The 20 Most Extreme Cases Of ‘The Book Was Better Than The Movie’

Going WAY back, to a classic, but I really felt t his with "Gone with the Wind." Great film, of course, but I was quite disaapointed that so many things were not in the movie. But I was 14 at the time I (a) read the book; (b) saw the film, so I didn't really understand how hard it would have been to condense such a book. Ever since them, I've thought: whenever possible, see the movie FIRST; read the book second.

All of the Harry Potters. I appreciate having the world visualized on the screen, but those books were magical.

Not the most extreme, but "World War Z".

I liked the movie but the book was so much better.

The movie just took the title and the idea of the "plague" and made a movie.

The book was really a collection of tales of people encountering and dealing the the plaque from its first appearance, through the initial encounters, its spread, to the battles, to the decisions as to how to counter it.

There was no clean "vaccine" as in the movie.

The book had some bits that were scary, very sad or very moving.

Those I've given it to as a gift (who also liked the movie) loved it to.

Thats "plague", not "plaque".

Interview with a Vampire! Mainly because Mmes. Cruise and Pitt demanded that the characters get de-gayed.

Stephen King's "The Shining"

[italic]The Cat in the Hat[/italic] is the most extreme example.

All of the Bond films except "On her Majesty's secret service"

R8 = George Lazenby

R7 I agree with you on that. The movie was atrocious and not in the least bit funny of charming.

Agreed r7.

Many horror or suspense books--not that they were so great to begin with--but still.

It

Doctor Zhivago. Before anyone threatens harm to me, it was a beautiful movie. Too bad it bore so little resemblance to Doctor Zhivago.

Gone With The Wind. My mother always said it was a woman's story made into a man's movie.

Bonfire of the Vanities.

Stinkeroo!

The Hunger Games and Watchmen are your literary examples, OP?

Good lord.

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter. Great casting but the book was just better.

The French Lieutenant's Woman. Early Meryl who was fine but the script was horrible. The big reveal - not to be revealed here because it's a definite spoiler - was like, "Oh, yeah, really, where my cigarette?"

I'm with [R13]. "Doctor Zhivago" is an epic beautiful to look at, but not the book at all. The book is about the failure of the Russian Revolution, as exemplified by the passionate idealist revolutionary Pasha, played by Tom Courtenay, who becomes embittered, murderous Strelnikov, and, in the book, ends up shooting himself, because he realizes he's a total failure. This is not even in the movie, though it's mentioned. (Curiously, the actors playing this role were the only ones to be nominated for awards: Courtnay for an Oscar, and the actor playing Pasha in the musical version of "Doctor Zhivago" this past year for a Tony.)

The movie, however beautiful, is just a big sprawling love story about how a man is trying to get to fuck two different women, and get away with it, with a smattering of guiltsachmerz to fill in the gaps.

But it is a beautiful film to look at.

Agreed with Bonfire and Cat. Add Easlt of Eden (like duh...), and Angel Heart. Turned a truly original and scary book into just a mess.

They should have changed the characters' names in the movie version of Doctor Zhivago, and called it "All That Snow." It would have been just as good a movie, and there wouldn't have been any nasty comparisons to the book.

Oh, and Goodbye, Columbus was a much better book.

I loved the Harry Potter movies and even though I assume the books were better, I never read them.

"The Choirboys" by Joseph Wambaugh was a great book, but it got made into a ghastly movie. Same with "Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York." Great book, terrible movie.

[quote]It would have been just as good a movie, and there wouldn't have been any nasty comparisons to the book.

To be fair, R21, there's a very normal amount of expectation created when making a favorite novel into a movie. No need to call those who wanted to see the real Doctor Zhivago "nasty." You exposed yourself as a fangurl with that remark.

They should have written their own story, filmed it as beautifully as possible, cast the prettiest actors around, and added a lush score. That would have been far more honest.

The Bible.

"Nasty" was the wrong word, perhaps, R25. I did not intend to make any commentary about "those who wanted to see the real DZ." I'm not even sure what you're implying with "fangurl."

Within your set of friends, are you considered to be the biggest umbrage taker?

Any of the Maeve Binchy books.

