Movies that were better than the books

[Fsyco]

Y'know what? I'm gonna go ahead and say absolutely every film adaptation of Alan Moore's work, with the possible exception of League of Extraordinary Gentleman. Yeah, that's right; I'm including V for Vendetta.

The big complaint that everyone levels at the movie is that it does away with the comic's moral ambiguity. Perhaps; V is pretty clearly the "good guy" in the fight against Norsefire. But this criticism loses me in two places:

1) V is still shown to do horrible things for his cause, and the audience is hardly asked to overlook them; they're just not bashed over the head with a big knobbly stick engraved with the message "Hey! This conflict is looking mighty MORALLY AMBIGUOUS! V might not be the hero! Deep, no?" as they are in the comic.

2) Let's face it- from any objective standpoint, V is the lesser evil in either version. In a world as miserable as the one perpetuated by Norsefire, human life is simply not worth living, fuck the fact that more people get to live it. Physical survival will never be worth freedom. V's strategy of "Fuck up the government and whatever happens afterward happens" is shortsighted and irresponsible, but it's still better than a fascist dictatorship- at least someone more sensible might crawl out of the rubble and start rebuilding.

Oh, yeah, and as mentioned above,

Spoiler: Watchmen

Fake Alien Vagina-squid < Framing Doctor Manhattan

HERESY!
I think you're assuming that everyone is on board with the idea that V is always in the right. Not everyone agrees that life under Norsefire is better than death, although that might have to do with differences in Norsefire between the two versions. The original story was about Order vs. Chaos, or more specifically, Anarchy vs. Fascism. The film version, which I still think is a good movie, made it into more of Conservative vs. Liberal. In the book, not only was V more cold and ruthless, Norsefire were more sympathetic. In the movie, Norsefire are basically super-Nazis that orchestrated the downfall of the UK to rule the world, and their leader is an angry, evil, power-hungry nutcase. In the book, Norsefire arose during a time of crisis to bring back order and make life more tolerable after a worldwide nuclear event, and their leader is a pathetic, repressed zealot who at the very least genuinely wants what he thinks is the best for his country.

Also it was less of "The comic bashes you over the head with it" and more of V just being less empathetic for others. In the film, he's charismatic and fun and cares about everyone, which made it feel kind of weird when he did some of the nastier stuff from the comic. I think the film as a whole suffers from trying to brighten up the mood of the original, especially at the end. Everything felt shinier and brighter than the original, which had more depth and grimness. It felt too 'Hollywood'. Then again, not everyone likes grimness.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

The Shawshank Redemption based on Stephen King's short story called Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. Stephen King is by no means a bad author, but prose and character are not really his strong suits, either. The film takes the base short story and basically supercharges it with better character development, stunning visuals, and of course Morgan Freeman. What more could you want?

Also, those here saying Lord of the Rings: I honestly feel sorry for you.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Watchmen.
Watchmen the comic breaks the cardinal rule of any visual medium: Show, don't tell. All it does is tell. It's less a comic, and more a picture-book.

Spoiler: Also, the movie didn't have...

...The psychic-alien-clone-brain-vagina-squid-thing. Instead opting for a more believable scenario of making it look like Dr. Manhattan did it.

Spoiler

Manhattan has a link to humanity though, which goes against Ozymandias' plan entirely. The plan was to shock humanity into peace by presenting them with something totally unknown and lovecraftian. The fact that it was unbelieveable was sort of the point.

Not that the plan in the comic was flawless, since at some point I'm sure someone would've figured out that the squid was genetically engineerd. It still works miles better in the book though.

 

[Mangod]

The Shawshank Redemption based on Stephen King's short story called Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. Stephen King is by no means a bad author, but prose and character are not really his strong suits, either. The film takes the base short story and basically supercharges it with better character development, stunning visuals, and of course Morgan Freeman. What more could you want?

Also, those here saying Lord of the Rings: I honestly feel sorry for you.

Speaking of Stephen King: Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining from 1980. I'm sorry, Stephen, I know how important this book was to you personally, but the Kubrick movie is just scarier. And nothing illustrates this more than the mini series, which ruins the horror aspect by explaining. Every. Damn. Thing. That was ever a mystery, and thus left up to the viewers imagination in the movie.

This actually seems to be King's biggest problem; the inability to let a mystery just be a mystery. Some things are much scarier when you have no idea what they are. Can you imagine in The Thing (1982), if the eponymous Thing had suddenly sat down with the research stations crew and loudly explained its origins, purpose, thoughts, feelings and motivations? You would have died of laughter!

