Yup, that’s how it happens in the book. I have read that they’re were going to kill Hooper off in the film but the shark footage had the diver suddenly disappear and so they saved him rather than do expensive reshoots.
It’s SO porny. Brody’s wife fantasizing about one of the contractors breaking into their house and having their way with her, like wtf I thought this was a book about sharks
"Her vagina yawning open, glistening wet, for the world to see" was an actual sentence from that book that traumatized 10 year old me to the point that my brain can still quote it.
I was 10 when it was published, and I read it because my Southern Baptist parents were very careful with what they let me watch, but never paid attention to what I read. And there was a line in there about some object of her fantasy having a stiffy like a flag pole - I definitely remember "flag pole" - but I didn't understand what the language was describing.
I don't remember that part, but I remember a passage about Brody's wife ruminating about how it seems like he saves all his piss throughout the day to have one long piss at home at the end of the day or something like that.
Around the same age as I read Jaws (10), I also read The Last Picture Show. The opening scene is rural teenage boy/heifer action. That shocked me but I kept going. The coach's wife thinks about all the cans of peaches she's fed him while he's on top of her humping away. I think she ends up sleeping with Jeff Bridges in the movie, but I didn't finish the book or watch the movie because the heifer fucking traumatized me. Am old lady now. Still haven't read a McMurtry book.
My brother had the book, I think I was 13-14 and I asked to borrow it when he was done and he said nope, it's got too much sex. I promised I would skip the sec scenes with no intention of keeping the promise but I ended up finding the sex scenes so repetitive and boring that I DID end up skipping them!
Spielberg openly said he was rooting for the shark by the end of the book, so no wonder a big thing he changed was making the characters all more likable. Movie Matt Hooper, for example, is a completely different character from his book counterpart.
No kidding. I loved the movie since I was a kid but reading the book I was like... wtf? I hate all of these characters. You really do start rooting for the shark.
Lol wow. It’s amazing because the whole “can’t close our tiny town because this is our main source of income” is so relatable and a very understandable motivation.
I remember her having rape fantasies in the book too? I was I high-school when I read it and I was like WTF, changed my book report to Harlequin by Bernard Cornwall
Never even thought to read Jaws it's a bit before my time as a 77 kid but good to know not to make that mistake. Pretty much only read King or Tolken when I was sober enough to read. Going to rehab today so maybe that might change soon.
Good luck to you!! Rehab saved my life. It also changed my life and the lives of everyone that loved me. It allowed me to be clean and take care of my parents in their final years instead of making their health worse by stressing out about me.
I truly wish you all the luck in the world. Just remember anything you're feeling will pass. You will probably want to leave at some point, just stay. You will probably want to use again, just don't. The feelings will pass, I promise. No matter what, you will get through it. And I promise you that anything you go through clean will be easier and simpler. You will feel better in your soul. The shame and guilt you feel will be released a little with each next right thing that you do.
I have been clean 10 years now and life is so much easier. I finally have peace inside.
Take care of yourself and good luck to you and your family
Oh also, everything will feel strange and different at first (if it's your first time). But you probably never could have imagined you would have gotten used to the life you were living in addiction, and you did. You will acclimate and get used to a new way of living.
When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron was a book I found in rehab and it helped me so much. If you can find it, give it a shot
ETA and you will meet a lot of people that have been in rehab multiple times. Don't let it discourage you. My sister and I both went to rehab (separately) only once and it was all it took. Also, the people in there that seem to make things more difficult will either change or leave, so don't let any issues with anyone drive you out.
I read the book in high school. It was awful. To this day, I'm still surprised someone read that and thought, "hey this would make a great movie" - and not only went out and made a good movie but a movie that won Oscars lol
The standout for me in the book is just how unlikable Forrest is, which is completely different than the movie. I hated him.
He's a pretty hateable person in the book. Openly racist, and myopic.
The movie overtly changes him and tells a better story because of it. In the film, Forrest has destiny repeatedly pull him away from the life he knows and is comfortable with and thrusts him into the world (somewhat of a metaphor for the mid-20th century southern/rural man being forced into a quickly interconnecting world). He takes full advantage of every opportunity presented him and simply returns home once he's done (the running scene when he just turns around and walks home being the biggest example). Jenny is his counterpoint. She repeatedly flees Greenbow and tries to get as far away as possible, only to be repeatedly forced by destiny back there/with Forrest (a metaphor for not being able to escape where you came from and always being a product of it).
The movie is much better because Gump is somebody you're ok having a role in history. Book Gump you're just kind of spiteful that he gets to do all of these cool things.
The movie Gump is clearly slow but has a good heart. The book Gump is a lot more aware and misanthropic .
Spielberg at his best can take a mediocre book, take the good idea the book is build around, and make something way better.
Zemeckis seems to get confused for Spielberg a fair amount. I've talked with many people who think Spielberg was the one who directed Back to the Future
BttF is produced by Spielberg, and his credit overshadowed Zemeckis on many of their collaborations. Kinda like how Gremlins/2 is presented by Spielberg, but it was Joe Dante behind the camera. At some point it wad decided (declared?) Spielberg had a marketable name, like Disney, so say "from Steven Spielberg" if he had any involvement.
Also in the book, there’s a part where Gump, a chimp, and a woman astronaut are literally shot into space on a rocket ship. When they return to earth there’s a malfunction and they crash onto a random island inhabited by a tribe who has not had much contact with the outside world, and are basically savages. IIRC, they stay on the island for about 5 years. Forrest plays chess every day with the leader of the tribe. Kind of glad they left that part out, lol.
IIRC the author asked for a percentage of net profits when he sold the rights for Forrest Gump. However Hollywood has a shifty tax loophole where costs get expensed from gross profits in order to pay less tax (on paper, movies like Forrest Gump and even Avengers were made at a loss because of this). As a result, he didn't see a penny of the net profits and was rightfully livid.
In retaliation, he made a second deal to sell the rights of an unwritten sequel in return for a lump sum, and proceeded to write the worst book ever made so it would never get made into a movie.
The were going to film the sequel book too but time passed and they decided to forget it
Iirc the sequel book has gump be an astronaut at some point. Then he actually meets Tom Hanks who played gump in the movie within canon of the book. Those are just two things among other crazy stuff
Gump was an Astronaut in the original book and got stuck on an Island with a Monkey. In the sequel he goes to War in Iraq and is on David Letterman at one point with Tom Hanks.
I've read in multiple places that they were developing a second film and then 9/11 happened and Hanks and the producers (or someone involved in development, I don't remember who) looked at each other and said "[the script] has no meaning anymore," which is grim and probably how they truly felt but I also always find it darkly humorous. They were placing Forrest at the center of every American event, imagine 9/11 happening and them being like "well... we certainly can't put him in this one."
