Exhibit A: Christine.
I’d put The Shining in the class of books/movies that are both great, for differing reasons.
Hijack—
I am not a Steven King fan, never read the books, however, not only did I enjoy both movies, but in my travels I’ve found myself both touring the ancient prison where they filmed the one movie, and on the railroad bridge where they filmed the other. Go figure.
—Hijack.
I find your choice of The Andromeda Strain odd – that’s one of the closest cases of adaptation of the movie to the book I’ve seen. They changed the sex of one character (and ages before Alien – and not to an attractive, young female scientist, either! Take THAT!), but otherwise this is incredibly faithful. Why do you think the movie was better?
Gotta disagree with you on The Land that Time Forgot. But I have a low tolerance for rubber dinosaurs and Doug McClure. And the movie missed the whole Ontogeny/Phylogeny point of the Caspak books.
Ice Station Zebra is a perfect example of my law that moviemakers feel free to completely rewrite books for the films – if they’re SF or spy novels. There’s hardly any resemblance between this book and the movie with the same name. It’s like The Spy Who Loved Me or The Osterman Weekend.
There’s someone else who gets a lot of mention in this kind of thread, too. Hint: so far we’ve seen mentioned:
Dr. Strangelove
The Shining
Spartacus
Full Metal Jacket
I think you can also make a case for:
2001
A Clockwork Orange
Someone once told me that Kubrick specialized in taking mediocre books with interesting premises and turning them into stylish, excellent movies. While he’s not my favorite director, I can definitely see their point.
V for Vendetta, IMO, had a much better conspiracy plot in the book (the government wasn’t responsible for the apocalypse, making them much more interesting) and a much better ending in the movie (the “everyone becomes V” idea is much more fitting for Moore’s anarchist tendencies than the books vanguardian approach). I like each for different reasons.
An obscure one: Plague Dogs, by Richard Adams. The book is pretty good, but the movie’s excellent animation of the dogs brings them alive. And the book has a completely deus-ex-machina ending, which the movie wisely disposes of. I read the book first, and when I saw the movie and realized they were going to get rid of the last chapter, it felt like a wonderful, wonderful punch in the gut.
Daniel
Either we saw different versions, or you didn’t watch through the end of the credits. (Or my mind is playing tricks on me, again.)
I thought that at the end of the credits the dogs were shown coming back out of the surf on a small island where someone fishing on a dock brought them home, presumably for a dry off and a meal.
My wife and I both read the book in about '03 or '04 and really enjoyed it. Then when we saw the movie this year, enough time had passed that we had forgot all the little details that they probably changed, so we loved the movie, too. We agreed that they were equally good. I definitely can’t see why someone would say the movie was better, though. It was a really good book.
You can’t really use Spartacus to bolster your case. It’s not at all like his other movies. It was chjosen and produced by Kirk Douglas (who had worked with Kubrick on Paths of Glory, and got him, I think, as a replacement), not chosen and produced by Kubrick. The screenplay was by Dalton Trumbo, with no input from Kubrick. Trumbo, in fact, wrote lengthy critiques about the direction, which were implementred. Kubrick, for his part, apparently wasn’t thriled with Trumbo’s writing. I’m amazed (although glad) that he stayed with the production. Finally, Kubrick apparently had no hand in choosing the music, which is of major importance in his works. If you look at it, Spartacus doesn’t look or feel at all like a Kubrick film. It’s a great movie, one of my favorites, but it’s not at all typical of his works, for the reasons I give above.
I’ll take exception with that “mediocre books” crack, too. Arthur C. Clarke? Anthony Burgess? William Makepiece Thackeray? Vladimir Nabokov? Mediocre?
*Trainspotting. * One of those books that “could never be put on film,” and yet it was, wonderfully.
I found the movies (especially #1) to be better than the novels themselves. mario Puzo had a rather starnge writing style; he seemed to make the interesting stuff boring.
Otaku, I didn’t watch through the credits, so you may well be right. If so, that’s a load of suck: the story is much better ending where it did before the credits.
I’ve neither seen nor read Lolita, so I can’t comment on that. Clarke’s book frankly isn’t that interesting to me; he’s an okay write, but I don’t think that was his best, nor does his best impress me as much as that of many other sf writers. Burgess’s novel, again, was all right, but not as good as the movie. I didn’t mean it to be a crack, in any case.
As for Spartacus, I’ve not seen it either; I was more noting how often Kubrick works showed up in this thread. Again, he’s not my favorite director, so I’m not super-educated on him. Just thought it was interesting how often he adapts a book into a movie that many folks find superior to the book.
