The adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, released in 2007 (or was it 2008)?
Fight Club (book was alright, movie was great)
Minority Report (not a book, but a short story; but not an any good one, I felt).
I think Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is better as a movie. It’s the worst book, in my opinion, and the movie eliminated the excess and focused on the core.
Do you mean 2004?
I thought you meant the classic with the cool makeup in Black and White.
Goldfinger
Pudd’n’head Wilson, done for public TV. I prefer it to the Twain original (!)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (the original) easily trumps Bates’ Farewell to the Master
They Live is better than Ray Nelson’s Eight o’Clock in the Morning
and Howard Fast is a helluva writer, but I’ll take the movie Spartacus over his book.
Starship Troopers
:ducks and runs:
God no. For one they had to change a lot so they could keep military cooperation. So instead of a military rescue mission, Jack Ryan hires an alcoholic pilot and does it himself. Total crap. And they killed off a character that continued to be in every other book in the series. pretty much crap from beginning to end. The book was much better.
The movie that come to mind when I read this thread is Jaws. Not a very well written book. No likable characters. Sheriff Brody is a schlub. Mrs Brody is an adulterous bitch. Hooper is a spoiled rich kid and complete asshole who sleeps with Brody’s wife and Queeq isn’t very interesting. Bad writing and lousy characters. The movie is much better.
It is in the movie. Sort of. The version that was released inchronological order had added scenes. In it they show Apollonia’s killer get his. They also show Vito meeting a young Hyman Roth.
If you’ll accept television shows, then the show Dexter is better than the book from whence it came.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
I really liked No country for old men, the book, and I think Cormac McCarthy is a terrific author. However, I prefer the movie. Partly because the photography and sound effects are sublime. But it’s also perfectly condensed and well acted.
Pretty much any movie based on a shorter children’s book (as in, takes less time to read than the movie). I was going to list them, but it seems to be a pretty normal pattern.
American Psycho - maybe the book is supposed to evoke the banality of consumerism with its endless lists of desirable products, but the film was much better in my opinion - perhaps because the hilarious vanity involved is largely visual.
Mine have already been said for the most part—Lord of the Rings, the Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Forrest Gump. But I’d like to add Jaws to the list.
Heh. Maybe you’re joking, but I’d say that and be totally serious. The movie works, if it works at all, as a scathing indictment of exciting war movies. The guys we’re rooting for wear Nazi uniforms, the propaganda is ridiculous, and an ending sequence with a captured enemy looks like a thinly-veiled rape/torture fantasy. The normal objections to the movie (insanely stupid tactics, science fiction that makes no sense, lack of fidelity to the book) are irrelevant to the director’s utter contempt for people who enjoy that sort of thing.
The book is among the worst books I’ve ever read. Horrible descriptions of everything, characters who function as mouthpieces for Heinlein’s weirdo politics, and not much in the way of pacing or rhythm.
I thought the movie was irritating and juvenile, sort of the equivalent of a GWAR show. I thought the book was loathsome.
Nobody’s Fool would be my contribution.
Totally agree. The book was ok but if I had read it first I’m not sure I would have bothered with the movie.
Field of Dreams. I don’t get all sobby when Ray and his dad have a catch like most folks do, but I am a sucker for baseball so I read the book Shoeless Joe, and I thought it was overly precious and affected. The movie in some ways too, but not as much.
I read Dune when it came out & loved it; of course, I was pretty young. This summer, I picked it up again & began the sequels. (Avoiding anything not written by Frank Herbert, of course.)
Up to Children of Dune now. And wishing that David Lynch had been allowed to complete the film as he’d wished. And then continued with the series, as some sources say was the intent.
Herbert had some great ideas but I’m finding his prose flat & awkward. Lynch’s work wasn’t perfect, but he added some depth & style.
Seconded on Jaws. How Benchley could make a sex scene unappealing to a 13 year horny teenager is beyond me even today. The movie was so much better than the novel that Benchley’s Estate ought to be still paying Spielberg extra royalties.