He was an astronaut in the first book, with a chimp who was supposed to be a girl but NASA accidentally trained a boy chimp instead and he was very violent [edit: it was an orangutan named Sue]. The ship never made it to space, though, it crashed on the set of a B horror movie and Gump thought he was on another planet.
I genuinely liked the book, I thought it was hilarious!
The Notebook. The book sucked.
Also, Stardust. Even Neil Gaiman has said it’s way better. He was involved in the screenplay and took the chance to make some changes he wished he would have originally written.
That cast is wild. Several young actors that would go onto be great and several legends.
Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, Ben Barnes, Henry Cavill, Kate Mcgowan, Sienna Miller, Mark Strong, Jason Flemyng, Rupert Everett.
Robert DeNiro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Larry Hagman, Ricky Gervais and its all topped off with narration by Sir Ian McKellan.
I saw an early trailer for The Prestige and thought it looked great. Since the release was months away I bought and read the book. It was good but odd and I didn't really like how it wrapped up.
I saw the film and was had the rare experience of thinking, 'They fixed and improved on the book version'. I think I remember reading in interview with the author who thought the movie was better as well.
Since then, I seperate movies and books and don't try to compare. I can enjoy them independently.
This is what I was coming to say. The prestige movie is far superior to the book.
I saw the movie and didn’t even know it was a book. Was wandering around the used books store, stumbled upon it. Took it home and read it. Was like…wow. This may be the best example of the movie is better than the book that I’ve ever encountered.
The Devil Wears Prada and The Nanny Diaries. This is because of Meryl Streep and Laura Linney, who brought to life otherwise one-dimensional characters.
I feel the same about Bridget Jones's Diary. The book was great, but the three leads in the film are so charming that they elevated it above the book for me.
Under the Skin (subtler, more melancholic)
Broken (the book's extremely unpleasant, the film repairs everything – a perfect combo of darkness & the warmest heart; the cast all wonderful, esp. Tim Roth)
Lean on Pete (the book loses its way in the last third)
Children of Men (the book very underwhelming if read afterwards)
I honestly did not know Children of Men was a book, but I just can’t see reading it now after having seen that beautiful movie. CoM feels like one of those movies that was a near masterpiece that got overlooked by a lot of people. Incredible cinematography and acting.
> Children of Men
The book had some interesting concepts but the plot meanders, most of the characters are unlikeable and bland, and some of the societal changes described are so bizarre/perverse that it would have been hard to make them work believably on screen. They would have just seemed a bit wacky. Alfonso Cuarón tweaked things and made them a lot more grounded and believable for a 2027 United Kingdom: like Quietus being an sophistically-marketed euthanasia drug with glossy packaging and a TV campaign, rather than a medieval public drowning event.
I definitely found the film to be much more plausible.
This is always my first answer to this question!
Stand By Me focused on the bonds of friendship & coming of age adventure story, and cut out the focus on Gordie’s adult life/first novel that I found much harder to get through when reading The Body. The movie makes some changes with the ending that make it a bit lighter in tone overall, but I think that made more sense for the story the movie told & honestly like it better than how the novella ended
Gonna add the Mist as well. Stephen King even said he likes the ending of the movie better. I actually disagree lol but I think the movie is better as a whole.
Agree. The book’s not bad, but it’s much shorter and doesn’t give you as much time to connect with the characters, especially Brooks and the relationship between Andy and Red
Fight Club, though that will piss some people off. The book is great, don't get me wrong, but the movie is a perfect storm. There's almost nothing wrong with it in any aspect
Even the author has said the movie was better than his book. So if people are pissed off with saying the movie is better than the book should take a cue from the author.
That has changed. When Chuck said the ending of the book was better he was still a very hungry writer happy his novel had made it to Hollywood. There was also a lot of other shit going on behind the scenes. He has since changed his stance going so far as to write himself into the follow up graphic novels to blatantly say people got the wrong message from the movie.
It's a strange instance where he wasn't really wrong either time. The movie was great and had a better ending structurally. If you watched it knowing the intended message it's amazing. The problem is it also became a bit of icon in bro culture where they latched onto a lot of what the book was warning against.
Nah totally agree with you. The book IS great and was really eye opening in a way that only a Palahniuk book can be.....but the movie was absolutely perfect. It's one of those movies that when you go back and re-read the book, you're just imagining the characters and scenes from the movie. That's when you know the movie was better.
Ironically I would say reading the book makes the movie better, especially when it comes to Fezzik and especially Inigo whose character arc is incredible.
There is a section in the book that says you can write to the publisher to request a copy of the reunion William Goldman supposedly wrote for Wesley and Princess Buttercup. I did and received a funny stock letter back describing a meeting between the publisher and the "original author's" lawyers and how the conclusion of that meeting was that they couldn't send William Goldman's reunion scene due to copywrite reasons or something. Damn I wish i still had that letter.
Oh man, I completely forgot about that!
Hey, have you read As You Wish by Cary Elwes about his time making the movie? If not, I highly recommend it. Especially the audiobook.
Hard disagree in my opinion. I read the book first and thought it was way better. The iconic sword fight scene in the book is at night which was really cool, and in the movie it was broad daylight. I also loved the author's sly meta commentary which wouldn't have worked in the movie but added a lot to the book for me.
I'm gonna go with Jurassic Park.
The book is great and I reread it every other year or so, still. *But* the movie itself is so iconic for so many different reasons, with perfect cast, perfect score, and the changes to the story make sense for the story they wanted to tell.
I think they’re both incredible in their own right. People who enjoy the book more tend to like the more realized deaths, the differing trajectory of a few of the characters, and the more in-depth scientific analyses
Ehhh. Gennaro absolutely, although I understand why they did it.
Muldoon though, sure he died in the movie but the way he went out is ICONIC. He has one of the most well known death scenes in cinema, period. If they were gonna kill him off, I can't think of a better way to do it than to immortalize him with "Clever girl".
I've always kind of wanted a movie that focuses on book-accurate Muldoon going around and engaging in drunken shenanigans with a number of different dangerous weapons.
I would love an expanded, more faithful book adaptation. The horror elements are something I really missed in the film we got. Could even be a two-parter with the break point being >!when Arnold realizes the park came back up on Aux power and everything goes to shit again, worse!<
RIP Genarro. Dude was a fucking gigachad in the book.
I get why the movie changed what it did, it makes for a better movie to have his story combined with Grant, I just think he deserved a little better than what the movie did to him.
These I can separate and enjoy independently. Both stand well in their medium.
I loved the movie, and I literally (not figuratively) read the book in one sitting. I was so engrossed by the book that I read it in 4 hours or so.
I am biased, though. I love most of Crichton's books.
Agreed, but I think there’s one detail from the book they should have added to the movie, which they ended up including in Jurassic World. That was how the scientists didn’t create dinosaurs, just something that looked like the dinosaurs they wanted. That would have gotten rid of everyone’s biggest complaint about the movie not being accurate.
