This thread inspired by the other one about the Hobbit movies. We talk a lot about film adaptations, usually in slightly resigned tones, where we say 'it was good, but not as good as the book.'

But what about those movies that took a written work and did it even BETTER? Clearly, this is totally subjective, but it makes for interesting conversation.

I'll start with my top three:

The Shawshank Redemption (from the novella 'Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, by Stephen King). This was, by and large, a very faithful adaptation. But there were a few changes, such as having the same Warden all the way through, and casting Morgan Freeman, that made all the difference in the world. It's a great novella, a great story, but there's something about the sights and sounds and feel of the film that I think makes for a better experience overall.

Jaws (based on the novel 'Jaws' by Peter Benchley). Peter Benchley, despite his 70's success, is/was a talentless hack. His prose is wooden and uninspired. His characters are shallow, one-note wonders. His plots are stale and predictable. But you take the pale grey dishwater that was the novel Jaws, put it in the hands of budding genius Stephen Spielberg, and you get magic. Keeping the shark out of sight, focusing less on the sex lives of the main characters, the addition/revision  of that chilling monologue by Quint, all made the movie a masterpiece, and yards better than the novel.

Field of Dreams (based on the novel 'Shoeless Joe' by W.P. Kinsella). It's a decent book. But it's not really about baseball. Or fathers. Or much of anything else. I found it a meandering, weak-kneed novel, without much to say about anything. And J.D. Salinger is in it! For no good reason! But then they took that messy thing and made a movie about love and loss and nostalgia and hope and innocence and the things that are really important. And yes, baseball, too.

Other contenders could include: the Godfather, Stand by Me, Misery, Mystic River, 127 Hours, the English Patient.

The Mist was much better than the novella by Stephen King. Not saying that the movie was great, but it has one of my favorite, kick to the face endings in cinema history. The ending to the novella is just sort of open and lacks the 'kick to the face' aspect.

I also wouldn't say it was better, since the book and movie were entirely different things, but Starship Troopers was a blast. I still would like to see a movie more faithful to the original tone, but the movie was entertaining in its own way.

The movie Children of Men was absolutely fantastic, and the book was a boring slog that I barely remember anything of.

Jurassic Park captures a sense of wonder and adventure in a much better way than the original book. Crichton's novels sometimes get bogged down by technobabble.

I'll get behind that one for sure. The novel was mostly an excuse to wax pontifical on various scientific discoveries. The movie was about, just as you say, wonder and afventure.

And raptors.

Yes. Every book adaptation can be improved with raptors.

I daresay the Hobbit movies could have used a few raptors, too.

Stephen King actually said he liked the ending of the Mist movie better than his own, so that's saying a lot.  Not my type of ending, but definitely impactful.

I read Crighton's Timeline book, and while I'm not saying the movie was all that great, it changed some things I didn't like in the book, which made me like the movie a little bit more.

I'll third Jurassic Park. The book was forgettable, but the film has stood the test of time as an almost-perfect thriller. Not to mention, it still blows my mind how seamless some of the effects are. Just an amazingly-crafted film, period.

has anyone ever read the Running Man?  I wondered how it stacked up to the movie, since it's another secret King book-movie.

In reply to gladiusdei (msg # 7):

That's a good example of what D.L.Hitomi was talking about in the other thread. The two are so dissimilar that they don't even bear comparison. Other than the title, some of the names, and the base premise (IN THE FUTURE GAME SHOWS ARE REAL!), they are completely different.

I sort of figured that was the case.  Couldn't picture King writing a Schwarzenegger action film book.  And the movie does have the hints of a classic dystopian future novel, which I thought the book might be.  Still a fun movie though.  Some of the best action movie one liners ever.

The Wizard of Oz

Beh-Hur

I find -usually- I prefer the books; even if I watch the movie first.

Having said that, I rarely dislike the movies so much, no matter how much they've changed from the book. LotR is a prime example - despite the fact that if I was looking for a 100% faithful adaptation, there are parts, especially in the latter 2, which are drastically different, I can enjoy them as they are - for the movie.

Having said that, my niece will swear blind that the Twilight movie was better than the books. Having no desire to read or watch either, I'll take her word for it. She didn't like the books, but she found the movie was watchable.

One flew over the cuckoos nest...

Film is excellent with some fine acting, a brilliant script and great production value. The book is just impossible to read, I got about 20 pages in and gave up due to the headaches the language gave me!

Same applies to Trainspotting...

Edit - I will also throw Blade Runner into the mix. Excellent film, but Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep is a dull dull book.
This message was last edited by the user at 22:38, Thu 11 Dec 2014.

Honestly I find a couple of the Harry Potter movies did a better job than the books did. Mostly the books won out, but Order of the Phoenix and Deathly Hallows were much better as movies. Mostly because I find them the worst books in the series, but the actors manage to sell me on the story in a way the books do not.

