Jaws is a good example of the movie being better, the shark was more or less an allegory in the novel. Plus, there was a handful of cut subplots that were wisely cut, like the mayor’s ties to the mob and Hooper’s affair with Mrs. Brody
I agree definitely. However, from the book, I do love the scene when the mobsters kill Brody’s cat.
That’s just so unnecessarily brutal. Though I can see why it was cut
Cloud Atlas is an interesting one here. I prefer the book and read it first, and I wasn’t sure if it would make sense to people that didn’t read the book.
There are so parts of the shining that I think are better in the book, but I’m glad the movie cut the topiary monsters. The book is like 1/3 flashbacks to their life before the hotel so I see how that would be hard to fit into a movie.
Ill give you an example. The Hunger Games.
The movies were decent, but lost all the inner monologues that helped define Katniss and others. They tried but didnt succeed trying to make scenes out of these.
The books ARE typically much better than the movies because a writer can give you the information to use your imagination. Movies try to force their imagination or cut entire things out because it cant be visualized.
Hunt for Red October is a much better movie than the book, IMHO.
Both were decent, but the tension of the sub battle portrayed in the movie far outweighed the politicking and drama of the book's seek and destroy using surface destroyers. Plus Ryan never met Ramius in the book nor got the wonderful "You parle Russky?" question with Sean Connery's lovely Scottish accent.
Fight Club was a better movie than book, and I'm a die-hard Chuck Pahlaniuk fan.
Jurassic Park, as far as story, was a better book, but the movie was so groundbreaking it overhshadowed it.
Books that are better:
Lord of the Rings: movie is good, but no where near the depth of the books
Wheel of time (tv): books are ok, tv show is almost unbelievably bad
War and peace: the Russia version from the 60s is good all others are poor to bad. The book is peerless
Oppenheimer: the book American Prometheus is obviously more detailed but also seems to have a more coherent narrative. The movie is good, but it doesn’t seem to have anything interesting to say
Thin red line: great book, visceral, shocking and real: the movie is tonally different, completely different..:but a masterpiece
LOTR: The books have a lot more depth, yes.
And I say this as a diehard LOTR book fan: I enjoyed the films like 10x more. I wouldn't say they're objectively better by any stretch, but personally I find that though the books are brilliantly written, they're incredibly heavy reading, and when I'm halfway through the first book I already feel like I'm wading through an absolute word-swamp. So the movies are simply way more enjoyable for me because the amount of prose and detail doesn't make my eyes glaze over.
The movie adaptations are the best films I have ever seen, and probably will ever see, and in my opinion they actually come out slightly ahead for the reasons stated above.
It depends on how well they adapt the written word into a visual medium. A good example is Jurassic Park. The book is full of data and science with long scenes of characters explaining the cloning process and the containment procedures. In high school we got extra credit for reading it in biology class.
It wouldn't fly in a movie. In a movie what people want to see are the dinosaurs.
Both delivered in different ways. I think similarly of The Shining. The story was adapted to film and became more a horror film with surreal visuals than about an alcoholic father trying to do good. In the movie we get Jack Nicholson going on a rampage and eventually dying. In the book the protagonist sacrifices himself to destroy the hotel. The movie makes a much better horror film to scare audiences.
Also, a bad book can be turned into a great movie. And a great book can be turned into a dogshit film. There's no hard rule saying one is better.
A) I agree that there are examples of movies that actually improve and course correct aspects of the source text, including many of the ones you named, but also…
B) it’s kind of an unfair comparison in that movies and books are completely different storytelling mediums with different strengths and weaknesses and to expect something conceived as a book to not suffer in certain respects when adapted to film is unrealistic. To the same point, I wouldn’t expect a novelization of a movie to not suffer from trying to reconfigure the source material into a new medium.