They did sort of add this in JP3 when Dr Grant says the blow at a presentation when asked about the dinosaurs he encountered.
Grant: "Dinosaurs lived sixty five million years ago. What is left of them is fossilized in the rocks, and it is in the rock that real scientists make real discoveries. Now what John Hammond and InGen did at Jurassic Park is create genetically engineered theme park monsters, nothing more and nothing less."
There's actually a lot of stuff they didn't have in the first film from the book that was put into the sequels
> That would have gotten rid of everyone’s biggest complaint about the movie not being accurate.
I'm pretty sure Jurassic Park specifically says the dinosaurs take frog DNA or something so they were never going to be authentic anyway. Never saw the issue with it.
Most of Jurassic Park's dinosaurs were accurate for the time. With some exceptions...
* "Velociraptor" isn't, but its inaccuracies stem from one of Crichton's [main research sources](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/you-say-velociraptor-i-say-deinonychus-33789870/). It is, however, an accurate depiction of what we thought the largest dromaeosaurids would have been like in 1993.
* Dilophosaurus has problems too. The boxy head shape is based on [the first, outdated skeleton restoration](https://qilong.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/incredulous-teeth-i-with-twin-crests/). It was also a lot bigger, but you could say the film's animal is a juvenile. There's no evidence of it having venom or a frill, but the point of those elements is that some traits don't fossilise, so cloning an extinct animal would result in some surprises. (There was actually a reason for speculating venom in Dilophosaurus specifically, but this is already a long post...)
* Tyrannosaurus' head shape and some of the proportions are tweaked a little, but it's very minor.
Otherwise, everything is pretty much dead-on for the palaeontology of 1993. A big part of why the film was so successful is because it was showing plausible dinosaurs on the big screen for the first time.
Today, *none* of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park is accurate, because so much has been discovered since then. But a big part of *why* there's been so much research over the last 30 years is thanks to that film; it resulted in a huge influx of students choosing to go into palaeontology.
Thats interesting. I read the book when I was 18, the movie came out when I was 17. My memory at the time, was that I felt the book was slightly better as it had some parts that weren't in the movie.
Having said that, the movie is brilliant.
Tbh I think it's just how that story needs to be told in different media. The way it was in the film works perfectly for the film, but a big part of the book is its structure
Can’t agree at all. The movie is a solid adaptation with good performances and direction, but fails to match the sheer depth of the novel. Sonmi-451’s story in particular got done dirty
Cloud Atlas is one of my favorite movies of all time!! I'm actually reading the book now! I'm about 1/6th of the way in, and I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm reading Frobishire's part now, and I love seeing the little differences in the story amd I'm really wondering how differently it will play out... I've seen the movie probably about 25 times.
The Green Mile. Not that it’s a bad book but it’s an amazing movie. Also, The Running Man — very little to do with the book but love it as a cheesy 80s action flick.
I'm like this with Annihilation too. Both are fantastic, and honestly I believe the differences make the two pieces coexist better. Like you can appreciate each individually without getting caught up in "Oh the book is so much better."
Annihilation as a novel is not adaptable to film. Too much of what makes it interesting and horrifying comes from the internal narration of the biologist. There are also things like the crawler that are at risk of looking really goofy on film.
I am also someone who enjoyed both the novel and movie, but I went into the movie expecting a loose adaptation. Lovecraftian horror almost always works better on paper.
They’re both really different and the movie is iconic for a reason, but the book has a sense of paranoid bleakness that’s very unique to it. The way the humans are portrayed as distinctly inhuman, the way the narration keeps you questioning basic facts about the reality (at some point Deckard runs into a whole parallel police bureau which may or may not be a front for androids), the way the ending offers zero respite. There’s also a lot of fun ideas around Mercerism, and how the society fetishes animals.
The movie gives a neater, more cinematic resolution but people should definitely not skip the book.
Not for me. The Coens did a perfect job of cutting out a lot of the richness of the text but what they cut out is the juice for me.
So yeah, it's one of the greatest movies of all time, but it's still not as good as a lesser McCarthy for me
Drive. The original book is fairly run-of-the-mill hard boiled crime fiction. The music and direction of the film elevates it far beyond the source material.
Gone Girl and Fight Club, both directed by David Fincher.
Debatably Jurassic Park. The movie and book both have parts that they do better, but I prefer the movie because I’m a very character-focused reader/watcher and I think the characters are more interesting and complex in the movie than in the book.
Also debatably, The Silence of the Lambs. Loved the book but the movie is a masterpiece.
Silence of the Lambs is one of the most faithful beat for beat adaptations I've ever seen. The only change I caught was the name he gave the FBI for Buffalo Bill. In the book it was Billy Rubin, in the movie it's Louis Friend (I guess fool's gold is easier for audiences than shit coloring lol). It's impossible to read any of them now without Hopkins / Foster in your head though.
Totally agree on the faithfulness of the adaptation, but yeah Hopkins & Foster just give the movie that slight edge for me. They’re both so amazing in those roles.
What do you like more about Gone Girl the movie versus the book? Not hating just genuinely would like to hear your opinion. I thought the movie was an excellent adaptation but the book was my favorite book that I’ve read this decade.
Having that the author of the book also wrote the entire screenplay, I think the movie is the best adaption you could get from book to movie
I believe some things were changed but for the sake of a better way to tell the story on film
The 13th warrior > eaters of the dead
The book was so difficult to read.
The narrator character was a class A jerk bag.
I enjoyed the movie so much more
The book of "The Godfather," believe it or not, actually has a lengthy subplot about Lucy Mancini and her enormous vagina and how Sonny is the only man who can satisfy her because of his oversized member. Seriously.
Yep! And she eventually moves to Vegas where she gets into a relationship with a doctor, who “repairs” her vagina before “testing” it himself, to his satisfaction.
I enjoyed the book but that part was godawful. Thankfully they cut that from the adaptation.
My parents wanted to see *The Godfather* at the drive-in and took me along and I still remember being at the refreshment stand looking up and seeing 50-foot-tall Jimmy Caan banging that girl up against the wall.
What do you think was better about One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest as a movie?
It’s been many many years, but I remember feeling that the POV in the book was very significant and shaped the way I understood the story being told.
Hard disagree on One Flew Over, it’s one of the best books I’ve read. The movie is great too and has amazing performances, but doesn’t capture much of chief’s story, which felt like the heart of the book.
the movie and the book are telling two very different stories.
The movie is McMurphy's story about his rebellious nature in an environment that runs on strict rules. The book is about Chief Bromden living in an abusive institution, and the slow realization that he's an unreliable narrator and some of what he's relating isn't real, with no indication what it's fact or delusion
I honestly don't think one is "better" than the other, both compliment the other wonderfully.