 

[Vausch]

Watchmen.
Watchmen the comic breaks the cardinal rule of any visual medium: Show, don't tell. All it does is tell. It's less a comic, and more a picture-book.

Spoiler: Also, the movie didn't have...

...The psychic-alien-clone-brain-vagina-squid-thing. Instead opting for a more believable scenario of making it look like Dr. Manhattan did it.

Can I offer a potential counter to that?

Spoiler

I thought the movie had a good idea by keeping it tied in to the main characters but with it being Dr. Manhattan as the end all world killing threat, the people of the world are more apt to attack the US.

Dr. Manhattan is an American and even if he attacked the US, other countries would blame them for it and odds are unleash hell on the entire country.

 

[an annoyed writer]

]I prefer David Fincher's Fight Club over the book.

Same. The original book is so depressing and humorless compared to the film, which is something of a perennial favorite film of mine. plus, the soundtrack is fucking awesome.

 

[AliasBot]

Top of my list is probably How to Train Your Dragon. The book was an extremely short, fairly enjoyable little underdog tale about a "runt" boy training a "runt" dragon and eventually saving the entire village through a series of happenstances, but though it took the original conceit (all Viking trained dragons) and flipped it on its head (all Vikings hated dragons, and Hiccup was the only one to actually interact with one outside of fighting), the change worked in the story's favor, both in terms of intrigue and entertainment value The added length to develop the story/characters better didn't hurt, either. In short: short, okay book -> very good movie.

 

[RealRT]

The Watchmen - I think {SPOILER ALERT} tying it all back to Dr. Manhattan was better than whatever the fuck that thing in the book was.
The Lord of the Rings - they trimmed a lot of the fat and streamlined some moments while still staying pretty faithful to the source.
The Secret Window - I liked the ending more than the one in the original story.
The Thing. I mean, have you seen that shit?

 

[Mikejames]

"The Walking Dead" TV Show is better than the graphic novel. The graphic novel is very weirdly paced. It's all over the place in terms of what's going on and what the characters do.

While I still think the game stands tall as the best version, I admit thinking it odd how much flak the show gets in comparison to the comics.

Watchmen. Watchmen the comic breaks the cardinal rule of any visual medium: Show, don't tell. All it does is tell. It's less a comic, and more a picture-book.

I'm on the fence with Watchmen. I wasn't a fan with all the changes the film made,

Spoiler

The inevitably fast pacing and gratuitous change to how Rorschach killed the child murder for example.

But I thought it was an enjoyable enough adaption.

 

[SinisterGehe]

As many have mentioned here before me. Lord of the Rings - I have seen the movies countless times, editor's cut, extended versions you name it. (Mainly because I like Peter Jackson's style and the beautiful vistas on New Zealand)

But the books, the fucking books! They are still haunting me after YEARS on my bookshelves. I have tried MANY times to get through them. But they are slow, long, tedious and I am dyslexic who has hard time reading. I have barely made through first few chapters. And I have tried!

Like it is good read, but HARD to read.

Also Requiem for a Dream - this is simply because Darren Aronofsky is master of all things weird. The sharp cutting music by Clint Mansell, the cutting, acting and directing are amazing. It is real but unreal - the dream scenes are amazingly well done.
I love everything about it. (Well there are few slow scenes - dream scenes - that in my opinion could been shorter)

But then again I am more of a movie person because I like visuals.

 

[Kyrian007]

I'd have to disagree with most of the responders here and say I've never seen it happen. I'm not saying it's not possible for an adapted screenplay to be better than it's source material, but I am saying I've never seen it happen yet. Vanity I suppose, but there's just something much better about what I see when I read a book than anything I've ever seen on the big or small screen. It isn't to say I've never enjoyed adaptations, some can be quite entertaining. I disagree with the OP's "Starship Troopers" pretty strongly. Heinlein is a classic sci-fi master and pretty good with subtext and subtle imagry. Verhoeven has never DONE subtle and wouldn't know how. It doesn't make him bad... that's just not what he DOES. Verhoeven is big, bombastic, over the top, and right in your face... a BOLD storyteller. Just not a very subtle one. He couldn't have missed the point of Starship Troopers any harder and quite easily could have changed a few names and the title and no one would have even seen much of a similarity. I didn't dislike it, it was a fun little romp. But it did do disservice to its title.