Daniel
Ditto (or tritto) for The Princess Bride, which is a all-time great movie but a so-so book. For some reason, quirky doesn’t always come across as well in print.
The movie ending of The African Queen was infinitely superior to that of the book. The book was flat and anti-climatic - the movie ending was perfect.
Movies and books are so different that a comparison is often difficult.
Regards,
Shodan
The fantastically absurd thing about that plot- it was originated for Boris Karloff’s The Mummy.
James Michener was an author I never particularly cared for as far as style and characterization. His books were impeccably researched- you could have written a doctoral thesis with the facts about a place he put in there- but his characters were often cardboard “just names with some historical and genealogical placement thrown in”, however the movies/miniseries based on his books were often good and better than the novels themselves as they fleshed out the characters.
Examples:
Hawaii- the movie takes about 1/5 or so of the novel and concentrates on the missionaries Abner and Jerusha Hale (Max von Sydow and Julie Andrews). The movie addresses the characters’ complicated relationship far better than the novels did. In the movie as in the book it’s an arranged marriage, they barely know each other, and Abner is a zealot even by the standards of other New England Calvinists, but in the book it takes for granted that Abner consummates his union without any qualms (not so in the movie- it takes Jerusha’s urging as Abner wishes to remain pure) and their marital relationship is explored deeper and portrayed as more complicated than in the novel (Abner feels his love [and jealousy] for Jerusha and their children is distancing him from God, while Jerusha grows to respect and love her husband but also finds him to be a judgmental and prejudiced tool in some ways as she grows to appreciate the “abomination” committing Alii Nui [a sort of regional queen who’s morbidly obese, married to her brother, and other things Abner will just never accept]). At the same time Abner is one of the few missionaries who never profits financially from the islanders and truly does, even in telling them they’re hell-bound, have only their best interests at heart, and becomes in some ways the staunchest white ally they have. Anyway, the characters are far more 3 dimensional in virtues and in flaws than they are in the book.
The same is true of the sequel, The Hawaiians, which also fleshes out characters from a small portion of the book (those who live in the time of Abner and Jerusha’s grandchildren) and gives a great spotlight on the marriage of Mun Chin and his concubine “Wu Chou’s Auntie” than exists in the book.
Centennial, a very long miniseries from the 1970s, also focused on the human relationship which were never Michener’s strong suit, beefing characters who were just names on paper into far more interesting people. (Of course I always liked anything that gave Chief Dan George a role.)
Get Shorty – I loved loved loved the film, so I picked up the book to see how much better it would be. I’m guessing it was horrible, because I simply cannot remember it. I have a vague recollection of being furious at how bad the ending was, but I couldn’t tell you a thing about it…apparently my brain has been kind enough to wipe out the details.
I came in here specifically to mention ‘Trainspotting’. Hated the book, and I thought the film was a vast improvement. I wouldn’t have seen it, having read it first, but for the presence of Rabbie Carlisle and Ewan McGregor.
The thing that bugged me about the book was that it wasn’t a novel, it was a collection of (derivative) short stories about the same group of characters. The film makers dropped a lot of unnecessary crap and made a through line out of it.
The only thing I miss from the book: we lost the point that the title came from running into Begby’s dad at the abandoned Leith Station. Trainspotting where you’re never going to see another train.
I prefer “A Place In The Sun” to Theodore Dreiser’s original novel, “An American Tragedy”. Dresier’s prose is just a little dense for my liking whereas the movie has great turns from Monty Clift and Shelley Winters.
I aso like “Bladerunner” better than “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
I also prefer both film versions of “Solaris” over the Lem novel. Maybe because the endless philosophy about the meaning of the planet got on my nerves a little and hence over emphasised the point. Also, the movies allowed me to fully appreciate the beautifully haunting images, especially in the 1972 (?) version. The ending, with the rain falling inside the house affected me in a way that just reading the description coudn’t do.
That wasn’t in the book? I love that movie, and I was under the impression it was pretty faithful.
Who would think that?
The Will Smith movie was just a turn-the–Hollywood-crank turd. The book had an interesting, flawed protagonist, and an infinitely superior ending, and “conceit” – the notion that the was the vampire’s vampire.
My nominations. . .
American Psycho was a better movie.
I agree that V for Vendetta was a better movie.
They both benefitted, essentially from having an editor. I thought the “V” graphic novel was scattershot, too many characters, too many themes. The movie took the good, and left the bad.
Who Framed Rodger Rabbit was infinitely better than Who Censored Rodger Rabbit. The producers bought the book for the basic idea and went a completely different way with it. The plots are completely unrelated.
Are you talking about The Odyssey by Homer?
Field of Dreams was much better than Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa. It cut some characters and gave it a much better ending.