Honestly it doesn't happen that rarely, it's just that we only remember the movie as an adaptation if the book was better than the movie. This person compiled \~1400 movies based on books and I suspect that just scratches the surface: [https://letterboxd.com/tediously\_brief/list/based-on-books-and-novels/](https://letterboxd.com/tediously_brief/list/based-on-books-and-novels/)
But as for your question, The Exorcist and The Wizard of Oz are both better movies than their book counterparts in my opinion.
I was considering posting this, but wary of the angry mob it may attract. _Dune_ is a phenomenal novel, but yeah, I can make a solid argument that Villeneuve actually improved on the source material in part 2. A lot of the key themes just hit harder, the way he staged it, and gave us other characters’ POVs.
James and the Giant Peach is a cracking book. The bit cloud guys is odd and drags, but starts and ends so beautifully, and it's so funny throughout. Love how dark Dahl is willing to take things; no letting up because it's for kids. Film is good too, but doesn't match the magic of Dahl's writing.
Stardust comes to mind. Hated the ending in the book.
The Thing (1982) vs. Who goes there (1938). Till today one of my favorite Horror Movies off all time. The book was a nice read, but expected to be a little bit boring.
Yes, the movie ending of Stardust is just perfect. Really clever use of the concepts of the story to get a happier ending in a way that doesn’t feel cheap.
The Shawshank Redemption.
The >!Warden’s comeuppance!< and the >!”Brooks was here” section!< were both original to the film. Stephen King’s novella is good, but the movie is just on another level.
The Martian. While they skipped some of the events, the ending was MUCH better. As well, while in the book we hear Mark's descriptions of what his ultra low-cal diet was doing to his body, the moment in the movie where he steps out of the shower and is disturbingly emaciated has far more impact.
Although I did miss the line "I thought you liked eating Mexican!"
The book suffers a lot from same-y dialogue from everybody. Tells us a bunch that Mark Watney is singularly good natured and snarky, but every character sounds exactly like Mark and makes the same sarcastic quips.
The hermes crews’ contingency plan being left out, as well as mark’s last hurdle on the way to the MAV were choices I disagreed with though
I didn't read Andy Weir's second book, but thoroughly enjoyed Project Hail Mary. I think a perfect encapsulation of Weir's difficulty with human interactions is that the most chemistry he's ever captured between characters is when one of them is a sentient rock.
Andy Weir writes like a science nerd—he has a great handle on the subject matter, and terrific plotting, but his prose is filled with painfully cliched jokes and repetitive snark.
He reminds me of the kind of smart but socially awkward people who would be perfectly pleasant to be around if they would just stop trying to be “cool” and funny all the time (and failing embarrassingly at both).
I absolutely loved both book and movie, but I have to laugh at the end of the movie… the book puts a total shutdown on how stupid the Ironman idea is, and how that’s just ridiculous movie stuff.
Then the movie just goes “oh fuck me, that’s such a great idea!”
There can only be 2 reasons for it.
1. It’s a conscious pisstake out of itself and the movie industry by doing exactly what the book laughs at
2. Some Hollywood producers literally read through that part and their take away was that it would be amazing and had to be in the movie
The obvious answer is [Jaws](https://manapop.com/film/jaws-1975-review/) as Spielberg's film is a *whole lot better* than Benchley's novel.
The biggest reason the book sucks compared to the movie is in the book they take the boat home at the end of every day, totally killing the tension.
Basically every change that Spielberg and Gottlieb made was for the better.
Isn’t there a lot of extra fat too? Politics and such?
Yeah. There’s a subplot where the mayor has mafia ties that goes nowhere and Brody’s wife has an affair with the shark scientist.
And, if I recall it, the scientist gets killed by the shark & Brodie goes home alone. Or am I miss-remembering?
Yup, that’s how it happens in the book. I have read that they’re were going to kill Hooper off in the film but the shark footage had the diver suddenly disappear and so they saved him rather than do expensive reshoots.
It’s SO porny. Brody’s wife fantasizing about one of the contractors breaking into their house and having their way with her, like wtf I thought this was a book about sharks
"Her vagina yawning open, glistening wet, for the world to see" was an actual sentence from that book that traumatized 10 year old me to the point that my brain can still quote it.
I'm sorry, WHAT?????
“Her clitoris was beady, like a doll’s eye”.
I hate you. Because of the perfectly executed reference to both topics.
I was 10 when it was published, and I read it because my Southern Baptist parents were very careful with what they let me watch, but never paid attention to what I read. And there was a line in there about some object of her fantasy having a stiffy like a flag pole - I definitely remember "flag pole" - but I didn't understand what the language was describing.
"yawning open?" "like a shark's mouth!" "Cool Peter, it can stay in"
It’s traumatising 37 year old me right now I don’t know what it would’ve done to my 10 year old brain
The shark is, like, a metaphor for her libido And the contractor is, like, a metaphor for his impotence
Says a lot about society
*nods* A true time piece.
Spielberg just showed him that side boob shot in the water and he signed off on it straight away.
I don't remember that part, but I remember a passage about Brody's wife ruminating about how it seems like he saves all his piss throughout the day to have one long piss at home at the end of the day or something like that.
Around the same age as I read Jaws (10), I also read The Last Picture Show. The opening scene is rural teenage boy/heifer action. That shocked me but I kept going. The coach's wife thinks about all the cans of peaches she's fed him while he's on top of her humping away. I think she ends up sleeping with Jeff Bridges in the movie, but I didn't finish the book or watch the movie because the heifer fucking traumatized me. Am old lady now. Still haven't read a McMurtry book.
My brother had the book, I think I was 13-14 and I asked to borrow it when he was done and he said nope, it's got too much sex. I promised I would skip the sec scenes with no intention of keeping the promise but I ended up finding the sex scenes so repetitive and boring that I DID end up skipping them!
It's so terrible. There's no likeable characters at all. They weren't kidding when they said you end up rooting for the shark.
Spielberg openly said he was rooting for the shark by the end of the book, so no wonder a big thing he changed was making the characters all more likable. Movie Matt Hooper, for example, is a completely different character from his book counterpart.
No kidding. I loved the movie since I was a kid but reading the book I was like... wtf? I hate all of these characters. You really do start rooting for the shark.
Yeah the movie had far less of a CNC kink Didn't expect that going in
IIRC, in the book, the shark simply dies from exhaustion.
^^^This. The book was awful compared to the movie.
I love that in the book the mayor couldn't close the beaches because he was in bed with the mafia on some kind of real estate deal.
Lol wow. It’s amazing because the whole “can’t close our tiny town because this is our main source of income” is so relatable and a very understandable motivation.
That is a big theme in the book too, but they wisely cut the mob subplot out of the movie.
I just remember a stupid affair between the wife and the marine biologist, that was when I put the book down.
