Sparks's books are not particularly literary and are short and simplistic enough to lend themselves to being made into films. Does this make them bad? Well no. I often stress that books and films are - in their simplest form - escapism. Sometimes people want to be intellectually challenged and read something complex and wordy like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or The Cloud Atlas. Other times, they want an easy-to-read romance and will turn to Sophie Kinsella or Nicholas Sparks to satisfy that need. They want a story that will take you along for a ride and leave you content at the end without the need to have a lie-down or take a paracetamol because your head hurts.
Blockbuster romance Titanic was the largest grossing film of all time before Director James Cameron's next film Avatar knocked it off the top spot. Millions of people across the world went to see the film. So did the IQ of the planet suddenly plummet? No. People were as intelligent when they came out as they were when they went in. The difference was simply that they had spent a couple of hours (well in the case of Titanic - more than 3!) living somebody else's life. They were - for the time they passed in the cinema - living the lives of Jack and Rose. They wondered if they would be able to stay together, if they would make it off the boat, if anyone would turn round and punch Rose's god-awful mother (just me?!).
People, I imagine, feel the same way about Michael Bay. I was a teenager when I first saw Pearl Harbor and was mortified when I read a critic say that no intelligent person could possibly enjoy that film. Was I an idiot for having 'enjoyed' it so much I bawled for the last half an hour of the film? No. I was a teenage girl madly in love with both Josh Hartnett and Ben Affleck, just as Kate Beckinsale's character was at the time. Watching it back now, I actually find it quite amusing. The drama, the action, the you'd-have-lost-the-war-if-it-
Why then does enjoying these formulaic stories make you an idiot? If reading a book or watching a film is simply a way for a person to escape, why does wanting to escape into the security of a well-known formula make you an imbecile?
