Movies that were better than the Books

[Leedo2502]

I'm sure I'm going to catch a lot of flak for this one;

The Lord of the Rings series.

I tried reading these when I was younger and was bored out of my head when Tom Bomdabom (whatever) showed up. All the "songs" that they sang in it were boring as hell too.

I tried again when I saw the first movie and was all "Jaysus these are boring".

But I'm sure that there are plenty other movies that were better than the books they were based upon.

[Leedo2502]

THought of another one... all the Bourne movies.

FAR better than the books, I tried chewing my hand off when I was reading the first one of those

[Cabbage Patch]

I'm sure I'm going to catch a lot of flak for this one;

The Lord of the Rings series.

I tried reading these when I was younger and was bored out of my head when Tom Bomdabom (whatever) showed up. All the "songs" that they sang in it were boring as hell too.

I tried again when I saw the first movie and was all "Jaysus these are boring".

But I'm sure that there are plenty other movies that were better than the books they were based upon.

We'll have to agree to disagree on Lord of the Rings. I read those books for the first time a good 30 years before the movies came out and there was no way they could ever match up in my mind.

One category where I have to agree that the movies are almost always better than the books is war stories. "A Bridge Too Far", "The Longest Day", "Band of Brothers", "The Bridges at Toko Ri" were all based on military history books I'd read that were far less memorable than the movies that were based on them. I think it's the kind of spectacle involved. The Lord of the Rings movies, as good as they were, could never match the fantasy stories as I imagined them. But the war movies could show scenes in far greater detail than I could imagine because they could use real tanks, ships and planes.

[Hellbringer]

Forest Gump. Watch the movie THEN read the book and tell me which is better. While the book had some funny parts, if it wasn't for Tom Hanks, no one would know about that guy from Alabama.

[forgottenone]

What a great topic of conversation. I have to say, I don't know of many. Typically if I read the book and liked it, I wouldn't go watch the movie. I'm curious about The Hunger Games. I liked the books, but haven't seen the movie, and so many have said it's really good. I'll still wait for the DVD.

[Cabbage Patch]

What a great topic of conversation. I have to say, I don't know of many. Typically if I read the book and liked it, I wouldn't go watch the movie. I'm curious about The Hunger Games. I liked the books, but haven't seen the movie, and so many have said it's really good. I'll still wait for the DVD.

I have the Hunger Games books, but I don't plan to read them till after I've seen all the movies. Ditto for Game of Thrones and the Harry Potter series. I figure that's the surest way to avoid disappointment.

[VEE]

Yeah LOTR the books are better than the films I reckon, good though the films are. The point about Tom Bombadil is fair enough though

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100109145731/lotr/images/thumb/c/c7/Tom_bombadil.jpg/220px-Tom_bombadil.jpg

That's why he wasn't in the film, it did drag quite a bit in the book.

[VEE]

Oh, and my contributions are:

The Bridges of Madison County
Jaws
Blade Runner

[Osiris]

All of this is subjective. It's only an opinion. Mine happens to be that you're all wrong. The books are always better.

[VEE]

All of this is subjective. It's only an opinion. Mine happens to be that you're all wrong. The books are almost always better.


Fixed.

[7oddisdead]

theres really only one thing that comes to mind in this for me. the mothman prophecies

[DogFromDuckhunt]

Bourne Ultimatum.
Starship Trooopers. Cheesy as it was.
Anything made from a Tom Clancy book.

[Leedo2502]

Starship Trooopers. Cheesy as it was.

Oh my god! THe book Starship Troopers was the shit... I loved the politics of it



Though I can begrudgingly accept that most would find it boring

[Leedo2502]

I'll even say any movie based off of a book by Stephen King is going to be better than the book

[lanezjones]

I think not a single movie is better than the book it taken.....mmmm.......Yes I do....not a single movie...!!!

[Litmaster]

You guys are friggin crazy... movies SUCK! They always have to cut corners and leave stuff out in order to condense the whole story.

Saying that movies are better than books is like saying that watching highlights of a football game is better than watching the game itself.