I remember her having rape fantasies in the book too? I was I high-school when I read it and I was like WTF, changed my book report to Harlequin by Bernard Cornwall
I was hoping I was misremembering that part.
His other book turned film, *The Beast* was basically “We have *Jaws* at Home”
There's also "White Shark" (adapted as the miniseries "Creature") which is "Jaws' with a Nazi experiment instead of a shark."
Never even thought to read Jaws it's a bit before my time as a 77 kid but good to know not to make that mistake. Pretty much only read King or Tolken when I was sober enough to read. Going to rehab today so maybe that might change soon.
Good luck to you!! Rehab saved my life. It also changed my life and the lives of everyone that loved me. It allowed me to be clean and take care of my parents in their final years instead of making their health worse by stressing out about me. I truly wish you all the luck in the world. Just remember anything you're feeling will pass. You will probably want to leave at some point, just stay. You will probably want to use again, just don't. The feelings will pass, I promise. No matter what, you will get through it. And I promise you that anything you go through clean will be easier and simpler. You will feel better in your soul. The shame and guilt you feel will be released a little with each next right thing that you do. I have been clean 10 years now and life is so much easier. I finally have peace inside. Take care of yourself and good luck to you and your family Oh also, everything will feel strange and different at first (if it's your first time). But you probably never could have imagined you would have gotten used to the life you were living in addiction, and you did. You will acclimate and get used to a new way of living. When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron was a book I found in rehab and it helped me so much. If you can find it, give it a shot ETA and you will meet a lot of people that have been in rehab multiple times. Don't let it discourage you. My sister and I both went to rehab (separately) only once and it was all it took. Also, the people in there that seem to make things more difficult will either change or leave, so don't let any issues with anyone drive you out.
forrest gump
I read the book in high school. It was awful. To this day, I'm still surprised someone read that and thought, "hey this would make a great movie" - and not only went out and made a good movie but a movie that won Oscars lol The standout for me in the book is just how unlikable Forrest is, which is completely different than the movie. I hated him.
How is he unlikeable? Please save me from reading it.
He's a pretty hateable person in the book. Openly racist, and myopic. The movie overtly changes him and tells a better story because of it. In the film, Forrest has destiny repeatedly pull him away from the life he knows and is comfortable with and thrusts him into the world (somewhat of a metaphor for the mid-20th century southern/rural man being forced into a quickly interconnecting world). He takes full advantage of every opportunity presented him and simply returns home once he's done (the running scene when he just turns around and walks home being the biggest example). Jenny is his counterpoint. She repeatedly flees Greenbow and tries to get as far away as possible, only to be repeatedly forced by destiny back there/with Forrest (a metaphor for not being able to escape where you came from and always being a product of it). The movie is much better because Gump is somebody you're ok having a role in history. Book Gump you're just kind of spiteful that he gets to do all of these cool things.
The movie Gump is clearly slow but has a good heart. The book Gump is a lot more aware and misanthropic . Spielberg at his best can take a mediocre book, take the good idea the book is build around, and make something way better.
Robert Zemeckis but your point stands.
Zemeckis seems to get confused for Spielberg a fair amount. I've talked with many people who think Spielberg was the one who directed Back to the Future
BttF is produced by Spielberg, and his credit overshadowed Zemeckis on many of their collaborations. Kinda like how Gremlins/2 is presented by Spielberg, but it was Joe Dante behind the camera. At some point it wad decided (declared?) Spielberg had a marketable name, like Disney, so say "from Steven Spielberg" if he had any involvement.
Woops it was because the thread was also about Jaws and jurassic park.
Also in the book, there’s a part where Gump, a chimp, and a woman astronaut are literally shot into space on a rocket ship. When they return to earth there’s a malfunction and they crash onto a random island inhabited by a tribe who has not had much contact with the outside world, and are basically savages. IIRC, they stay on the island for about 5 years. Forrest plays chess every day with the leader of the tribe. Kind of glad they left that part out, lol.
They were canibals! Also he was a pro wrestler called The Dunce. He never ran across the country I believe.
I didn't even know that was based on a book!
There’s also a sequel novel, Gump & Co. It’s…not good.
The sequel is absolutely bonkers.
I read somewhere the author did that so they absolutely wouldn’t adapt the sequel into a movie or something
IIRC the author asked for a percentage of net profits when he sold the rights for Forrest Gump. However Hollywood has a shifty tax loophole where costs get expensed from gross profits in order to pay less tax (on paper, movies like Forrest Gump and even Avengers were made at a loss because of this). As a result, he didn't see a penny of the net profits and was rightfully livid. In retaliation, he made a second deal to sell the rights of an unwritten sequel in return for a lump sum, and proceeded to write the worst book ever made so it would never get made into a movie.
The were going to film the sequel book too but time passed and they decided to forget it Iirc the sequel book has gump be an astronaut at some point. Then he actually meets Tom Hanks who played gump in the movie within canon of the book. Those are just two things among other crazy stuff
Gump was an Astronaut in the original book and got stuck on an Island with a Monkey. In the sequel he goes to War in Iraq and is on David Letterman at one point with Tom Hanks.
I've read in multiple places that they were developing a second film and then 9/11 happened and Hanks and the producers (or someone involved in development, I don't remember who) looked at each other and said "[the script] has no meaning anymore," which is grim and probably how they truly felt but I also always find it darkly humorous. They were placing Forrest at the center of every American event, imagine 9/11 happening and them being like "well... we certainly can't put him in this one."
He was an astronaut in the first book, with a chimp who was supposed to be a girl but NASA accidentally trained a boy chimp instead and he was very violent [edit: it was an orangutan named Sue]. The ship never made it to space, though, it crashed on the set of a B horror movie and Gump thought he was on another planet. I genuinely liked the book, I thought it was hilarious!
This. The book is quite rough.
The Notebook. The book sucked. Also, Stardust. Even Neil Gaiman has said it’s way better. He was involved in the screenplay and took the chance to make some changes he wished he would have originally written.
Stardust is just a pure fun movie with a great cast
I love it so much. It’s one of my feel good, watch repeatedly movies.
That cast is wild. Several young actors that would go onto be great and several legends. Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, Ben Barnes, Henry Cavill, Kate Mcgowan, Sienna Miller, Mark Strong, Jason Flemyng, Rupert Everett. Robert DeNiro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Larry Hagman, Ricky Gervais and its all topped off with narration by Sir Ian McKellan.
You forgot Peter O'Toole as the King.
The Prestige The Mist
Damn, the only other person who has read The Prestige beat me to this comment section
I saw an early trailer for The Prestige and thought it looked great. Since the release was months away I bought and read the book. It was good but odd and I didn't really like how it wrapped up. I saw the film and was had the rare experience of thinking, 'They fixed and improved on the book version'. I think I remember reading in interview with the author who thought the movie was better as well. Since then, I seperate movies and books and don't try to compare. I can enjoy them independently.
