Do You Ever Get Sick Of "The Book Is Better Than The Movie" bit?

There are many times I'll be in a discussion talking about movies, and nothing but movies. We throw names of directors, actors, and of course, movie titles. Someone always has to interject with, "The book is better". We're not talking books, either.

Is it just a knee-jerk response? Maybe some want the world to know they are smart, because they read a book?

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I don't.



(It simply happens to not be true sometimes. I like Kubrick's Shining better than the novel for instance.)

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I see that come up as well from time to time, but that argument doesn't do much for me. I think that books and movies (which are two entirely different mediums) have such wildly different goals and ambitions that comparing them seems to miss the point. Both films and books come with so many masterpieces and failures that comparing the two mediums to determine what the better one is seems like a wormhole of a discussion to me.

I said this once...

There are stories that work better as a book than a movie. One instance would be Milan Kundera's book entitled The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The book is heavily narrated which gives the author the chance to explain what the unbearable lightness of being is. Long narrations don't usually work for movies.I would venture to say there other elements that get lost when you take a novel and turn it into a movie. I think the movie can be better than the book, but I think it is much harder to make the transition from book to movie. One example would be Angel Heart. It was based on a novel called Fallen Angel. They had to alter the story in large part because filming it as it was written would be a logistical nightmare. Filming in abandoned subway stations, filming on the Harlem end of central park, etc. There is always the argument that a book makes you use your imagination to interpret the book, while in a movie based on the book, all those interpretations are made by the movie director who has to make hard decisions about what to include and exclude from the original story. There are some reason for making the statement "the book is better than the movie" on many occasions and I don't think that is always a matter of arrogance to say the book is better when it really is better.

There's been a lot of discussion of this subject on this site and I'll say it again...the book is ALWAYS better than the movie...case closed.

But why should someone referring to their opinions on the source material relative to the adaptation be off-limits in those discussions? I mean, if the person refuses to expand on their reasoning, I get why that would be annoying, and seem like a hollow display of their intellect, but it should be judged on a case-by-case basis, and if someone brings the book into the discussion in a substantive way, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with that (quite the opposite, really).

Another example of a movie being better than the book would be Blade Runner. I think the movie Blade Runner is much better than the book, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep".

All I hear is "the apple is better than the orange."

That said, sometimes the idea is fine (the movie stripped away the core essence of the book) even if it comes out in cliche form.

LOL! (I sort of agree).



So here is something to consider when someone says "The book was better than the movie":

Imagine your favorite narrative film. Psycho, Die Hard, whatever.

Now imagine someone cutting it to a third of its runtime and dubbing over some of the actors' voices with other voices. Obviously some of the subplots will have to be seriously abridged, or even removed. And the voices, when you watch them, just seem wrong.

And now imagine that this heavily abridged version of the film is aired on TV in a half-hour primetime spot. You become aware that this version of the story is the one that most people will think of when they hear the title.

If people were sitting around, talking about how great 25-minute Die Hard was, wouldn't you be tempted to blurt out, "Guys, the feature length version is so much better?!"

There are definitely some book adaptations that I think are fabulous (A Monster Calls, for example, or the most recent adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd). Some writers/directors really put a new artistic stamp on a story, and make changes to a key element that end up working really well. (I happen to like And Then There Were None's goofy, totally unfaithful approach to Christie's material, and I'll go to it way, WAY more often than the much more faithful miniseries that came out recently).

In most cases, though, film can't capture the depth of a story that you can get in a book. Even when I really like a film adaptation, I still usually say in my praise that the book is a must-read.

Just to name a single movie: no way is Vanity Fair the movie better than Thackeray’s masterpiece of the same name.

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Kinda.
I don't really give a shit if a movie is true to a book or whatever, even if it's a book I really like, I don't think it's the responsibility of filmmakers to simply transfer a novel, say, to the screen.
And it just seems like, usually, when people say this, what they really mean is that they saw the characters in their minds differently or they really liked some part that they had to cut out to make the script work within an acceptable run-time or whatever.
Now, there are exceptions both ways. Sometimes a movie really just isn't very good and the book was in which case the book is literally better than the movie.
In others, a director or whoever is in charge of that, may trim some fat of a book that was maybe a little bloated and could have used some streamlining but still had a good story.
For example, my mother was a big fan of the book, The Firm, but she actually said the movie improved upon it by cutting out this long section where he sails around on a boat to keep documents out of U.S. jurisdiction or something like that. She liked the movie's streamlining and enjoyed it more than a book she liked a lot.
It can be distracting sometimes, though. Like, I haven't seen it yet, but having just read Agatha Christie's Death On The Nile, I wondered why Branaugh and company would change the thing so much as it appeared they did in the trailer. Or in his Murder On The Orient Express, he added a big action sequence at the climax that seemed out of place in an Agatha Christie story... but I understood how, for modern audiences, he and the studio probably felt like they needed to add some action.
Some books probably just shouldn't be made into movies, it's the wrong medium for the story. Of course, this did lead to the genesis of my favorite movie review of all time, a one sentence review for the screen adaptation of the best-selling novel Snow Falling On Cedars: "Paint Drying On Walls."
I dunno, I think it's case by case really, but my knee-jerk reaction when someone says it is, in fact, to roll my eyes.

There just tends to be more in the book than the movie, it takes longer to read a 300 page book than watch a 1.5 hour movie. That's why the books tend to be "better"

I don't mind stretching out the discussion, ever. When I said "Do you ever ...?" it's basically (for me, anyway), "I don't mind hearing it, but every single time?". And the most people expound upon is the typical, "It's more descriptive".



