# movie better than book? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 17, 2020, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005 "2020-05-17T23:09:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/82 "2020-05-19T23:57:25Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I disagree on both points. > > I’ll spoiler this even though we’re talking about a story that was published in 1944 and a TV show that was broadcast in 1967. > > On the enemies: > > [spoiler]I feel the Gorn (from the TV show) were set up as more interesting characters. The show made them initially look like pure evil. But by the end of the show, we learned that they were just an ordinary alien race, no better or worse than humans, who had their own legitimate claims from their viewpoint. In Star Trek’s expanded canon, the Gorn end up being a close ally of the Federation. > > I feel this is much better than Good Guys fighting Bad Guys, with the Outsiders being nothing more than a stereotype of evil who literally torture small animals.[/spoiler] > > On how the hero won: > > [spoiler]Another area where I feel the TV show did a better job. I liked the idea of Kirk winning the fight by making some gunpowder and building a small cannon. It showed that he won by using his brain. > > Carson won because of luck. If the alien hadn’t tortured the lizard, if the lizard had remained conscious, if the lizard had died, if the alien hadn’t thrown the lizard through the barrier, if the lizard had died before Carson found it, if the other lizard hadn’t approached Carson - any one of those would have broken the chain of random events that led Carson to the solution to his problem. Along with his luck in being able to knock himself unconscious just long enough to get through the barrier but not long enough for the alien to kill him. > > Carson won because he had a long string of luck. It was the alien who had a plan for winning and was building catapults.[/spoiler] > > On the plots: > > [spoiler]Brown’s story was one dimensional. A human and an alien are told to fight. They fight. The human wins. That’s literally the entire plot. > > Coon’s story had a plot twist. A human and an alien are told to fight. They fight. The human wins. But then the human refuses to kill his opponent as he had been told to do. Then the superior aliens return and say this was the correct answer. So there turned out to be a surface level to the test, where the human and the alien fought each other, and a hidden level, where the Metrons were watching to see if one of the opponents would rise above the conditions they had been placed in.[/spoiler] I couldn’t disagree more. Forget the “expanded canon” The Gorn were initially painted as EVIIL invaders (and you have to admit, sneak-attacking a colony, even if it’s there without realizing they were squatting is a Dick Move). At the end Kirk realizes they mighht have a point. There’s no real characterization. The Gunpowder schtick was old when they did it on TV, and Kirk was damned lucky his quickly-thrown-together stuff worked. Carson didn’t win by luck. Both he and the Outsider tried various things to get at the other – making a spear, making a catapult, maqking fire bombs. Carson tried and tested lots of hypotheses to try to figure out how the alien Arena setup worked, logically deducing the “physics” of the situation. He won because he figured out how the setup worked, and used it to his advantage. He didn’t just climb up to the top of a hill and fall into the correct solution. And, yes, it was a story about one side vs. the other, with one side demonstrated to be pretty irrevocably bad. It wasn’t just tearing the limbs off multlegged lizards. The Ousiders had been systematically wiping out earth bases (not a single mistaken attack on one). Carson’s attempt to communicate with the Outsider showed that it had no intention of relenting or cooperating. And he had the word of the Overmind (or whatever you want to call it) that there was no foreseeable peace between them. But just because it’s a case of Good vs. Evil doesn’t make it trivial or one-dimensional. ---
**Author:** ![steepone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/977dab/32.png) [@steepone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steepone)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/83 "2020-05-20T02:34:18Z")
> [@XOldiesJock](#): > > One that immediately comes to mind is “Moby Dick,” the movie made in the 50s starring Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab, directed by John Huston, with screenplay by Huston and Ray Bradbury. Anyone who had to slog through Melville’s novel in an American Lit class knows what I’m talking about. Huston and Bradbury cut out all the boring stuff and turned it into a remarkable adventure story. I totally agree with this, the book seemed to drag on and on, it’s definitely not a book I would ever read for pleasure ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/84 "2020-05-20T03:23:22Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I couldn’t disagree more. Okay, it’s obvious we have a fundamental difference of opinion here and not just an unclear understanding of each other’s position. So de gustibus non est disputandum and all that. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/85 "2020-05-20T13:01:39Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > **Goldfinger** – this one’s practically obligatory in these threads. The movie observed the logical shortciomings in the book (Goldfinger really DID want to steal the gold from Fort Knox) and fixed it. The movie had its problems, too. Bond borrowed a bar of gold, set up a golf game with Goldfinger, caught him cheating and turned the tables, all so he could get close enough to Goldfinger’s Rolls Royce to plant a homing transmitter on it. The receiver is in his tricked-out Aston Martin. With all this cutting-edge technology and spycraft, Bond follows Goldfinger to… …a factory with “Auric Enterprises” written on it in huge letters. I could have found that with a rental car and a phone book. