Movies that were better than the books

[Tono Makt]

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.

Hear hear!

I'm going to go with Game of Thrones too. Though I think GoT the TV show has something the novels don't have - a huge push to ensure that content is out in a reasonable amount of time. You simply can't have 11 years between series with GoT the TV series because people age, people die IRL and people just generally change. So with the books there is always the feeling of "Will this series ever be finished?" that creeps into the reading of the books that can amplify the negative aspects of the books, which may make it a bit easier to say the TV show is better than the shows.

 

[Malty Milk Whistle]

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.

I never said that the book was fascist propaganda, but you cannot deny it did glorify fighting for your country and presented the state as a wonderful thing which everyone should enjoy.
But eh, different interpretations for different folks.
The guy who directed Troopers also directed Robocop, and was Dutch. It's a satire. He disagreed with the book's themes (because, y'know, Europe halfway through 20th century) and adapted it heavily to suit his own ideas of war. Visuals are crap, but hey, it's made in the 90s. The sequels were dumb, but the message of the first remains "Woo! Let's go and die in a war!' throughout the film.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

As I said last time this thread popped up, I found the Lord of the Rings movies to be miles better than the books. I'll give Tolkien all the credit in the world for all of the creative work he did to craft such a full and believable universe.. but I've always found him to be a terrible writer. The LOTR books make me want to find excitement elsewhere by watching paint dry, but the movies took that world /story Tolkien created and actually made it enjoyable and interesting.

This. Peter Jackson's movies take the anthropologist's fanwankery into the visual spectrum, which leaves tons of breathing room for the actual characters and plot. The best example of that is in "Fellowship"'s opening sequence, "Concerning Hobbits". The book spends page after page after page making sure we get all the detailed minutia of the Hobbits' general culture, when the movie just shows us extremely clear vignettes that summarize *everything* in Tolkien's word salad in just a few seconds of celluloid.

I'm a fan of the books and I'm also a fan of super-detailed descriptions. I love imagining places or being given exacting detail as to what's going on in a given scene. The thing is, I also like it when that goes somewhere, when action shows up and allows the writer to contextualize all that lore that's been presented. The books dawdle along forever in that respect, Bilbo's disappearance and Gandalf's first direct intervention taking *ages* to set the plot in motion.

If Tolkien were alive today and were working on the manuscript for the books, and if I were part of his reading committee, I'd ask him to consider trimming the fat. There's a ton of details that really do make the Hobbits come alive as a culture, but they serve no purpose whatsoever for the plot. Spending a paragraph or two telling us that they're placid folk with a thing for expansive meals and quiet lives would have been more than enough.

 

[Blow_Pop]

How about plays?

Because I do enjoy reading plays but Hamlet was best with Patrick Stewart in it. And Romeo and Juliet was good (one of the older ones that I saw in high school). And A Midsummer's Nights Dream.

You snubbed Twelve Angry Men... you bastard!

Can't snub something I've never seen or read. But you have made me realise I also forgot another play. The David Tennant/Catherine Tate version of Much Ado was better than the play as well.

 

[Blow_Pop]

Hmmm... I wonder how much of a smartass move it is to say "Pokemon"

Can't snub something I've never seen or read. But you have made me realise I also forgot another play. The David Tennant/Catherine Tate version of Much Ado was better than the play as well.

You've never seen it? 0_o

I recommend you at least watch the film then. Just for reference, on imdb, it has an 8.9, being the 8th best rated film on the site, the average critic rating for it on Rotten Tomatoes is 9/10, all of them being positive, and even a whopping 97% of the audience input on Rotten Tomatoes rated it positively, out of almost 100,000 people. Its also one of my favourite movies ever. Basically, watch it when you have a chance is what I'm saying.

I think the better would be to say I've never even heard of it. But now knowing that it is in print I have to read it first before I'll even consider watching it (I'm kind of really weird that way)

 

[Raggedstar]

I'll pitch a vote to that Lord of the Rings pile. I'm no major Tolkien fan, but I can get through the movies a lot easier.

