# Is the book always more enjoyable than the movie? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 16, 2003, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224 "2003-12-16T01:04:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![The\_Long\_Road](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b5a626/32.png) [@The\_Long\_Road](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Long_Road)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/21 "2003-12-16T03:06:09Z")
The book _Independence Day_, based on the movie of the same name, was a horrid pile of stinking garbage. It was obviously written in about a week to capitalize on the movie’s publicity. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_of\_the\_CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/58956e/32.png) [@Earl\_of\_the\_CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_of_the_CC)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/22 "2003-12-16T03:44:55Z")
I must personally track down everyone who says The Godfather movie is better than the book and administer a test to see if they actually read the book. I bet most of them haven’t. It’s not even close. The book demolishes the movie. But that’s just my opinion. ---
**Author:** ![Bob55](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Bob55](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bob55)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/23 "2003-12-16T04:03:50Z")
Well definitely NOT _Starship Troopers_ (best book ever worst movie ever). ---
**Author:** ![Jadis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/87869e/32.png) [@Jadis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jadis)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/24 "2003-12-16T04:10:36Z")
_The Color Purple_ was a much better movie than a book, IMO. Also, I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard that the book version of _Forrest Gump_ was downright awful, and it was turned into a fairly acclaimed movie. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/25 "2003-12-16T04:25:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Jadis \* > \*\*Also, I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard that the book version of _Forrest Gump_ was downright awful, and it was turned into a fairly acclaimed movie. \*\* I haven’t read it either, but I’ve mostly heard that the book is about as good as the movie. Of course, I felt the movie was downright awful, so that’s not strong praise. But most of the people I know who really, really liked the movie also really, really liked the book. ---
**Author:** ![Avalonian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@Avalonian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Avalonian)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/26 "2003-12-16T04:49:26Z")
_Fearless_ is one of my all-time favorite movies, perhaps my favorite one. It has an emotional center that is rare in any medium, pareticularly in film. The novel has only a passing shadow of the power of the film. Strangely, the author and screenwriter are one and the same: Rafael Yglesias. Credit must go to Peter Weir for avoiding much of the dross of the novel and finding a great story. Also, I’m no big fan of the movie _Forrest Gump_, but I can say at least that it was definitely better than the book, which was at best a muddle. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/27 "2003-12-16T05:15:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Enright3 \* > \*\*I know that a lot of people agree with you on that, but I disagree. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the movie. It’s one of my top five of all time. What I thought the book brought out, that the movie didn’t as well, was how Michael was just like his father. He was cold and calculating, knew how to keep his emotions to himself. You knew in the beginning of the book that he was the right man to succeed his father. The other part I didn’t like was when the modernized the movie in regards to Michael’s wife. I’m a couple of years out on reading the book, but I believe that they pretty much left it at his wife going to mass and praying for his soul as his mother regularly went to mass to pray for Vito’s soul. That’s my most favorite book of all time. I’m trying to get my son interested in reading it. He’s 20 years old. I’m sure I had already read it half a dozen times by the time I was 20. ~sigh~ > > E3 \*\* I liked the book a lot, but I felt the book lost points because it had that entire section about Johnny Fontaine and his buddy in Hollywood that doesn’t really seem related to the story at hand. That and the movie had visual flair working in it’s favor, most notably the famous Baptism sequence. That’s not a comment on the book, but that the movie can do things that the book can’t really pull off. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/28 "2003-12-16T05:31:58Z")
I felt “Apocolypse Now” was a hell of a lot better then “Heart of Darkness”. ---
**Author:** ![Duderdude2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@Duderdude2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duderdude2)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/29 "2003-12-16T06:26:50Z")
_2001: A Space Odyssey_\* was better than the book (though they were equal up to the ending, at which point, thr book fell apart). ---
**Author:** ![Duderdude2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@Duderdude2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duderdude2)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/30 "2003-12-16T06:29:51Z")
What? Why the hell can’t I close an italic command with a cease bold one? Makes no sense I tell ya ---