Meanwhile, Half Blood Prince is one of the strongest books IMO, but the movie was meh. Go figure.

In reply to gladiusdei (msg # 9):

Yeah, the original wasn't much of an action story...more of a commentary on society's acceptance of horrific stuff in the name of entertainment, I think.  I haven't read it in years (decades, even), but I remember being tremendously disappointed that the movie was NOTHING like the short story.  As 80's action movies go, it wasn't bad...it really did have some great quotable lines in it, and there were a few of the characters that I really enjoyed (and, hey, I've gotta hand it to any movie that's going to make Mick Fleetwood a hero of the rebellion...)

But in terms of an overall story?  I'd love it if someone actually made the short story into a film, rather than just borrowing a hint of a premise and some character names.

I can't think of many films that I enjoyed more than the books they were based on, which haven't already been named here (and most of those, I never got around to reading the book...sounds like I haven't missed much).

I do have to say that I really enjoyed Ender's Game...there were a lot of parts of the book that got skipped over, but I can see why they skipped what they did, and why they tweaked the overall plotline they ways they did.  There's some stuff that just couldn't be done in the film without bogging it down to the point where only die-hard Ender fans would sit through it.  I'd like to see someone do a mini-series so they could take the time to tell the whole story...but for taking such an extensive novel and turning it into a two-hour(-ish) movie, I think they handled it well.

Yeah, I agree about ender's game.  and on a side note, that actor would make a great robin, if they ever decided to make him the young kid he was for decades in the comics.

I'll put in LA Confidential. Although the book is great Ellroy, it was unfilmable as written. The filmmakers took the skeleton, pared it down to its essentials and its strongest characters, and made one of the best noir police stories ever. The Jack Vincennes character (especially his end) was particularly well treated.

To see what could have happened instead, take a look at the movie made from Ellroy's The Black Dahlia.

Misery

Sense and Sensibility

Interview with a Vampire

Forest Gump

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Scott Pilgrim vs The World

Great pick, Gaffer. And I totally agree. And a great example of a film taking something and making it very different in order to keep the spirit of the thing alive.

I'll drop a couple more:

Brokeback Mountain (based on the short story 'Brokeback Mountain' by Annie Proulx). I love Ang Lee and I can't stand Annie Proulx, so maybe I was an easy sell. In purely narrative terms,  the two cleave pretty close. But there's something about the power of film to show pages of dialogue in a single look, pages of description in a single perfect shot, and show the passage of time in quick-cuts. Add to that the visuals, the music, and suddenly the movie is the story that the story should have been. I read the story and went meh. The film made me weep. Twice.

Silence of the Lambs (based on the novel 'Silence of the Lambs' by Thomas Harris). Harris is a decent thriller-writer who made one really compelling villain. Jonathan Demme (and Ted Tally, who wrote the screenplay), on the other hand, is an artist. He had the sense to realize that Clarice and Lector were the real story, and Buffalo Bill merely the means by which that story is told. And whoever dug up Anthony Hopkins (who was next door to a has-been when he was cast) deserves a Lifetime Achievement Award. One of only three films to win the 'Big Five' Oscars, it's a masterpiece crafted from a forgettable bestseller.

Starship Troopers, depending on how you feel about militarizing society. It's like the Colbert Report take on the source material. This article explains it better than I can:

http://www.theatlantic.com/ent...-movies-ever/281236/

In reply to Gaffer (msg # 16):

Ah, good choice with LA Confidential. For me, it's almost like the Starship Troopers adaptation: something quite different from the book, but good in its own right.

And you're right. The book as written was unfilmable. Especially with that spine-chillingly nasty serial killer/cartoonist sub plot.

Stardust. Beautiful, uplifting adventure film.

Depressing book.

Y'know...at the risk of stacking my own funeral pyre here, I have to say I was not that impressed with the film version of Starship Troopers.  I didn't read the book until YEARS after the movie came out...so it wasn't that I thought the book was better, because I honestly didn't know.

It was a fun watch, yes, and a chance to see some of the actors playing roles I never would have thought to offer them, and doing it (relatively) well.  But I think they just got so caught up with trying to make it a satirical jab at overzealous nationalism that they oversimplified the story.  It left me feeling very underwhelmed.

I kind of agree.  Thought it was kind of fun when I first saw it, but the characters weren't very likable at all.  Could have been their goal, and if so, it worked well.

If that article is correct, it was the goal. It was a satire of the jingoistic theme of the original source material.

