Novels are better than the movies based on novels

This is for anyone who thinks that movies based on novels are better than the novels themselves. Thanks to the person who accepts this challenge. The first two rounds shall be used to explain the views of the participants on the topic with suitable examples. The third round will be the concluding round. I am comparing the two ( Novels and Movies based on novels) considering only the people who can afford these commodities and have the skills to understand them. I would like to give some definitions first. Novel : A written/ printed narrative, representing emotions and characters with some degree of realism. Movies based on novels : A movie is a story/ event which is recorded by a camera in the form of moving images. A movie based on a novel is such a movie whose plot is basically the same as the novel it is based on, with actors playing the different characters from the novel in the movie. Reading a novel is always better than watching a movie based on it. This is because reading a story and imagining the events, and how the characters and the places look like, how the characters feel, etc. gives a person room to imagine the story in their own way. For example, people normally identify with one or another character in the story, and reading gives them plenty of chances to create the characters in their heads as they wish, still keeping in mind the limitations given by the actual author. This can not be done in a movie as the characters all have a fixed appearance. Take the example of Robert Langdon from the novels of Dan Brown. "By his female colleagues, Langdon was called an erudite, not much handsome in the classical sense. He was described as having probing blue eyes, thick black hair with wisps of gray, dimpled chin, and a strong, carefree smile" "He was six foot tall and his body was the one of a swimmer, lean and toned thanks to his morning ritual in Harvard's pool." Although the author gives us readers the key aspects of Langdon's appearance, we still have lots of room to create our own Langdon. Every person to read this would create his own version of Robert and it will be highly rare that anyone's version will look like anyone else's version or like Tom Hanks. A person will create the character which they like the most and believe to be the most perfect, and the word 'perfect', my friends, is different for different people. Movies and Novels both try to bring a sense of realism and it seems the novels clearly win the point here, since imagining your own 'perfect' characters, places, and degrees of feelings of the characters will lead to a more realistic experience of the story-line than accepting someone else's pre-created views of the things that are completely alien to you, but are still spoon-fed to you. Another argument is that novels can describe the smallest of the things most efficiently. The person reading a well written novel can almost feel everything in real time. The thrill, the happiness, the sadness might have been ignited by the novel, but these feelings actually come from within. Take, for instance, a 500 page novel. So much can be put into those 500 pages, like facts and information, or a step can be taken out of the main story-line, giving the reader's brain some rest. Every thing that the main characters do or say can be put into those pages making the experience fulfilling. On the other hand, Movies based on novels have to cut out so much to fit the whole novel in an approximately 2 hour frame. Most of the times, many parts of the story are manipulated and some good parts are cut out just so the whole story can be squashed into the given time period. This often leads to messy, not-well-told plots leaving the viewers confused. Besides reading a piece of text has its own good effects. Novels are better than movies even for people who don't have English as their first language. Reading through the lines gives the brain a better knowledge about grammar and spelling, and also increases creativity of the mind (by being able to imagine the things as the person wishes). Movies evidently don't come with these benefits but rather come with disadvantages. Continuously staring at the screen can definitely stress the eyes. I am not saying that reading for a long duration won't do the same, but note that the time taken by a book to stress someone's eyes is relatively much greater that the time taken by a movie to do the same. These are my opinions about why Novels are better.