Slaves of New York

Planet of the Apes

Neither the original or remake were faithful to the book. The 1968 version was great, but the "Marky Mark" version wasn't, even though they were a little closer to the original book in that his visit to the Planet of the Apes was a different planet than Earth, but returns to Earth to find it with apes in charge. I suppose when they did the movies they wanted to invent their own surprise ending that readers of the book wouldn't expect.

You know OP isn't the blog writer, right, R16?

Clear and present danger

Anna Karenina

The Andromeda Strain

Agree with The Shining and Interview With the Vampire being the two biggest book-to-movie disappointments ever.

Two books I loved as a teenager basically raped (sorry for the triggering word!) by filmmakers.

Flowers in the Attic was one. Weirdly enough, I felt the film captured the book's tone and intent beautifully with the cinematography and Christopher Young's gorgeous score. It was just a few of the casting choices and the leaving out of several key plot points that upset me. Don't even get me started on that ending. Louise Fletcher was perfect, though. Apparently ,a lot more was shot but cut my the studio. I wonder if this still exists somewhere. I'd love a special edition.

The Lifetime movie managed to squeeze in just about all the events of the book into 90 minutes, but left out all the moments to breathe and allow the characters to take it in, which resulted in a super cold, dull film. If they'd been given a 2 hour slot, it would have fared much better. Oh, and if Heather Graham hadn't been cast.

Stephen King's IT could benefit from a new adaptation, but the studio's plans to make it into one film (unless it's 3+ hours) seems like it's setting it up to fail.

Generally speaking, great novels never make equally good films, particularly if the novel's richness is based on a lot of content about characters' interior lives, or if it's a sprawling book that can only be reduced to a Cliff Notes version onscreen.

Mediocre or bad books usually make better movies because their very artlessness as literature translates well to the visual and action-oriented stories that work well in the theaters.

Getting to the OP's question, I would also vote for BONFIRE, INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, plus Demi Moore's vesion of THE SCARLET LETTER.

I'll go in the other direction and say THE HEIRESS is actually better than the book WASHINGTON SQUARE.

Should I explain why or save it for a future thread?

Don't agree with you R36, but would be interested to know why. The movie is really an adaptation of the stage play adapted from the novel. The novel is different in many ways, though I do like the film and the play when they are well done.

Catch-22

Up the Down Staircase

[quote]Don't agree with you [R36], but would be interested to know why.

Mont. Gomery. Clift.

Another vote for The Shining, and adding Sophie's Choice

They ruined Serena. It was nothing like the book. I don't understand why they even called that Serena

R27, I don't associate with the kind of people who deem people's opinions "nasty," so the subject has never come up. You elicited a negative reaction from me by saying another poster and I have nasty opinions because we don't love the sugar-coated movie version of Doctor Zhivago.

According to Cambridge Dictionaries Online, "Fangirls ​love ​shows not just for ​their good ​qualities but for the ​opportunities they ​provide to ​engage emotionally with what's on the ​screen." I'm suggesting you may have that kind of relationship with the movie version of Doctor Zhivago.

Any adaptation of any F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. People should stop attempting it, it never works.

Interview With The Vampire stunk. Bad Pitt's hair brush was the only thing used effectively and would have been the better inanimate object picked for the role but alas, they chose Brad.

Brooklyn, the current movie, from the book by Colm Toibin is for me better than the book. Had the book in my Ipad since the year it came out. Saw the movie a few weeks ago, so read it finally. The movie is extremely faithful to the book with a slight change at the very end but IMO is actually better, as the book is very low key and rather bland (the tone seems to be an experiment for Toibin, haven't read any interviews with him about it). The movie is so visually beautiful (with saturated colors and beautiful '50s production design) and Saoirse Ronan is so good and lovely in a very quiet way, that it is more vivid and more enjoyable, especially a very good and lively Julie Walters as her Irish Brooklyn landlady. See the movie, skip the book in this case!

Tell me, did "The Hobbit" make the list?

Because if it didn't, the author didn't do his research.

The Sheltering Sky

R42, I didn't like the movie, either.

The Shawshank Redemption

Starship Troopers.

The recent* film of Brideshead Revisited was a joke compared to the genius of the book.

*The 1980's production, however, did the book justice and more. If you're ever caught by ISIS and they ask you which ONE video you'd like to watch before they behead you, ask for the original Brideshead production from ITV. They won't give it to you, because GAYS, and will probably behead you sooner, but at least your last request will have been for THE BEST.