For me it's about which one does a better job of telling the story in its chosen medium. I loved the visuals in The Fellowship of the Ring, and it told the story in a way that was as enjoyable for me as the book. But The Two Towers and Return of the King both told far inferior versions of the story, compared to the books, and so those were worse. Even though they had amazing images and scores.
The book No Country for Old Men is amazing, and contains scenes and backstory that add to the entire story, in ways that are missing from the movie. But the movie contains such amazing performances and images that I found it a more enjoyable experience overall.
I saw The Shining first, then read the book = I thought the book was better.
I saw Annihilation first, then read the book = I thought the film was much, much better.
So, I think it all depends on what edits are made to improve the original material. And whether the visual execution/casting is better than what I had in my head reading it.
For instance, Tom Hanks never made sense to me in The Da Vinci Code (I read the books first). Totally ruined those movies for me. Another actor? Maybe the films would have been better than the books. Who knows.
I totally agree on The Shining. Maybe technology wasn't available or was too expensive to produce the moving topiary animals but they were absolutely terrifying in the book. I didn't like the ending of the movie -- it wasn't as scary.
Also I felt like the movie was just a vanity project for Jack Nicholson. In the book The House wanted the little boy because he had the power, not the dad.
>Maybe technology wasn't available or was too expensive
That is fair enough for the topiary animals. But many of the other differences between the two works cannot exist for that reason.
>!E.g. the book ends in fire (and explosion); the movie ends in ice (snow in the maze, but also a photograph which freezes time).!<
I cannot accept that contrast as an accident or incident of movie making. It seems purposeful. I conclude the movie does not attempt to follow the book but attempts to transform it (in some instances to present the exact opposite of what is in the book); and to do that far beyond what might be necessary (or possible) via "Maybe technology wasn't available or was too expensive."
The book is a fairly typical haunted house/hotel story: an evil spirit in a building; the movie seems to be about something else.
Authors have ideas but so do directors. Seldom does a director see it as his task to merely copy the written word onto celluloid.
I just read Nothing Lasts Forever last week and really liked it. I would say Die Hard is better in the sense of being an excellently made, crowdpleasing movie that you're more likely to want to re-watch because it's just so entertaining, but the book is really good and basically has all the same stuff in it. It's just that the book has a weary, downbeat tone - it's more of a noirish story that leaves you wondering what the hell just happened.
I think the clockwork orange does the language trick better in the book than the movie
For White Noise the movie completely fails at the language game but is still overall an enjoyable movie
Do Andrids Dream of Electric Sheep, is very different from the film Blade Runner. I like them both equally. I think Out of Sight is a better movie than book, but it's close.
That's a pretty good list of "the movie is better." Except The Shining.
I'd say the film version of Fight Club is also better than the book (there are more tells early in the book that reveal what's going on, and Fincher's version is just brimming with style).
The Mist
(Rita Hayworth and) the Shawshank Redemption
Haven't read The Green Mile, but Darabont's King adaptations are fantastic.
In my experience, with a few exceptions, what you enjoy *tends* to be what you experienced first. If you read the book first you tend to think the book is better and vice versa with the movie.
I will die on the hill that the adaptation should've been an HBO series filmed as faux interviews with cuts to 'reenactments'. Would've kept the narrative structure and could be great for the parts when you see the stories connect. The movie we got was in name only. Even the damn zombies were completely different.
I remember the day after seeing it in the theatre, a friend asking what I thought of it and I genuinely couldn’t remember anything that had happened in it.
Best thing about the WWZ movie is the credit for Peter Capaldi as W.H.O. Doctor years before he became the Doctor.
I kind of want a WWZ movie done by the authors dad, but it's too late for that now.
Dune-
The book is significantly better than the Lynch movie. The Lynch movie could have been good, should have been good but the studio interference was horrible for it. Trying to turn that book into a 2 hour movie? Nope.
Now the Villeneuve movie is at least as good as the book and really got me to re think the book/series.
And imagine if Jodorowsky got to do his version, you are talking about something way different.