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/86 "2020-05-20T14:11:26Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > You can buy abridged versions of great novels where they leave that sort of stuff out for you, but I hate those. My personal feeling is if it was important enough for the author to go to the trouble of writing that, then I’m darned well going to read it. I “read” Moby Dick in school as required reading in English class and it was quite a slog to get through. I remember an entire chapter being about a rope on the ship. (Later, though, in thinking about the novel, it might have made more sense if I understood the Biblical origin of the names, like Ahab or Ishmael.) And in another English class, we read Billy Budd, in which the title character is described so lovingly that we concluded Melville was gay, although the teacher denied it. And as a kid, I read lots on my own. I tried to read one classic novel in unabridged form. I think it was Robinson Crusoe, but the unabridged version was so long and so dull. We also had to read some Dickens novels in school and it seemed obvious that he was being paid by the word. (Much of his stuff was serialized and he was paid by the word.) ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/87 "2020-05-20T14:14:19Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > I’ve watched the movies repeatedly, with all the extended cuts. I never managed to finish the books. Boring as hell, they were. I just got done watching a YouTube video where a guy runs the LOTR trilogy over three evenings for his parents, brother, and SIL none of whom had seen it before. All of them kept whining about how boring it was. I highly doubt they’d read the books, either, or – I’m being judgmental here – much of anything else. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/88 "2020-05-20T15:42:04Z")
I didn’t think the books were _bad_…just boring. To me. I’d sooner try (again) to make it through the complete **Don Quixiote** than try **LotR** one more time. ---
**Author:** ![Acierocolotl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acierocolotl/32/6241_2.png) [@Acierocolotl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acierocolotl)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/89 "2020-05-20T17:36:24Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > 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. I have strong opinions about books turned into movies, and generally find the movies wanting. In the case of Fight Club, I have read the book (my wife owns it) and seen the movie a few times, and to me it’s completely unquestionable: the movie is vastly superior to the book. My wife feels differently about this; the book stuck with her and I barely remember any of the details at this point. Anyway! it feels like movies sort of gloss over much detail and remove the rest, leaving a highly-varnished treatment of the book’s main tropes. In this case, the movie actually added detail and clarification. This is partially because the movie itself was good (in my opinion, of course) and partially because the book was incredibly sparse. ---
**Author:** ![divemaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/divemaster/32/78_2.png) [@divemaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/divemaster)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/90 "2020-05-20T17:46:26Z")
Forrest Gump. The Exorcist. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/91 "2020-05-20T17:51:34Z")
Movies inherently must remove lots of detail, except in so far as that detail is describing something visual. A novel’s worth of nonvisual detail would take a six-hour movie to translate it faithfully, but a whole chapter of visual description can be condensed into a minute of cinematography. ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/92 "2020-05-20T17:56:15Z")
Dead Calm The Sand Pebbles Flight of the Phoenix The Deep Often I would try to find and read the books from films that I liked. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/93 "2020-05-20T18:12:52Z")
Two picks for movies much superior to the books they were based on. _Bridge On The River Kwai_ took a fairly good story and made it into a much more compelling, classic movie. _Gorky Park_ worked because it tightened up a rambling, overly long book. > [@Dropo](#): > > _The 39 Steps_ – Hitchcock’s 1935 film made several critical improvements, including eliminating some gratuitous anti-Semitism, adding Mr. Memory and changing the significance of the eponymous steps. I couldn’t disagree more. Apart from the anti-Semitic reference (which is a brief, tiny plot element), the novel by John Buchan is a compelling mystery and great fun, while I thought the movie made unnecessary, detrimental plot changes and dragged by comparison. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/94 "2020-05-20T18:30:47Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I agree. I read this a couple of months ago, too. > > I wish Elwes had gotten a few better roles. He was good as Dudley in the virtually unknown _Lady Jane Grey_, and he was the perfect tool for sending up Robin Hood in Mel Brook’s film, but everything else he was in – not his performance – was second-rate. I guess he’s only mostly dead… He was a fine corrupt mayor in _Stranger Things_, and was an entertaining guest star on \*Psych \*for a few episodes. I wonder if “_The Wolf of Wall Street_” (movie) is better than the book. I’ve heard lots of people talk about the movie, but I can’t recall having heard anyone EVER say they’d read the book, which doesn’t bode well for the book being any good. ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/95 "2020-05-20T18:42:10Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > On that note, I will say that _The Ten Commandments_ was a lot better than the book it was based on.