Book better than movie

I read the book and saw the movie, which only proves I'm old. Movie was better.

 

You and me both. Didn't Heston's character end up dying on the field?

 

The Rainmaker. The book presented more details about Rudy Baylor getting help from law professors and other attorneys.

 

My personal rule of thumb is that if YOU read and liked the book first, YOU probably won't think the movie is as good. No matter how good the movie might be.

Reading a book is a very different experience than watching a movie. It takes a much bigger commitment of time (in general), but once you've made that commitment to a book that's worth the effort, it's a more immersive experience. A book reader also starts forming mental images of the characters and the action, which is one the one hand more work (one reason people watch many more movies than read books) but once done can make the reader feel more attached to the book and to the images they've created, in part precisely because it took more effort.

Then when one watches the movie, a book-reader is hyper-aware of anything that doesn't fit the mental images they've created. Sometimes that's because the movie has changed something factually -- someone mentioned Dallas' hair color in the Outsiders. I'm sure the producers just felt Matt Dillon was the best fit for the role despite his hair color, and maybe he didn't want to dye it. Who knows? But that's clearly a factual departure from the source material.

But sometimes book-readers quibble with "changes" that weren't really changes, but were merely the picture they had created in their mind's eye. Example: those dopey Hunger Games "fans" who went Twitter-crazy that Rue was "turned black" in the movie, insisting that in the book she was blonde and blue-eyed, when in fact the book described her as dark-skinned, I believe.

Plus, lots of material -- both significant plot element and even characters -- need to be cut from most books to "fit into" a two-hour movie. Techniques that can work well on the page, such as interior monologues and narration, don't translate well to movies because they're not especially visual.

I just don't think anyone who has read and really liked a book will ever been completely satisfied with a movie adaptation. It's just an impossible bar to meet. Now, that doesn't justify truly bad and/or misguided adaptations like 'Bonfire of the Vanities.'

This might also argue that a good book is a "better" experience than a good movie, because it both asks for and gives more in return. Though I wouldn't actually argue that -- they're simply different mediums with different experiences.

I just think they should be evaluated on their own merits compared to other entries in that medium -- i.e. books compared to other books, and movies to movies. Or at least we should try to do that as much as possible, given that if in fact we have read the book first (or seen the movie first), it's hard not to compare, and find the second version lacking if you liked the first version.

 

Those were just people pretending to be outraged. Some posters here do that, too. They think it makes them cool.

 

The Andromeda Strain.
The Day of the Jackal.
Where Eagles Dare, though I love the movie.

 

Michael.

That was one of the campiest movies of all time.

 

"Friday Night Lights"

What the film did with Boobie Miles, and his sudden cooperation at the end of the film was a major error if one read Buzz Bissinger's book.

 

You know, I haven't seen as many book/movie duos as I would have thought. The majority of my (pleasure) reading has been fantasy and comic books and books I read for school, I'm not likely to see the movie unless I watch it in class. Most fantasies were best served as miniseries, which I always though Game of Thrones should have been. (It got the TV series, which I guess, in retrospect, was the better move).

But, Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent" was better than the movie, I thought, although at this point in the game, I can't remember why I felt that way.

 

The Encyclopedia Brown adaptation was abominable. Whoever came up with that should have been forcibly castrated.

 

This gets my vote. What a shitshow that movie was.

 

The adaptation of "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" was almost nothing like the book. There was this random <i>girl</i> main character added who didn't exist.

(And that's a kids' cartoon book, so it should have been pretty close to camera-ready.)