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I watched ‘Angels & Demons’ a Dozen Times. The Book Won 6–3
I thought I knew the story by heart. Then I spent six days comparing the book and movie, one round at a time.
Warning: Contains spoilers
I’d seen the Tom Hanks and Ron Howard version of Robert Langdon’s Vatican chase so many times that I could probably recite the cardinal murders from memory. So when I finally opened Dan Brown’s book, I wasn’t expecting surprises. I was expecting to check facts.
Instead, I ended up keeping score.
Somewhere around chapter ten, I started giving points to whichever version, page or screen, handled a moment better. Six days and one finished book later, here is the full scorecard.
The rules were simple. Nine categories. One winner per round. No ties allowed.
First, a Strange Detail About the Order
Before the rounds, there’s one detail that’s easy to miss.
The book came out in 2000, three years before The Da Vinci Code. So in book order, Angels & Demons is Langdon’s first adventure. But the movie came out in 2009, three years after the Da Vinci Code film. Ron Howard chose to make it a sequel instead of a prequel.
