Just got done re-reading “The Loved One” by Evelyn Waugh, and was reminded that to me the movie captured essence of book better than actual book. anyone else find this?
I never read it, but i’ve Heard “The Godfather” is a good example of the movie being better than the book.
Maybe, although I liked the book a lot.
Being There was better than the book. And I don’t know if it counts since it’s a short story, but 2001: A Space Odyssey was better than the story it was based on, The Sentinel.
I like the Iron Giant movie better than the book.
Nudies Go Berserk. Such an improvement over the novel.
n/m
The Lord of the Rings trilogy
There, I said it.
The film “Delores Claiborne” with Kathy Bates was better than Stephen King’s novel Delores Claiborne.
It’s a statement that can seldom be said about a Stephen King novel. In fact most SK-based movies suck. This one is superlative.
And from the kiddie corner, the Disney movie “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” is actually much better than the dreary kid’s fantasy novel that I read back in 6th grade, “Bed-knob and Broom-stick”.
Granted, I did see The Prestige before I read the book but I thought the movie was much better. Maybe the twist just went off better visually than on paper, plus I thought it was one of Christian Bale’s best roles.
**Jaws **is a pretty popular example of this. They took a shark-attack book and made a real movie out of it.
Jurassic Park is another one, also from Spielberg, that is better than its book.
Jaws is much better than the book. They wisely jettisoned the Mafia subplot as well as Brodie’s wife and Matt Hooper having an affair and went simple. Shark. Man. Munch.
I must respectfully disagree that “most Stephen King based movies suck”. In my opinion, the two best answers to the OP’s question are “Stand By Me” and “Shawshank Redemption”, both of which are stories originally written by King.
I would also say that all three (Dolores Claiborne, Stand by Me & Shawshank Redemption) are better than average Stephen King movies because they stay close to the source material and are also some of his better works (IMHO).
Howard Hawks’ *To Have And Have Not *is far superior to the Hemingway novel. But, hey, you got Bogart, Bacall, Walter Brennan, and Hoagy Carmichael…it would just about have to be.
No, not by a long shot.
I have a feeling we’ve probably had a thread on this before, so I’ve probably given my standard answer - Sense and Sensibility, Emma Thompson version. She fixed a lot of problems with that book (excising superfluous characters, better character development of the ones that remain) to turn an ok but not great novel into a really good movie.
I believe Neil Gaiman’s Stardust was produced in both book and movie form at about the same time - I prefer the movie, though they’re both pretty good
I’d say the Harry Potter series. The movies dropped a lot of the subplots that I found annoying, like Hermione’s giant rights initiative (SPEW? I think?). The books are pretty good, but after the first couple, they got pretty bloated.
The movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit was much better than the novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?.
No way! The movie was fabulous, but the book was even better. I’ve read/seen both many, many times.
I’ve heard that Chuck Palahniuk (author of “Fight Club”) thought that the movie was better than his book. Not having read the book, I can’t offer an opinion, but if the author himself says so, that’s got to count for something.
The movie “Julie and Julia” was orders of magnitude better than the book.