have preferred the film, even if I had watched it after reading the novel. (more…)