Movies That Are Better Than the Book
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I agree entirely. I will fart in the general direction of anyone who claims that the books are boring or that the movies are better, since those are both horribly false statements!fenrizz said:
Lotta good choices here. Good work, people.
There's a lot of stuff out there based on books. The trouble is that deciding how much a movie can stray from the source material before they should be considered completely different works. LotR, Harry Potter, and others that clearly stayed as close to the book as possible are good for this type of question. But something like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" was completely changed by Ridley Scott. Yes, I enjoy Blade Runner more than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep but they are so different. Same goes for There Will Be Blood and Oil! by Upton Sinclair. TWBB is this dark masterpiece and is way better than Upton's Oil! which it was based on, but they are so damn different. It's like trying to compare Star Wars to a Jane Austen novel. "I enjoyed Star Wars more." "Yeah, well Lucas did stray from the source material a bit."
(Please don't think that I think that Lucas based Star Wars on a Jane Austen novel, just making a point about straying from the source.)
There's a lot of stuff out there based on books. The trouble is that deciding how much a movie can stray from the source material before they should be considered completely different works. LotR, Harry Potter, and others that clearly stayed as close to the book as possible are good for this type of question. But something like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" was completely changed by Ridley Scott. Yes, I enjoy Blade Runner more than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep but they are so different. Same goes for There Will Be Blood and Oil! by Upton Sinclair. TWBB is this dark masterpiece and is way better than Upton's Oil! which it was based on, but they are so damn different. It's like trying to compare Star Wars to a Jane Austen novel. "I enjoyed Star Wars more." "Yeah, well Lucas did stray from the source material a bit."
(Please don't think that I think that Lucas based Star Wars on a Jane Austen novel, just making a point about straying from the source.)
Compare it alongside a proper, Broadway or West-end production of Romeo and Juliet with actors who actually have some grasp on how to deliver Shakespearean language and iambic pentameter, and we'll talk. Although I absolutely love the film for its eye-humping cinematography, there's a reason you don't mix Shakespearean dialect with California accents.TheSunshineHobo said:
I loved the film adaptation of Holes. The book is wonderful, too, and it'll always have a special place on my bookshelf, but the movie improved on it in ways I never would have expected from a Disney adaptation.
I'm also going to agree with the Lord of the Rings, because as great as the books were, they haven't exactly aged well (to me, anyway).
I'm also going to agree with the Lord of the Rings, because as great as the books were, they haven't exactly aged well (to me, anyway).
Bond, The Godfather and The Three Musketeers come to mind. For the rest, nada. And I have a lot of books like The Lord of the Rings, Bourne, The Green Mile, Harry Potter, Twilight even (jus' saying that the books are better than the movies ... Nothing more, nothing less)
The Stephen King short story Shawshank Redemption is based on is much worse than the movie (still not bad, but I love the movie), but they got Stephen to actually help write the movie, so they both feel similar with certain bits changed, in every instance I can think of, for the better.
If you haven't seen Shawshank GO WATCH IT YOU FOOL!
is it me, or is Stephen King's best work his Non-horror stuff? green mile, shawshank, stand by me, all great.
If you haven't seen Shawshank GO WATCH IT YOU FOOL!
The warden doesn't shoot himself, he just gets transfered
Boggs doesn't get his cummupins quite as badly
The kid Andy tutors doesn't get shot, just shuffled hopelessly back into the prison system
Red is white (I just really like how the line 'maybe it's because I'm Irish' wasn't supposed to be a joke
)
They explain why Red's in jail (he cut the brakes on his wife's car, didn't know she was driving a friend as well that day)
Some other small stuff, like how the music scene works better on film, as well as the ending
Boggs doesn't get his cummupins quite as badly
The kid Andy tutors doesn't get shot, just shuffled hopelessly back into the prison system
Red is white (I just really like how the line 'maybe it's because I'm Irish' wasn't supposed to be a joke
)They explain why Red's in jail (he cut the brakes on his wife's car, didn't know she was driving a friend as well that day)
Some other small stuff, like how the music scene works better on film, as well as the ending
is it me, or is Stephen King's best work his Non-horror stuff? green mile, shawshank, stand by me, all great.
