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It’s a cliche that movies are never as good as the books they are based on. It’s usually true. But not always. What are some of the movies you find superior to their source material? What makes them superior?

I’ll name a few:

The Godfather. The film is a classic. The book is ...an ‘airport thriller’. The film discards a lot of the extraneous crap from the novel and focuses on what makes the mafia interesting, the old world social bonds in a modern city, the evolution both personal and organizational of a mobster and the mob. It’s about family.

Die Hard. The protagonist in the novel is a retired anti-terrorism Chuck Norris type, suiting his daughter at a Christmas Party in an oil company’s skyscraper. The plot and many of the names remain the same, but everything about the main hero and villain is changed in the film to be more interesting.

The Princess Bride. If you are a fan of them film, avoid this book. Everything that is wholesome or heartwarming in the film is cynically mocked in the book. The book feels like the mean-spirited parody of the film. Even the wraparound story is just gross and uncomfortable.

Jurassic Park. I did not think so at the time, but on a later reread I found the book to be full of anti-science and unlikeable characters. The film is a bit schmaltzy, but tightly written and well-executed. Most readers would likely disagree with me.

Stand By Me ...Shawshank Redemption. This one is a twofer. Both were decent Stephen King stories that were cleaned up and tightened to make amazing films.

Last of the Mohicans. I think the film is merely “good”, but the book was just awful. Also, the book didn’t have an ace musical score.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Jurassic Park. I did not think so at the time, but on a later reread I found the book to be full of anti-science and unlikeable characters. The film is a bit schmaltzy, but tightly written and well-executed. Most readers would likely disagree with me.

I have to most emphatically disagree with you there. Yes, the movie was great, but the book is completely amazing, as is nearly everything I've read that was written by Michael Crichton. And the sequel novel is far better than the sequel movie (The Lost World).

The old Andromeda Strain movie came close to being better than the book, I have to admit. Still perhaps the most faithful film adaptation of a novel I've ever seen. Both the movie and the book are very dated these days (gotta remember, both came out in the early to mid '70s), but still worth checking out.

Yeah, I agree that Jurassic World the novel is significantly better than the movie, even though the movie is good.

My main problem with Crichton was his inability to end a book. The ending of Jurassic Park felt really anticlimactic, and Andromeda Strain was frustrating. Sphere was the book that made me stop reading Crichton.

Twilight.

Hear me out.

The movie sucks, but it's so bad it's good sometimes. Particularly the ludicrously overdone hair and make up, the stupid "I'm a monster' bit where he's twinkling in sun light, and Kristen Stewart's blank stare. She inadvertently turned her entire performance into a critique of how utterly vapid and empty Bella Swan is as a person.

The movie's actually kind of great if you choose to treat it as satire

Also:

Jaws, because I'm not sure anyone remembers it was book all anyone remembers is the movie.

American Psycho, was a book but again, the movie is way for famous.

Blade Runner, same.

The Godfather, there's a theme forming here.

Silence of Lambs, kind of feeling like a broken record.

There's actually a lot of these: Fight Club, Forest Gump, Psycho, Princess Bride, Little Women, Planet of the Apes, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Who Framed Rodger Rabbit, Shrek. I just feel like if there's a movie that people don't even know was a book because the movie is all anyone remembers the book probably didn't have much going for it XD

Going to say Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. This isn't a popular opinion as I know people who love it, but I found it a confusing mess. I have read some difficult sci-fi over the years but really had to knuckle down and drag myself through it, and still had absolutely no idea what was going on by the end. I thought the film by comparison was really well made and the script writers did a good job of corralling the storyline and characters into a palatable film.

 LordofHats wrote:
Twilight.

Hear me out.

The movie sucks, but it's so bad it's good sometimes. Particularly the ludicrously overdone hair and make up, the stupid "I'm a monster' bit where he's twinkling in sun light, and Kristen Stewart's blank stare. She inadvertently turned her entire performance into a critique of how utterly vapid and empty Bella Swan is as a person.

