I have to strongly disagree with this one. This is one of my favorite books and it’s really not as widely read as it should be. The movie, while I remember it fondly as a movie I loved as a kid, really can’t compare. Ende was completely disgusted by the treatment of the book, and I think he had every right to be.
I was going to mention Forrest Gump but that’s been taken.
Another vote for Jaws and Blade Runner (never did figure out what “Mercerism” was supposed to be). I agree that Godfather and Godfather II are better than the first book, but it’s not like the book was terrible.
Though I haven’t seen the movie, I liked the book King Rat very much and cannot imagine the movie being better. What about the book did you dislike, villa?
No, I strongly agree. Rowling is one of the worst writers I have ever happened upon.
The movie is wonderfully cast. And I just find James Clavell to be a terrible writer. Good story lines, but no concept of how to describe them.
Hmm. The book was a bitter satire about the worst aspects of American society; the movie celebrates them instead. It’s possibly the most egregious example of a film adaptation that just did not “get” the book.
ETA: apropos of this thread, I think the book–flawed as it was–is several orders of magnitude better than the movie. The book makes you think about the world you live in; the movie brainwashes you into being complacently uninterested in giving a shit about it.
The winning answer:
The Shining***
I much preferred V for Vendetta and Stardust in print form, and think the Harry Potter movies tried too hard to cram everything from the books in, making the movie pacing look too forced. YMMV.
Back to the OP:
The Razor’s Edge - by combining the narrator with the main character the movie got rid of a lot of unnecessary blather from the book without losing an ounce of plot. W Somerset Maugham can be very tedious at times.
The Shining. I know not everyone likes Kubrick’s take on the book but I find it compelling. And it doesn’t require an explanation of what “roque” is like the book does.
Since someone mentioned King Rat I’ll confess to preferring the television version of Shogun to the book, although that opinion might change if I watched it again now.
Da Vinci Code the movie was flawed but at least it had Jean Reno, Audrey Tatou and Tom Hanks’ hair to entertain me.
The book, however, I kept wanting to fling across the room.
I started to write a long post explaining why I thought the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit was better than Gary Wolf’s novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit? but I found this article which made most of the same points.
Patriot Games
Clancy’s great at the whiz-bang technical stuff, but the book had less than his usual fare and draaaaaaaged.
Regarding who Framed Roger Rabbit - I, too, preferred the film, but the film was trying to do something very different from the book, as the article Little Nemo links to implies, but I don’t think it shows. The film was an explanation about (and a ‘love letter" about) the place of the Animated Cartoon in American Culture. I don’t think I’m reading too grandiose a thing into Zemeckis’ film – he shows the importance of cartoons in uplifting the spirits of the unemployed men in the bar. When Roger makes his speech about cartoon characters, he’s standing on a soap box – a detail that’s obviously deliberate. It uses the world of film noire to make a film that isn’t really noire when you get to the end of it-- which is appropriate, under the circumstances. Cartoons make things right, or bearable. So Jessica isn’t really a cheat. In fact, she and Roger have the healthiest sex life of any cartoon characters I’ve seen (only the Simpsons seem to come close). The evil toons and those who misuse them aren’t merely defeated, but obliterated.
Happily, there is a delightfully-written British children’s novel about a young man who goes from an abusive family situation to a mysterious boarding school hidden from the sight and memory of ordinary mortals, meeting a precociously clever girl and a bit-thick-but-likable boy on the train with whom he becomes fast friends and undertakes to unravel the sinister supernatural goings-on, while becoming an adept in the magickal arts.
Anthony Horowitz’ Groosham Grange will likely never be adapted for film, because audiences would doubtlessly perceive it as an intolerable rip-off of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, although it was written ten years earlier and indeed won the Prix Européen for children’s literature only four years before the publication of its poor imitator.
If I may comment on two of these…
Forrest Gump - I absolutely hated the book, so put me down for the film.
And as for The Shining, the film is pretty good, and Nicholson is fantastic, but the ending of the movie is just so much worse than the book that I can not agree.
Jack’s chasing them through the maze! Oh no, he’s gonna catch them! But wait! He got… kinda cold! They’re saved! Yay!
Irrelevant?! Encountering a sage or oracle or numinous being along the way is a basic element of the archetypical heroic quest!
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, as bad as many consider it to be, is better than the graphic novel it was based on. Mina wasn’t even a vampire, ferchrissake. Quartermaine was an ugly old fart, and even so, he and Mina… I just… no.
I really liked the movie Flight of the Phoenix (the old one, not the new monstrosity). I’ve been thinking of tracking down the book - does it really suck?
I disagree about The Shining - I liked the book better (although it has been years since I read it).
Speaking of Mr. King, Stand by Me the movie is infinitely rewatchable whereas once works for the novella The Body. Same goes for The Mist.
I recalling liking both the book and the movie King Rat.
Oh - I hope the Sookie Stackhouse series is better than the books. The first book sucked (heh) worse than Twilight.
I gotta disagree. As I said in a recent thread, I read Flight of the Phoenix, and liked it. The placing of the men on the Phoenix was different in the book (arrayed in cots along the fuselage) than in the film (along the wing). The engineer was British, rather than German. But I recall it being quite good, and very similar to the original film.
I liked The Andromeda Strain, too. Michael Crichton’s later books always managed to annoy me (especially with his overuse of the “technology goes wrong, screwing those who unquestioningly trust it” meme), but his first was pretty well done, except when he tried to “wow” us with his description of binary code.
I agree with the principle. But Tom Bombadil was redundant in The Lord of the Rings. Frodo and the other hobbits were going to meet other characters who would fill the same role in the story.