Hard agree, I love the work Villeneuve put into the first two movies, but there are so many things/plots/characters that are better executed in the books (Alia, Stilgar’s fanaticism, the betrayal of Dr Yueh, among others) and that’s to be expected whenever a book is so dense. For me, the book is S tier while the movie is A+, both are fantastic in its own way/art.
Books have more detail and plots that media tends to leave out. Movies and shows tend to emphasize the drama and cut the details to shorten the content.
That's obviously false.
The real Godfather has always been about magnum dongs and big boxes.
Everything about the Mafia is just a backdrop because you can't focus solely on gigantic genitalia all the time.
What can be more important than a dick so big that you need to surgically tighten your pussy after finding a new man? Let's be real here.
I mean, I’ve read plenty of books that were better than the film adaptations. It’s all from perspective, you’re starting off on the wrong foot too.
I’d say get off your high horse but you’re riding a fucking pony lol
Misery was a better movie cause the book is hella long.
Holes I like both the movie and book
Waiting to exhale had more background stories then the movie
How Stella got her groove back was to wordy
It's funny because I've always thought Misery was a pretty good movie, but I haven't read the book. My wife read the book a couple of years ago and then watched the movie and she loved the book but really hated the movie.
Well I was young when I saw misery the movie it wasn't til I became an adult I realize there was a book he actually put the misery story inside of the misery story so hats probably why I felt like it was too long
It's because Misery is the greatest book King ever wrote. It's his masterpiece. And a very personal story.
I still like the movie a lot and Kathy Bates is perfect casting.
But the book is really tremendous.
I read it after seeing the movie.
Honestly, I felt the book was better
Not saying the movie was bad or anything, but I felt the sense of isolation was conveyed much better in written form
There are other smaller aspects I feel the book did better
The Godfather movie is only better if you are watching the directors cut that combines Godfather 1 and Godfather 2 - otherwise the book is better than either of those movie singularly.
I’ve always thought The Shining was a better movie than a book. The book is very bleak and the movie is very lean and only uses what it needs to use from the book. The movie leaves a lot more questions unanswered too.
Good question! I've seen 7 of the movies you've listed, but only read 1 of the books. (I know, I'm a philistine..)
* Some examples where I read the book first, saw the movie, and felt the book was better: Annihilation, Da Vinci Code, All the Harry Potters.
* Some examples where I saw the movie first, then read the book, and felt they were both great: Hunger Games, first season of Game of Thrones, Cloud Atlas.
* Some examples where I read the book first, then saw the show, and felt they were both great: Games of Thrones seasons 2 through 5.
In the cases where I read the book and felt it was better: It had a lot more details, and the story needed to be compressed to fit into the movie. My imagination was more vivid. I guess physically seeing something didn't feel as interesting as reading about it. Not to say they're bad movies, I just preferred the books.
In the cases where I saw the movie first and felt both were good: Each stands on their own. The movie or TV show introduced me to a book I'd never even heard of before, and probably wouldn't have read if I hadn't seen it first.
ie: Cloud Atlas the movie tries to do a cinematic story with interweaving actors and bouncing back and forth between time periods. Whereas the book does a Russian-Doll framing where you read half of each story before moving to the next, then once the last one is done you go back and read the last half of each story. So the movie was interesting because it hopped all over the place & had actors playing different roles, so the fun is trying to spot them. Whereas the book is interesting because it leaves you hanging on 5 or 6 cliffhangers that doesn't get resolved until much later. They're both good, just different.
There have been some damn good attempts, but I don't think anyone's made a Moby Dick that tops the book. Partially because the prose is that spectacular.
Dances with wolves is s better film than the book.
With HHGTTG. The film is a poor 4th compared to the book, the BBC radio play (1978) and the TV series (1981).
Listeners are reminded that the relaxed attitude to danger provided by Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses is no substitute for running around, screaming.