The movie's actually kind of great if you choose to treat it as satire

I always get ridiculed for saying this, but I actually think it's a really well made film. Not a particularly good film in terms of plotting and character, but I love the way it is filmed (with the grey/purple filter applied throughout), there is some really nice camerawork in it and it's got an awesome soundtrack. Had an awkward moment when someone I had just started going out with found the CD soundtrack in my car glove compartment, but soon managed to convince them that it was pretty good!

Also agree on Fight Club - the film is incredible, the book has a kind of stilted prose that I found to be almost unreadable (although I have spoken to other people who loved it, so horses for courses I guess).

Wow, I lot of stuff here I completely disagree with...

The Godfather: Loved the book, the movie bores me sleep. Literally. I think I have never finished watching it.

Jurassic Park: While the movie is good, I would say it stands at the same level as the book.

American Psycho: The book is just insane. And I found myself involuntarily chuckling along to the main characters perverse sexual and/or violent outburst. Far more often than I was comfortable with. Germany had the book on the index for a few years before it was revoked (meaning no ads, no shelf space and only sold to adults on request), and it's the first time ever I agreed with something being put on there. The movie is good and Bale's performance is outstanding, but it's very different to the book.

Blade Runner: movie and book are completely different. The book is from the 60s, and wouldn't have translated into a movie at all. Still wouldn't say the movie is better, because it's missing quite a bit themes from the book like the religious and animal stuff.



Upon thinking about the topic, I have very little overlap between books I've read and movie adaptations I've seen, it's usually one or the other. In cases where I have read the book and seen the movie, the book either beats the movie, or the adaptation is so very different, that I couldn't say I liked one or the other more.

I could only come up with one, where I think the movie is actually better:
The Mist: adaptation of a Stephen King short story, that solidly builds on the foundation but the cynical ending improves the original story by a lot.

Disagree on Jaws. The movie is awful. The book has issues, but is far superior.

Blade Runner, though... The movie isn't one I particularly enjoyed, but the story it is based on is, like much of Philip K Dick's work, nigh on incomprehensible.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
My main problem with Crichton was his inability to end a book. The ending of Jurassic Park felt really anticlimactic, and Andromeda Strain was frustrating. Sphere was the book that made me stop reading Crichton.

It feels like he just gets bored towards the end and dashes something off to get it done. Every single book.

 insaniak wrote:
Disagree on Jaws. The movie is awful. The book has issues, but is far superior.

Blade Runner, though... The movie isn't one I particularly enjoyed, but the story it is based on is, like much of Philip K Dick's work, nigh on incomprehensible.

Everything I’ve ever heard or seen says that Philip K Dick came up with great ideas that need to be handed to someone more...sane...to develop into actual stories.

My problem with Jurassic Park the book is the talking head that is Ian Malcolm. In the movie he is his own character with a distinct place in the cast but in the book he is literally just there to spout the authors own point of view at the reader. It's almost anime levels of bad how he is just there to exposition with an agenda.

 Hanskrampf wrote:


American Psycho: The book is just insane. And I found myself involuntarily chuckling along to the main characters perverse sexual and/or violent outburst. Far more often than I was comfortable with. Germany had the book on the index for a few years before it was revoked (meaning no ads, no shelf space and only sold to adults on request), and it's the first time ever I agreed with something being put on there. The movie is good and Bale's performance is outstanding, but it's very different to the book.

I think they're both amazing. Impossible to say which one is better.

 Hanskrampf wrote:

Blade Runner: movie and book are completely different. The book is from the 60s, and wouldn't have translated into a movie at all. Still wouldn't say the movie is better, because it's missing quite a bit themes from the book like the religious and animal stuff.

Dick is my favorite writer and I have most of his novels but Electric Sheeps is not one of his best, while Blade Runner is among the best movies in history.

 Hanskrampf wrote:

The Mist: adaptation of a Stephen King short story, that solidly builds on the foundation but the cynical ending improves the original story by a lot.

I totally agree about this.

I know I'll sound unpopular about this but:

The Lord of the Rings: movies are wonderful but I've never been fond of the books. I consider them boring in too many parts. The Hobbit novel is far better than the adaptations though.

