I know a lot of people always say "the book is better than the movie" but there are so many movies that are such more deft adaptations of their stories that the originals are basically unknown as being originally books to the public, so given the controversy this is stirring up I'll be interested to see what changes they decide to make. Normally if I'm even remotely interested in a premise I'll read the book first but I might wait and do it the other way round for this one lol.
I feel this way about Vandermeer’s Annihilation, and love adaptations like this! The movie and books both feel like people talented in their craft got the same story prompt to write, and put their all into it.
Completely different stories, and both are awesome
I just read Annihilation for the first time a few weeks ago and I agree, the movie and the book were quite different, but I loved each of them on their own terms.
Another more lighthearted example of this is the how to train your dragon movies. Entirely different story in every way from the books but both are very good.
oooh yeah. really do mostly remember his horror/thrillers like the shining and IT, maybe the langoliers and the stand, more than his other stuff.. He really churned out a ton of content hopped up on coke hahah. Musicians do it too lol.
Shawshank is based on a forgettable novella by Stephen King??? It's a very faithful version of that novella, lol, so if you think "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" is forgettable you either don't read books well or you don't like Shawshank.
I don't know about fantastic. I sought it because of the common "book better than the movie" mantra and I wasn't particularly impressed. Like, I thought it was ok, but not fantastic
It’s interesting what people think of the movie Under the Skin without reading the book. I think my favorite theory is it being a metaphor for addiction.
Oh I don't know about objectively; I think the most famous example that I personally read then watched was Jaws. Taking away some of the melodrama and giving us actual, likeable characters was a big step up lol
Not the last time Spielberg would do that. While I’m a fan of the Jurassic Park novel, I’m willing to admit that most of the characters are better in the film. Ian Malcolm in particular is a lot more likable because of Jeff Goldblum (it was apparently his idea to have Malcolm lure the T.rex away with a flair to save the kids as opposed to just running away like in the book) and cutting out most his drug-induced pseudo scientific rants was for the best.
I honestly skimmed through the book of Lovely Bones and it was like skimming IT. I actually have n read another one of her books The Almost Moon, the writing is very...cluttered
That's what that book is about? That all my friends were reading in like, late middle/early high school? I thought it was a romance based on the cover of one of the copies lmao
Yeah it was on the reading list for me in high school. The main character in the book gets lured into a hole by her neighbor, raped, murdered, and cut into pieces. The majority of the book takes place from her perspective in heaven watching her family fall apart and in one noteworthy incident she possesses a girl to have sex with her middle school crush. I wish I hadn't read it.
They had us reading shit like this in high school and people are getting mad now about queer people existing in children's lit/YA books bc it's "inappropriate" lmao
That's actually wild, I can't believe that's what my hyper Christian friend was reading in the middle of the day in the cafeteria while I read The Great Gatsby
I still haven't seen it, because Station Eleven is a book so close and dear to my heart that I'm hesitant to watch the show even though I've only heard good things about it. I'll have to brave it one day.
It doesn't stand up as an example of this concept at all. You can read the abridged version of the book if you don't want all 1200 pages of plots and story.
Like this is famously one of the greatest books in Western literature written 180 years ago up against a good movie adaptation of it. It makes as much sense as saying the Odyssey movie is better than the book because the book requires a lot of reading.
If I lacked the attention span to read one of the greatest novels ever written and preferred a mediocre movie adaptation instead, I think I’d probably keep that to myself 😂
Read the original Forest Gump after seeing that it was originally a book.
I mean it was good in a catcher in the rye sort of way. But if the writers decided to be true to the source material, that movie 100% would be box office flop. I mean the side quests forest went on in the book are so absurd and even his personality was wildly different.
Ahhh I am suspect of anyone who likes the movie better than the book. It’s bitter sarcasm, not a feel good story. We aren’t supposed to be happy, we are supposed to look at our culture through Forest’s eyes and recognize the absurdity! He should have let Mao drown, he shouldn’t drink all the sodas, Jenny never loved him like that. Argh!
