Do you generally prefer the book or the movie version of the book?
For example, I think that Stephen King’s books are always better than the movies. I can imagine a scene much better in my head than what some producer or director can put on a screen.
For an older example, The Poseiden Adventure book was much better than the movie.
Is it just me, or is this a general feeling?
It’s a truism: great books almost never make for great films, but mediocre books often do.
Sure, we can all think of books we liked that were made into bad movies. But I can think of just as many movies that were much better than the books they were based on. Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather” was a lame book, but Francis Ford Coppola and a stellar cast made it a brilliant film. And I think John Huston’s movie adaptation of “The Maltese Falcon” (thanks, in large part, to Humphrey Bogart’s performance) was much mre interesting and enjoyable than Dashiell Hammett’s book- indeed, when modern readers pick up a copy of “The Maltese Falcon” for the first time, I’d bet most of them picture Humphrey Bogart in the role.
Incidentally, while I agree that most film adaptations of Stephen King books haven’t been very good, I don’t consider him a brilliant writer. I consider him a talented entertainer (he once described his own work, aptly, as “the literary equivalent of a Big Mac with fries”), but don’t see that his novels are inherently so brilliant that they have much to lose in translation to film. In theory, at least, his stories are precisely the kind of entertaining potboilers that SHOULD make for good movies.
In cases where I’ve read/watched both, I almost always like the book better. The one exception would be The Princess Bride, where it’s really hard to say that one is better than the other.
Along the same lines, I usually consider a movie based on a book to be “good” to the extent that it follows the book.
On the other hand, I haven’t read the book for a great number of good movies, and I can well believe that good movies can be made from bad books.
Generally the book is always better than the movie, IMHO.
In fact, I cannot think of any movie that has been better than the book.
I can think of countless movies that were terrible adaptations of books.
In general I would say that most books are better than the films which are based on them. I’m sure this is not always the case though (I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head at the moment)
In a book it is easier to get across a picture exactly as you want it, on film, you are relying on the weather, the actors, the director etc. Also, in books you have longer to describe things, to introduce characters etc. Most movies have to leave out some of the detail so that they can keep to a 90 minute or 2 hour time constraint.
One thing I like about books is that they leave the image to your imagination (I guess it is only good if you have a pretty good imagination, having no imagination at all might take something away from it) by describing everything. It is up to you to then picture it and fill in all the other details.
Rick
As Chronos says, The Princess Bride is a definite example of a wonderful book which made a wonderful movie, Of course, the book and the screen play were written by the same man, William Goldman, and I think that can make a huge difference. I think often one of the biggest problems with books-turned-movies is that they don’t reflect what the author of the book was really trying to say/do.
Here’s a retake on the subject:
If you see a brilliant film that was based on a book, you’re liable to be disappointed when you read the book.
If you read a brilliant book, you’re likely to be disapointed when you see a film adaptation.
Film and books are very different media, and each does very different things well. If a movie captures you with stunning visual images, you’ll miss those images when you read the book it was based on. And if a novel fascinates you with its vivid descriptions of characters’ emotions and innermost thoughts, well, even a great script and a good actor can only convey a small part of that in words and expressions.
I can think of two, right off the top of my head…
Jaws - A terrible, terrible book with lots of pointless sex in hotel rooms. The movie is much tighter, and more suspenseful.
Fearless - Though Rafael Yglesias wrote the screenplay for the film based on his own book, somehow Peter Weir’s directorial hand was what really made it into a great story. The book was good and worth reading, but the film… the film was an emotional journey. A masterpiece, far superior to the book it was based on.
I’ve a hard time with The Shawshank Redemption… the King story it is based on (“Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption”) is one of my favorites, but the film is almost letter-perfect. I’d put them both on equal footing.
Oh yes… there are many in this category… many.
In general, I too prefer the books, but not always.
** Pratical Magic** is an ok movie and a horrible book.
I hate ** The Scarlet Letter** but some of the movies are ok. I couldn’t even get through LOTR or ** The Witches of Eastwick** (two examples of writers whose styles I hate) but witches was an ok movie, and LOTR was fantastic.
Which do you prefer: apples or oranges?
If the director is an artist, one would expect them to have their own take on the themes of a book.
If a director likes a book enough that it inspires them to make a film, I would HOPE that they (the director) would put their own stamp on it; otherwise, what’s the damn point? Just read the book again.
I really don’t understand people who DEMAND that a movie be exactly the same experience as the book it’s based on. Again, what’s the point of that?
What really sucked about Harry Potter, IMHO, was that the movie experience added absolutely nothing to the reading experience, beyond the whining kids in the audience.
On the other hand, if a book is turned into a movie just as an extension of the book’s marketing strategy, and is the product of a studio, with a director hired simply to color in by numbers (HP being, again, a perfect example) . . .
This seems to be what most people demand. Which just leaves me flabbergasted.
I generally prefer the books over the movie adaptations.