Fight Club: the book is kinda fun to read, but the movie is amazing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jadenim wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Disagree on Jaws. The movie is awful. The book has issues, but is far superior.

Blade Runner, though... The movie isn't one I particularly enjoyed, but the story it is based on is, like much of Philip K Dick's work, nigh on incomprehensible.

Everything I’ve ever heard or seen says that Philip K Dick came up with great ideas that need to be handed to someone more...sane...to develop into actual stories.

He's my favorite writer.

Actually just a few of his novels are hard to understand. Most of his work is actually pretty linear. Maybe the lack of real protagonists (typically there's 4-5 of them in each novel, ala A song of Ice and Fire) is something many readers consider an obstacle.

Of all those listed the only one I specifically remember reading before I saw the move was Jaws. I think the book was OK, but the movie did an excellent job of clearing the clutter of the book. Sure, you have to and every movie must, but sometimes they hint at book plot points that they do not have time to flesh out and that is just annoying. Also, sometimes an iterative explanation in a book might be good reading, but translates into crap onscreen, so change away to make the movie better; if it does.

Books are supposed to be much more demonstrative in the storytelling, because, hey, it's a book! I think it is clearly the success or failure of the movie on what it does with the content.

Starship Troopers. I read the book after seeing the movie, and loved them both for very different reasons. They are VERY different stories told in very different ways. And while the book was great, I've never felt the need to revisit it, but the movie I go back and watch again every few years and still love it just as much. The book may have been technically better, but the movie was the perfect mix of awesome and fun. I love how seriously everybody treats the incredibly goofy aspects of the movie. I don't think it would work at all as a normally shot film, it's too ridiculous, but by using the over-the-top propaganda commercials to break up the scenes and frame around the story it gives it just the perfect amount of 4th-wall breaking, you get that constant wink at the audience. The sequels all completely missed that mark, but the original Verhouven film hits it just right.

I do wish we'd gotten the powered mech suits, but I'm willing to accept not having them due to the technical limitations of 1997

 insaniak wrote:
Disagree on Jaws. The movie is awful. The book has issues, but is far superior.

Blade Runner, though... The movie isn't one I particularly enjoyed, but the story it is based on is, like much of Philip K Dick's work, nigh on incomprehensible.

Oooohh Blade Runner is a good one here. Loved the movie, but "do androids dream of electric sheep" was a mess, I even listened to that one on decently narrated audio, and was left stunningly underwhelmed.

I prefer the experience of the Harry Potter stories from the films over the books, even if the books are essentially required to appreciate everything in the films. The only two major exceptions for me are:

Azkaban cuts out way too much of the "your parents were once dumb kids just like you" subplot that becomes critical to the "you've grown to be the people you idolized at the start" structure of the conclusion.

The final duel with Voldemorte is really only interesting in the books because "talking is a free action" that allows the reader to be surprised to learn Harry had won before they even started. The movie can't replicate that in a satisfying way.

Otherwise, I mostly find the books to be enjoyable in the same way I enjoy deep diving into Wookiepedia, but the movies do a better job of hitting the beats of the story.

I don’t really consider Starship Troopers to be an adaptation of the book. They’re almost opposites of each other.


But yeah, that movie is a modern classic in a way that even the book isn’t.

 Blackie wrote:
I know I'll sound unpopular about this but:
The Lord of the Rings: movies are wonderful but I've never been fond of the books. I consider them boring in too many parts.

THANK YOU!! I'm with you on this. I love, love, love the movies and as a result I tried picking up the books to read once. I made it I think about 30 pages in before I got bored of having various varieties of tree described to me - if I wanted that, I'd have picked up a textbook.

Good call on LotR, I've tried many times to read it both in book and audiobook format and furthest I could ever make it was the forest after Gandalf falls to the Balrog. LOVE the movies, love the videogames and the tabletop game and watched hours and hours and hours of behind the scenes and making ofs and youtube lore videos, spent hours bouncing around the wiki articles, but the book is just kinda awful. I can appreciate it being the birth of modern fantasy and I know all the the work and care and love Tolkien poured into the book and the history and world and the languages, but the movies are where my LotR love begins. Looking forward to the Amazon series.