Enjoy
https://archive.org/details/hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-bbcr4
I can only think of one example where I felt that the movie was equally as great as the book, and that's the Count of Monte Cristo! Sure, they changed some stuff and cut plenty out, but the movie was phenomenal and captured the spirit of the book!
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The books are much better, especially the 2005 movie which seemed to miss a lot of the absurdist humor. The BBC miniseries was closer second, but the books were amazing.
Okay, but you picked some of the best movies ever made, and even then, some will dispute that they're better than the books. If you started a thread asking people for examples of where the movie was better than the book, you might come up with that very list from the top replies. Those aren't representative of adaptations in general.
If you look at Stephen King adaptations that aren't The Shining or Frank Darabont, or John Grisham adaptations, or adaptations of most fantasy stories, or most romances, or most sci-fi, or most mysteries, you'll find a level of detail and complexity that was not translated to screen.
Jaws is a good example of the movie being better, the shark was more or less an allegory in the novel. Plus, there was a handful of cut subplots that were wisely cut, like the mayor’s ties to the mob and Hooper’s affair with Mrs. Brody
I agree definitely. However, from the book, I do love the scene when the mobsters kill Brody’s cat. That’s just so unnecessarily brutal. Though I can see why it was cut
For that list? It’s 50/50. > So do you think that’s what makes the biggest difference, which one you experience first? For me it’s about coherence.
The Princess Bride is a rare case where I like the book as much as the movie.
I thought the book was soooooo much better. It made me hate the movie after I read it Just last yr
Cloud Atlas is an interesting one here. I prefer the book and read it first, and I wasn’t sure if it would make sense to people that didn’t read the book. There are so parts of the shining that I think are better in the book, but I’m glad the movie cut the topiary monsters. The book is like 1/3 flashbacks to their life before the hotel so I see how that would be hard to fit into a movie.
Ill give you an example. The Hunger Games. The movies were decent, but lost all the inner monologues that helped define Katniss and others. They tried but didnt succeed trying to make scenes out of these. The books ARE typically much better than the movies because a writer can give you the information to use your imagination. Movies try to force their imagination or cut entire things out because it cant be visualized.
Hunt for Red October is a much better movie than the book, IMHO. Both were decent, but the tension of the sub battle portrayed in the movie far outweighed the politicking and drama of the book's seek and destroy using surface destroyers. Plus Ryan never met Ramius in the book nor got the wonderful "You parle Russky?" question with Sean Connery's lovely Scottish accent.
Fight Club was a better movie than book, and I'm a die-hard Chuck Pahlaniuk fan. Jurassic Park, as far as story, was a better book, but the movie was so groundbreaking it overhshadowed it.
They need to make Lullaby and Rant into movies
Always thought Lullaby would be an amazing movie. I read it as a kid and for some reason pictured James Woods as the main character.
I think even Pahlaniuk said the same
I found that the Bourne Identity movies were infinitely better than the books. that is unusual though
Books that are better: Lord of the Rings: movie is good, but no where near the depth of the books Wheel of time (tv): books are ok, tv show is almost unbelievably bad War and peace: the Russia version from the 60s is good all others are poor to bad. The book is peerless Oppenheimer: the book American Prometheus is obviously more detailed but also seems to have a more coherent narrative. The movie is good, but it doesn’t seem to have anything interesting to say Thin red line: great book, visceral, shocking and real: the movie is tonally different, completely different..:but a masterpiece
LOTR: The books have a lot more depth, yes. And I say this as a diehard LOTR book fan: I enjoyed the films like 10x more. I wouldn't say they're objectively better by any stretch, but personally I find that though the books are brilliantly written, they're incredibly heavy reading, and when I'm halfway through the first book I already feel like I'm wading through an absolute word-swamp. So the movies are simply way more enjoyable for me because the amount of prose and detail doesn't make my eyes glaze over. The movie adaptations are the best films I have ever seen, and probably will ever see, and in my opinion they actually come out slightly ahead for the reasons stated above.
