Oooo…I disagree with that.
In the book, Grant uses his brains - our only real advantage - to outwit and kill the velociraptors via poisoning the eggs. He therefore earns our right to survive against them. In the movie, Grant and company are surrounded and clearly about to die when the TRex Machina shows up out of nowhere and kills the velociraptors. We as a species haven’t asserted our right to survive in any way.
^ My brother always said the only thing missing from that ending (the movie), is the T. Rex turning to the humans and giving them a wink along with a (tiny) “thumbs up.”
[J. Chance, I tried to quote your post and the spoiler was exposed. Hope this is an acceptable substitute.]
Jurassic Park movie way improved on the book. Yeah, that ending was Spielberg, but the book ending is very anti-climactic despite being Hollywood in every other aspect. Then there’s the children. yeah, the girl’s “UNIX-fu” was ridiculous, but the book gave EVERYTHING to the boy and made her just a whiny appendage. I also liked making the director character more misguided than flat out evil.
The Parallax View
The Killer Elite (Peckinpah original)
Likewise, I preferred the movie “Planet of the Apes” to the book, although the book is more of a satire so it’s harder to compare.
The DID do a version of that scene from Goldfinger, but with the saw threatening Bond. It was for some British TV show.
The flaw in Goldfinger isn’t just the thing about the heist – it’s also in the way that Goldfinger keeps Bond alive top basically DO Officece Work for him! In the novel we are – no joke – treated to scenes of Bond collating and filing for Goldfinger. Maybe this is what they mean by the life of a secret agent generally being dull and routine.
I image Bond stuck in the back room with Rob Schneider doing his “Copier Man” routine from those old Saturday Night Live episodes.
“It’s Bond, James Bond. Ol’ Jimmy. Bondo-san. The Bondmeister. Double Oh Seven, Mr. Licensed to Kill. Mister Henderson. Makin’ copies.”
The Day the Earth Stood Still was, I think, a marked improvement over the short story Farewell to the Master by Harry Bates. What was supposed to be the crazy twist ending was there, but not used as a twist, but as the framnework of Klaatu’s system of government.
Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was arguably better than the Verne original, in that it took a drifting and episodic story and streamlined it into a narrative with more of a plot, and a proper story arc.
They Live was definitely better than the rather short (but punchy) story Eight o’ Clock in the Morning by Ray Nelson
I haven’t read Bernard Malamud’s The Natural, but from what I’ve heard, I think I would definitely prefer the filmed version
With Jurassic Park, my “meh” for the movie was bigger than my “meh” for the book, but then again I consider Crichton to have been an overrated hack writer
This is another case where they started writing the script, then someone pointed out the similarity to the existing story, so they changed the title and bought the story.
The Star Trek episode “The Arena” really isn’t Fredric Brown’s story. I’d really like to see Brown’s story adapted properly one of these days (even the Marvel comic adaptation screwed it up). It’s ben ripped off pretty often.
And I have to say that I much prefer the ending of Brown’s original story. But the one they used on TV pretty clearly was closer to Roddenbery’s heart.
One of the minor things about the movie that still irks me is that Goldfinger, in the lustrous vaults of Fort Knox, surrounded by all that gold, doesn’t try to take a souvenir. You just KNOW that he would love to have the only remaining bar of pre-irradiated American Gold of the Fort Knox vintage, just as he wanted that bar of Nazi Gold from the bottom of that lake. He’d bring it out and show it off to people (who would, no doubt, be killed later on) just to gratify his ego. It’s simply not believable that he didn’t take at least one bar for himself.
I think that Ian Fleming eventually saw (or had pointed out to him) how ridiculous the situation was. when he next had to get close to the villain and spend a lot of time with him – in the not-really-completed last novel the Man with the Golden Gun, Scaramanga actually hires Bond as his bodyguard, a pretty ludicrous situation, given that a.) Scaramanga is a crack shot and b.) Bond’s assignment is literally to assassinate Scaramanga. But at least in this situation Bond has a pretty gutsy, gritty role to play instead of seeing that Scaramanga’s memos all get distributed to the staff.
If you only know TMwtGG from the Roger Moore movie, you should be aware that the book is unbelievably different from the film, and worth a read, even if Fleming never did get a chance to polish the writing. I was surprised to learn that the explanation for “Tiffy’s” nickname isn’t some thing Fleming made up, but was a story he really did hear in Jamaica, apparently from the person with that name.
It was just on TV the other day, and I watched the scene where Goldfinger is in the vault watching Bond get handcuffed to the ‘atomic device’. And there’s a shot of him looking at the gold with a nervous look on his face. He definitely wants some of it, but he also knows he has a schedule to keep. It’s really well played.
