Fried Green Tomatoes. The book was quite good, don’t get me wrong, but the movie preserves everything good about it *and *lets me watch Mary-Louise Parker at her prime.
I haven’t decided for sure, but I think I like the movie better than the book John Dies at the End. The movie is tighter and more coherent, while keeping plenty of the weirdness and sense of menace.
Lord of the rings. Come at me.
Torture this guy in the Pits of Mordor for an eternity! 
Does 2001: A Space Odyssey count? It was from a short story.
Bullitt was far better than Mute Witness.
Yeah, but they totally puss-ed out on the lesbian angle! 
In the book it is clear that Ruth and Idgie are lovers. In the movie it is hinted at with the lightest of touches.
I didn’t think at that in 1991 homosexual angles in written works still needed the Tennessee Williams treatment when translated to film.
Definitely. Hooker benefited from Robert Altman ditching much of the books style and making his own movie. Hooker was able to make a bunch of sequels later.
The Poseidon Adventure.
You do not deserve a frontal rush. You may not even be killed. You will simply be disappeared in your sleep!
Moby-Dick. I can’t even name one particular version, but the movies weed out the large chunk of the novel that is really a treatise on whaling. I’m a very high-level reader, but I have little patience for classics that use many pages not moving the plot forward.
I don’t think I can say the Harry Potter movies were better than the books, but once I saw the first movie, it was much easier for me to visualize the settings in the books.
I think it’s perfectly clear in the film. What other possible interpretation of the bee scene is there? I think the film captures the manners of the time - why would one ever discuss, or even speculate on, the sex life of others?
Oh, and Horatio Hornblower series with Ioan Gruffudd was much better than the books.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Runs like a Swiss watch. On crack.
Jaws. The movie dropped the stupid sub-plot about Hooper having an affair with Brody’s wife.
I tried reading The Princess Bride. I couldn’t even get through the first chapter.
I totally agree about Jaws and add The Devil Wears Prada.
The Spy Who Loved Me. Ian Fleming himself described the book as “a failed experiment”, and when he sold the movie rights, he told them to just use the title and ditch everything else.
Ted Hughes’ The Iron Man is a galumphingly clumsy and dull piece of hamfisted 60s whimsy and bong-addled parable about - something. The Iron Giant, on the other hand, is a wonderfully adept and touching movie.
Man, the movies were overly long and self-indulgent, but at least there was action. I can’t imagine how tedious the books must have been.
Agreed.
I humbly nitpick this one. I think the novel is a masterpiece, one of my two or three favorite books. I’ve read it many times. The movie is no less a masterpiece, and I can’t imagine a better adaptation of the book to screen. I think it’s a rare case of the original novel and the film adaptation being equally great, for their similarities as well as their differences.
Yes! Bromden as psychotic narrator, one of the novel’s strongest aspects, couldn’t possibly have made the transition to film.