Cases where the movie is better then the book

Mainstream literary examples are harder to find, I think. Why is this?

(hey, Melissa M!)

Blade is nothing compared to 'do androids dream of electric sheep?' (but the visuals are good).

or adaptations of bram stokers boring novel, where you have to plough through countless pieces of correspondence written by the protagonists.

http://www.iap.de/~kulturwerkstatt/Bilder/Nosferatu.jpg

o hello hello, like to go to see, lad?

http://www.blakes-7.demon.co.uk/SevenCyc/a9/Mutoid-GB.jpeg

Um, as for the thread's question: Jaws? Planet of the Apes?

Not to mention my favourites: Die Hard & Die Hard 2.

Ed Harris? James Woods? I suck at that casting thing. Chris Walken can do whatever he chooses, so, yeah, him.

Will I get in trouble if I say "The Shining"?

Love Is a Dog From Hell

Although I have to say that Kubrick's Shining far outshines the book (or perhaps it's just Nicholson). And my fave movie of all time, George Steven's Giant, is better than Ferber's novel. Which is still great.

inherent vice

The Ice Storm

Point Blank (1967) starring Lee Marvin better than The Hunter by Donald E. Westlake

I'd be gutted if Wizard Of Oz and Alice in Wonderland were better in the old film versions because I don't really like either film and the Carroll and Baum books are supposed to be brilliant and far weirder.

XP
Obv a 'faithful' adaptation of Naked Lunch was impossible, but the decision to interpret it as a piece of displaced hetronormative autobiography seemed to me not only banal - the William Tell business being just about the most overplayed 'fact' there is to know abt WSB - but also wholly contradictory to the spirit of the work. Things like the mugwumps are just embarrassing, and even Ornette is pretty much wasted on the S/T. Crash seemed a much better film, and a better fit for Cronenberg's sensibilities.

xp Yeah, as much as Disney's "Alice" is in my top 5 of their classic animated films, it is in now way better than Carroll's books. Not by a long shot. The book is just so dense with wordplay and allusion and pardoy and absurdity that the movie can't even begin to approach.

xxp

No worries, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland are both fantastic and easily trump their film adaptations.

Return To Oz is a pretty cool film though.

I'd be mildly annoyed if Jungle Book animated was better than the Kipling book.

Pinocchio is the only Disney film I truly love but I hope the book is better.

Jungle Book doesn't come close to Kipling either

I'm not sure there's any right Disney answer to this thread

oh wait, The Lion King is better than Hamlet

someone said the Bible upthread and actually DeMille's 10 Commandments...

Don't Look Now

Silence of the Lambs, maybe?

Not that either are terribly good but Twilight movie is more enjoyable than the stupid book

Silence of the Lambs for sure. And even people who aren't fans of the film version of Hannibal would surely hail it as a masterpiece relative to the piece of rancid trash from which it was adapted.

I think I preferred the adaptation of The Magic Christian to the book.

no one's said American Psycho yet...?

oh Dan did over a decade ago. good job Dan!

Dr strangelove

The Sound of Music

The Social Network

cosign Silence of the Lambs, and American Psycho

Glazer's Under the Skin was originally scripted after the Faber book, but as he couldn't raise the budget, the film was stripped to an essential core without the alien culture, plastic surgery, and animal rights baggage.

come on American Psycho : it's enjoyable and has its moments but the movie is a joke compared to the book !
maybe it's people who hated the book who like the movie more, though.

visuals in the book are too much, like being stuck in a room with a loud tv, the movie is a lot easier to take & yes it dumbs it done but on the upside you dont have to spend nearly as much time in his head & you still get the gist

plus christian bale is great to watch

personally speaking, anyway

*down, not done

the movie extracts the central premise, which is funny and engaging, from the prose, which is neither.

^^^

exactly

there's actually a really good piece by norman mailer about american psycho the book where he concludes that it has all the originality and thematic complexity and other basic elements of a great novel but is let down by the fact that bret easton ellis is a godawful writer.

Under the Skin is yeah, probably better than the book; the book was frustrating and irritating even though I liked portions of it a lot. Along similar lines, I think Movern Callar is a better film than a book.

The Mosquito Coast maybe? I certainly remember the film more than I remember the book.

How about comics? Obviously no Alan Moore stuff. I'd be interested to hear people's opinions on Himizu, 30 Days Of Night, Blue Is The Warmest Color, Dylan Dog/Cemetery Man and A History Of Violence. Soon enough Polina by Bastien Vives is getting a Juliette Binoche film.

whoever said Psycho upthread is OTM. Bloch's novel was very dry and did little for me.