**Author:** ![Odinoneeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/97f17d/32.png) [@Odinoneeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odinoneeye)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/31 "2003-12-16T08:11:10Z")
I usually find whichever comes first is the better product (usually). Novelizations of movies tend to be worse than the movie their based on (Funhouse by Dean Koontz is one exception) and the reverse is true for movies made of books. As for LOTR, I like the book Fellowship better, but liked the movie The Two Towers better, so it’s a toss up for me. Have to see ROTK for the winning vote. ---
**Author:** ![notquitekarpov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@notquitekarpov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/notquitekarpov)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/32 "2003-12-16T09:05:06Z")
Agree **2001: A Space Odyssey** was the book’s - well _short story_\*'s - equal. Interestingly Stanley Kubrick came out with his take on why books usually make bad movies without seriously radical trimming - he thought it had to do with how many scenes a 110 minute movie had, around 30? Check out how many episodes a book has - five to ten times that - which results in either long-winded pale immitations (whole LOTR film saga, IMHO) or total messes (Dune or Catch-22 anyone?). 2001: A Space Odyseey was based on a short story which was half the reason it filmed so well. ---
**Author:** ![BlackKnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb8c5e/32.png) [@BlackKnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlackKnight)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/33 "2003-12-16T09:11:26Z")
I thought “Fight Club” was a pretty decent book, but a very good movie. ---
**Author:** ![jovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/0ea827/32.png) [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/34 "2003-12-16T11:56:07Z")
I have not read the book but Russel Banks was apparently very pleased with Atom Egoyan’s rendition of _The Sweet Hereafter_. ---
**Author:** ![Caprese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a9a28c/32.png) [@Caprese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caprese)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/35 "2003-12-16T12:09:47Z")
I thought that the movie \*The English Patient[i/] was a distinct improvement on the book. The novel was too stream-of-consciousness for me. ---
**Author:** ![Caprese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a9a28c/32.png) [@Caprese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caprese)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/36 "2003-12-16T12:10:51Z")
oops I meant _The English Patient_ ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/37 "2003-12-16T12:30:30Z")
“Fight club” is much better as a movie than the book that was written - it seemed amateurish to me, the book, that is. Also, the ending, and hence the entire story, really, was a let down in the book. ---
**Author:** ![Trunk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/87869e/32.png) [@Trunk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trunk)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/38 "2003-12-16T12:56:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Herge \* > \*\* > The worst conversion of book to films that I have seen was probably American Psycho. > > Are there any well known examples of film makers producing a film that was more enjoyable than the book it was based on? \*\* That’s really funny you say this. When I saw the thread title, I immediately thought of American Psycho, because… that’s my fallback example of a movie that blew the book away. I thought the book was unreadable. On and on and on he rambled about the same stuff over and over. Whoever did the screenplay not only served as an adapter but did what an editor should have done in the first place: removed at least 50% of what’s in the book. How about **The Orchid Thief**? I never read the book, though. I read and saw **The Godfather**. It’s a movie that does a good job with good material. There are lots of movies that do a good job with bad material – the book **Jaws** is a mess. I have enjoyed both formats of **LOTR** a lot. Still, Peter Jackson isn’t doing much creatively except doing a great job of bringing the books to the screen. **The Long Goodbye** is one of my favorite movies, and probably better than the source. You could say that about a lot of the old _noir_ stuff based on pulp. ---
**Author:** ![Agrippina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8797f3/32.png) [@Agrippina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agrippina)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/39 "2003-12-16T13:04:52Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Trunk \* > \*\*I thought the book was unreadable. On and on and on he rambled about the same stuff over and over. Whoever did the screenplay not only served as an adapter but did what an editor should have done in the first place: removed at least 50% of what’s in the book. \*\* It was supposed to be that way in “American Psycho”, although I do agree with you. The point was to paint Patrick Bateman as an extremely shallow guy, more concerned with the different shampoos he used or the Whitney Huston CDs he listened to instead of the people he killed. I think the movie brought that side out far better than the book. I agree with the “Lord of the Rings” movies. I didn’t even like “FOTR” but liked it far more than the book. At least the movie got the point right away instead of going on and on with scenes of them walking and singing. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2003, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224/40 "2003-12-16T13:40:32Z")
The Committments is a better movie than novella. Roddy Doyle is a very funny guy, but that book in particular is a difficult read and does much better in a visual/dialogue format (the book is written in a lot of dialogue and lyrics). (Its probably an easier read if you read Irish English.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-book-always-more-enjoyable-than-the-movie/219224.md?page=3)