The Hobbit is a much easier read. If you care for RPG background hooks, you’d probably like the Silmarillion, too. LOTR is undeniably tedious, but I can’t really say I rate the movies higher than the books.


On a similar note, however, I have to give the Harry Potter films a reluctant thumbs up. Some of the books are better than the movies, but by Order of the Phoenix the balance shifts for me.

Either way, the HP series ends less with a triumph than a “glad that’s all wrapped up.”

 Super Ready wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
I know I'll sound unpopular about this but:
The Lord of the Rings: movies are wonderful but I've never been fond of the books. I consider them boring in too many parts.

THANK YOU!! I'm with you on this. I love, love, love the movies and as a result I tried picking up the books to read once. I made it I think about 30 pages in before I got bored of having various varieties of tree described to me - if I wanted that, I'd have picked up a textbook.

Tolkien had a wonderful imagination and crafted an amazing world, but mother of god did the dude need an editor.

Nobody cares about the leaf atop a twig beneath the shadow of the oak upon who's roots the party tread. There's huge swathes of descriptive text that just end up being visual noise, disrupting the pace and narrative. He also does dumb stuff like devoting a huge number of pages to the oldest and one of the most powerful characters in the lore, only for the character to come off as goofy comic-relief and be largely irrelevant to everything else in the story and lore (looking at you Mr. Bombadil).

The Lord of the Rings can definitely be a slog.

If I can cheat a little - The Terror is an absolutely dreadful book full of not just racism and sexism and the rest but
weird racism and sexism and the rest, while the TV show is one of the best shows of the last ten years. It's roughly faithful to the machinery of the same story, but makes so much more use of its characters and events.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
On a similar note, however, I have to give the Harry Potter films a reluctant thumbs up. Some of the books are better than the movies, but by Order of the Phoenix the balance shifts for me.
Either way, the HP series ends less with a triumph than a “glad that’s all wrapped up.”

Funny you should mention OotP in particular... my girlfriend was dead set on finishing the books before she watched the movies, but eventually caved and switched when she got stuck on that book for almost a year. She just couldn't be bothered to keep reading it because - and I quote - "Harry's just such a whiny brat".
That was almost a year ago now that we finished watching the rest of the movies, and she hasn't picked the books back up since.

 Super Ready wrote:

Funny you should mention OotP in particular... my girlfriend was dead set on finishing the books before she watched the movies, but eventually caved and switched when she got stuck on that book for almost a year. She just couldn't be bothered to keep reading it because - and I quote - "Harry's just such a whiny brat".
That was almost a year ago now that we finished watching the rest of the movies, and she hasn't picked the books back up since.

Give Rowling her due, for all the issues with the HP books, she did a masterful job of writing authentic teenagers. But yes, it makes several of the books really tough to read without throwing them at the wall. Goblet of Fire was the hardest going, for me, with the movie being much easier to sit through.


I would also agree that the LotR movies are a much easier experience than the books, although I don't know that this necessarily makes them better. Wandering off the story for a bit of world building can be ok if you're in the mood for that sort of thing. The biggest problem with the LotR for me is that Tolkien just didn't know when to stop. The villain has been defeated, good has triumphed... and yet for some reason there's another 500 pages of everyone packing up and going home. You don't need to wrap everything up in a bow before you call the book done, dude. The movie definitely does a better job there.

On the other hand, the movies also accentuate the fact that the ring, the Ringwraiths, and Sauron himself never really actually do anything.

 Super Ready wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
I know I'll sound unpopular about this but:
The Lord of the Rings: movies are wonderful but I've never been fond of the books. I consider them boring in too many parts.

THANK YOU!! I'm with you on this. I love, love, love the movies and as a result I tried picking up the books to read once. I made it I think about 30 pages in before I got bored of having various varieties of tree described to me - if I wanted that, I'd have picked up a textbook.

I actually like the books, but can understand this viewpoint. Less about trees than linguistics though.
But the exact opposite is true of the Hobbit. The book is much better (and more readable/viewable) than the films. Those are just a mess.
The book doesn't get bogged down and is happy to skip past sections that have feth-all to do with the theoretical protagonist.