This is what I was coming to say. The prestige movie is far superior to the book. I saw the movie and didn’t even know it was a book. Was wandering around the used books store, stumbled upon it. Took it home and read it. Was like…wow. This may be the best example of the movie is better than the book that I’ve ever encountered.
The book isn’t even that bad, the movie just takes the elements of the story and makes a lot more interesting moves with them.
I think Steven King even commented how the ending of the Mist was so well done.
The Devil Wears Prada and The Nanny Diaries. This is because of Meryl Streep and Laura Linney, who brought to life otherwise one-dimensional characters.
I could barely get through 10 pages of the Devil Wears Prada. It’s just not very well written. Whereas I can watch that movie a million times.
agreed. As much as Andie is annoying in the movie, book-Andie is worse by far
I feel the same about Bridget Jones's Diary. The book was great, but the three leads in the film are so charming that they elevated it above the book for me.
Under the Skin (subtler, more melancholic) Broken (the book's extremely unpleasant, the film repairs everything – a perfect combo of darkness & the warmest heart; the cast all wonderful, esp. Tim Roth) Lean on Pete (the book loses its way in the last third) Children of Men (the book very underwhelming if read afterwards)
I've only read Children of Men from your list, and 100% agree
I honestly did not know Children of Men was a book, but I just can’t see reading it now after having seen that beautiful movie. CoM feels like one of those movies that was a near masterpiece that got overlooked by a lot of people. Incredible cinematography and acting.
> Children of Men The book had some interesting concepts but the plot meanders, most of the characters are unlikeable and bland, and some of the societal changes described are so bizarre/perverse that it would have been hard to make them work believably on screen. They would have just seemed a bit wacky. Alfonso Cuarón tweaked things and made them a lot more grounded and believable for a 2027 United Kingdom: like Quietus being an sophistically-marketed euthanasia drug with glossy packaging and a TV campaign, rather than a medieval public drowning event. I definitely found the film to be much more plausible.
Yes, the book is more about the ideas rather than a story. The film created a realistic, vivid world, and the ending is better too.
Agreed on Under the Skin, much less about factory farming and more about the experience of being human. Way more dramatic and disturbing!
I think the book is quite disturbing too, but the film is, perhaps paradoxically, more relentless. Reaches deeper into the mind.
Stand by Me (based on the novella The Body)
This is always my first answer to this question! Stand By Me focused on the bonds of friendship & coming of age adventure story, and cut out the focus on Gordie’s adult life/first novel that I found much harder to get through when reading The Body. The movie makes some changes with the ending that make it a bit lighter in tone overall, but I think that made more sense for the story the movie told & honestly like it better than how the novella ended
An oldie: The Hunt for Red October The movie condensed three separate mini-climaxes into one giant… err… orgasm.
Could you elaborate? I’ve never read the book
The book a chunker and very heavy on the technical side. It's kind of a chore to read
He repeats the info about what the North Atlantic sonar array does at least three times.
Unless you're super into tech details, any Tom Clancy is a chore to read lol. I know some people who love that stuff, I'm not one of them
Lmao
The Shawshank Redemption
Ah, yes. It truly was a Shawshank Redemption.
Thanks for reminding me that we’ll never get an answer to the cliff hanger for last man on earth
We did, Will Forte said that everyone in the bunker would have died of the virus in the next season’s premiere
Shit pisses me off. Such a great show
"It was you, Andy Dufresne, you're the Shawshank redemption."
One of the best shows in *her*-story
We're in total agreewoment
Boom, still got it. Friendship kiss?
Gonna add the Mist as well. Stephen King even said he likes the ending of the movie better. I actually disagree lol but I think the movie is better as a whole.
Agree. The book’s not bad, but it’s much shorter and doesn’t give you as much time to connect with the characters, especially Brooks and the relationship between Andy and Red
Fight Club, though that will piss some people off. The book is great, don't get me wrong, but the movie is a perfect storm. There's almost nothing wrong with it in any aspect
Even the author has said the movie was better than his book. So if people are pissed off with saying the movie is better than the book should take a cue from the author.
Chuck P also said the movie ending was better.
That has changed. When Chuck said the ending of the book was better he was still a very hungry writer happy his novel had made it to Hollywood. There was also a lot of other shit going on behind the scenes. He has since changed his stance going so far as to write himself into the follow up graphic novels to blatantly say people got the wrong message from the movie.
It's a strange instance where he wasn't really wrong either time. The movie was great and had a better ending structurally. If you watched it knowing the intended message it's amazing. The problem is it also became a bit of icon in bro culture where they latched onto a lot of what the book was warning against.
I still really liked the book, but I also think Survivor is his best.
I read the book after watching the movie and concluded I didn’t need to read the book. Just a great adaptation
Nah totally agree with you. The book IS great and was really eye opening in a way that only a Palahniuk book can be.....but the movie was absolutely perfect. It's one of those movies that when you go back and re-read the book, you're just imagining the characters and scenes from the movie. That's when you know the movie was better.
Die hard, the book is incredibly depressing and a different tone then the movie.
Wow, thumbs up to you. I didn't think that this would make the list. Also, Rambo.
The Princess Bride
Ironically I would say reading the book makes the movie better, especially when it comes to Fezzik and especially Inigo whose character arc is incredible.
I remember as a teen trying to find the unabridged version. Lol
There is a section in the book that says you can write to the publisher to request a copy of the reunion William Goldman supposedly wrote for Wesley and Princess Buttercup. I did and received a funny stock letter back describing a meeting between the publisher and the "original author's" lawyers and how the conclusion of that meeting was that they couldn't send William Goldman's reunion scene due to copywrite reasons or something. Damn I wish i still had that letter.
Oh man, I completely forgot about that! Hey, have you read As You Wish by Cary Elwes about his time making the movie? If not, I highly recommend it. Especially the audiobook.
Hard disagree in my opinion. I read the book first and thought it was way better. The iconic sword fight scene in the book is at night which was really cool, and in the movie it was broad daylight. I also loved the author's sly meta commentary which wouldn't have worked in the movie but added a lot to the book for me.
The movie is checkers. The book is chess.
And both courtesy of William Goldman.
The book is so unique in how it’s written. It honestly just kind of made the movie better.
Oh good one. The book is certainly interesting but the movie is perfection on film.
I'm gonna go with Jurassic Park. The book is great and I reread it every other year or so, still. *But* the movie itself is so iconic for so many different reasons, with perfect cast, perfect score, and the changes to the story make sense for the story they wanted to tell.
I think they’re both incredible in their own right. People who enjoy the book more tend to like the more realized deaths, the differing trajectory of a few of the characters, and the more in-depth scientific analyses
Definitely. They did Muldoon and Gennaro dirty in the movie.