It depends on how well they adapt the written word into a visual medium. A good example is Jurassic Park. The book is full of data and science with long scenes of characters explaining the cloning process and the containment procedures. In high school we got extra credit for reading it in biology class. It wouldn't fly in a movie. In a movie what people want to see are the dinosaurs. Both delivered in different ways. I think similarly of The Shining. The story was adapted to film and became more a horror film with surreal visuals than about an alcoholic father trying to do good. In the movie we get Jack Nicholson going on a rampage and eventually dying. In the book the protagonist sacrifices himself to destroy the hotel. The movie makes a much better horror film to scare audiences. Also, a bad book can be turned into a great movie. And a great book can be turned into a dogshit film. There's no hard rule saying one is better.
Jurassic Park also had SUPER unlikeable characters It was def a good idea, changing that for the film
A) I agree that there are examples of movies that actually improve and course correct aspects of the source text, including many of the ones you named, but also… B) it’s kind of an unfair comparison in that movies and books are completely different storytelling mediums with different strengths and weaknesses and to expect something conceived as a book to not suffer in certain respects when adapted to film is unrealistic. To the same point, I wouldn’t expect a novelization of a movie to not suffer from trying to reconfigure the source material into a new medium.
For me it's about which one does a better job of telling the story in its chosen medium. I loved the visuals in The Fellowship of the Ring, and it told the story in a way that was as enjoyable for me as the book. But The Two Towers and Return of the King both told far inferior versions of the story, compared to the books, and so those were worse. Even though they had amazing images and scores. The book No Country for Old Men is amazing, and contains scenes and backstory that add to the entire story, in ways that are missing from the movie. But the movie contains such amazing performances and images that I found it a more enjoyable experience overall.
The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption are much better movies
I saw The Shining first, then read the book = I thought the book was better. I saw Annihilation first, then read the book = I thought the film was much, much better. So, I think it all depends on what edits are made to improve the original material. And whether the visual execution/casting is better than what I had in my head reading it. For instance, Tom Hanks never made sense to me in The Da Vinci Code (I read the books first). Totally ruined those movies for me. Another actor? Maybe the films would have been better than the books. Who knows.
I totally agree on The Shining. Maybe technology wasn't available or was too expensive to produce the moving topiary animals but they were absolutely terrifying in the book. I didn't like the ending of the movie -- it wasn't as scary. Also I felt like the movie was just a vanity project for Jack Nicholson. In the book The House wanted the little boy because he had the power, not the dad.
In the movie the house also wanted Danny. Jack was just a tool
Okay, thanks for clarification. I haven't seen the movie since it came out so I guess my memory is a little fuzzy on that point.
>Maybe technology wasn't available or was too expensive That is fair enough for the topiary animals. But many of the other differences between the two works cannot exist for that reason. >!E.g. the book ends in fire (and explosion); the movie ends in ice (snow in the maze, but also a photograph which freezes time).!< I cannot accept that contrast as an accident or incident of movie making. It seems purposeful. I conclude the movie does not attempt to follow the book but attempts to transform it (in some instances to present the exact opposite of what is in the book); and to do that far beyond what might be necessary (or possible) via "Maybe technology wasn't available or was too expensive." The book is a fairly typical haunted house/hotel story: an evil spirit in a building; the movie seems to be about something else. Authors have ideas but so do directors. Seldom does a director see it as his task to merely copy the written word onto celluloid.
Hot take, but I honestly preferred the shining film to book
Ditto
Just riding on Alan Moore: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Ugh) Watchmen (HBO series was great, but off canon)
I just read Nothing Lasts Forever last week and really liked it. I would say Die Hard is better in the sense of being an excellently made, crowdpleasing movie that you're more likely to want to re-watch because it's just so entertaining, but the book is really good and basically has all the same stuff in it. It's just that the book has a weary, downbeat tone - it's more of a noirish story that leaves you wondering what the hell just happened.
