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Movies v. Books

HungryJoeHungryJoe
edited August 2008 in Movies
Everyone always says "the book was better than the movie". Have you ever seen a movie that was better than its corresponding book?

Comments

  • JasonJason
    No. But I have seen movies that are equally compelling as their literary counterparts. Dances With Wolves comes to mind.
  • chaosof99chaosof99
    I'd say it depends on what you get first. I found Fight Club better as the movie than the book, but my view could be skewed since I saw the movie before I watched the book. However, it is practically unavoidable that something will get lost when translated from one medium to another. Sometimes those are insignifcant, but more often than not the losses are substantial.
  • HungryJoeHungryJoe
    Has anyone besides me noticed that when movies are made from books, the writers and directors take great liberties with the books, but when movies are based on other movies, they slavishly copy scene-for-scene? I'm thinking of Point of No Return in particular. It wasn't a remake. It was just based on La Femme Nikita. However, it just completely copied Nikita nearly scen-for-scene. I think a lot of movie adaptations of books would be better if they copied the books scene-for-scene as well.
  • JasonJason
    Length and inner monologue are preventative to doing that.
  • RochelleRochelle
    I think a lot of movie adaptations of books would be better if they copied the books scene-for-scene as well.
    No. But I have seen movies that are equally compelling as their literary counterparts.
    Does Sin City count, even though it's a graphic novel and not a word novel?
  • HungryJoeHungryJoe
    Length and inner monologue are preventative to doing that.
    Not always. Frankenstein is a good example. Someone could make a great Frankenstein by just filming the book. Kenneth Branagh said that was what he was going to do when he made his Frankenstein, but he failed monstrously.
  • CremlianCremlian
    I enjoyed Blade runner better then "Do androids dream of electronic sheep"

    I probably enjoyed Lord of the Rings better as a movie.
  • Luke BurrageLuke Burrage
    The film Contact was a much better film-watching experience than the book Contact was a book-reading experience. The film was pretty good and I didn't get to the end of the book as it was written so poorly for what was meant to be a novel but was in fact a preachy popular science book, and about an eighth as good as Carl Sagan's next worse book.
  • ErynEryn
    edited August 2008
    I probably enjoyed Lord of the Rings better as a movie.
    Agreed. I find Tolkien's writing style incredibly dry and far, FAR too heavy on description.

    And I haven't seen for myself, but a friend of mine swears that the movie version of American Psycho is much better than the book. The book version, she claims, spends far too much time describing what people are wearing than actually focusing on the plot.
    Post edited by Eryn on
  • Loganator456Loganator456
    They both have their pro's and con's, but generally, while I do like books, I will go for the movie, because of time. If the movie sucks, then I think it would be better to go with the book. It really depends.
  • ......
    Someone could make a great Frankenstein by just filming the book.
    Someone get me a copy of Frankenstein and a digital camera. Gonna make this movie. Joe, do you want a visible hand flipping the pages, thus also seeing a of the table it lies on, or a handless transition between pages?
  • Jain7thJain7th
    edited August 2008
    I find Stanley Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange" to be much better than the book. However I read the German version.
    Post edited by Jain7th on
  • ......
    However I read the German version.
    More proof that translations always suck compared to the original. Hence why I absolutely refuse to read ANY text that has been translated to Dutch when I can just as well read and understand the original (English) version.
  • HungryJoeHungryJoe
    I find Stanley Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange" to be much better than the book. However I read the German version.
    The book spent a lot of time playing with language. I don't think that would translate well.
  • JasonJason
    However I read the German version.
    More proof that translations always suck compared to the original. Hence why I absolutely refuse to read ANY text that has been translated to Dutch when I can just as well read and understand the original (English) version.
    I think Dumas' books work just as well in English as they do in French.
  • SailSail
    Octavio Paz's "El Ramo de Ojos Azules" isn't nearly as chilling in English.
  • MarcusNobleMarcusNoble
    It can be very difficult to compare one to the other since both mediums tell stories in different ways. That being said the only comparison I could make is "fight club" and i found the movie to be better than the book. Only because the fight scenes were better to see on screen rather than "the movie in your mind" that most good books tend to achieve.
  • misakyramisakyra
    It can be very difficult to compare one to the other since both mediums tell stories in different ways.
    This pretty much sums up my feelings. When I see a movie based on a book I've read, I try not to make nit-picky comparisons because books and film are so different. What I look for is whether the filmmakers did their best to capture the major plot points and the spirit of the story. The 'and' is what's important here, because without both, you end up with a lousy movie. Either the plot has nothing to do with the book, or they tried so hard to make it exact that they end up with a movie that feels more like reading a checklist.
  • gomidoggomidog
    More movies than people realize are adaptations. Sometimes people take short stories and adapt them into a script. One such movie was "In the Bedroom" based on "Killings." I felt it fleshed out the characters of the short story and this gave the ending a lot more weight. In addition, I've heard it said that adaptations of mediocre writers often make good movies, because while the idea is solid, the writing is so-so, and thus you don't feel like you are missing an integral part of the experience by forgoing the prose. I bet there are many movie that you watched without realizing that it was based on the book. ("Who framed Rodger Rabbit" was a novella before it was a film. I just found that out.)
  • ChurbaChurba
    The Movie Eragon was pretty accurate to the book - they both sucked and were both a blatant Author-insertion wankfest.
  • BlattusBlattus
    Might I be going out on a limb by suggesting that LotR was a decent set of movies? I mean decent in the sense that it was an adaptation of a book that was actually done well and didn't make me cringe when thinking of the book, given that it left things out.

    Just another observation, I thought that the movie adaptation of Love in the Time of Cholera was very interestingly done, and though it had cringy moments, I think it complemented the book well. I'm biased toward Garcia Marquez's work though.
  • TheWhaleSharkTheWhaleShark
    I find Stanley Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange" to be much better than the book. However I read the German version.
    Uh, the book and the movie are quite different, unless you read the truncated version of the book. The movie omits the crucial last chapter of the original book, which changes the message of the work.
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