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.
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.
Well definitely NOT Starship Troopers (best book ever worst movie ever).
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.
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.
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.
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.
I felt “Apocolypse Now” was a hell of a lot better then “Heart of Darkness”.
2001: A Space Odyssey* was better than the book (though they were equal up to the ending, at which point, thr book fell apart).
What? Why the hell can’t I close an italic command with a cease bold one? Makes no sense I tell ya
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.
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.
I thought “Fight Club” was a pretty decent book, but a very good movie.
I have not read the book but Russel Banks was apparently very pleased with Atom Egoyan’s rendition of The Sweet Hereafter.
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.
oops
I meant The English Patient
“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.
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.
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.
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.)