# Instances of the movie actually improving on the book **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 9, 2004, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200 "2004-04-09T17:37:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![CairaJade](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f04885/32.png) [@CairaJade](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairaJade)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/41 "2004-04-10T02:49:13Z")
> [@](#): > > I don’t remember the moving staircases being in the Harry Potter books, but they were certainly a great touch. They were certainly in the books. They were completely different in the movie from how I imagined them too. I imagined that the staircases were a bit more “sneaky,” changing when no one was looking so subtly confuse everyone. I didn’t visualize a large multi-story hall, but still, it was quite cool to see someone else’s vision. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![jackelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@jackelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackelope)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/42 "2004-04-10T02:52:15Z")
Two examples from Elmore Leonard: _Out of Sight_ and _Jackie Brown_. Both were good books, but both were _great_ movies, thanks largely to the direction of Steven Soderbergh and Tarantino, respectively. I know there’s contention about these two, especially _Jackie Brown_, but I loved both of them. _Out of Sight_ is in my top ten films of the 90s. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/43 "2004-04-10T02:58:16Z")
> [@lissener](#): > > \*Starship Troopers the Book \* is a mediocre genre piece; \*Starship Troopers the Film \* is a viciously effective, multilayered satire on the warmongering dark side of the American psycho. Scuse me, _psyche_. Not this banal inanity again… :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/44 "2004-04-10T03:08:15Z")
In _Goldfinger_ the novel, the title character plans to use a small nuke to blow open the gold depository at Fort Knox and rob the place. In the movie, Sean Connery rightfully dismisses this idea as patently stupid and then learns the modified plan is to detonate the nuke _inside_ the depository, in order to destroy/irradiate the gold, causing economic upheaval in the U.S. as well as making Goldfinger’s own gold reserves more valuable. ---
**Author:** ![pool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pool/32/4152_2.png) [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/45 "2004-04-10T03:10:20Z")
Originally posted by lissener: > [@](#): > > Which reminds me: American Psycho the Book is a mediocre genre piece with a mildly interesting pomo twist; American Psycho the Film is a viciously effective, multilayerd satire on the metaphorical violence behind the American capitalist dream. Are you fucking kidding me? I think maybe you have mixed the two up. While the movie is very good and Christian Bale gives a great performance,the movie pales before the genius of the book. Although the movie is largely narrated by Patrick Bateman it is not completely, but in the book you experience everything he experiences through his eyes, and slowly pick up the subtle nuances at the beginning of the book that “hey wait a minute, I think this guy is a complete sociopath”. And the book does the nearly impossible job of making you feel sympathy for the main character while the movie just falls short. The movie might as well have a G rating compared to the brutal “in your face” frankness that the book delivers. ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/46 "2004-04-10T03:23:34Z")
Disney’s _The Little Mermaid_. Much better than the original Andersen tale. ---
**Author:** ![plankter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ba0ec/32.png) [@plankter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plankter)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/47 "2004-04-10T03:56:40Z")
_Contact_ the movie was a huge improvement over Carl Sagan’s novel. I’m a passionate defender of the film (and a devoted fan of Sagan’s nonfiction), but I wouldn’t recommend the book to anyone. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/48 "2004-04-10T04:24:36Z")
The Choirboys. The movie was really funny, the book more realistic and much less funny because of it. ---
**Author:** ![Jenaroph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e8c25b/32.png) [@Jenaroph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jenaroph)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/49 "2004-04-10T04:48:08Z")
Nobody’s mentioned _The Princess Bride_ yet. I thought it was a very well done adaptation; it cut the unimportant stuff and kept all the great stuff. Which, interestingly, is what the book (very good in its own right) purports to do. Would that make the story twice-distilled? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/50 "2004-04-10T04:54:23Z")
_Hannibal_ the movie had a better ending than the book. ---
**Author:** ![Kyomara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8edcca/32.png) [@Kyomara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyomara)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/51 "2004-04-10T05:07:13Z")
> [@Chastain86](#): > > You shut your dirty mouth. Now, now… I know it has its fans, but the whole time I was reading it I kept thinking “this guy only wrote this book so that someone would make a movie out of it.” It felt really sloppy to me. ---
**Author:** ![Kyomara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8edcca/32.png) [@Kyomara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyomara)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/52 "2004-04-10T05:09:32Z")
By the way, the above post refers to _Fight Club_. Forgot to add any reference to that. Also, someone mentioned _A Clockwork Orange_. I don’t remember whether the movie was necessarily better, but I was very disappointed by the book, especially the ending. It seemed as though the author just got tired and looked for some easy way to end the story. Made me feel like I’d been fooled. ---
**Author:** ![Tentacle\_Monster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba9def/32.png) [@Tentacle\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tentacle_Monster)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/53 "2004-04-10T05:46:12Z")
My, fast-moving thread. For the record, I haven’t seen _Manhunter_, and I thought the book _Hannibal_ was superior to the movie in every aspect, including the ending. Hey, I got a soft spot for the old psycho. ---