Also, the visual nature of movies automatically means that they'll put more emphasis on action scenes where something is 'happening' rather than on more subtle character development and underlying tension. The result is that damn near half of a 3 hour movie is taken up by bullshit car chases and fight scenes, where this may not be nearly so emphasized in the book version. They basically steamroll all the nuance in favor of flashy sensationalism.


Besides, in a movie you cannot get inside the head of a character like the way you can in a book. It's a total weakness of the visual medium.

[DannyBox]

"Books are always better" (that's the quote of my boo) girlfriend :D lol my thinking is that, movies are a way of turning that imagination of the readers minds, back to life in the BIG SCREEN but...sadly they not get it quite right when directors buy some of the permits to change stuff etc... but when you do it whit the dedication like Peter Jackson did you will get a piece of art

[Litmaster]

... but when you do it whit the dedication like Peter Jackson did you will get a piece of art

Tolkien was a bit long-winded with some of his tedious songs and page upon page of meeting-discussion dialogue. He was a bit too in love with the world he created, which is by now a cliche among fantasy writers. I re-read the Hobbit last summer after nearly two decades since I last read it, and found it quite a bit slower than I had remembered. By today's standards, I think the series would be improved a bit if a few dozen pages were edited out, but this would only make it a better book.

My point:
- I thought the LOTR movies were done as well as they could be, by any director
- I thought the LOTR books were great, but could be better with some stern editing

Nevertheless, a good book beats a great movie any day. :cool:

[Osiris]

Comes to Books subforums, says movies are better.

:hsugh:

[Vlarken]

I'll even say any movie based off of a book by Stephen King is going to be better than the book

......No. Most movies based off of his books butcher the story. Also, a lot of things that he does with writing sound good in a book, but translate poorly into a movie. Example: In Dreamcatcher the character Beaver has all these strange made up swearwords that seem funny and unique in the book, but sound rather stupid in the movie. A lot of the thought processes that go in in character's heads don't translate well either, and just most dialogue taken directly from the book doesn't sound that great on film.

[Leedo2502]

Saying that movies are better than books is like saying that watching highlights of a football game is better than watching the game itself.


Sometimes the Highlights are better than the football game, Superbowl XXXV for instance. While it was fun watching Ray Lewis dominate the Giants and make them his bitch It got boring after the first quarter and I jsut kept watching for the commercials and went to the bathroom during the game.

And just like some (not all) movies are better than the books, Some football games can be summed up with lack-luster QB preformance on a highlight reel.

[Leedo2502]

Comes to Books subforums, says movies are better.

:hsugh:

Just some

[Osiris]

Just some

I should punch you in the nutballs for that. :squint:

[Leedo2502]

I should punch you in the nutballs for that. :squint:

There are quicker ways to end up in the ER

:D

[Osiris]

There are quicker ways to end up in the ER

:D

:squint:

[Vlarken]

Just some

Just none. :meh:

[Leedo2502]

Just none. :meh:

Ones that haven't been mentioned, Jaws and The Godfather.... just off the top of my head.

I love to read but it's crazy to assume that the best media for telling a story is always going to be a book.

And the novelty of this thread is to show those rare examples of the movie being better than the book.

Any John Grisham movie. (mainly because he should have written scripts instead of novels)

[Hellbringer]

Ones that haven't been mentioned, Jaws and The Godfather.... just off the top of my head.

I love to read but it's crazy to assume that the best media for telling a story is always going to be a book.

And the novelty of this thread is to show those rare examples of the movie being better than the book.

Any John Grisham movie. (mainly because he should have written scripts instead of novels)


From a money perspective, most movies are better than books. That's monetarily speaking. Again, I got back to Forrest Gump as a prime example. That movie made over 667,000,000 million dollars worldwide. I seriously doubt the book was better in generating that kind of revenue. On amazon, the book price is comparable to the dvd and blu-ray, but that will never help the book be better than the money-making machine that is the movie. Again, all this from a financial point of view.

The same goes for Leedo's examples of Jaws and The Godfather.

[Chuckingdice]

Psycho....Robert Bloch was a great writer, but the film had it all over the book. Also Norman Bates was completely different from the book. I think Anthony Perkins was more unassuming and eventually creepier. The book however is much more gorier.