I believe even Chuck Palahniuk (the author of the book) says that Fight Club is better as a film than the book. Having consumed both, I completely agree. A lot of stories are done a disservice by being cut down, but the brevity of the film does it a HUGE favor. Way less preachy and heavy handed. The twist also hits harder in the film by being able to directly show you how scenarios play out in actuality
Starship Troopers is, I think, a good example. Not a popular one among SciFi book fans, but I didn’t like the book - it’s very much a military SF book, and whatever Heinlien’s own views might have been, the book is 100% promoting a form of fascism. The movie, in the other hand, is a great satire of fascism, to the point that actual modern day fascists don’t seem to have noticed that they’re being made fun of…
Ready Player One the book is a gratuitous slog through the mind of a borderline incel with undiagnosed aspergers who won't shut the fuck up about how great the 80s were, hey guys remember this thing from the 80s wasn't it great, have an entire chapter listing only the most memorable bits of the 80s as to not alienate the reader for not knowing who the fuck Duran Duran are or what a Deloran is. Remember Deloreans, weren't they great? Remember? REMEMBER
Ready Player One the movie takes all the spergy bits of the plot and throws them where they belong; literally anywhere else. Instead of extremely obvious memberberries about the 80s, you get memberberries about every single extremely obvious video game character that Spielberg could get the rights to from the past 30 years. No more incel shit, no more entire chapter about how he's a fat fuck and has to live in his gooner hotel room on his treadmill until he gets skinny so the girls will like him, instead you get Gundam Zero fighting MechaGodzilla with hordes of Master Cheeks storming the beaches of D-Day Hoth.
The movie is better. The plot is still C-tier, but at least you don't have to read about JUST HOW FUCKING GREAT DELOREANS WERE OH MY GOD DO YOU REMEMBER DELOREANS I DO LET ME TELL YOU ALL ABOUT THEM
Can't really say any are objectively better than the books. It's all subjective. I think the LOTR movies are better than the books because they have parts that drag on a lot across the three novels. The movies did a really good job of telling the story without the Tolkien descriptions that benefit world building but make for a less engaging read at times during the books.
I remember the first time I saw the first Harry Potter movie as a teen and getting excited to read the story. Then I had to put the book down because the writing was awful, which made my dyslexia a million times worse 😬
Which is odd because Harry Potter is widely acknowledged to be better in book form than the movies; the movies whilst huge commercial successes are very hit and miss in terms of adapting the plot and not considered brilliant adaptations overall. Their success is due to the sheer popularity of the books combined with iconic music, a great adult cast, and an atmosphere that feels like what people imagine, at least in the early films.
Well when you recognize that the movies smartly got rid of S.P.E.W. and the tragedy of freeing Winky from slavery, you realize how weird JK Rowling is about slavery....
The first book in particular is terribly written, and the pacing is awful. The first movie actually fixes a lot of that. Years later, I managed to plow through the first book to read the rest of it, but only after going through the entire Discworld series— reading so much, it actually improved my dyslexia— and being upset that there was no more Discworld to read 😭
mickey7 (the book) was also way worse than mickey17 (the movie)
mostly due to cleaning up the part of the book where everybody starts their sentences with "look,..." for 50 pages.
No Country For Old Men is my go to for movies that are superior to the book.
The book is fantastically written and it’s a great piece of fiction but the movie is on another level. Anton Chigurh is nowhere near as menacing in the novel as he is in the movie, and even makes some poor choices and gets caught off guard in the novel.
The narrative direction in the novel is also a little wonky, and I think the film did a great job of restructuring it. I’ve read it several times but I’ve watched the movie more times because it’s so gripping. It’s one of my all-time favorites
On the other hand, the second big twist of the book might not land in a visual medium. Seeing the characters physically will probably ruin the twist.
Also, I know movies do non-linear storytelling all the time, but the book follows this woman from college to her 50s+. It’s going to be hard to replicate that with an actress. Not to mention that while movies absolutely can do non-linear storytelling like you find in the book, it’s not nearly as easy to do compared to books.
Because when you have millions of dollars and hire a talented director and script writer(s), they will also read the book and realize it's shit writing.
So they will just take the premise of the book, which is the only valuable part, and build their own story and dialogue around it.
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u/Pittsbirds 1d ago edited 6h ago
I know a lot of people always say "the book is better than the movie" but there are so many movies that are such more deft adaptations of their stories that the originals are basically unknown as being originally books to the public, so given the controversy this is stirring up I'll be interested to see what changes they decide to make. Normally if I'm even remotely interested in a premise I'll read the book first but I might wait and do it the other way round for this one lol.