Gert Fröbe’s performance is one of the reasons that movie is as good as it is, and he deserves more credit for it. The scene of the villain explaining his cunning plan has been done to death, but Fröbe sells it really well. He knows he should be quiet about it, but he just can’t help bragging to the one person who can appreciate how really clever he is.
So I read Stephen King’s novella Apt Pupil and then watched the movie (which I had already seen once, years ago), for the purposes of reporting back to this thread about whether the film exceeds the book. In this case, my ruling is that the film does, in fact, exceed the book.
Both of them are pretty good, as examples of their respective media. However, I think that the book takes things a little bit too far with the killing. Todd (the “pupil”) in the book, turns into a complete psychopath and winds up murdering multiple homeless guys independently of the Nazi. Likewise the Nazi (Mr. Dussander) is shown repeatedly luring winos to his house and murdering them. And then at the end of the book Todd goes on a shooting spree. It’s just too much, IMO.
The movie, on the other hand, is more grounded in a reality that the viewers can relate to. Todd is a more normal teenager and rather than turning into an outright mass-murderer over the course of the film, he becomes involved in one murder, along with Dussander (Ian McKellen’s character), under circumstances that…while most people would never want to find themselves in…they could nonetheless imagine it actually happening. By the end of the film, Todd isn’t a serial killer, but he has become much more skilled at deceit and manipulation, and the final scene shows him threatening to blackmail a guy by falsely accusing him of being a child molester. (Ironically, the movie was directed by Bryan Singer, who himself has been accused of the same.) It’s just an overall more interesting character than the one-dimensionally evil Todd of the novella.
Film also gets bonus points for Bruce “Willard” Davison playing Todd’s dad, and David Schwimmer as his guidance counselor in a serious role that he actually nails perfectly.
“The Ghost and the Darkness”. I really enjoyed the movie. I decided, I must read the novel it’s based on. “The Maneaters of Tsavo”, is terrible. Patterson was definitely not a writer. I made it all the way through, but it was a hard read.
I thought that the ending of The Firm was MUCH better in the movie than the book.
I also think that The Terminator tells a better story overall than the Harlan Ellison story, “Soldier Out of Time”. I’m sorry. I should probably be ashamed of myself.
Let me guess: “The Council of Elrond.” Approximate 1,398 pages of people talking, referencing names, places, and events that will never be mentioned again. Took up like three minutes of screen time in the film, and even that was too much.
My entry is sort of a weird one: The Martian.. The book is good, stellar even. But it would make a terrible movie as written. The movie is, I think, one of the best reasonably hard science fiction movies of all time, but would suck as a novelization.
Last night I heard Somebody to Love playing on something or the other I was watching. It led me to trying to remember another movie that featured the song and I finally remembered that it was Ella Enchanted. That in turn made me think of this thread–I stumbled across and read the book of Ella Enchanted a few months back and it was just another retelling of Cinderella, and I don’t mean in a very loose sense–even though it started up original, it ended up with the magical horses and coach and the ball and the glass slippers and everything. The movie is very different from the book, and benefits from the differences.
No, I dropped out before the Ring Team even left Frodo’s house.
I can’t say the movie was better than the book, but the 1940 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was the best and least faithful I have ever seen.
Greer Garson captured Elizabeth Bennett’s lighthearted irreverence better that any who came after her, and Olivier was, well, hot. Even hotter than Colin Firth. It was totally believable Elizabeth would still fall for the jerk.
That being said, the movie completely missed most of the themes and conflict in the book. They told different stories, reflective of different times, in very different media, which are enjoyed in very ways.
You see, those are the things that make me think the book was way better than the movie. Todd Bowden is a classic case of a good “all-American” kid who’s seduced by the forces of evil, not even because of some outside force but because of his own morbid, “tell me the gooshy stuff” curiosity. For me at least, it was still possible to feel a tiny bit of sympathy for him, until the end when he finally crosses the Moral Event Horizon by killing his counselor and going all “King of the World!” on random civilians.
The movie wants to make you think that Bowden’s worthy of sympathy, but it never works. For starters, Brad Renfro kinda looks like a creep anyway, and he always acts a little disturbed and more than a little determined to get his way. But he never actually does anything evil, except helping Dussander cover up the murder, and frankly I think his threat to accuse David Schwimmer of molestation was downright irresponsible from the filmmaker’s perspective. (How many kids are gonna see that scene and think, “Hey! What a great idea to get out of trouble!”)
Oh, and did you notice how the cat escaped from Dussander’s oven, but a few days later there’s a “missing cat” poster near his house? Seems like a little Executive Meddling to me…