**Author:** ![Coulbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Coulbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coulbean)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/54 "2004-04-10T06:15:17Z")
> [@Bippy the Beardless](#): > > Please don’t mention ‘Red Dragon’ when ‘Manhunter’ had a similar idea first. Red Dragon and Manhunter were both based on the same book (Red Dragon), so of course they are similiar. Manhunter came first and was way ahead of its time. Red Dragon more closely sticks to the book, whereas Manhunter left out a few things and kind of diverged from the book as the movie went a long. However, it should be mentioned that Red Dragon would never have been made, IMO, if it weren’t for the success of Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. They were feeding on the popular desire to see more Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal (Who was played by a different actor in Manhunter.) ---
**Author:** ![Abbie\_Carmichael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/49beb7/32.png) [@Abbie\_Carmichael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abbie_Carmichael)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/55 "2004-04-10T06:18:15Z")
Forrest Gump was the worst POS book ever written, yet the movie was pretty good (although too long, IMHO). I had to fight to finish the book, that’s how bad it was. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/56 "2004-04-10T07:00:55Z")
> [@Kyomara](#): > > Also, someone mentioned _A Clockwork Orange_. I don’t remember whether the movie was necessarily better, but I was very disappointed by the book, especially the ending. It seemed as though the author just got tired and looked for some easy way to end the story. Made me feel like I’d been fooled. The ending of the movie was certainly less conventional than that of the book, but it does change the meaning of the work in what strikes me as a self-contradictory way. If Alex is an unredeemable violent sociopath who will not and cannot possibly change of his own free will, then I don’t see how the government was wrong in what they did to him. The movie comes across to me as actually _supporting_ mind-control experiments on prisoners – it’s the only chance we have of modifying their behavior! I don’t think this was Kubrick’s intent, but that was the feeling I got from it. That said, many people do prefer the ending of the movie to that of the book. Or rather, the ending of the full-length, 21-chapter book. The old American edition had the last chapter chopped off, and that truncated version is the one Kubrick chose to base the film on. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Mapp](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miss_mapp/32/369_2.png) [@Miss\_Mapp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Mapp)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/57 "2004-04-10T12:16:20Z")
I know I’ve done this before, although I didn’t see my post in the old thread linked on the first page. Anyway, two of my favorite films that improve on the book are, IMHO: _The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie_, based on Muriel Spark’s novel. The book has a rather more episodic feel to it; things happen, and don’t have anything to do with the main plot. Sandy’s and Jenny’s imagined love letter from Miss Brodie to Mr. Lowther, for example: in the book, it gets buried under a rock and is never seen again; in the movie, it’s found years later to create crises in the relationships between Miss Brodie and Mr. Lowther, and between Miss Brodie and the headmistress (plus, the scene where the headmistress reads the letter aloud to the two is one of the funniest in the film). Also, there are six schoolgirls in the novel, but only four girls in the film, which helps to focus the story on a smaller group. The combining of some of the girls’ characteristics also gives the less developed ones a little more depth: pretty Jenny is merged with Rose, “who is known for sex,” and hopeless Mary MacGregor is also the girl who runs off to get killed in Spain. _Maurice_, based on E.M. Forster’s novel. Another episodic story gets pulled into a stronger narrative focus on film. The key improvement to me here is in the character of Clive. In the book, he just sort of turns straight and loses interest in Maurice. In the film, he’s terrified when one of his also-gay friends is arrested for picking up a man in a bar and, like Oscar Wilde, sent to prison; after that, Clive dumps Maurice, goes into the closet, and gets married, which seems much more plausible to me than his suddenly having a different sexuality for no reason. ---
**Author:** ![Chastain86](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Chastain86](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chastain86)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/58 "2004-04-10T17:57:55Z")
> [@Kyomara](#): > > Now, now… > > I know [_Fight Club_] has its fans, but the whole time I was reading it I kept thinking “this guy only wrote this book so that someone would make a movie out of it.” It felt really sloppy to me. Thought you might enjoy this quote… > [@](#): > > The fact that “Fight Club” was made at all is credited to the late Fox executive Raymond Bongiovanni, who headed the New York office of Fox 2000, and sent the book to Ziskin and her then top executive Kevin McCormick (now at Warner Bros.) in the fall of 1995. > “Raymond called us one morning and said he had been up all night reading this book and we should read it,” said Ziskin, recalling how 36 hours later she was sitting “on the edge of my bed in the middle of the night reading dialogue out loud to (her screenwriter husband) Alvin (Sargent), thinking ‘this is amazing.’” > A week later when Fox optioned the book for $10,000, Ziskin admits, “Quite honestly, I didn’t know how we’d make the movie, but I did think at the very least that underground fighting was a commercial idea.” [Cite](http://www.s-t.com/daily/10-99/10-18-99/c01ae309.htm) So in truth, nobody was really sure **how** Fight Club was going to be made into a movie. Kind of defeats the idea that the book was written specifically to **be** a movie. No offense intended for my earlier (snarky) comment. It was meant in good fun. ---
**Author:** ![hazel-rah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/73ab20/32.png) [@hazel-rah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hazel-rah)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/59 "2004-04-10T19:47:25Z")
I notice nobody’s mentioned _The Passion_ yet. ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200/60 "2004-04-10T20:37:22Z")
I think the ending of _The Color Purple_ was more believable in the movie than in the book. I just couldn’t see how Celie could have forgiven Mr. after all he did to her. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/instances-of-the-movie-actually-improving-on-the-book/239200.md?page=4)