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 ).
I recently read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for the first time. The plot of the movie is a lot more straightforward and makes more dramatic sense*. Killing the Wicked Witch isn’t even the climax of the plot, but there are a bunch of other adventures after that.
*It does however make more sense as to why the Good Witch of the North doesn’t tell Dorothy that her silver (rather than ruby) slippers will take her home right away: she doesn’t know. Dorothy has to visit the Good Witch of the South to find that out.
I liked the movie The Mouse that Roared better than the book. I think that it’s due to Peter Sellers.
I thought the movie Dune was better than the book because it was easier to understand what was going on.
2 Robert Altman films: MAS*H and The Long Goodbye.
Dr. Sleep was definitely a better movie than it was a book. I enjoyed the book fairly well, but I thought the movie was one of the best of the year.
I remain blown away that IT had two movies that were hits. I could not stand the IT movies they made, but really liked Doctor Sleep.
How different is the movie from the screenplay Goldman turned in? He did adapt his own book.
Colibri, you’ve given me something to think about. I haven’t read “Moby Dick” since Freshman American Lit, 50 years ago. Hardly the best circumstances for appreciating a classic. I think I may still have the book from college. My wife read it back in the 80s (I think) and enjoyed it. Perhaps I should give it another shot with a more mature perspective!
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.
Out of the Past a.k.a. Build my Gallows High – Simplified and more focused than the novel it’s based on, the filmmakers also wisely changed the name of the femme fatale from “Mumsie McGonigle” to “Kathie Moffat.”
Kiss Me Deadly – The movie version effectively subverts the puerile Mickey Spillane ethos by showing what a sleazy fuckwad detective Mike Hammer really is, while tying into ’50s nuclear paranoia in place of the novel’s focus on a cache of drugs.
Night of the Hunter – The book is unrelievedly pretentious swill, but it was turned into a unique film directed by Charles Laughton starring a crazed (and reportedly very drunk) Robert Mitchum as a serial killin’ psycho preacher.
The Fountainhead – Book unreadable, but the movie is at least watchable under “I can’t believe how audaciously awful this is” parameters.
Casino Royale – The 1967 movie is both better and worse than Fleming’s novel.
Despite all those book tours and public readings Traven did to promote sales of his work.
I read Moby Dick in high school English, and hated it. A few years later, I bought a copy on impulse, and read it cover-to-cover. If you read it at your own pace, and you don’t have to write essays on the Symbolism and Meaning, it’s a fun book.
If we include tv series, the Star Trek episode “Arena” is better than Fredric Brown’s short story.
Although the connection between the story and the script is muddled. Gene Coon wrote the script for the show in 1967 and some people noticed it was similar to the story that Brown had written in 1944. To avoid possible legal problems, the studio bought the rights to Brown’s story and gave him a credit.
When we read it in high school, my English teacher gave us a list of chapters we could skip if we wanted to. We didn’t have to read all the chapters on whales and whaling.
You can get away with just reading the narrative chapters. But as a budding naturalist, the ones on whales were the ones I found most interesting.
I have not read Psycho, but given how highly acclaimed Hitchcock’s movie was it seems like a good possibility. And that would lend credence to what Chronos said about Hitchcock choosing mediocre books to turn into movies.
Highly recommend the Arion Press/University of California edition, with woodcut illustrations by Barry Moser.
I understand Banksy is his illegitimate son.
Traven’s novels (whoever he was) were very successful in the 1930s and 1940s, and several besides Treasure of the Sierra Madre were made into movies, but none were remotely as popular as that one.
Agreed.
Agreed. (I omitted “The Long Goodbye” because I’m not familiar with it.)
Hoping this doesn’t lead to arguments, I’ll submit Blade Runner. Far more thought provoking than the Androids/Electric Sheep story. Although I sometimes wonder if Ridley Scott’s story is more of a “based on a story” than it is a film adaptation.
I agree with you about The Shining. But for Doctor Sleep, I found the novel vastly superior, especially the ending.
I loved that ending, which is just one of the many ways the book is better. (It was sort of like what they did at the end of Six Feet Under.) But I don’t recall the plane crashing into the house being in the book, and I did like that.
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.
There is hardly any movie and not that many books better than Stephen King’s book The Shining. It’s his best book.
You might give the Directors Cut of Dr Sleep a chance. While it adds another 30 minutes to an already long film, the added material is mostly filling out scenes already in the film. I thought it superior to the original version and further develops the characters.
Blasphemy!
I challenge you, sir!
Phasers at dawn!
“Awakenings.” Movie much better than book, although that’s not hard for Oliver Sacks because while he was a great doctor, most of his books were rather, um, turgid? Is that the right word? Except for his autobiography, “On The Move”, the ones I’ve read were difficult to follow.