Of course, why would you be staking a funeral pyre? Personal preference is subjective. No one should tell you that you're wrong because you don't like something. :-p

I know that no one SHOULD tell me I'm wrong for not liking something.  But it happens on a regular basis anyway.  *grin*

And even knowing that they made the characters so flat intentionally doesn't help.  The same guy directed Robocop, which had a very similar satirical jab (that time, it was at corporate America running rampant over rule of law and common sense, but kind of the same notion--just privately funded instead of government sanctioned).  However, THOSE characters were quite engaging, even done, as they were, to be caricatures of stereotypes.

But that's drifting off topic.

Another, older, adaptation that I thought was really well-handled was The Hunt For Red October.  The book is really good (I think, at least), but it's very dense with technobabble (legit, but still a lot to digest for the average reader).  The film stripped most of that out, simplified the plotline, and gave us a very similar story that was much easier to follow and less likely to make Joe Average give up on it with a declaration like, "Who cares how much pressure a sub is designed to handle?"  (I haven't read the rest of Clancy's Jack Ryan novels to see how the other films did as adaptations, though Clear and Present Danger is next up on my reading list, since my writing partner kept telling me the plotline I was creating for one of our upcoming scripts was very similar to it.)

I can't argue with JP, but only because where do yoj go from there. Its not even fair to ask someone to try and craft a more perfect movie. I do love me some Crichton technobabble, though, and thought the book wonderful too. The literary version of Lost World, on the other hand, beat the absolute pants off of its counterpart. Shawshank is, of course, the ultimate example of this phenomenon.

3 titles that I'm surprised haven't already been brought up:

Fight Club, Be Cool, and Get Shorty,

Just wanted to add Dune here. Some people might disagree, but I really didn't like the book. The movie however was a lot better.

In reply to mowiegan (msg # 27):

Yeah i would be one of the vast majority that dressage's the dune novel had actual characters, depth and a think background. the film was a cheesy action flick without the action.

But i will second fight club. the book is disjointed and lacking focus in some areas. the film really solidified it and sold it as an actual plot. however you can't blame the book after all it was a writing challenge based on a short story where there is no dialogue, now called chapter 7.
This message was last edited by the user at 10:42, Thu 18 Dec 2014.

I would say the Universal studios versions of Dracula, Frankenstein, and Phantom of the Opera with Lugosi, Karloff and Chaney were better than the books, although later adaptations of them have fallen short (but I do like the play Phantom of the Opera).

A Christmas Carol has several versions that are superior to the book, in my opinion.

The Little Mermaid was a wonderful story, but I do prefer the Disney movie. Ursula came across as truly scary.

Prince Caspian of the Chronicles of Narnia was better as a movie, but I prefer the books for the others in the series.

And while the movie version of Les Miserables was horrendous, the stage version was better than the books.

And very quickly, Anne of Green Gables, Gone With the Wind, A Clockwork Orange, The Devil Wears Prada, The Color Purple, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and Bridget Jones's Diary were better in the movie versions.

I know that you mean the musical, but it's important to note that there are multiple film versions of Les Miserables...the best, arguably, was one that Hallmark used to sponsor on an almost-annual basis as holiday-TV fare.  The more recent adaptation that starred Liam Neeson as Jean ValJean was...decent.  Well cast, but I found the story lacking a bit (probably due to the fact that they really did try and turn that entire novel into a 2 hr. film...)

I still haven't seen the film version of the musical.

The giver.  My daughter Hates the book, but had to read it, twice, in 7th grade.  I got the movie from the library and she decided to watch it so she could tell at the screen.  Her final comment.  They did it wrong but I liked it

There is absolutely no way The Giver is better in movie form.  The movie is generic along the lines of all of these 'young adult distopia' movies that have been coming out, in spite of a few good casting choices, and the book is unique among young adult fiction and actually has something to say.  Some young people who didn't actually understand the book might like the movie better because it's shallower and appeals to a lower common denominator, but that doesn't make it better.

"Better" is somewhat subjective though. If someone prefers the movie version, then for them, it really is better. What's better between a movie and a book isn't something that has any objective stats that can be used.

For example, I think someone upthread stated that they felt the Wizard of Oz was better as a movie. I can't disagree more. For me, the book is far superior. But I don't really think that I can argue that, for -them-, the book is better. It's purely a subjective view point.

The November Man.  The movie was better than the book, which proves, if you were one of the twelve people who say the film, just how badly the book was written.

I prefer to read, watch, whatever the first iteration of whatever media option is presented.  For example, I read The Watchman graphic novel before I went to see the movie.  I also don't generally read novelizations of movies.

In reply to willvr (msg # 33):

I've got to agree with your logic.  I've got friends who have tried (and failed, repeatedly) to read The Hobbit and LOTR.  They just can't do it.  Tolkien's literary style is dated enough that they just can't settle into the narrative.  They love the movies, but the books are beyond them.

