Usually when a novel (or other work) is made into a movie they have to scrap various sideplots and characters in interest of time. (Examples: Harry Potter films deleted Peeves, made Nearly Headless Nick basically a John Cleese cameo, deleted the Dursleys in one movie, and even omitted some pretty important pieces of info [who made the Marauders map or who sent the Dementors on Harry and Dudley] that probably made the films difficult to follow for those who hadn’t read the books; Cider House Rules condensed 50 years of events in the book into about 3 years in the movie.)
Sometimes the reverse is true however. Some examples:
Shawshank Redemption- actuall adds to the short story on which it was based to fill a feature length film (and does a good job) and has a far more satisfying ending. In the short story the warden at the time of the escape [one of several who’ve served during Andy’s sentence] just resigns rather than killing himself.
Hawaii- takes a short section from James Michener’s huge novel and fleshes out the characters (characterization was never Michener’s strong point in his ‘epic’ novels) and adds sideplots to make a film, and is actually (if only imho) better than the section of novel it is based on. It’s sequel The Hawaiians does the same thing with a later section of Michener’s novel Hawaii.
What are some other examples where the movie is longer than/has more plot or details than the book or other source on which it’s based?
Erich von Stroheim’s Greed not only shows every scene in the book, but it includes scenes only mentioned in passing. For instance, the book says McTeague grew up in a mining camp; Greed shows scenes from the camp.
I wonder if the second and third Bourne movies fit your criteria.
The first one took the basic story, but reworked it considerably. The second and third basically took nothing except the main character and the title, and added a completely different plot, totally unrelated to the books in any way.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Coppola, 1992) added the vampire-seeking-his-reincarnated-lost-love plot, which is found nowhere in Stoker’s book but is old hat now – I think it actually goes back, more or less, to The Mummy (1932).
Ode to Billie Joe - Another song turned into a full-length movie. At least Alice’s Restaurant was a long song (18+ minutes) with a lot of plot to it. Bobbie Gentry’s song is just over four minutes, and despite some backstory really only definitely relates a single conversation during a noontime meal.
Sense and Sensibility. They did make some minor contractions (deleting Lady Middleton and the elder Miss Steele, which were no great loss) but also added a lot of material to flesh out Edward’s character, and Margaret’s role was also greatly expanded. On my list as “Best Book Adaptation Ever”
As mentioned above, many short stories turned into movies do this. I wish they’d do this more with science fiction. But the choice of mateial even in sf and fantasy has been pretty awwful. For instance;
**Mimic
They Live
Invasion of the Saucer Men (later remade as Invasion of the the Eye Creatures)
The Twonky
** All not that great, although the source story was pretty good.
I think they did a better job with The Day the Earth Stood Still (original version only)
This is a myth perpetuated by Harry Potter fans who knew what was missing and extrapolated from that. I saw Prisoner of Azkaban without having read the books and followed it just fine. After being lukewarm on the first movie, sleeping through most of the second movie, finally I saw a Harry Potter movie that was excellent and felt like a real movie. I didn’t miss that stuff because I didn’t know it was supposed to be there, and had no problems. I thought Harry Potter fans who went on and on about it were bonkers. Now, later, after I had read the books (after the Goblet of Fire movie came out), I could better understand their wrath. It’s a pretty big piece of information, and cool besides. But the point is that it wasn’t important to the story, the plot, as told in Azkaban (the movie) and it’s being gone made no difference to those who had no idea it was even supposed to be there. I can see both sides because I was on both sides.