Thanks for the recommendation R45, sounds like my kind of thing.

[quote]Stephen King's IT could benefit from a new adaptation, but the studio's plans to make it into one film (unless it's 3+ hours) seems like it's setting it up to fail.

When Stephen King dies, we might see some better adaptations of his stories. He was so angry about The Shining that he got a death grip on any movies made from his books and he will never let go. He may be a writer many enjoy, but he is not a good judge for what makes a story come alive visually.

Surprised not to find the following great books ruined by Hollywood:

The Bonfire of the Vanities

Strip Tease

Running With Scissors

The World According to Garp. Robin Williams was miscast.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.

Queen of the Damned.

The Lost Weekend. The ending was changed when it was made into a movie, ruined it completely.

Catch 22. It never should have been made into a movie.

The Girl on the Train

The cinematic version of Dawson’s 50-Load Weekend fails to capture the thematic patterning and character development that the book so richly yet subtly achieves.

R60 there’s a book version?

Seriously, what’s with the bumping of old threads? You couldn’t even find these threads in a normal search, they’re so old. Have we run out of stuff to say that we have to recycle? R55, how on earth did you even find this thread?

I often find really old threads when I am watching a show or movie and Google it with datalounge added in. I like to see what was said about it or the actor etc. I watched celebrity big brother recently and did that and got a bunch of threads about celebrity big brother and also threads about/that had the name of the individual players in other things.

"Ragtime." The movie pretty much ignored two-thirds of the three communities and chose to focus on the Coalhouse Walker story. The musical did a much better job of maintaining all three story lines.

Two books I'd love to see made into movies if only because they'd cause religious heads to explode. They are both by Robert Heinlein. The first is "Strange in a Strange Land" the second "Number of the Beast." If I ever become rich I'd finance the first one.

J.G. Ballard's Crash was waaay better than the movie. But Lynch's Wild at Heart was a way better movie than the source material.

R45: If they changed the very end it can only be better. I loved 3/4 of the novel (and i generally hate novels where a romance is in the middle), the last part of the novel was a big dissapointment for me.

The name of the rose is a case where the movie is good but they simply can't translate what makes great the novel.

The truth is the book is generally better. Most cases of the opposite are bad books with a good plot (like John Grisham's novels)

Shining Through - The book is about a bilingual legal secretary during WWII who winds up working as a secretary at the OSS. This involves some soap opera and intrigue. She goes on a mission undercover in Germany and is in waaaaaaaaay over her head, but because she's smart and capable, she gets out some good information and survives the mission.

So, when casting the movie, they cast then It-Girl Melanie Griffith to play a smart, bilingual New Yorker who manages to survive in WWII Berlin. The story was completely changed and involved giving her a potential Nazi officer love interest played by Liam Neeson.

[quote]The film was neither a commercial nor a critical success. The Razzie Awards declared Shining Through the Worst Picture of 1992, with Melanie Griffith being voted Worst Actress (also for her performance in A Stranger Among Us) and David Seltzer for Worst Director. It also received nominations for Michael Douglas as Worst Actor (also for Basic Instinct) and for Seltzer in the category of Worst Screenplay. The film holds a 44% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 16 reviews.[10] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade of "B+" on scale of A+ to F.

[quote]Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, "I know it's only a movie, and so perhaps I should be willing to suspend my disbelief, but Shining Through is such an insult to the intelligence that I wasn't able to do that. Here is a film in which scene after scene is so implausible that the movie kept pushing me outside and making me ask how the key scenes could possibly be taken seriously."

[quote]Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times that the first three-quarters of Susan Isaacs' book "never made it to the screen," including Linda Voss's love affair and marriage to her New York law firm boss, John Berringer. "David Seltzer's film version of Shining Through manages to lose also the humor of Susan Isaacs' savvy novel. Even stranger than that is the film's insistence on jettisoning the most enjoyable parts of the story."

[quote]The film is listed in Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson's book The Official Razzie Movie Guide as one of The 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made.

It was while doing press for this movie that Griffith made her infamous comments about not having been aware of the Germans doing bad things to the Jews during WWII until she made the movie.

I've been mad about adaptations since I saw The Wizard of OZ. Those shoes were not red in the book, and the 7 year old gayling I was was terribly undone about it all.

Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch was a recent egregious example.

(I see I posted upthread...years ago)

Pet Sematary - both times.

Maybe a bit obscure. The Dark is Rising, a classic children's fantasy novel written more than 35 years ago (and well before anything Harry Potter, the fans of which had the gall to accuse Cooper of ripping HP off).

Move to 2007, and The Seeker, it's godawful movie adaption. Not even some strong cast members (Christopher Eccleston, Ian McShane, and Frances Conroy) can save this thing, and it is a knife in the heart to anyone who grew up reading the books.

At least the reviews seemed to agreed (14% at Rotten Tomatoes, for example)

I'll cast my votes along side "The French Lieutenant's Woman," "The Interview with eh Vampire," and "The Bonfire of the Vanities."

Though, a couple of years ago, I re-read "The Bonfire of the Vanities" and the book as at least as much of a piece of crap as the movie.

My all-time worst adaptation of a book: "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." Clint Eastwood had no idea what the book was about, so he directed a movie about his misunderstanding."

Dune. A thousand times Dune. I'm hoping this movie breaks the curse

Camelot was terrible.

I definitely agree about the abomination that was the movie version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Lovely lovely book; awful, mediocre movie.

Queen of the Damned

Notice that 95% of the adaptations in the list are chick flicks - The Last Song, Safe Harbor all that Frau crap.

I have to disagree with [R32] about The Andromeda Strain. One of my favorite books, and a brilliant screen adaptation. The audiobook version demonstrates just how difficult it is to adapt that novel, and the film managed to include almost all of it with very few changes. The main one, the gender of one of the characters, in no way detracted from the story.

Similarly, I thought the Harry Potter books were extremely well-adapted from the source material. Goblet of Fire, in particular, was a masterful job of condensation. After reading the book I wouldn't have thought it possible to make a coherent film with a running time under five hours, but they did it.

For me, the worst adaptation was Raise the Titanic. The film literally stops halfway through the book! It was woefully miscast, and directed in such a plodding manner that there was no suspense at all. The film's only redeeming value was the score by John Barry.

A close second is Escape to Witch Mountain. The original novel for young readers remains a classic, but it has been filmed several times with diminishing results. No one seems to trust the source material at all! Why film a novel and change the characters, setting, and plot? The first Disney film is enjoyable on its own, but it bears so little resemblance to the novel that it's really a separate entity.

[quote]I've been mad about adaptations since I saw The Wizard of OZ. Those shoes were not red in the book, and the 7 year old gayling I was was terribly undone about it all.

They were silver in the book. Why the change? One word: Technicolor.

Billy Lynn's long halftime walk. I'm still mad that Ang Lee was able to do a good movie of a crappy novel like Life of Pi and failed completely to make a great novel like Fountain's one into a decent film

R74: I doubt it. I read recently an article that blasted Villeneuve for some of the changes he did. The writer said directly that the director didn't understood a thing of the novel if he thouht those changes were necesary

r80, yes of course, but a 7 year old has their devotions.

Every single attempt to film "Jane Eyre" and "Peter Pan"

Curiously, though, I found the Potter films better than the books, as Rowlings plotting was wonderful, the actual writing was staggeringly, you should pardon the expression, charmless. The films stuck closely to the books but supplied the magical patina the writing lacked. Rowling is inventive, but she's no Nesbit, MacDonald, Burnett, Stevenson, or Kipling. In this case, my vote went to the films.

Terrific books / crapwad movies include:

Sophie's Choice

The French Lieutenant's Woman

Out Of Africa

Heartburn

The Bridges Of Madison County

Postcards From The Edge

The Devil Wears Prada

(You're all seeing the pattern here, right?)

"Little Women" - the casting is never right and the films are not comfortable with the 1860s pious New England pious, women's happiest fate is as a loved wife and mother "on the shelf" and the constant theme of others before self.

^*pious New England patriarchy

[quote]Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch was a recent egregious example.

I tried to watch the movie on Thursday. It's free now if you have Amazon Prime. I couldn't take 15 minutes of it.

