From Harry Potter to the Hunger Games, movies based on books are as popular as ever. After all, they’ve been around for almost as long as movies themselves.

One iconic first is Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”. Movies based on books also have the advantage of already having a fan base, not to mention pre-written plots, characters, and snarky one-liners from everyone’s favorite sidekicks.

One such example is the “Harry Potter” series, which was a smashing success. The movies have earned over $7 billion at the box office, according to Warner Bros, making “Harry Potter” one of the most successful film franchises of all time. In fact, it’s turned out to be so popular that JK Rowling is writing the currently screenplay for a completely new movie in the “Harry Potter” universe, “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”.

Another notable movie adaption is the “Hunger Games” trilogy. The first film set the bar high for the “Catching Fire” movie, which comes out this November. Other highly anticipated films based on movies include Veronica Roth’s “Divergent” and John Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars. They both come out in 2014.

With all of these film adaptations, there’s one debate that often comes up – whether the book or the movie is typically better.

Junior Corinne Rolf said that she usually prefers books to movies because they “leave everything up to your imagination.” However, Rolf adds that movies are more realistic to her than books. Despite their differences, they both seem to have their strong points.

“I think the pros of books is that you get to use your imagination to become part of the world the book’s created for you and the movie is good because it fills in those gaps that don’t make sense until you see it,” librarian Liz Chopp said.

People like Rolf and Chopp who prefer books aren’t in the minority – in fact, Times Magazine reports that a lot more people actually prefer the book to the movies. Times Magazine’s theory is that when people read the book before the movie, they’ve already visualized their ideal movie in their mind’s eye as they read the book.

This brings us to our next question: is it okay to watch the movie before reading the book? What about watching the movie without reading the book?

“No. Big no no…I don’t like it when people do that because they don’t get to experience the book and why the movie was even made in the first place,” freshman Emily Magness said.

On the other hand, others are more neutral. Freshman Katharine Wu says that she thinks it’s okay either way.

Perhaps it just depends on the circumstance and whichever movie you’re watching. Rolfs brings up an interesting point. “If you know the the movie’s going to be disappointing, I would watch the movie first because then you’d be excited instead of being disappointed by reading the book,” Rolf said.