films that were better than the book
 

after looking at novels that shouldn't have been made into movies, i decided that there should be a thread for films that are better than the books

such as jaws (far better film)
and count of monte cristo (well i thought the new one was very clever)

do you think that there are any more out there

Friday Night Lights- The book is good, but the movie is great
25th Hour- Spike Lee's best film IMO
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring- My favorite film of the trilogy
LOTR: The Return of the King

While i haven't read Wiseguy i am told that Goodfellas is better

Correct! That is my number one example.

I haven't read the book, but I've heard numerous times that The Godfather is much better as a film.

I've read The Godfather and it goes off on several tangents that are left out of the film - there's a massive subplot about Johnny Fontane that takes up several chapters. The film summed up the main story of the book in three hours. Perfect.

Witches of Eastwick
John Updike Wrote the book and the character played by Jack Nicholson was a whimp in the book. The ending was so wishy washy I was disappointed.
The movie was an upgrade and Jack MADE that character 'sing'! The entire cast made that movie.

The book Forrest gump is interminable. The author is a true hack, and yet the movie is great!

Me! read a book that would be made into a movie. :laugh:

LOTR return of the king. The movie doesn't leave out as many scenes as most movies do when they convert novels into film. Plus the book was confusing since there were so many characters to follow, the movie put faces to names.

as far as lord of the rings...i actually thought the book was better, but it is hard to get through...at least i found it so the first time i read them

I can't believe noone has mentioned the best example, BY FAR.


To kill a Mockingbird.

Gregory Peck in the courtroom. Need I verb more?

It's been a while, but when I saw the movie, I had just finished reading the book. I thought they were equally impressive.

***

I wish I could contribute, but in my experience, the book has always been better than the film (or they've at least been on the same level).

I would say Jurassic Park, but that wouldn't be fair. The book bored me to tears, so I didn't finish it. It might have turned out to be amazing; but from what I read, the film was better.

I'd say Ian Fleming's novel From Russia with Love is a tough call. The book is arguably one of the best of the Bond novels. In fact, it was one of JFK's 10 favorite books of all time. And yet, the movie is, by the same token, one of the best of the Bond movies--mainly because of the hilariously over-the-top characters. I always get a kick out of Kronsteen, the slimy Russian chess player who shows up at the start of the movie; Rosa Klebb, the disgusting hag who happens to be a senior Soviet official, and, of course, Red Grant, played by Robert Shaw, the ruthless KGB assassin who has been hired to take out Bond. Sean Connery is at his best as Bond in this movie and Daniela Bianchi is pretty hot as Tatiana Romanova, the Russian babe. I especially get a kick out of the final scene in the movie, with the final confrontation between Bond and Rosa Klebb, who shows up disguised as a cleaning woman, to emphasize her disgusting hagginess, I guess. As Bond tries to avoid Rosa Klebb's poison tipped boot, Tatiana has to decide whether she wants to shoot Bond in the back, or shoot down Rosa Klebb. Luckily for Bond, she decides to shoot Klebb, but I hate to think what might have happened if she had given in to her Soviet indoctrination and shot Bond instead. What is interesting about the movie is that it remains ambiguous to the end--it could so easily have gone the other way. Tatiana might have shot Bond in the back instead of the Soviet hag, Rosa Klebb, and, instead of vacationing with Bond in Venice, she might have had to return to the Soviet Union with Klebb. So, I'd say, what makes this movie an instant classic is the open-endedness and ambiguity to the very end.

The book is fantastic, which is why I think To Kill a Mockingbird is unrivaled. Because the book was so good, and in my mind the movie was better, that constitutes it as the greatest adaptation ever (in terms of quality, mind you).

What other terms would it be in? :)

The other term would be faithfulness to adaptation.

I'm not sure that faithfulness to the original is necessarily an applicable point. There are many movies out there that take tremendous liberties with their source material, and are often way better than the original. One example is the Bond movie From Russia with Love, which changed the original story by introducing the secret organization SPECTRE as the main villain to avoid offending the Soviet government. Not that it's way better than the original novel, but it's still a pretty good movie.

But that's a quality issue. He was saying that, regardless of quality, a film can be adapted more or less faithfully from a book, and can be evaluated as such. It all depends on what you value in a film adaptation. If you liked the book, chances are you'll want the film to stick pretty close to the source material. If you didn't read the book, though, you probably won't care how close the film sticks to the book as long it's a good movie.

When I see film adaptations, I try to look for quality of film first. If I've read the book (like The Lord of the Rings), I'm more inclined to be bothered by changes here and there - but I recognize that adapting a book to film means naturally cutting out and changing material to fit the much different medium, and I keep an open mind so long as the themes and meaning of the story (or any other major aspects of a written work) are left intact. To me, that's the reason why anyone adapts a book to film - to convey on film the same message the author intended to convey on the page. If that is lost, then it ceases to be an adaptation. It becomes something else.

Yup.