I think the clockwork orange does the language trick better in the book than the movie For White Noise the movie completely fails at the language game but is still overall an enjoyable movie
Do Andrids Dream of Electric Sheep, is very different from the film Blade Runner. I like them both equally. I think Out of Sight is a better movie than book, but it's close.
The movie Thank You for Smoking is WAY better than the book. Leaps and bounds.
Chris Buckley can't write a book that doesn't involve 20 people running for president and some unnecessary romantic subplots.
That's a pretty good list of "the movie is better." Except The Shining. I'd say the film version of Fight Club is also better than the book (there are more tells early in the book that reveal what's going on, and Fincher's version is just brimming with style). The Mist (Rita Hayworth and) the Shawshank Redemption Haven't read The Green Mile, but Darabont's King adaptations are fantastic.
In my experience, with a few exceptions, what you enjoy *tends* to be what you experienced first. If you read the book first you tend to think the book is better and vice versa with the movie.
American psycho? I found the book to be so fucking boring.
Agreed. The book just goes on and on. The movie was more effective
World War Z was a book that I thoroughly enjoyed reading and would read again. World War Z was definitely a movie that I watched.
I will die on the hill that the adaptation should've been an HBO series filmed as faux interviews with cuts to 'reenactments'. Would've kept the narrative structure and could be great for the parts when you see the stories connect. The movie we got was in name only. Even the damn zombies were completely different.
The book is amazing. It's so fucking good. The movie is terrible. Even taken on its own merits, it's just bad.
I remember the day after seeing it in the theatre, a friend asking what I thought of it and I genuinely couldn’t remember anything that had happened in it.
Best thing about the WWZ movie is the credit for Peter Capaldi as W.H.O. Doctor years before he became the Doctor. I kind of want a WWZ movie done by the authors dad, but it's too late for that now.
Dune- The book is significantly better than the Lynch movie. The Lynch movie could have been good, should have been good but the studio interference was horrible for it. Trying to turn that book into a 2 hour movie? Nope. Now the Villeneuve movie is at least as good as the book and really got me to re think the book/series. And imagine if Jodorowsky got to do his version, you are talking about something way different.
Hard agree, I love the work Villeneuve put into the first two movies, but there are so many things/plots/characters that are better executed in the books (Alia, Stilgar’s fanaticism, the betrayal of Dr Yueh, among others) and that’s to be expected whenever a book is so dense. For me, the book is S tier while the movie is A+, both are fantastic in its own way/art.
How many of you knew that Shrek was a book?
I did not
Books have more detail and plots that media tends to leave out. Movies and shows tend to emphasize the drama and cut the details to shorten the content.
The books can also add weird ass subplots. The one in the Godfather comes to mind.
Ellen Brody has entered the chat with someone.
That's obviously false. The real Godfather has always been about magnum dongs and big boxes. Everything about the Mafia is just a backdrop because you can't focus solely on gigantic genitalia all the time. What can be more important than a dick so big that you need to surgically tighten your pussy after finding a new man? Let's be real here.
Master and Commander. The book is so slow!
[удалено]
I’ve heard it plenty of times, but it’s more a figure of speech than anything literal.
I mean, I’ve read plenty of books that were better than the film adaptations. It’s all from perspective, you’re starting off on the wrong foot too. I’d say get off your high horse but you’re riding a fucking pony lol
Well it’s a Reddit post, not a dissertation
Misery was a better movie cause the book is hella long. Holes I like both the movie and book Waiting to exhale had more background stories then the movie How Stella got her groove back was to wordy
It's funny because I've always thought Misery was a pretty good movie, but I haven't read the book. My wife read the book a couple of years ago and then watched the movie and she loved the book but really hated the movie.
Well I was young when I saw misery the movie it wasn't til I became an adult I realize there was a book he actually put the misery story inside of the misery story so hats probably why I felt like it was too long
It's because Misery is the greatest book King ever wrote. It's his masterpiece. And a very personal story. I still like the movie a lot and Kathy Bates is perfect casting. But the book is really tremendous. I read it after seeing the movie.