BobtheInquisitor wrote:The Princess Bride. If you are a fan of them film, avoid this book. Everything that is wholesome or heartwarming in the film is cynically mocked in the book. The book feels like the mean-spirited parody of the film. Even the wraparound story is just gross and uncomfortable.

Very much yes. There are things to not like about the film, but the book is wretched and wallows in being wretched.
Just for further information for people who don't believe it (or don't want to) and shouldn't put them through the experience firsthand, the 'wraparound' story is the author complaining about his family life, the moral of which is his son is fat and stupid, and the author bitterly regrets not cheating on his wife when he had the chance.

LOTR might be excessively verbose, but the movies get so many things wrong. Thematically they are arguably not even the same story.

I really enjoyed the films when they came out, but I couldn't be buggered to watch them again.

That's pretty fair. Two Towers was especially aggravating for thematic missteps.

I still can not figure out why Peter Jackson could have possibly thought Aragorn needed an overly melodramatic fake death to a random dog in the middle of a pointless travel scene to the next plot location.

And then Faramir, who inexplicably was a 'tense melodrama' Boromir Mark 2, rather than his opposite. And then after all the build up, jumped back on script so the plot could continue.

Voss wrote:
That's pretty fair. Two Towers was especially aggravating for thematic missteps.

I still can not figure out why Peter Jackson could have possibly thought Aragorn needed an overly melodramatic fake death to a random dog in the middle of a pointless travel scene to the next plot location.

And then Faramir, who inexplicably was a 'tense melodrama' Boromir Mark 2, rather than his opposite. And then after all the build up, jumped back on script so the plot could continue.

I was very annoyed after seeing the theatrical cut, because Faramir is my favourite character in the book, but the special edition pretty much redeems it entirely for me by showing the broken relationship with Denethor and how much pressure that puts on him to do what is expected, not what he knows is right.

I love the book of LotR, so it’s hard for me to say the film is “better”, but it did cross my mind before it was mentioned here, because the films are more “fun”? Not sure if that’s the right word, but can’t think of a better one right now. Certainly I rate the films as some of the best cinema ever made and I can appreciate why some people would rate them above the books.

Better is a tricky thing here
as the problem is what someone wants from a movie

Lord of the Rings are good movies (while the Hobbit is not), but they are not good in re-telling the book
yet there are fan-edits that use the extended material to cut out everything that was different and fill the gabs

Similar with Dune (1974) as it is a good movie, Lynch just did not care much for the source material (as he had never read it) and changed things were he thought it may look stupid on screen
(and needed to cut stuff down as the producers wanted a shorter movie, hence I recommend SpiceDivers Fan-Edit on Youtube were the additional material from the TV cut was used to make a 3 hour version)

Starship Troopers is a good example as well
the movie was first just a movie as the people realised that their idea is similar to an existing book, claim the rights for it and just changed names on their existing script
the movie is bad at re-telling the story of the book, but a very well made (satirical) approach on the theme of a militarised/facist future

Harry Potter is difficult, as the first movies are good and kind of better than the books, but later the movies did not use parts of the books that were essential for the plot in the book after that and things needed to change there too, which made the Half Blood Prince the worst movie, although I consider it the best book.

What movies can do that make them better than the source is to add music which gives everything a different theme and adds something the books will always be missing
and a good music theme very much makes the difference if a movie is "as good or better than the book but different" while no music or bad one will make the book the better one

LoTR - it's a book that is a product of the time at which it was written, I think something that a lot of people forget when they are reading it.

It's very similar if you try and read Mary Shelley, HG Wells etc. or even if you go into classical literature. Writing, like many aspects of life, has changed along with societal and linguistic evolution.

I read it as a teenager, tried again recently and definitely struggled. I think you have to treat it like you would any other classical text; be it something like the Iliad, Crime and Punishment, or Anna Karenina. It's not something that I would say is a 'light' read you can relax and read just before you fall asleep after a hard day at work, it takes some concentration and a dedicated effort to appreciate fully (at least that is what I have found).