For a more personal choice I would say Don Bluth's The Secret of NIMH is better than Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. The book was stronger in it's portrayal of the rats (as well as going into their past more in general), but despite it's changes I still prefer the movie. Not to mention Brisby/Frisby is a MUCH more likable presence in the movie and was focused more on her than the rats. I guess despite Jenner being tossed in as a villain (Jenner left the group long before in the book. There wasn't much of a villain in the books) and Nicodemus being changed to an old mystic. Those guys had a certain atmosphere to them in the movie.

 

[Fox12]

Can we count To Kill a Mockingbird? I mean, the book's good and stuff, but that's a fantastic movie. I doubt considering the movie better is a popular opinion, though. I liked it more (but then I like film more as a general rule, so).

Thems is fighting words right there. That's one of my favorite books ; )

OT: Probably Les Mis. I loved the book, but it was preachy and dragged on to much. The film was one of the few times where a movie managed to streamline a classic work without sacrificing either its soul or its brain. Even more impressive, considering that its an adaptation to an adaptation.

 

[Marter]

Thems is fighting words right there. That's one of my favorite books ; )

I do like the book. I said it was good (and stuff). I just like the movie more. Although it's been years since I've experienced either.

 

[Malty Milk Whistle]

They're remaking the original.

Yup. Took them less than fifteen years to annnounce a remake.

Sometimes I wish those bugs were real...

And the producer is the same man who graced us with Fast and Furious, xXx, Tokyo Drift, Evan Almighty, Battle Los Angeles and the Green Hornet.

Well I'm already psyched, with a resume that outstanding.

 

[hermes]

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.

Yeah... when I saw the original Watchmen comment, I wanted to say something like that.

Spoiler

The squid monster works because its an alien threat, literally from outer space (at least, that is the public story), unlike anything people have ever seen. Because of that, all the powers of the world would unite against an hypothetical enemy that would never return by the time they discovered the ruse. The plan of Ozymandias depended on the fact people would be no one on earth to blame for the catastrophe.
Dr. Manhattan, on the other hand, was always USA's deterrent weapon of mass destruction, to the point they used it to win Vietnam on a single week, and Nixon constantly used his presence to make the other powers accept more and more concessions. Under that scenario, all the powers in the world would redirect his frustration and unite against a common threat: the USA, now weakened and without the means used to bully others for decades. Their defense of also being attacked would be the equivalent of a mass murderer asking for mercy because he lost control of his machine gun and shot himself in the foot.

 

[x EvilErmine x]

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.

Just as an aside I think that was because the author (Douglas Addams) was kinda forced to write the other books by fan pressure/contractual obligation. He didn't want to write the last book IIRC but had to because of a contract with the publishers, that's why Francesca just vanishes, he meant to leave it open ended and she was supposed to be Arthur's happy ending.

Hmm can't think of a film I enjoyed more than the book.

To turn the topic on it's head, a book I enjoyed far more than the film, Jurassic Park. It was an OK film but a fantastic book, this goes double for The Lost world too.

 

[InfinityCubed]

As I said last time this thread popped up, I found the Lord of the Rings movies to be miles better than the books. I'll give Tolkien all the credit in the world for all of the creative work he did to craft such a full and believable universe.. but I've always found him to be a terrible writer. The LOTR books make me want to find excitement elsewhere by watching paint dry, but the movies took that world /story Tolkien created and actually made it enjoyable and interesting.

I would agree partly. I love the books but consider the movies better because they managed to seamlessly add in an important subplot that Tolkien couldn't fit and put in the appendices. Stay away from the extended editions. They add three hours of boring things that weren't even in the books.

 

[TheRiddler]

For what it's worth, I enjoyed The Lion King more than I did Hamlet. I know that the two aren't perfectly comparable, but I think that The Lion King still used a lot of the big ideas (admittedly dumbing them down in the process, but oh well) of the original play, while making it accessible, fun, and including some awesome musical numbers.

 

[Zontar]

For what it's worth, I enjoyed The Lion King more than I did Hamlet. I know that the two aren't perfectly comparable, but I think that The Lion King still used a lot of the big ideas (admittedly dumbing them down in the process, but oh well) of the original play, while making it accessible, fun, and including some awesome musical numbers.

Too bad they couldn't make the protagonist likable. Or have him act consistently. Or use logic, or at least the logic of someone the character's age, when making dissensions.