The Shining: I liked the book better. The movie was pretty good, but it had too much missing. The TV movie, which was on ABC last night and continues tonight, seems to have more of the novel in it. King wrote the teleplay for the TV movie.
The Three Musketeers: The book and 1974’s The Four Musketeers stand on equal footing in my opinion. Both are great and the latter closely follows the former. The Disney version is an insult to Dumas.
A Clockwork Orange: A great film, but the book is better.
Do Androids Dream…: Both very good for different reasons. The movie doesn’t follow the novel too closely, but it’s one of my favorite scifi movies.
Breakfast of Champions: Great novel, horrible movie.
Fight Club: Enjoyed both the book and the movie, which follows it fairly closely until the end.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Both the book and the movie are classics.
Catch-22: The movie was okay; the book was better.
Les Miserable: None of the movie adaptations I have seen match the book.
These are just some novel/movie combos that come to mind. I’ll post more when I think of them.
One of the few movies to be better than the book IMHO is “Dr. Zhivago”. Every time I see that movie, I cry buckets at the wasted potential of “what might have been”. The book was very difficult to get through.
The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers 
Plus I forgot an “s” in Les Miz:p
I liked the movies to The Postman and Battlefield Earth much better to the books. I actually read the books (pity me) and managed to skip the movies.
Other than that, as said, books and movies are vastly different media. It’s the treatment of the story that matters, not its pedigree.
-Rue.
Oh, another example that I just thought of was In the Name of the Father, with Daniel Day Lewis. Wonderful wonderful movie, IMO, based on the autobiographical book by Gerry Conlon of his 15 years of wrongful imprisionment in British jails. Saw the movie, then went out and bought the book (I don’t think the book was originally named that, but it is now… after the movie and all). The book was also excellent.
I agree with the second half of this, but your first statement doesn’t flow, unless the book is a total piece of crap. In most cases, if a movie comes out that’s based on a book, I watch the movie first, then if I feel like it, read the book, and so far, there’s only been one instance where I found the book to be dissapointing in comparisson (it was Eaters of the Dead, which was just a bad book, but The Thirteenth Warrior was a great film). In every other case, having seen the movie gives me a bit of an example of what the characters look like and how they behave, which makes the realism of my imagination more powerful. Sure, I get by on my own with books not based off of movies, but even book covers and similar story ideas give my imagination bits and pieces to feed off of.
Generally, I tend to prefer the book over the movie. Take for example Jurassic Park. A great movie in and of its own. But the book has so many more sequences and many more things happening at once. If only the movie was just another half hour longer.
goes off to find his copy of the book and of the movie
What puzzles me is why some books are made into films.
Forrest Gump the book was a crude satire that no one had ever heard of before it was a movie, and you can see why. The movie was a technically superior work, and regardless of what one might think of it artistically, it did “reach” a lot of people.
I agree with elfkin477 re: Practical Magic. Another book that made me wonder why someone wanted to make a movie of it.
Of course, in both cases, hardly any of the premise or action survived the transition, so the book and film are almost unrelated.
The most striking example of this that I can think of is Gas Food Lodging, written and directed by Alison Anders. It’s supposedly based on a novel by Richard Peck, called Don’t Look and It Won’t Hurt. Anders said in an interview (paraphrasing):
“Well, I really liked the story, but it wasn’t quite right. So I updated it to the current year, made the SO an on-screen character, made him a geologist instead of a drug trafficker, had him die instead of going to jail, added a gay best friend for the younger sister, gave her a genuine SO instead of just one date with one guy, eliminated the character of the elementary-school aged sister altogether, along with a white-trash character who would have added some humor, made the mother sympathetic, for some reason made her a truck stop waitress instead of hostess, had the dad’s second wife merely reluctant to have the dad lend the younger girl money, instead of having her threaten the daughter, gave the mom two different SOs (serially, not simultaneously), removed the plot point where the younger sister goes to another city to visit the pregnant sister and talk her out of keeping the baby, and changed the locale! Oh, and I also made the sex scene totally gratuitous.”
The funny thing is, Richard Peck has co-author credit on the script!
Now, I’m not saying GFL was a bad film. I loved the visuals, and although it had a few moments that were a bit melodramatic, overall it was entertaining. I also admit that the book did not exactly cry out to be filmed.
But that’s my point. Why purchase the rights to a book if you’re just going to change everything! Write your own damn script if you’re so smart! This was not like “Why is the girl the master of the computer in Jurassic Park, instead of the boy?” This was an entirely different story, and I think if it had been filmed independently from the book, it wouldn’t even have been an infringement.
This is the book that came to mind when I read the OP. The book was incredible, the movie, eh. I have to say that the casting was pretty good. Jeff Goldblum IS Ian Malcolm.
I would also submit The Firm and The Pelican Brief as excellent books where the movies disappointed.
I forgot to add Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone. Your imagination can take you to places that your eyes cannot.