People who read books and then go to watch the film based on it often end up disappointed. Many felt this way when The Da Vinci Code made it to the screen after the success of Dan Brown’s fictitious novel, despite of having star actor Tom Hanks in the main role.

The American icon is the protagonist of Angels and Demons, which opens in Malta today. And the question is – will viewers have the same reaction? Will they, once again, prefer the story they read, or the one that has been adapted to the screen?

Actually, Angels and Demons is not the sequel of The Da Vinci Code, as many believe. Angels and Demons was written three years before The Da Vinci Code, but became successful only after the latter made the headlines because of the controversial subject it tackled – the battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the claimed possibility of Jesus Christ having been married to and fathering a child with Mary Magdalene.

The Da Vinci Code’s success in 2003 and the media hype that surrounded the fiction then pushed people into reading other books published by the same author. Angels and Demons was one of them, and many say that this 2000 publication, when the writer was virtually unknown, was in fact a better story than Dan Brown’s most famous novel.

Brown’s penchant with writing about religious matters could already be felt in Angels and Demons, as the story revolves around the quest of Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) to uncover a plot to destroy Vatican City by a secret society called the Illuminati.

The conflict between history and science, so present in The Da Vinci Code, is again the foundation on which Angels and Demons is built. This time, however, the hype surrounding the book – and now the film – is much less because the basics of the Catholic religion, questioned in The Da Vinci Code, are not touched. And, perhaps, the story flows a little bit more smoothly.