Thoughts on Movie vs Book... spoilers

I had watched Contact for the first time in the 1990s and have watched it a few more times since release.

Finally after a quarter century I finished reading the book and I was kinda surprised how the two diverged while being quite similar as well.

Here's my thoughts on the two -

Key differences =
The movie has only Ellie while the book had 5 chars travel through the pod (dodec as they called it for dodecahedron - 12 sided structure). The chars are from various parts of the world - USA, USSR, China, Nigeria and India. The choice was quite interesting with 3 men and 2 women. Their stories were sort of explored to a bit but not in depth. I preferred the movie here.

The chars are also all jumbled up - Kitz, Drumlin and there's new chars like der Heer and the President is a lady who is a bit more involved.

The project takes a long time from discovery to construction - years in fact.

The main discovery is made by Ellie in the book but Drumlin and few others are responsible for discovering a lot more things in the message. Drumlin's death seemed more poignant in the movie imo.

There's also 2 Machines built like the movie version but the costs are higher and has bit more blurbs about it and the events surrounding it.

The message itself is similar as in the movie but the primer search and discovery is helped by S.R. Hadden in both.

SR Hadden is younger and lives with some other dude up in space orbit that Ellie travels to which was interesting.

The alien journey is kinda similar but has differences in how the pod material is.

The aliens are also left up to imagination with key differences being the 5 of them having their experiences.

The aliens also show them an inter-galactic co-operative mission to basically fill an expanding Universe's large void with new experimental creations. This was a massive takeaway imo with them creating Cygnus-A, 600 million light years from Milky way on an epic unimaginable scale.

The part where suddenly they're skeptical is present in the book as well but it was very jarring and odd - I mean it's more believable if it is one person but for 5 to be not taken seriously is odd. But the parts about the whole video unit recording 18h of static and time elapsing were done better in the movie.

The book also delved more into the religion and god vs science aspect a bit more. Joss Palmer was also present but not really a love interest and is older.

Carl Sagan wrote it well but tbh the book makes you imagine things a certain way but the movie was really showing it to you very very well.

Personally, I wholly prefer the movie over the book. It could be a bias having watched it first but I felt the same about many others like The Godfather etc. Sometimes a word not being said conveys a lot with emotion and gestures and situations while you can't have a blank page but a blank stare with background noises tells a lot.

Contact is a fantastic movie (top 5 all time for me) and personally I rate the movie higher than the book. The director definitely used music, rockets of the spinning rings, lurching ship, "I'm ok to go" etc. way better. The drama, tension, excitement of the music bass from the message felt more alive to me. The passage of time certainly is more believable in the book but the movie did well here to keep you occupied.

So many memory scenes in the movie - the initial sound crescendo of the signal, the appearance of Hitler and Kitz going "ok" as he beckons the soldiers inside, the Machine journey entire scene, "I'm ok to go", and dialogs like "What interests me is not that it recorded static..." "Continue..." .... "what interests me is that it recorded approximately 18 hours of it"...
To "But a voice from the sky..." to the discovery of the primer to "Wanna take a ride".... etc.

This is a fantastic movie by my count and whether you read the book or watch the movie, it truly is an epic ride.