I enjoy some parts of the movies, am ambivalent about many others, and there are a few parts that I feel are a blatant adulteration of the story.  I'd rather take a week to read the books than sit down for a few hours to watch the movies, any time.  So, I definitely feel like the books are better.  But for my friends who just can't get into the books, the movies are a vast improvement.

There are actually very few movies that I think are 'better' than the book.  I don't judge them on that kind of scale.  I look at them in terms of 'was this a solid adaptation of the book?'  Being different media, the way the story is told will ALWAYS be different.

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 35):

Sometimes it's not a solid adaptation though, and in fact sometimes it's not even a good movie on its own, taking the book completely out of the mix.  When there's something good about both versions and someone just happens to like one better than the other and I don't agree, I'm not going to argue about it.  I have trouble agreeing to disagree though when people say that outright bad movies are better than classic books, beloved by millions, with something important to say.

In reply to Silver_Cat (msg # 36):

Some people simply do not read, so in their case a poor movie may give them access to a classic story they would otherwise not be exposed to.  I suppose in that context the movie may be considered 'better' for some.

I do read, extensively and compulsively, but even I couldn't manage the LotR trilogy.  I did read the Hobbit once years ago, and don't have particularly fond memories of the struggle I recall, but I gave up a few pages into the trilogy.  I've occasionally had thoughts of trying again now that the movies had given me some idea of the story, but always seem to find something else to read instead.

In reply to Silver_Cat (msg # 36):

Oh, please don't mistake my statement.  A HUGE percentage of adaptations are rather ineptly handled, and in some cases, there are really poor adaptations of books that had precious little to offer in the first place (seriously, I've seen some films advertised and said to myself, 'Really?  Someone thought THAT was worth turning into a film?')  But when someone does a good adaptation of a good book, there's no objective measurement of whether the film is better than the book...they're different media and anyone who's a decent storyteller is going to focus on those parts of the story that work best for the medium in which they're working.  Some people will call the film better...some will call the book better...some will consider them both good within the limitations of their respective media.

And, occasionally, someone comes along and does a really awesome adaptation of a mediocre (or even bad) story...a film-maker reads a book and says, "Man...that had so much potential...I could do a better job of telling that story..."

And sometimes, the film-maker is actually right...

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 38):

The Notebook, perhaps?  Sparks is a cliche-ridden, formulaic writer, but a great cast made something of very little.

Possibly.  Having neither seen the movie nor read the book, I'm in no position to judge.  I was thinking more along the lines of the argument someone made above, about how Peter Benchley's writing was, at best, mediocre, and (by their description, at least) downright awful at worst...but 'Jaws' was adapted into one of the quintessential blockbusters of all time, and, even with the dated animatronic effects of the shark, it's still a gripping film.

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 40):

Dated animatronic effects?  Bruce the shark has held up better than any CGI I've ever seen.

He has...but the state-of-the-art in animatronics has come a VERY long way since the mid-70's.  And Bruce's teeth visibly fold over in a couple of shots when he's munching on Quint (better than actually biting him, I know, but if you've seen the movie enough times, it kind of jumps out at you).

There's a reason that Spielberg didn't show you the shark for most of the movie, and when he did show it, Bruce was mostly seen in short clips without enough time to take a good, long look.  I'm old-school...I pretty much always prefer physical effects over CGI, whenever possible...but Bruce is dated.

Sometimes I wonder if mediocre books that have a little something to offer are made into movies more because they don't have to worry about upsetting 1000s of fans...

For me, whilst I do prefer the book versions of things like LotR and Wizard of Oz; the movie versions do still have something to offer. Though I would never use the movie version of either to try to get someone into the books; because there are things, as stated, that happen in the movies (especially for LotR) that just don't happen in the books, and they'll be wondering when they're happening...

I disagree with probably 75% of the comments here (Starship Troopers?  The Giver?  Stardust?  A Christmas Carol?  LOTR?!), but I agree that the movie adaptations should be considered on their own and offer elements that the original books don't provide.   Having recently re-read The Wizard of Oz, I agree that the movie is in some ways superior to the book.  I'm not a terribly big fan of Jane Austen, although I do like Pride and Prejudice, but the Colin Firth adaptation hooked me in ways the book never did.  And although I adore the Princess Bride, both the book and the novel are equally satisfying to me.

Yes, you are correct; I was referring to the somewhat recent musical version of the movie. There were other movies and versions that were quite good. I actually thought the best portrayal of Jean ValJean was in an animate version.

Personally, I thought the problem with the musical movie was that they cast it with people whose talents were primarily as actors who had might have had some talent at singing, as opposed to singers who had some talent at acting. For an ordinary movie, they made the right decision. For a musical, not as much. :P


And Mad Mick, I will stand by some versions of Christmas Carol being better than the book. Certainly not all of them have been, but several have been. So, it seems we will simply have to disagree on this. ^_^