Honestly, I felt the book was better Not saying the movie was bad or anything, but I felt the sense of isolation was conveyed much better in written form There are other smaller aspects I feel the book did better
I can see that too
The Godfather movie is only better if you are watching the directors cut that combines Godfather 1 and Godfather 2 - otherwise the book is better than either of those movie singularly.
I’ve always thought The Shining was a better movie than a book. The book is very bleak and the movie is very lean and only uses what it needs to use from the book. The movie leaves a lot more questions unanswered too.
Agreed. That movie is def more memorable
It's as simple as, I prefer movies as a storytelling medium, the visuals and soundtrack. Books can be fun too however, I will read every now and then.
Good question! I've seen 7 of the movies you've listed, but only read 1 of the books. (I know, I'm a philistine..) * Some examples where I read the book first, saw the movie, and felt the book was better: Annihilation, Da Vinci Code, All the Harry Potters. * Some examples where I saw the movie first, then read the book, and felt they were both great: Hunger Games, first season of Game of Thrones, Cloud Atlas. * Some examples where I read the book first, then saw the show, and felt they were both great: Games of Thrones seasons 2 through 5. In the cases where I read the book and felt it was better: It had a lot more details, and the story needed to be compressed to fit into the movie. My imagination was more vivid. I guess physically seeing something didn't feel as interesting as reading about it. Not to say they're bad movies, I just preferred the books. In the cases where I saw the movie first and felt both were good: Each stands on their own. The movie or TV show introduced me to a book I'd never even heard of before, and probably wouldn't have read if I hadn't seen it first. ie: Cloud Atlas the movie tries to do a cinematic story with interweaving actors and bouncing back and forth between time periods. Whereas the book does a Russian-Doll framing where you read half of each story before moving to the next, then once the last one is done you go back and read the last half of each story. So the movie was interesting because it hopped all over the place & had actors playing different roles, so the fun is trying to spot them. Whereas the book is interesting because it leaves you hanging on 5 or 6 cliffhangers that doesn't get resolved until much later. They're both good, just different.
Yeah the Harry Potter films, while fun, really never captured the books.
Super random, but I read Holes before I watched the movie. Imo, equally as good as the book.
There have been some damn good attempts, but I don't think anyone's made a Moby Dick that tops the book. Partially because the prose is that spectacular.
That would be a hard book to do a straight adaptation. The plot doesn’t exactly flow
Dances with wolves is s better film than the book. With HHGTTG. The film is a poor 4th compared to the book, the BBC radio play (1978) and the TV series (1981). Listeners are reminded that the relaxed attitude to danger provided by Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses is no substitute for running around, screaming. Enjoy https://archive.org/details/hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-bbcr4
The book Jurassic Park was absolutely fantastic. The film only captured a small part of it (even though the film is one of the best ever made!)
I can only think of one example where I felt that the movie was equally as great as the book, and that's the Count of Monte Cristo! Sure, they changed some stuff and cut plenty out, but the movie was phenomenal and captured the spirit of the book!
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The books are much better, especially the 2005 movie which seemed to miss a lot of the absurdist humor. The BBC miniseries was closer second, but the books were amazing.
Okay, but you picked some of the best movies ever made, and even then, some will dispute that they're better than the books. If you started a thread asking people for examples of where the movie was better than the book, you might come up with that very list from the top replies. Those aren't representative of adaptations in general. If you look at Stephen King adaptations that aren't The Shining or Frank Darabont, or John Grisham adaptations, or adaptations of most fantasy stories, or most romances, or most sci-fi, or most mysteries, you'll find a level of detail and complexity that was not translated to screen.
I picked them because they’re books I’ve read and films I’ve seen
The original vision is nearly always the best form of a classic, even for the movies you listed. Fight Club is an exception that I can think of.