Back when I was little, after Jurassic Park came out back in the day, I dove into a bunch of Micheal Chrichton books. One of which was Congo . I LOVED this book, and when I later heard it was going to be a movie, I was super excited to see it.
Even at 13 years old, I could tell that movie was horrible, and I swore I’d never see another movie after I had read the book.
Fast foward to 2003, I was at Border’s and saw The Da Vinci Code on prominent display and gave it a chance. I was hooked and read the book in a little over 2 days. After it blew up in the media, they announced they were making a movie out of it. I thought, well, I’ll wait til the DVD comes out and then check it out.
So after watching it on DVD, I once again renewed my promise never to see a movie if I had already read the book. I’m tired of getting my hopes up from a great book, only to see a film-maker leave me dissappointed.
So are there any movies out there that are actually BETTER than the book they were based on? I had a friend who read Fight Club after seeing the movie, and he said he thought the movie was actually better than the book (he had crappy reading habits in general though.
So I turn to Dopers to help suggest a movie made from a best-selling (even non-best selling) book, wherein the movie was actually noticably better than the book it was based on.
Though not based on a traditional “book”, I thought the movie “V for Vendetta” was way better than the graphic novel/comics it was based on. After seeing the movie, I read the graphic novel and was pretty disappointed. But it definitely gave me an appreciation for how much better the movie was.
I fully expect to be flamed for this, but I thought the movies of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy were better than the books. Sure the books flesh out the scenes a lot more, and there were scenes/episodes that were left out of the movie. But the basic fact is that Tolkein didn’t write action well. Whereas the action sequences of the movies were riveting.
BTW, you picked one of the ultimate examples of destroying what could have been a fantastic movie based on a book: “Congo”. When I read the book, I could almost see the scenes as if it were a movie. Yet the movie was one of the worst of all time (not just of a book adaptation).
I read No Country for Old Men after seeing the movie. Maybe it affected my judgment, seeing the movie first, but IMHO the movie made a lot more narrative sense than the book.
I haven’t read Candace Bushnell, but many people say that Sex and the City (the series) was much better than the book(s) (Was there just one?).
I think Misery was a better movie than it was a book—and I liked the book an awful lot. I also think Stand By Me was better than The Body, and again, I liked the novella an awful lot.
I think the movie version of “The Maltese Falcon” was way better than the Dashiell Hammett novel. Indeed, the Dashiell Hammett novel is IMPROVED by the movie, because as you read it, you can’t help but hear Bogart, Greenstreet and Lorre saying the lines, and making the dialogue sound a lot crisper than it is.
Opinions will vary on this one, but I think W.P. Kinsella is an unbearably smug and mean-spirited writer. Hence, I think the movie “Field of Dreams” was a lot warmer, more human and just plain better than the novel “Shoeless Joe.”
The movie version of Goldfinger follows the book pretty closely, but the biggest difference is in Goldfinger’s plan at Fort Knox. In the book, he really does plan to take the gold away. He has a small army of men, and plans to take the gold away by truck and train. In the movie, Bond explains how difficult that would be, and Goldfinger drops his bombshell (sorry) about how he’s not planning to steal the gold at all. It’s a great surprise, it raises the stakes, and Gert Frobe plays it so well. It’s better than the book.
Except, once I thought about it some, I’m not sure it made sense. The idea is that by destroying the supply at Fort Knox, the rest of his gold will be worth signifigantly more. He shouldn’t care about that. He says it himself; he loves gold, its brilliance, its devine heaviness. He cares about gold, itself, not what he can buy with it. It seems against his nature to blow it up.
Now, to submit the reply before CalMeacham gets here.
The one movie that I always think of when this topic comes up is About a Boy. It’s a fun little book that you mostly forget about once you are done reading it. It’s a neat story, and the characters are great, but the ending seems to go on forever and really doesn’t go anywhere worth going. On the other hand, the film has a perfect ending that ties everything together really well. Hugh Grant was great, Toni Collete was her usual excellent self and an amazingly good soundtack all made the movie shine much brighter than the book ever could.
I liked the movie of The Princess Bride better than the book. I saw the movie first, years ago, and have loved it ever since. I finally got around to reading the book a couple years ago and thought it was pretty good but nowhere near as fantastic as the movie.
yeah I really did read the book when I was younger, my god did it suck, of course it would have to to make the movie better but it was.
Fight Club I think was a better movie but I did see the movie first, however the book ending would have been a billion times better than the movie one.
Ditto. Did you also read those books after seeing the movie? Usually people prefer whichever one they experience first, even if they don’t consciously realize it. I think that’s an overlooked reason why books are so frequently considered better than the movie; they typically come out years before. The movie never comes first (with rare exceptions like Star Wars novelizations.)
For me, it’s one that was already listed: Starship Troopers. Even as a Heinlein fan, I was utterly bored by the book. I really like the movie, though.
The Witches of Eastwick was an awesome bit of fun as a movie. However, the book was hard labour. Admittedly - I stopped reading it after the 50th mention of spaghetti sauce and I was only up to page 16.
I enjoyed the film of About Schmidt much more than the book. (Not that they resembled each other at all. About all that was left of the book in the film version was the title.)
I absolutely agree with this. The books were almost unreadably slow for me, but the movies only had small, infrequent down-times. I actually came in here to say the same thing you did.
ETA: I read the books before I saw the movie. I was annoyed at how they resolved some issues in the movies differently than in the books, but overall I still much preferred the movies.
