Just sat here half watching Limitless. I read the book a few months back and guess what, the film is crap compared to it. Is this always the way? Are film versions of books always utter drivel or are there actually films that are better than the book?

No Country for Old Men was a excellent version of the book. Oh, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, of course.

The Road is another good adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy book.

I also like American Psycho, although some don’t.

Lord of the Rings (all of them) – those films are much better than the books…
Flame away Tom Bombadil lovers – I’ll still be right 🙂

EDIT – mikey74 beat me to it – damn my slow typing!

Lord of the Rings (all of them) – those films are much better than the books…
Flame away Tom Bombadil lovers – I’ll still be right

In some ways it must be nice to be so delusional

Great films, even better books.

The LOTR movies are bloody good but I still prefer the books, just.

Ooh, what a good question.

Offhand, I’d say The Princess Bride film is better than the book. Struggling to think of many others though.

😆

Books are nearly always better than the film IMO.

I thought American Psycho was a better film than book…

Philip K Dick has provided the books for a slew of Sci-Fi films:

Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, A Scanner Darkly, among them.

The books were mostly better than the films, but Blade Runner Vs Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep is an on going battle.

shermer75 – Member
I thought American Psycho was a better film than book…

Really!? I think the book gives a better insight into how much of a nutcase he is, more gore as well 😀

Shooter. The bob lee swagger books are much better.

The GOdfather is a pretty average book.

Fight club is a better film than book IMHO but debateable.

Probably lots of examples where the book is not that well known or celebrated but just gives and outline for a great film.

Trainspotting, The film is not as detailed as the book and omits chapters, however I thinks it’s brilliant and does the book justice.

The Shining is a great film, okay book.

The Shawshank Redemption, if short stories count.

I’ll probably get flamed for this one but Exorcist III: Legion. Good book and a good film IMO.

The 39 Steps – much more developed plotline than the admittedly short (one of 4 IIRC adventures in one volume).

The Hitchcock/Robert Donat version, I mean, not the far weaker Kenneth Moore version.

And don’t get me started on the Robert Powell travesty!

Green Mile – book was so good I didn’t get around to seeing the film!

Just binned reading American Psycho funnily enough. Thought the book was very poor.

The Bourne books are all pish – the original trio of films are much better.

The Walking Dead obviously not a film but a pretty good effort..

The Shawshank Redemption, if short stories count.

Short stories often make excellent movies, the longer the book invariably the more disappointing the film is a reasonable generalization.

walking dead comics are better than the series, though i still love the series,
game of thrones tv is good as TV gets but the books are sooo much better

Short stories often make excellent movies

As do fairytales and other traditional stories.

books and films are different.

A book can indulge you into 1000 pages of tiny details and a skillful writer can make you imagine the words coming to life.

A film shows you a directors (+ a couple of others) view and interpretation of a text taking the imagined world form you. They are also constrained by time and keeping a story moving, something books never seem to be – some of Ian M Banks Culture novels seem to be 90% setup which would never make a film followed by 10% action/climax that doesn’t make sense without the previous hard work.

Most books are not written and plays and hence need to be adapted for cinema. Some may work better than others but in the end they are different. Going to see a film expecting it to be page by page the books is going to end in disappointment. It would also be dull

Misery – hard to pick whether the book or film is best, both are excellent.

Short stories often make excellent movies, the longer the book invariably the more disappointing the film is a reasonable generalization.

That’s a conclusion I’ve reached as well.

Misery – hard to pick whether the book or film is best, both are excellent.

I was going to say Misery, the film’s clearly better. But I did see the film before reading the book, maybe the other way round I might have a different opinion…

Novella’s often make better films because they’re recognised as good stories and are wrought more vivid and expanded on (or trimmed) for film – such as The Body (Stand By Me) and as previously mentioned The Shawshank Redemption, both by King.

Others are better because the of the sheer tour de force performance of the actor(s), which propel the narrative even further forward – I’m thinking Jack Nicholson as McMurphy and Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

And what about Puzo’s novel The Godfather – will anyone argue the book was better?

The Commitments.

Pick any Sherlock Holmes book – all bobbins compared to the Jeremy Brett tv series.

Rich_s – Member

Pick any Sherlock Holmes book – all bobbins compared to the Jeremy Brett tv series.

Utter nonsense. 😀 *
The books are brilliantly written.

Brett was possibly the best Holmes at the start of the series, but as he becamed consumed by the role the character suffered.
David Burke was probably the most accurate Watson, very closely followed by Edward Hardwicke, although the latter was a little too old, strictly speaking.

*imo obviously.
S’all subjective innit?

Jaws is possibly a better film than a book – The Godfather too.

Films and books are different mediums and film is much more constrained than literature. Film is a very specific way of telling stories. There are things you can do in film that you can’t do with other dramatic mediums – you can have a chase movie for instance, but The French Connection would make a pretty poor bit of theatre. By there same measure there are things that films can’t do (or can’t do well) so it shouldn’t be a surprise that something conceived as a novel doesn’t work well (or work as well) as a film.

That said a book can still be translated into a successful film, it just has to be re-configured to work as film, a direct transcription of a novel would be shit. But that means people who have already read the book are usually dissatisfied as bits they like have changed or disappeared. But that has to happen.

Change is part of the film making process – a film is authored three times (or four times if it started out as a novel). A screen play is written (or adapted) then its filmed – thats a translation of the script, and then its edited, and thats an translation of the filmed footage. A film takes 2-3 months to shoot but it can take a year or longer to edit and thats because the film is really made in the edit. The edit isn’t a process of making sure everything in the script is there as written and in the right order, its a process of constructing cinema and that can mean discarding pieces of script, even discarding whole characters that have been written and filmed. Usually 9/10ths of the way through you have to shoot new footage to fill cinematic gaps.

The other problem with adapting books is seeing any transcription of a work you know always disappoints. Fans of the Goon Show were disappointed when it was televised for instance, simply because they’d had a picture in their head of what the radio charactered looked like, so when the Goons moved to TV in their eyes everybody looked wrong. Seeing someones elses version of your ideas makes everything seem unauthentic.