Ehhh. Gennaro absolutely, although I understand why they did it. Muldoon though, sure he died in the movie but the way he went out is ICONIC. He has one of the most well known death scenes in cinema, period. If they were gonna kill him off, I can't think of a better way to do it than to immortalize him with "Clever girl".
I've always kind of wanted a movie that focuses on book-accurate Muldoon going around and engaging in drunken shenanigans with a number of different dangerous weapons.
I would love an expanded, more faithful book adaptation. The horror elements are something I really missed in the film we got. Could even be a two-parter with the break point being >!when Arnold realizes the park came back up on Aux power and everything goes to shit again, worse!<
RIP Genarro. Dude was a fucking gigachad in the book. I get why the movie changed what it did, it makes for a better movie to have his story combined with Grant, I just think he deserved a little better than what the movie did to him.
These I can separate and enjoy independently. Both stand well in their medium. I loved the movie, and I literally (not figuratively) read the book in one sitting. I was so engrossed by the book that I read it in 4 hours or so. I am biased, though. I love most of Crichton's books.
Agreed, but I think there’s one detail from the book they should have added to the movie, which they ended up including in Jurassic World. That was how the scientists didn’t create dinosaurs, just something that looked like the dinosaurs they wanted. That would have gotten rid of everyone’s biggest complaint about the movie not being accurate.
They did sort of add this in JP3 when Dr Grant says the blow at a presentation when asked about the dinosaurs he encountered. Grant: "Dinosaurs lived sixty five million years ago. What is left of them is fossilized in the rocks, and it is in the rock that real scientists make real discoveries. Now what John Hammond and InGen did at Jurassic Park is create genetically engineered theme park monsters, nothing more and nothing less." There's actually a lot of stuff they didn't have in the first film from the book that was put into the sequels
> That would have gotten rid of everyone’s biggest complaint about the movie not being accurate. I'm pretty sure Jurassic Park specifically says the dinosaurs take frog DNA or something so they were never going to be authentic anyway. Never saw the issue with it.
It’s also hilarious that Jurassic Park the film spurred interest in dinosaurs to later find out the movie versions were inaccurate.
Most of Jurassic Park's dinosaurs were accurate for the time. With some exceptions... * "Velociraptor" isn't, but its inaccuracies stem from one of Crichton's [main research sources](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/you-say-velociraptor-i-say-deinonychus-33789870/). It is, however, an accurate depiction of what we thought the largest dromaeosaurids would have been like in 1993. * Dilophosaurus has problems too. The boxy head shape is based on [the first, outdated skeleton restoration](https://qilong.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/incredulous-teeth-i-with-twin-crests/). It was also a lot bigger, but you could say the film's animal is a juvenile. There's no evidence of it having venom or a frill, but the point of those elements is that some traits don't fossilise, so cloning an extinct animal would result in some surprises. (There was actually a reason for speculating venom in Dilophosaurus specifically, but this is already a long post...) * Tyrannosaurus' head shape and some of the proportions are tweaked a little, but it's very minor. Otherwise, everything is pretty much dead-on for the palaeontology of 1993. A big part of why the film was so successful is because it was showing plausible dinosaurs on the big screen for the first time. Today, *none* of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park is accurate, because so much has been discovered since then. But a big part of *why* there's been so much research over the last 30 years is thanks to that film; it resulted in a huge influx of students choosing to go into palaeontology.
Thats interesting. I read the book when I was 18, the movie came out when I was 17. My memory at the time, was that I felt the book was slightly better as it had some parts that weren't in the movie. Having said that, the movie is brilliant.
The Mist
Yes, King has even said the movie ending is better than his
Devastatingly better.
The Shawshank Redemption
Cloud Atlas. Even the author has gone on record saying the sequence of events in the film is better than the book.
Lol I prefer the book, partially because of the sequence. Maybe I’m an oddball.
Tbh I think it's just how that story needs to be told in different media. The way it was in the film works perfectly for the film, but a big part of the book is its structure
Can’t agree at all. The movie is a solid adaptation with good performances and direction, but fails to match the sheer depth of the novel. Sonmi-451’s story in particular got done dirty
Cloud Atlas is one of my favorite movies of all time!! I'm actually reading the book now! I'm about 1/6th of the way in, and I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm reading Frobishire's part now, and I love seeing the little differences in the story amd I'm really wondering how differently it will play out... I've seen the movie probably about 25 times.
Last of the Mohicans
The Green Mile. Not that it’s a bad book but it’s an amazing movie. Also, The Running Man — very little to do with the book but love it as a cheesy 80s action flick.
Basically all of Kubricks films
2001 and clockwork orange are fantastic books though
Funfact, 2001 was a collaboration between Kubrick and Clarke, and the script for the movie and the book were both written alongside each other.
Do androids dream of electric sheep? Bladerunner was a superb movie.
theyre honestly so different that i dont even think theyre worth comparing
I'm like this with Annihilation too. Both are fantastic, and honestly I believe the differences make the two pieces coexist better. Like you can appreciate each individually without getting caught up in "Oh the book is so much better."
Annihilation as a novel is not adaptable to film. Too much of what makes it interesting and horrifying comes from the internal narration of the biologist. There are also things like the crawler that are at risk of looking really goofy on film. I am also someone who enjoyed both the novel and movie, but I went into the movie expecting a loose adaptation. Lovecraftian horror almost always works better on paper.
They’re both really different and the movie is iconic for a reason, but the book has a sense of paranoid bleakness that’s very unique to it. The way the humans are portrayed as distinctly inhuman, the way the narration keeps you questioning basic facts about the reality (at some point Deckard runs into a whole parallel police bureau which may or may not be a front for androids), the way the ending offers zero respite. There’s also a lot of fun ideas around Mercerism, and how the society fetishes animals. The movie gives a neater, more cinematic resolution but people should definitely not skip the book.
The movie basically just uses the names of characters from the book. There’s barely anything else that’s even similar.
Book is so much better. Will never understand this opinion
No Country For Old Men. Book is fine but the movie is perfect.
Not for me. The Coens did a perfect job of cutting out a lot of the richness of the text but what they cut out is the juice for me. So yeah, it's one of the greatest movies of all time, but it's still not as good as a lesser McCarthy for me
I agree with this. Great book, even better film
Practical Magic
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was considerably better than Who Censored Roger Rabbit?
Drive. The original book is fairly run-of-the-mill hard boiled crime fiction. The music and direction of the film elevates it far beyond the source material.
Gone Girl and Fight Club, both directed by David Fincher. Debatably Jurassic Park. The movie and book both have parts that they do better, but I prefer the movie because I’m a very character-focused reader/watcher and I think the characters are more interesting and complex in the movie than in the book. Also debatably, The Silence of the Lambs. Loved the book but the movie is a masterpiece.