I'm pretty sure The Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins, and Mean Girls are better than the books, though I haven't actually read them.

the original mary poppins books are very different from the disney film, much sharper and less sentimental. i like the film ok but i'd probably rather spend more time with the books than rewatch it.

i love baum's oz books but the 1939 film is a better and deeper work of art than "wonderful wizard of oz," which is actually one of the weaker ones in the series imo.

yeah, Greg Fanoe should be tempbanned and sent to an ice floe for a month

the Poppins books are wonderful and bitter and so much the product of a voice; the film is a dumb turd that's a mish-mash of competing ideas. the 10th Oz adaptation is a good kids film, and the first book wasn't as rich as the series became, but c'mon, especially if you have an O'Neill version

inherent vice

saw it last night and fuuuuuck no. it's not bad, but the streamlining only manages to fit it barely into a PTA-sized film, not to improve anything. Bigfoot is the only character that manages to survive the transition as a character at all. (Phoenix's Doc is a new creation that serves the film he's in fine; nobody else gets enough space to be a person.)

do we have a thread for 'books you wish could be made into films?'

re : American Psycho. I know that many people despise the book. Personally I loved it at the time. It was a shock and one of my craziest experiences with a book (I totally understand being saturated by it... negatively !). I haven't read it again though so maybe I wouldn't think it's a strong anymore. When the movie was released it just seemed so... dull and empty (which is ironic !).

do we have a thread for 'books you wish could be made into films?'

Following the discussion about American Psycho, Jonathan Littell's "Les Bienveillantes" would make a crazy movie... I could have imagined something with Klaus Kinsky (impossible of course !).

err Kinski, of course !

i'm interested in films based on books considered to be impossible to film. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it's generally an interesting conceit. i like the fact people have at least attempted to make something out of flatland, naked lunch, watchmen etc... i'd love to see a film of the pale king by DFW (a perennial fave of mine)

Well, Les Bienveillantes would have all the problems of extremely graphic violence, sex, etc. like American Psycho... plus nazis/shoah issues !
I don't think anybody would be crazy enough to put money in this...

I only want to see a film version when a book is very flawed and a disappointing missed opportunity. But remaking a book might be more appropriate. Books don't get remade very often and that's probably for the best.

I've always liked the idea of only doing remakes of bad yet promising films because remaking classics rarely makes sense.
I also like the idea of filmmakers insulting each other by remaking very recent films. "Your version was not good enough".

When I like a book I really don't want a film version, although I do like plenty of adaptations. There's lots of books I pray never get made into a film.

Books don't get remade very often and that's probably for the best

when Terry Pratchett died the other week I was reminded of The Carpet People, I read the 1992 version when I was a kid, always wanted to have a look at the original and see how they compared

The Carpet People is a fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett which was originally published in 1971, but was later re-written by the author when his work became more widespread and well-known. In the Author's Note of the revised edition, published in 1992, Terry Pratchett wrote: "This book had two authors, and they were both the same person."

I've read the 1928 version of Wyndham Lewis's Tarr, but not the 1918 version

The Bourne Identity

Anyone read La Planète des Singes?

Yeah, INHERENT VICE is straight wrong for this thread. Enjoyed the film well enough, but it succeeds only in bringing over the general plot (the least interesting aspect of the novel) and jettisons all the beautiful hallucinogenic accents and asides about the roaming spirits of dead surfers and underwater Atlantean cities and such. And so many vivid sections of the book are flat and leaden on the screen. I’m willing the meet the film on its own separate grounds and appreciate it as its own thing, but it’s still a significantly lesser piece of work.

"I’m willing the meet the film on its own separate grounds and appreciate it as its own thing"

find this really difficult to do if I liked the book tho if I watch the movie first its easier I think

godfather for sure, that book is pulp garbage

The Thin Red Line though they only really have a passing resemblance to each other.

agree that, while the movie is fine on its own merits, Inherent Vice is a much better book.

incidentally i often fantasize about someone doing Moby Dick right...which would essentially entail somehow capturing in film the unique voice of the novel.

has anyone actually read Barry Lyndon?

i've never read starship troopers. still, starship troopers.

I like Ken Russell's adaptation of The Rainbow, I've never read the book but I think I remember hearing that some D. H. Lawrence-lovers thought it was a travesty. is anyone here familiar with both?

I think frank perry's 'last summer' is better than the book but the book is also not bad

incidentally i often fantasize about someone doing Moby Dick right...which would essentially entail somehow capturing in film the unique voice of the novel.

― ryan, Wednesday, March 25, 2015 6:59 PM (2 hours ago)

imo the john huston version is pretty good, prob the best we're going to ever get. saw a bit of the patrick stewart miniseries when it first aired and it is, uh, not good.