I must admit, I mostly read biographies, but I wouldn't agree on the idea that the book or movie is always better. I only bring it up because it's constantly mentioned, more than something like, "The re-make is better" which as Yoda said is not to apples/oranges.


I also wonder if me (or others) would enjoy the book after knowing what's going to happen. I just looked at see I have rated 2,500 movies, but haven't read more than a handful of fiction books. It's something I plan in the future though, when I'm ready for fiction, since I write and spend a lot of time imagining.

It's not just a question of quantity, though.

Many books, by the nature of their narration, give you much more insight into the characters. I read the book A Monster Calls in about two hours (and then cried for like an hour). I watched the film in just under two hours. But there's no question that the depth of insight you get into the main character is stronger in the book.

And sometimes the opposite is true in terms of quantity. For example, films that stretch 10-15 page short stories into feature length films. They technically have "more" (think The Cat in the Hat), but in many cases lack the snap and charm of the source material.

People get mad when someone else’s interpretation doesn’t match the one in their head. Simple as that. Has very little to do with quality.

The people who say the book is always better are the ones that say every book should be a mini series.

Novels, like mini-series and tv shows, often aren’t good enough for the time invested in them.

And I say that as an avid reader and tv show watcher.

There's a difference between saying "The book was better" and saying that a movie adaptation is bad.

I've seen a lot of really solid adaptations of novels. I often still feel that the book is the superior version of the story, even if the film is really good. I love two different versions of Pride and Prejudice and think that they both do really cool things with the source material, but I still find the book to be the best way to experience the story of the Bennett sisters. I'm not mad at all at the films. I don't mind that the characters look different than what I pictured in my mind (and at this point, Jennifer Ehle IS Lizzie Bennett in my brain).

There are also times that a film changes elements of a story to suit market purposes. I really love The Big Sleep. Like, I really love it. But it lacks some of the oomph of certain sections of the book, like when he finds the sister high and naked in his bed and he's so angry at the violation of his space. Again: it's just down to which experience with the story you prefer.

To give a counter-example, I recently watched an adaptation of Austen's Northanger Abbey that added stuff that wasn't in the novel and I preferred it to reading the book. It was goofier, and took you much more into the mind of this young woman who is sort of scattershot horny, but through the lens of these trashy novels she reads. It was funny and actually more coherent as an intersection between romance and parody than I found the novel to be. I would say that the film is the version of the story that I find more engaging and satisfying.

I think frequently when people assert “the book was better” into a conversation, it’s to show a level of disdain towards the film adaptation.

I’m not saying there aren’t superior books to their adaptations. But in my experience, there are just as often adaptations that are superior (The Godfather, Jaws, No Country For Old Men, Silence of the Lambs, Children of Men, The Thing, I could go on and on and on).

Frequently, it’s stated as “the book is always better,” a sentiment expressed in this thread, which is about as myopic as “all remakes are bad.”

I will admit to partiality towards the film medium, as I generally think it’s much harder to make a film than it is to write a book, and incorporates a ton of different skill sets and artistry than mastery of the prose (as daunting and impressive as that may be).

If it is a good adaptation, I rarely think a book is better than the movie. Sure, a book can get into the headspace of a character in a very special and intimate way, but a good director making a film that is anchored with good performances, good DoP, etc, can make a completely adequate or even exquisite approximation of this. Also, while it is also true that books often have a lot more in them, and good stuff frequently gets cut out...I don't think this makes one necessarily better than the other. If a movie makes something tighter, more compact, and yet retains the overall impact of the story, I don't care if some things get binned.



There is also the issue that loads of good movies have been adapted from wretched to mediocre books. A lot of the time this is because lousy books are usually easy to adapt, but it's also because I think most authors suck. So I'm quite happy when a film rescues an interesting premise or good characters from writer's who don't have a clue how to maximize their medium.



And while I agree with pretty much everything else MKS is saying above, I don't agree that making a movie is much harder than writing a book. There are undoubtedly tonnes of logistical and technical issues which an author will never have to tend to. But a writer is alone, relying on no one but themselves, in a medium that is absolutely unforgiving towards any mistakes. It's why I can name probably hundreds of great filmmakers off the top of my head, and would struggle to name thirty or forty great writers. An average filmmaker can make a decent and sometimes even a great movie. While an average writer will never do anything but write a pile of garbage.


Off the top of my head I'm struggling to even think of books that are unequivocably better than the movies based on them. Definitely Heart is a Lonely Hunter and Wise Blood. I'm sure any adaptation of Dostoevsky or Joyce or Kerouac or Marquez or Borges would be pretty pointless, or at least certainly not as good as the source (but I don't know as I don't think I've ever seen any of their work adapted before). Um....defintitely Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas......um.....Alice in Wonderland...........and Lovecraft has been proven to be pretty unadaptable. But I think that's it.

So my usual phrasing when I've read a book and enjoyed a film adaptation but still think the book is the better experience is to say "If you liked this film, I highly recommend checking out the novel it's based on. It really [insert character or plot that gets more depth or whatever]".

When I say "the book was better", snippy-like, it often is because something about the film has made me feel negatively toward it.

But I've also said some variation on "the book was better" many times without it being a slam on the film.

I do hear what you're saying, though, that it can be more about being dismissive (and maybe even feeling a little superior?) than about genuinely wanting to compare two versions of a story.

I don't think that books or films are superior. They're different mediums with different strengths.