# The Book is always better than the movie **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 14, 2002, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-book-is-always-better-than-the-movie/108999 "2002-05-14T12:01:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mephisto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/48db29/32.png) [@Mephisto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mephisto)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2002, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-book-is-always-better-than-the-movie/108999/21 "2002-05-15T05:24:27Z")
The movie, _The Hunt For Red October_ entertained me much more than book even if the Russian submarine captain did have a Scottish accent. A lot of Tom Clancy’s books are “okay.” For the most part, though, I like the movies better. I have a feeling that will change in the next one, but we’ll see . . . ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2002, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-book-is-always-better-than-the-movie/108999/22 "2002-05-15T08:11:33Z")
You know, I actually thought there was a “Dude, where’s my car” book, but I hadn’t seen it because I never look in the “popular fiction” section of the bookshop… I am a :wally: Sorry to lead your thread down the wrong alley… ---
**Author:** ![gex\_gex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/94ad74/32.png) [@gex\_gex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gex_gex)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2002, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-book-is-always-better-than-the-movie/108999/23 "2002-05-15T15:07:33Z")
Is _The Shining_ considered to be a better book than a movie? I’ve seen the movie, haven’t yet read the book, but i can’t see how it could top Kubrick’s masterpiece. I mean let’s face it - Kubrick is a critically acclaimed director - one of cinema’s ‘greats’. Stephen King? A horror-writing hack who’s sold a lot. He’s never going to be remembered as a literary ‘great’, however. When people mention literature of the twentieth century, names like Kerouac, Salinger, Orwell and F Scott Fitzgerald will crop up. Kerouac will certainly be remembered as a film great. King won’t make either list. So, what’s the deal with The Shining? Are those who say the book is better than the movie rabid King fans or did King somehow write a great novel before returning to his usual crap? ---
**Author:** ![widdershins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f0a364/32.png) [@widdershins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/widdershins)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2002, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-book-is-always-better-than-the-movie/108999/24 "2002-05-16T11:58:51Z")
Alright then: _Zapped!_ _Head_ _Scary Movie_ _I Gonna Git You Sucka!_ _Pretty Woman_ _Can’t Stop The Music_ All of those Freddie Prinze Jr. teen flicks with three word titles. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2002, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-book-is-always-better-than-the-movie/108999/25 "2002-05-16T14:01:11Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by astorian \* > \*\* > “Field of Dreams” I expect a lot of disagreement here, but I think W.P. Kinsella is a snotty, petulant jerk with a mean streak. The movie had a heart that the book completely lacked (I’m well aware that many people LIKED Kinsella’s mean streak, and thought the movie was too corny, sentimental, and sweet). > > \*\* No disagreement here. The film really improves on the book. The book has a couple of strange and meaningless subplots and dosen’t have a real payoff at the end. ---
**Author:** ![Abe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f1d935/32.png) [@Abe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abe)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2002, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-book-is-always-better-than-the-movie/108999/26 "2002-05-17T07:50:27Z")
some spoilers ahead for _The Shining_. > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by gex gex \* > Is _The Shining_ considered to be a better book than a movie? I’ve seen the movie, haven’t yet read the book, but i can’t see how it could top Kubrick’s masterpiece. It doesn’t, but the status conferred to the book by King cultists is quite high. I’m not a fan of King’s no-style formulaic writing, but the book _The Shining_ is fairly good as such books go. When filming, the enigmatic Kubrick avoided many cinematic horror conventions and deliberately undermined the basic scare tactics used in horror (so, rather than rapid sequence montages with bursts of surprising sound and light, he gives us beautiful long shots of the action, and in many cases he lets us know when something abrupt will happen before it really has a chance to scare us). Kubrick tried to have a little bit of fun with the film version by throwing in some of his famous touches. Every time the bartender ghost scene comes up I burst out laughing at the glowing bar-top, which seems trasposed directly from the end of _2001_ (in my opinion that is Kubrick telling us not to take this bit too seriously and look elsewhere–possibly into the mirror behind the ghost). The creeping or soaring horror (depending on the camera shot), the bloody elevators, the ghost twins, and many other elements were all introduced by Kubrick. Kubrick also replaced the killer animal hedges with the (IMO far nore effective) maze because he thought that ambulating bushes were ridiculous and could not work on film. King complained numerous times that the film is not true to his vision–but if it were, it probably wouldn’t be such a good film. King’s book is (as many of his long books are) rather tedious, bloated, and long-winded, and he tries to build up steam by drawing out a narrative into a lengthy exercise in brand recognition (he frequently appeals to the mass-consumerist). This is a case where the film is better than the book, partly because, as you say, this is one of the greatest film makers deliberately using material from a popular horror hack. Mind you, the book was not even a horror book in the traditional sense, it was more a “woman in danger, running and scared witless in an exotic and scary setting while her husband is driven nuts by the influences of alcohol, failure, insecurity, etc. and the vaguely supernatural,” although the supernatural does not manifest itself in the book until the evil ghost releases Jack from the larder, and that is quite late in the narrative (contrast this to the fact that in the film we see the paper in Jack’s typewriter magically replaced by the Overlook fairly early on). Kubrick transformed it into a supernatural horror film proper. > [@](#): > > So, what’s the deal with The Shining? Are those who say the book is better than the movie rabid King fans or did King somehow write a great novel before returning to his usual crap? I think _The Shining_ is a better novel than many other King books, because it’s the one with the Overlook hotel–by far the best character King ever wrote. What’s also of interest in the novel is the level of misdirection; as pointed out earlier, it’s not until late in the book that we know for sure whether this is an issue of psychological disturbance or supernatural mayhem–I get the feeling King wanted to emulate Henry James’s nasty classic ghost story [The Turn of the Screw](http://www.blackmask.com/olbooks/turndex.htm), in which it is also unclear whether ghosts associated with a location exist or are imagined. I would say the Overlook and the misdirection are the books’s two best features. King is hardly a very skilled writer overall, and his novel does not stand up to the film–but the two are quite different works. I heard that King worked on a critically unacclaimed mini-series of _The Shining_ that he wanted to keep true to the events in the book, meaning that it could be an 12-hour long affair requiring creative camera-work to stimulate audience interest, but I have not seen that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-book-is-always-better-than-the-movie/108999.md?page=1)