I’ve started reading Jumper by NameDoesNotMatter. I would like to formally apologise about all the harsh things I’ve ever spoken about that film.
Fine, the cast is unlikeable and the action scenes are just fisticuffs in the air, but my god, in comparison to the teenage dreck that is the book, it’s a masterpiece. At least they tried to build a credible back story for the main character.
In the book, he literally thinks everyone is out to sexually assault him (and somehow they seem to), he solves his problems by throwing money at it, instead of any actual creativity, and the author desperately tries to portray him as a mature-for-his-age adult, despite the fact that his first reaction to anything is crying followed by petty revenge.
I’m just flicking through the pages, pausing at any plot bits, and then flicking on.
How do they differ? My kid loves the movies and I always thought about buying the books.
From what I remember, where the movie has a longer guy discover a powerful dragon and with that starts a classic hero arc, the books are about a guy who gets very unlucky and is generally not very impressive, but still manages again and again to sort of stumble through adventures. In the books every kid gets a dragon to train, as a kind of rite of initiation. The main character only manages to get a tiny, rather pathetic dragon with literally no teeth (hence the name toothless). And he and his dragon both stay kind of pathetic as big events happen around him, but he keeps managing to somehow save the day, but of course no one realises what he has done and thinks it a fluke that he survived at all.
I read only the first couple books, so maybe it changes after that, or maybe I’m misremembering things. I really liked the story, but it’s certainly quite different to the fairly traditional hero arc of the movie. If your kids loves the movie there’s a good chance the book would disappoint them.