# Novelization better than the movie **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [November 23, 2022, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440 "2022-11-23T14:21:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/21 "2022-11-23T18:29:36Z")
> [@gnoitall](#): > > Potentially controversial submission: Clarke’s novelization of _2001: A Space Odyssey_ is fractionally better than the movie, but not incontrovertibly so, because both have different strengths and weaknesses. But that’s got to be considered a special case, as both movie and book were being produced at the same time, one did not proceed the other. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/22 "2022-11-23T18:43:08Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > I liked Isaac Asimov’s novel version of _Fantastic Voyage_ better than the film but that’s the order in which I encountered them (even though the film was done first). > > There’ve definitely been a few others but I appear to have offloaded those memories to external storage. Maybe I’ll come back and post them if the titles rise to the brain surface. Asimov wrote a novelization of the script, but production delays (and a lack of coordination – novelizations were not that common), had the novel on the stands before the movie came out. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/23 "2022-11-23T18:44:49Z")
> [@74westy](#): > > > [@AHunter3](#): > > > > I liked Isaac Asimov’s novel version of _Fantastic Voyage_ better than the film but that’s the order in which I encountered them (even though the film was done first). > > The movie was a B grade potboiler mostly remembered for having Rachel Welsh in a wetsuit. Asimov’s novelization was a game attempt to fix not just the scientific errors but the gaping plot holes. Great author but he’d do anything for a buck. What he could not fix was made into fantasy/speculative science. > > I read a story about him watching the movie with his young daughter. Don’t remember her age but I’m picturing 6-10. The story contains spoilers for a 50 year old movie/novel. > > > **Summary** > > > > The movie is about a team of doctors and what not shrunk to microscopic size with a submarine and injected into the bloodstream of a dying patient who could only be saved by microscopic surgeons. > > > > At the end, the miniature submariners were removed from the patient’s body just before they returned to normal size. All except the villain and the submarine which had been eaten by a white blood cell. > > > > His daughter said that just because the submarine was eaten, wasn’t its matter still present in the white blood cell and wouldn’t it return to normal size and kill the patient? > > > > Point being that a school girl could see an obvious plot hole that the movie makers apparently couldn’t. Asimov saw the problem and fixed it when he novelized it. Note that the script was written by Jerome Bixby, author of the classic TZ episode, _It’s a GOOD Life_ ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/24 "2022-11-23T18:50:40Z")
Whit Stillman wrote a novelization of his film _The Last Days of Disco_ several years after the movie came out. It’s an interesting case – written from the point of view of one of the movie characters who points out where the movie got things wrong. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/25 "2022-11-23T18:51:56Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > **The Abyss** – James Cameron was unhappy , he said, with earlier novelizations of his work (I assume he meant Alan Dean Foster’s novelization of _Aliens_), so he had SF writer Orson Scott Card do it. Card added so much backstory that Cameron actually worked it into his script and distributed it to the actors. This is the one that stands out to me the most. I read it before I saw the movie, and was disappointed by how much got “cut out” of the movie. The book made things make more sense, what characters’ motivations were, including those of the aliens, as well as describing much better the scenes that were occuring. (For instance, _why_ the sub crashed, or how Bud knew which wire to cut.) Sme have mentioned the Star Trek Novelizations, but I have to mention Star Trek V here. I thought it was a really good book, and a pretty good story, but when it got put on the big screen, it was pretty terrible. ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2022, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/26 "2022-11-24T05:32:05Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I don’t know if I’d say that makes the novelization _better_, but it’s certainly more complete. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > The book made things make more sense, what characters’ motivations were, including those of the aliens, as well as describing much better the scenes that were occuring. (For instance, _why_ the sub crashed, or how Bud knew which wire to cut.) Combining these two snips to point out to me at least, that a more complete story normally feels ‘better’ to me. In the case of the The Abyss, and my example of the Black Hole, you get all these elements that generate WTH moments in the movies, because characters act in ways that make no sense, or show skills that come out of nowhere. Which breaks immersion. With more complete background, there’s normally a reason said events happen, and thus the suspension of disbelief can remain unbroken. Again, utterly personal choice, but for me that’s the better story. Then again, it’s going to be a lot about what sort of movies you’re evaluating - I think we’ve all noticed that this comes up a LOT in Scifi, which by nature, tends to need more explanation of the ‘how’ of things. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2022, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/27 "2022-11-24T16:26:43Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > I liked Isaac Asimov’s novel version of _Fantastic Voyage_ better than the film but that’s the order in which I encountered them (even though the film was done first). Which one? He basically wrote two novelizations, the first one sticking closer to the plot of the movie, and the second in which he fixed a number of flaws he saw in the movie’s plot. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2022, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/28 "2022-11-24T18:56:38Z")