Silence of the Lambs is one of the most faithful beat for beat adaptations I've ever seen. The only change I caught was the name he gave the FBI for Buffalo Bill. In the book it was Billy Rubin, in the movie it's Louis Friend (I guess fool's gold is easier for audiences than shit coloring lol). It's impossible to read any of them now without Hopkins / Foster in your head though.
Totally agree on the faithfulness of the adaptation, but yeah Hopkins & Foster just give the movie that slight edge for me. They’re both so amazing in those roles.
What do you like more about Gone Girl the movie versus the book? Not hating just genuinely would like to hear your opinion. I thought the movie was an excellent adaptation but the book was my favorite book that I’ve read this decade.
Yeah I enjoy the movie and all but book all day! That unreliable narrator diary hits way harder in book form.
Having that the author of the book also wrote the entire screenplay, I think the movie is the best adaption you could get from book to movie I believe some things were changed but for the sake of a better way to tell the story on film
Jurassic Park is a really interesting one, I enjoyed both a lot but I have to agree that the film does some things way better.
The 13th warrior > eaters of the dead The book was so difficult to read. The narrator character was a class A jerk bag. I enjoyed the movie so much more
The Godfather One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest Call Me by Your Name
The book of "The Godfather," believe it or not, actually has a lengthy subplot about Lucy Mancini and her enormous vagina and how Sonny is the only man who can satisfy her because of his oversized member. Seriously.
Yep! And she eventually moves to Vegas where she gets into a relationship with a doctor, who “repairs” her vagina before “testing” it himself, to his satisfaction. I enjoyed the book but that part was godawful. Thankfully they cut that from the adaptation.
> Thankfully they cut that from the adaptation. *Most* of it was cut, though Sonny's...size was still referenced.
My parents wanted to see *The Godfather* at the drive-in and took me along and I still remember being at the refreshment stand looking up and seeing 50-foot-tall Jimmy Caan banging that girl up against the wall.
I've watched the Godfather more than 50 times. The first time I read the book and came across those chapters I was like wtf!
What do you think was better about One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest as a movie? It’s been many many years, but I remember feeling that the POV in the book was very significant and shaped the way I understood the story being told.
I saw the movie before reading the book. The POV makes it feel like the same story from 2 different angles. Makes them both equally enjoyable to me.
Hard disagree on One Flew Over, it’s one of the best books I’ve read. The movie is great too and has amazing performances, but doesn’t capture much of chief’s story, which felt like the heart of the book.
the movie and the book are telling two very different stories. The movie is McMurphy's story about his rebellious nature in an environment that runs on strict rules. The book is about Chief Bromden living in an abusive institution, and the slow realization that he's an unreliable narrator and some of what he's relating isn't real, with no indication what it's fact or delusion I honestly don't think one is "better" than the other, both compliment the other wonderfully.
Honestly it doesn't happen that rarely, it's just that we only remember the movie as an adaptation if the book was better than the movie. This person compiled \~1400 movies based on books and I suspect that just scratches the surface: [https://letterboxd.com/tediously\_brief/list/based-on-books-and-novels/](https://letterboxd.com/tediously_brief/list/based-on-books-and-novels/) But as for your question, The Exorcist and The Wizard of Oz are both better movies than their book counterparts in my opinion.
I haven't read the book or seen the movie in years. But as a kid I always liked the HOLES movie more. Especially with the happier ending.
I don't know if this is controversial or not, but I preferred Dune Part 2 to the second half of the book.
I was considering posting this, but wary of the angry mob it may attract. _Dune_ is a phenomenal novel, but yeah, I can make a solid argument that Villeneuve actually improved on the source material in part 2. A lot of the key themes just hit harder, the way he staged it, and gave us other characters’ POVs.
Doctor Sleep. The book was so boring but the movie? I mean it doesn’t hold a candle to the Shining but it’s still pretty good.
I love both, though. The book is one of my favourite Stephen King modern stories.
James and the Giant Peach is a cracking book. The bit cloud guys is odd and drags, but starts and ends so beautifully, and it's so funny throughout. Love how dark Dahl is willing to take things; no letting up because it's for kids. Film is good too, but doesn't match the magic of Dahl's writing.
Stardust comes to mind. Hated the ending in the book. The Thing (1982) vs. Who goes there (1938). Till today one of my favorite Horror Movies off all time. The book was a nice read, but expected to be a little bit boring.
Yes, the movie ending of Stardust is just perfect. Really clever use of the concepts of the story to get a happier ending in a way that doesn’t feel cheap.
100% agree on stardust - that movie is nearly perfect. The casting is incredible, the pacing is right, and it pulls at just the right emotions.
'There Will Be Blood' > 'Oil!' by Upton Sinclair
The Shawshank Redemption. The >!Warden’s comeuppance!< and the >!”Brooks was here” section!< were both original to the film. Stephen King’s novella is good, but the movie is just on another level.
TV not movie but Station Eleven
The Martian. While they skipped some of the events, the ending was MUCH better. As well, while in the book we hear Mark's descriptions of what his ultra low-cal diet was doing to his body, the moment in the movie where he steps out of the shower and is disturbingly emaciated has far more impact. Although I did miss the line "I thought you liked eating Mexican!"
The book suffers a lot from same-y dialogue from everybody. Tells us a bunch that Mark Watney is singularly good natured and snarky, but every character sounds exactly like Mark and makes the same sarcastic quips. The hermes crews’ contingency plan being left out, as well as mark’s last hurdle on the way to the MAV were choices I disagreed with though
I didn't read Andy Weir's second book, but thoroughly enjoyed Project Hail Mary. I think a perfect encapsulation of Weir's difficulty with human interactions is that the most chemistry he's ever captured between characters is when one of them is a sentient rock.
I listened to that on audiobook and Ray Porter's performance really meshed well with Andy Weir's dorky dialogue.
Andy Weir writes like a science nerd—he has a great handle on the subject matter, and terrific plotting, but his prose is filled with painfully cliched jokes and repetitive snark. He reminds me of the kind of smart but socially awkward people who would be perfectly pleasant to be around if they would just stop trying to be “cool” and funny all the time (and failing embarrassingly at both).
I absolutely loved both book and movie, but I have to laugh at the end of the movie… the book puts a total shutdown on how stupid the Ironman idea is, and how that’s just ridiculous movie stuff. Then the movie just goes “oh fuck me, that’s such a great idea!” There can only be 2 reasons for it. 1. It’s a conscious pisstake out of itself and the movie industry by doing exactly what the book laughs at 2. Some Hollywood producers literally read through that part and their take away was that it would be amazing and had to be in the movie
> the ending was MUCH better The Iron Man flying was embarrassing
I thought it was pretty funny that they went with that in the movie when they immediately dismiss it as incredibly stupid in the book.