Contrast that with Snyder's take of Watchmen, another movie I quite enjoyed. Rather than changes (other than a few the really bothered some folks but I didn't care much about,) Snyder seemed to storyboard the thing directly from the source material. I liked it, it was a pretty decent tribute to the comic. That said, it was a copy. A tribute. An imitation. Good? Yes I liked it. But there's nothing like the original.

Then again, if I thought a book was unreadable trash... I usually avoid the movie adaptation. So perhaps I'm not doing this right. Maybe if I check out Twilight or Hunger Games or True Blood then I might see one that's better.

 

[IndomitableSam]

I enjoyed the Hunger Games movie better than the book, the visuals were fairly interesting, I think it was paced better, but most of all it cut out most of the angst from the book. Can't speak for Catching Fire as I haven't read it nor seen it.

Came here to say this, too. The Hunger Games series is a pretty generic dystopian teen story. When I read it all I could think of was Battle Royale and how much better that is. I read the books when I was a school librarian, so I read a LOT of teen fiction at the time and thought it was only average.

The first movie was a pretty good PG/PG-13 action movie. The second was actually a pretty good movie, plain and simple.

 

[Jamieson 90]

The Watchmen, I found it more enjoyable than the graphic novel.

Lord of the Rings, I appreciate what Tolkien did as a writer and he's by no means a bad writer, I just don't personally like his writing style but recognize others will no doubt love it. Again I found myself preferring the movies.

The same applies to Game of Thrones, the acting in the show is absolutely sublime and it's a lot more compact and streamlined whereas the books lose their way a lot.

On the flip side can I think of a movie that I hated compared to the book(s)? Absolutely, the Harry Potter movies being a prime example. PS, COS, POA and DH1 were all great movies and adaptations, GOF, OTTP, HBP and DH2 were all terrible movies and terrible adaptations.

 

[RoonMian]

THe Godfather.

Oh god, that book bored me to tears... One of the very few books I actually didn't manage to finish.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Time for a controversial choice: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Before you burn me at the stake, let me clarify: I'm saying this in light of having read the whole quadrilogy, and in the end I found the movie more enjoyable. What passed for random witty nonsense in the first book just felt mean-spirited and nasty in the last books. I left the books with the impression that none of the characters cared for what happened to another and in some cases genuinely hated each other. Neither did it feel like any of them had accomplished anything by the end. And if you want to say "That's the point!" then I'll reply: Well did it really need four books to convey said point?

The movie on the other hand felt heartwarming, funny and cute, and IMO it conveyed the "unfilmable" parts of the book rather well.

 

[tippy2k2]

The reason for the handling of Shane was the book wasn't hugely popular yet and there was a real possibility of cancellation so Kirkman wanted to reach the ending to the Shane arc before the book was potentially forced to end. Kirkman has said in the past that he is unhappy with how quickly he ended Shane's part of the story and was glad to have a second chance with the TV show.

That actually does help my view on the comic for I did not know that. Kirkman gets MUCH better about it as the series goes on and that explains it nicely.

I still like the show better (The Governor is a much more interesting guy in the show I believe) but the show also has the advantage of seeing what worked and what fell flat and changing accordingly.

 

[MrBaskerville]

Most often i find it to be the other way around, but i would argue that Jurassic Park 1 and 2 are better than the novels. I think the first Jurassic Park book gets a bit silly at times (Raptors on ships?) and i prefered the sympathetic and oblivious Hammond over the unlikeable bastard from the book. It's a great read, but nowhere near as elegant as the movie. The sequel is a bit different, the book was written while they were writing the script, so it's a bit weird to compare them, they have a lot of the same key scenes, but the material is almost completely different and i will say that i prefer the movie version.

I also prefer to watch Naked Lunch over reading it, it's too hard to make sense of the book, imo. The movie seems more comprehensible (if you can believe that). Depending on mood i might also prefer the Fear and Loathing movie, it's such a perfect adaptation that you could go with either and end up with the same experience.

 

[Rastrelly]

well, as the title says.

In your opinion, what movies did you enjoy more than the book?

I'll go first and say Starship Troopers.

I watched the film, and loved it for the tongue in cheek satire on fascism and over-militarisation that it was.
Read the book....and ended up putting it down almost halfway through because it was so...Disagreeable. (immature I know, but I found it hard to read something that presented fascism as a legitimate way to run stuff, i mean, come on, it was fairly propagandtastic)

So, what's yours?

Fascist propaganda? Wow. Really wow. You know what? I'll agree! But same logic will make me to actually mark each and every government on this planet as fascist. Also, Starship Troopers movie is an awful piece of crap, with horrible visuals, absent story logic, and "anti-military message" that contradicts itself.