I sort of view it like the inverse of TV/movie producers feeling compelled to flesh out and explain everything that happens off-screen. I mean, the viewer doesn’t need to know what’s going on off-screen in most fantasy stories (LOTR, Witcher, GoT, etc…) but it’s like the producers think they’re too stupid to just realize that stuff is going down elsewhere and neither they _nor the characters_ know what’s going on. Authors do this all the time, but producers feel like they have to flesh stuff out. And in novelizations, it’s the opposite. The authors tend to flesh out stuff that’s just a detail or entirely glossed over in the film/TV versions. IIRC, the Rebel troops who were just nameless guys in camouflage in RoTJ were actually described in a little detail in the novelization. The trick is in the balance I figure. There’s no point in fleshing out all the off-screen stuff when adapting a book to the screen, just like there’s not much point in going into extreme detail of off-camera stuff when novelizing a film/TV show. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2022, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/29 "2022-11-24T19:13:26Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Which one? He basically wrote two novelizations, the first one sticking closer to the plot of the movie, and the second in which he fixed a number of flaws he saw in the movie’s plot. Cite? AS far as I know, he wrote one novelization of the movie, in which he fixed some of the plot holes. I never heard that he wrote two. He later wrote an original novel based on a similar premise. It had the theme of a miniaturized sub traveling through a human body, but other than that a totally different plot. Not a direct sequel, it took place in a different continuity. Is that what you’re thinking of? > **[Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Voyage_II:_Destination_Brain)** > > Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain is a science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov, published in 1987. It is about a group of scientists who shrink to microscopic size in order to enter a human brain so that they can retrieve memories from a comatose colleague. > Despite the title, Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain is not a sequel to Fantastic Voyage. The latter is a novelization that Asimov wrote from the 1966 film of the same name. Asimov was never quite happy with the novel... ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2022, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/30 "2022-11-24T20:20:45Z")
I never read it but I’m aware of a novelization of Spaceballs which has to have fixed all the plot holes in the movie I hope. ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2022, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/31 "2022-11-25T06:54:57Z")
Similarly, the novelization of _Galaxy Quest_ attempts to repair one of the gaping plot holes of the movie: how the Thermians could have constructed a device like the Omega 13 if it had never been explained in detail in the television show (the device was in Part One of a two-parter that was never completed). While the novelization of _Ghostbusters_ isn’t necessary better than the movie (a high bar to hurdle) it gives wonderful backstories on the main characters. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2022, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/32 "2022-11-25T07:49:28Z")
I found the novelization of **V** by A.C. Crispin to be far superior to the two miniseries it was based on, which was low-rent and campy in comparison. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2022, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/33 "2022-11-25T14:22:37Z")
I just remembered one I read in sixth grade, **Battle for the Planet of the Apes** by David Gerrold. It did a much better job of setting up the origin of the mutants in _Beneath the Planet of the Apes_ and then subverting that future through Caesar’s actions. ---
**Author:** ![veryfrank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/87869e/32.png) [@veryfrank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/veryfrank)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2022, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/34 "2022-11-25T14:56:40Z")
Often, to ensure that the novelization doesn’t trail the movie by too much time, the writer works off an earlier draft of the script. The book of _Die Hard With A Vengeance_ ends with the original surreal conclusion, with John McClane and Simon sitting across a table from each other spinning a bazooka between them while playing a game of riddles. Some others took weird liberties. In the novelization of _Ghostbusters_, the dialogue between the leads is a lot more naturalistic, or at least less typical of Murray and Aykroyd’s line deliveries. After their first gig (catching Slimer at the hotel), Venkman says something like “That was about as easy as pushing smoke into a bottle with a baseball bat.” which immediately entered my vernacular upon reading it. Thre are also some bowdlerizations, like “This man is a jerk.” replacing “This man has no dick.” The weirdest one for me was the (largely forgotten) _The Manhattan Project_, the flick about the genius high schooler who steals someplutonium to make a nuclear bomb for a sicence fair project. The novel has a ton of backstory, much of it about the lead’s music fandom, and his best friend’s suicide. The friend had turned him on to Richard Thompson; that book was my introduction to Thompson and I think I bought _Shoot Out The Lights_ because of it. In the book the lead is also a Shriekback fan, which is a pretty deep cut for a trashy paperback that probably sold a few hundred copies from drugstore racks. None of that was in the movie, and Christopher Collet’s performance is kind of flat and shallow, with little characterization. ---
**Author:** ![veryfrank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/87869e/32.png) [@veryfrank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/veryfrank)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2022, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/35 "2022-11-25T16:43:43Z")
Also, on the subject of adaptations based on earlier drafts of a script… The Target brand novelizations of _Doctor Who_ were a fascinating phenonemon. Partly because they were often the only way for fans to experience old episodes of the show before reruns, and also taking into account the lost episodes of the show they were the sole surviving record of the continuity, but also because they were often written by the actual screenwriter of the relevant serial, and they could flesh things out in ways that diverged from what was onscreen. That authorship is also why there have been some gaps in the adaptations over the years. Douglas Adams was asked to adapt his scripts (he was story editor for a few seasons but only had credited authorship on a few stories) but when that happened, _Hitch-Hikers_’ had become a huge success, and he declined cranking out another novel for a mere thousand pounds. Decades later, long after his death, those were turned into hardcover novels. Another oddity is that the Target books had a standard page count, no matter how many episodes the serial ran. So _The War Games_ at ten episodes was equally thick as _Black Orchid_ at two, meaning some adaptations veered closer to summaries and others got padded out. Also, I remember the Marvel Comics tie-in of the original _Star Wars_ included scenes that wouldn’t appear onscreen until the reissue in 1997, like Han meeting Jabba at the Falcon before he leaves Tattooine (when Jabba was still conceived as a humanoid figure). ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2022, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/36 "2022-11-25T16:48:22Z")