The Lord of the Rings. That was a thousand pages of boring traveling occasionally broken up by something interesting which was quickly glanced over. Damn it, this isn't a traveling book its a fantasy adventure book!
The Two Towers. It took me three attempts to get through that book just once. It isn't that the story is bad it's just that it drags on and, on and, on and, on and, on ... The movies were lengthy as well but, the Lord of the Rings books were extremely bogged down with unnecessary detail. I'm not saying detail is a bad thing but part of the whole experience of reading is for one to conjure one's own image of the world into which one is reading. I am very curious to see how The Hobbit turns out. That was my favorite book of the Middle-Earth saga/Universe/whatever the hell one wishes to call it ...
If comic books count, then Dragonball Evolu-BWA HA HA HA!!! Sorry I couln't finish that with a strait face.
This is something I feel kills so much reading in School. It's like Panto/Cosplay, most of the people who loathe it were forced into doing it in their early life and have grown up to loathe it.SomeUnregPunk said:
The thing to remember about Watchmen though was Moore's dealings with reality are slight at best (Putting Meyer to shame on that as well) and Watchmen was the film Terry Gilliam said couldn't be filmed.
This is the man who hired elephants for a battle scene on a beach because it fitted the scene.
Zak Snyder deserves full credit for even managing to get it on screen, never mind getting it as close as he did. Just think what Watchmen could have been like in Bay's terms.
/shudder
I... What...?GreyFox389 said:
The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the single worst movie adaptations I've ever seen. They left out everything that happened in the prison!!! That is hands down, without any doubt, the single most important piece of character development in the entire story. In the movie they basically gave you just the beginning and end (how he acted before and after he was in the prison) without the middle! The actual meat of the story, how he changed! Argh!
Everything. Except for Tai-Pan and I Am Legend that is (which were let downs). I prefer movies to books.
There was a lot of pressure from the producers and studio's funding the movie to 'update it' for modern audiences. I heard that they were trying to convince Snyder to replaces the Russians with some terrorist plot because, ya know, that's what people want to see. I'm pretty glad that Snyder stuck to his guns and decided to keep it as faithful as he could.The_root_of_all_evil said:
A couple of movies that I think are better than the books.
The Crucible (1996 version). A pretty good play but the performances of people like Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder are better than anything you can conjure up in your mind or that you can see performed in the theater and because of this the movie experience is much better than watching it performed or reading it yourself. There was also some pretty good scenes added in by Miller which really improved to the experience I think.
A Clockwork Orange. It was directed by Kubrick so what do you expect? Being able to hear the music referenced through out the book really adds to the experience. Even if you are able to remember each note or are listening to it at the same time of reading, it doesn't have the same result. Kind of like in V for Vendetta the film, hearing the 1812 Overture made those explosion scenes while just knowing that it was playing in the comic didn't really do anything, set up the character V for sure, but had minimal effect after that. It was also cool to hear people speaking in Nadsat and McDowell did quite well in the role of Alex.
Twilight. It is a lot better for the description of a character to be summed up by them appearing on the screen than having them described again and again and again. Plus, CGI wolves are kind of cool.
I personally thought the Lord of the Rings were a lot better as films than as books. But then again I seem to be in the minority. I was seriously, seriously bored by the Lord of the Rings. I managed to crawl my way to the first 2 books and got a little though the third before I gave up after a character started reading poetry in the middle of a fucking battle...AGAIN!
Now the Hobbit, there's an exciting book. A talking dragon or a fat sleepy dwarf would have livened up those books nicely.
Now the Hobbit, there's an exciting book. A talking dragon or a fat sleepy dwarf would have livened up those books nicely.
I agree, reading the first book I can barely make 20 pages every 30 minutes and normally I can't even remember what happened. The words are so small.Crystal Cuckoo said:
And half the time it's like 'The hobbits settled under a tree for the night, got up in the morning after eating a good hobbit style breakfast, get nearly caught by a Black Rider, and go to sleep again, then go journeying once again.' Repeat 60 times. I'm sure it gets better but DEAR GOD the movies are so much more involving.
And I've read other Tolkien books as well, like The Hobbit, which is AWESOME, and The Children of Hurin, which is AWESOME. They don't drag on like LoTR