The goldfinch never was a good material for a film, maybe for a tv show but the novel is too long and the plotting is too vague to make a good film of it

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

R90 Everytime a movide decides it's a good idea to change the sexual orientation of a main character you know it's going to be a crappy film

The Great Gatsby

Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides

Richard Price's The Wanderers & Bloodbrothers

Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles & Far from the Madding Crowd

Slaughterhouse-Five

Moby-Dick

Pet Sematary

A Beautiful Mind. The movie stripped the book of all the complexity of John Nash’s life. It’s a remarkable story but Nash was incredibly cruel to the people in his life — he was not redeemed by the love of a good woman.

[quote]Every single attempt to film "Jane Eyre"

That may be true but I have a soft spot for the 40s version. Orson Welles was creepy as hell as Mr. Rochester and Joan Fontaine was her Rebecca mousy-best as Jane.

Just love it b/c Liz Taylor has a bit part in it and you can see immediately she will be star. I saw the movie and did not know she was in it, kept thinking "who is that little girl." Well, I checked the credits and was very surprised.

Considering Liz didn't take acting seriously, except for one or two occasions, I can only attribute to her allure as a love affair between herself and the camera.

R93: It's difficult to be redeemed by the love of a good woman when you are gay (no matter how many mental gymnastics he did to deny it)

Speak for yourself r95

Bonfire of the Vanities. I was in love with that book and thought DePalma was an interesting choice. But the movie was just terrible. You wonder why directors take material that obviously they love and manage to turn into something completely different. I thought Sherman McCoy should have been played by William Hurt. He has that wasp look and the Master of the Universe attitude. I did like Kim Cattrell's scene where's she trying to explain to her daughter what her dad does for a living. Melanie Griffith should never attempt a southern accent.

Mighty Mouse ("Here I come to save the dayyyyyyyy!")

Superman (the original TV programme, and dumber than shit)

Mister Ed (dumber than just about everything else mentioned)

^*Apologies - that was meant for the Stupid Films You Loved Anyway thread.

R98

The Horse Whisperer was a phenomenal book, then the movie was... meh.

"Anna Karenina" owns this thread.

No one EVER does justice to the extraordinary breadth of observation of personal human anguish Tolstoy presented in the novel.

They always turn it into a soppy tragic love story where Anna and Vronsky suck all the air out of the room, and Levin's spiritual struggles and his and Kitty's relationship are just filler; more lately it always turns into a feminist tome about the oppression of women by patriarchy.

R101- I don't know if you've seen the lengthy BBC miniseries version from the 1970s, but you would've hated that as well.

Lord Of The Flies

R102 - I remember it, actually, and yes, I hated it. Nicola Pagett, Eric Porter (who also got to play Soames Forsyte, husband to another unhappy wife, Irene), and Stuart Wilson, looked right but it lacked the breadth of the book.

It isn't possible to get the breadth of the book, because Tolstoy's gift was to be able to put himself in his characters' emotional shoes, so a great deal of what occurs is interior.

Film doesn't do well with transfers from interior to action . . .

"Film doesn't do well with transfers from interior to action . . . "

This is why "The Great Gatsby" will never work as a movie.

So many of the characters are mistaken or deluded about each other, and you can't put someone's delusions on film. The camera shows the characters as the shallow twats they really are, not what the others hope or believe they are.

Queen of the Damned was a terrible movie but the book is not much better. It's probably the weakest of the Vampire Chronicles. 3000 years asleep and all she could come up with was kill all the men? I'd love to see a really faithful adaption of The Vampire Lestat. It's probably best suited for a limited run series than a 2 hour movie.

The Shining was never meant to be a real adaption of the novel so it gets a pass. Most of King's novels have been made into horrible films. Apparently he sells the rights to his short stories to film students for $1 which is pretty cool.

The problem with King's adaptations (and i'm not talking about the Shining which in my opinion is a total faliure becasue Kubrick simply didn't care about the characters of the novel) is that some things that work incredibly well on the novel doesn't translate well to film. Some scenes that give you chills when you are reading them are laughable in images.

That's probably the reason the less blood the better the adaptation

Every Stephen King adaptation except the Green Mile and Stand By Me.

American Psycho. Book was amazing, but I walked out of the movie. Horrible.

Forrest Gump in the novel was an asshole.

Slightly off-topic, the novel Wicked was a colossal bore. while the stage adaptation was entertaining.

Tried reading wicked three times before giving up r111. Like you say, the stage adaptation was incredible

I love Wicked the novel and was only mildly entertained by the musical.

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