😃 I know you are just being funny, but that movie is quite an epic production, famous cast, sets, it should be seen just for that even if you don’t agree with the subject matter. Every one who was anybody in Hollywood, at the time, was in that movie. Hence the Blazing Saddles quote “I’ve killed more people than Cecil B. DeMille.” ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/96 "2020-05-20T18:57:36Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > The World According to Garp is my choice. I think I liked the movie “The Cider House Rules” about as much as the book, and it has the added advantage that it’s much shorter. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/97 "2020-05-20T20:09:22Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I “read” Moby Dick in school as required reading in English class and it was quite a slog to get through. I remember an entire chapter being about a rope on the ship. (Later, though, in thinking about the novel, it might have made more sense if I understood the Biblical origin of the names, like Ahab or Ishmael.) And in another English class, we read Billy Budd, in which the title character is described so lovingly that we concluded Melville was gay, although the teacher denied it. > > And as a kid, I read lots on my own. I tried to read one classic novel in unabridged form. I think it was Robinson Crusoe, but the unabridged version was so long and so dull. We also had to read some Dickens novels in school and it seemed obvious that he was being paid by the word. (Much of his stuff was serialized and he was paid by the word.) I did read _Moby-Dick_ (with the hyphen is the correct rendering) for pleasure a couple of years ago and very much enjoyed it. However, I do think if I’d had to read it as a punk high-schooler, I would not have liked it so much. By the time I got around to it, I was more mature, better educated and had already gotten into many of the classics. > [@hogarth](#): > > I think I liked the movie “The Cider House Rules” about as much as the book, and it has the added advantage that it’s much shorter. I loved the book and absolutely hated the movie. Worst of all, the film dropped the entire subplot with Melony. It was almost like an entirely different story. ---
**Author:** ![TimfromNapa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d26b3c/32.png) [@TimfromNapa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimfromNapa)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/98 "2020-05-20T20:37:06Z")
[quote=“Just\_Asking\_Questions, post:38, topic:854005”] The World According to Garp is my choice. In the movie, you have to imagine Garp’s book from the montage with the gloves and the falling piano, and Garp’s description. “…when he takes the gloves off, he finally touches his family, but he dies.”\* “If that’s what it’s about, I like it!” In the book, Irving actually includes an excerpt. All it shows is that Irving isn’t as good a writer as Garp. For things like that, it’s best to leave magical writing to the reader’s imagination. PLus, I love the cyclical nature of the film, the constant repetition of themes as if the movie were the score of a play. None of that is in the book. But the book does have a large section on how every character died. Kind of a bummer ending, dude. More to the point, you could do that with every novel ever written. It doesn’t really add anything, or tell you anything insightful. It’s not all that clever. I could not agree with you more, especially your last paragraph. That was the first movie/book title that came to my mind. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/99 "2020-05-20T22:02:24Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Happy ending vs. very melancholy ending. I like happy endings generally, but I think the graphic novel packs a little more unexpected punch. That said I agree both are pretty decent( the movie benefits quite a bit from the campy Michelle Pfeiffer performance ). Aside from the Captain Shakespeare bit (WTF???) I tend to agree with you. I loved the book as well but rereading it after the movie reminded me of the truly depressing ending of the book. A Little Mermaid. As Disneyfied as the whole thing was, the original tale by Hans Christian Andersen is really depressing. Hell, everything by Anderson is depressing (The Fir Tree, The Little Match Girl…). The man was CRUEL. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/100 "2020-05-21T16:19:21Z")
Tell me about it. I suspect he wasn’t writing stories so much as Important Lessons in Life. I think the most highly Disneyfied treatment on record has to be _Frozen_. After I went and read HCA’s seed, _The Ice Queen_, I concurred. About all that was taken from it by Disney was that it’s cold, and the names of two of the palace staff, Gerda and Kai. Had much more of the original had been used, I’m picturing angry parents stalking out of the theater with bawling kids in tow. ---
**Author:** ![Kron](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kron/32/12444_2.png) [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2020, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005/101 "2020-05-21T19:06:37Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Wow, really? Couldn’t disagree more. > > [spoiler]In the book, humans - represented by Grant et al - survive against the raptors through knowledge and brains. They take advantage of knowing that the raptors eat eggs by poisoning the eggs and exposing them to the raptors who then die. > > In the movie, there’s just a Tyrannus Ex Machina who comes out of nowhere to eat the raptors, save the humans and pose for the camera. There’s no way at all that humanity earns its right to survive in the movie.[/spoiler] Thank you. I was gobsmacked, myself. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movie-better-than-book/854005.md?page=6)