Book better than movie

[joe]

Not as easy, perhaps, as movies better than books, but still plenty. A partial list:

To Kill a Mockingbird (damn close)
East of Eden
We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young

 

[Riptide]

Forrest Gump.

 

[Versatile]

Not as easy, perhaps, as movies better than books

Wait, what? Almost every classic novel that's been adapted would qualify.

 

[93Devil]

I think the thread title is backwards.

I have never read the short story that Shawshank Redemption is based, but it needs to be spectacular to top the movie.

 

[Boom_70]

Black Hawk Down
Deliverance
50 Shades of Grey

 

[dreunc1542]

Not as easy, perhaps, as movies better than books

Wait, what? Almost every classic novel that's been adapted would qualify.

Yeah, this should be far easier. The book is better than the movie the majority of the time, at least if it was a good book.

 

[Steak Snabler]

I think the LOTR movies are far, FAR better than the books (and I love the books).

But so much of the books are people walking, walking, walking, walking. Did you really need 500 pages for Frodo to get from Hobbiton to Rivendell?

 

[ColdCat]

I have never read the short story that Shawshank Redemption is based, but it needs to be spectacular to top the movie.

There's a lot more rape

 

[Michael_ Gee]

Godfather I and II were way better than Puzo's book, which is a pot-boiler of massive dimensions.
Despite many tries, nobody has succeeded in making a credible movie version of "The Great Gatsby."

 

[SFIND]

I too don't think it's rare for a book to be better than a movie. It's usually the general consensus that most books are superior to their movie adaptions.

Speaking of Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises comes to mind. I saw a 50's adaption once, and it didn't do the book justice. Hurts when you have a bunch of 40 year-olds playing 20 somethings.

 

[Boom_70]

Money Ball

 

[X-Hack]

Bonfire of the Vanities. Still a great book and Wolfe's only novel that wasn't an unwieldy mess (though I enjoyed "Man in Full" and would have liked to have seen a film version). Movie was an atrocity.

 

[PaperDoll]

My rule of thumb is that if the book came first, it's usually better than the movie. If the book comes afterward, and is adapted from the script, the reverse tends to be the case.

"Silver Linings Playbook" was a recent exception, though the book was very different from the movie. "Cry Freedom" was also a fabulous fictionalization of Stephen Biko's biography, though I'm not sure it was based on a single book.

I still believe Gerry Conlon's biography "In the Name of the Father" was far better than the film, though I loved both... and I think in that case the Daniel Day-Lewis movie came first.


(Aside: I thought I owned at least the latter two books... and I can't find them on my shelf. Guess I'm overdue for a Barnes 'n' Noble visit!)

 

[playthrough]

Any Stephen King. As a teenager, I thought "Christine" was terrifying. Ditto "The Shining".

 

[Brian]

Yeah, switch the concept and it'd be a much tougher thread.

Two of the fun ones to debate are The Wizard of Oz and Charlie/Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I loved the Baum and Dahl books so much as a kid and always stuck up for the books. There are good arguments to be made on both sides in those two.

 

[NDJournalist]

Any Stephen King. As a teenager, I thought "Christine" was terrifying. Ditto "The Shining".

Also Misery, which had a terrible movie adaptation.

 

[Guy_Incognito]

Bonfire of the Vanities. Still a great book and Wolfe's only novel that wasn't an unwieldy mess (though I enjoyed "Man in Full" and would have liked to have seen a film version). Movie was an atrocity.

I know I'm alone on this, but I hated the book - put it down after almost 300 pages. His writing of her accent drove me nuts. When the movie was lousy, I just attributed it to another bad movie like hundreds of others. The book was disappointing.

 

[Brian]

Bonfire of the Vanities. Still a great book and Wolfe's only novel that wasn't an unwieldy mess (though I enjoyed "Man in Full" and would have liked to have seen a film version). Movie was an atrocity.

I know I'm alone on this, but I hated the book - put it down after almost 300 pages. His writing of her accent drove me nuts.

I had a similar experience with Back to Blood back in 2012. I wanted to throw the book into a lake and scream every time he tried to write the dialogue between the Cuban-American characters.

 

[cranberry]

Bonfire of the Vanities. Still a great book and Wolfe's only novel that wasn't an unwieldy mess (though I enjoyed "Man in Full" and would have liked to have seen a film version). Movie was an atrocity.

I know I'm alone on this, but I hated the book - put it down after almost 300 pages. His writing of her accent drove me nuts. When the movie was lousy, I just attributed it to another bad movie like hundreds of others. The book was disappointing.

I'm with X-hack. I thought Bonfire of the Vanities was exceptional but Wolfe's only great novel. Man in Full was very good. The rest are abominations. I struggled to finish Back to Blood recently and now wonder why I wasted the time.

 

[cranberry]

The Silence of the Lambs was a very good movie but an even better book. Same with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

A close call for me might be LA Confidential but I think, overall, the book wins on that one, too.