That is it. Despite the title implying that it’s a sequel, it’s really more of a re-write of the original. IIRC, he wrote a foreword explaining that. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2022, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/37 "2022-11-25T17:25:06Z")
> [@veryfrank](#): > > In the novelization of _Ghostbusters_, the dialogue between the leads is a lot more naturalistic, or at least less typical of Murray and Aykroyd’s line deliveries. … Thre are also some bowdlerizations, like “This man is a jerk.” replacing “This man has no dick.” There was a TV version of the movie, with some shots redone with different dialog. Maybe the novel closely follows this version. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/gucH9STn6ew/maxresdefault.jpg "Ghostbusters (1984) - Theatrical Version -VS- TV Cut") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gucH9STn6ew) ---
**Author:** ![veryfrank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/87869e/32.png) [@veryfrank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/veryfrank)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2022, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/38 "2022-11-25T17:40:52Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > There was a TV version of the movie, with some shots redone with different dialog. Maybe the novel closely follows this version. Some of it does have the whiff of that. I’ve read the published screenplay, though (it was a gorgeous trade paperback with loads of Bernie Wrightson storyboards, I wish I knew where my copy went), and it was definitely noticeably different from the novelization. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2022, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/39 "2022-11-25T17:41:52Z")
> [@veryfrank](#): > > Also, I remember the Marvel Comics tie-in of the original _Star Wars_ included scenes that wouldn’t appear onscreen until the reissue in 1997, like Han meeting Jabba at the Falcon before he leaves Tattooine (when Jabba was still conceived as a humanoid figure). In the 1950s and early 1960s Dell comics would often do adaptations of movies as tie-ins, and interesting bunch they were. (Later on, reprints of these and new adaptations were done by Gold Key comics). Sometimes they had the actual film to work from (as in the case of the Russian import _The Sword and the Dragon_, the title they gave to the cut down and dubbed version of _Ilya Muromets_) . But if it was a movie just being made it’s clear that they only had a description or a script to go by, and had to try to figure out how it was going to look. So in the 1960 comic based on _The Lost World_ the script or description evidently says “Tentacle Monster”, and they drew a bunch of tentacles (without the rest of the monster), and it looks nothing like the film. Or the Graveyard of Bones they run through. For one scene, not having a description of the dinosaur, the artist cleverly drew an eye looking out from the cover of leaves – it was mysterious and atmospheric. For some scenes they evidently had publicity stills, and in those cases, the drawing is practically a tracing of the photo. They even managed to add some lethal-looking teeth that weren’t in the original. For the adaptation of _The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad_ they clearly had very little to go by – neither much of the script nor images of Harryhausen’s creations, so the comic adaptation was just sort of winging it, with little resemblance to the film. Many years later, years after the movie was out, Marvel did a much more faithful adaptation. The adaptation of _Atlantis: The Lost Continent_ is interesting because it includes scenes cut from the released film. They either got a lot of stills to work from, or else saw the rough cut, because the images closely resemble the film. See my article here – [Atlantis — The Lost Continent – The Writings of Stephen R. Wilk](https://srichardwilkcom.wordpress.com/atlantis-the-lost-continent/) Gold Key’s 1969 adaptation of _King Kong_ is really interesting, because it appears to be based on the Delos W. Lovelace novelization rather than on the 1933 movie. It has the triceratops attack (not in the film – Peter Jackson seems to have done an homage to it in his Director’s Cut of his 2005 version). Kong is shown onstage in a cage, rather than simple trussed up. Ann Darrow looks like a 60s-era woman rather than a 1933 starlet, and Carl Denham has a pith helmet and a moustache (as Robert Armstrong did in _Mighty Joe Young_, many years later, but not in Kong.) There are plenty of other examples. They were clearly trying to fill in the blanks for the comic version of _Fantastic Voyage_ and _The Mysterious Island_ and others. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2022, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440/40 "2022-11-25T18:55:45Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > In the 1950s and early 1960s Dell comics would often do adaptations of movies as tie-ins Are you familar with these? [http://www.moviecomics.net/2016/07/movie-comics-featuring-movie-comics-1.html?m=0](http://www.moviecomics.net/2016/07/movie-comics-featuring-movie-comics-1.html?m=0) They apparently pasted in photos of the actors’s heads with creepy results, and included lots of movies I cant see kids being interested in. > **[The Phantom Creeps-Movie Comics-1939](http://fourcolorshadows.blogspot.com/2012/03/phantom-creeps-movie-comics-1939.html?m=1)** > >   MOVIE COMICS was a bizarre series that tool actual movie stills and heavily retouched them to become comics panels in adaptations of then... [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/novelization-better-than-the-movie/975440.md?page=3)