Books Are Better Than Movies

I enjoy both . I always enjoy reading what the author writes but like to see the interpretation by the director/producer of the movie that was made from it. Some movies are very disappointing but then again some books are as well.

 

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I enjoyed both the book and movie versions of Starship Troopers. The one problem I had with the movie was that it really didn't have much to do with the book other than a few characters' names. The movie was entertaining, but it doesn't do the book justice. I'd hate to think that Heinlein's talent was being judged by people who watched Starship Troopers without actually reading any of his books.

But, aside from Blade Runner, my experience has been that every book was better than its movie counterpart.

 

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2001: Book a genre work, good of kind: movie as good overall, some transcendent moments.

LOTR: Book a classic long tale, with profound implications: Movie a betrayal, depite apparently good motives.

The Bourne Identity: Very badly written, ugly book - movie a striking improvement, by extensive rewriting and editing.

A River Runs Through It: Movie auxiliary to the book - almost no scenes in common - and notably inferior. The book is wonderful, partly on a unique style - the title story is one of three separate stories in the titled book.

Silence of the Lambs: Book read first, found excellent (one of the examples of a genre work escaping its ghetto): movie disappointing - especially in its treatment of the protaganist.

The pattern - which continues in other examples such as "Jaws" (book lousy, movie better), the "Pelican Brief" (book OK, movie equal), "Aliens" (OK and OK), "The Lathe of Heaven" (book excellent, movie inferior), Blade Runner (book fine, movie OK but missed the point), etc., the pattern seems to be that if the movie is as good or better than the book, even just great on its own, the book was ordinary at best.

And that it is very difficult to make an equivalently great movie out of a great book. The odds are better starting with a lesser book.

My guess is that a movie is written, primarily, and few writers can match the writing of a really good book, while few makers of movies respect writers.
The lack of respect for writing seems at the root of otherwise inexplicable failures such as LOTR - and the reason I will not watch a movie version of, say, "Far Tortuga", despite its apparently cinematic scenery and story.

 

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If you read aloud to little children you'll discover that not only do characters in a book have different voices, but they sound nothing like what you would imagine they should!

 

I find that incredibly strange coming from you...

 

Movies, if done well, are better than the book. The main differences are the locations and character because in the movie that information is provided through the imagination of the director. Which, for me, is not that big of an issue.

 

Of course it depends on the topic. If it is pure fantasy then it is up to replicating it and it just amounts to limitations, Dune etc. What books set in the natural world are better than the movie? In the movie the work is done for you and if it is acceptable then there is usually more of an impact.

 

I kinda thought the same thing. . . but I didn't want to say anything.

~String

 

Reading LOTR to children, I have noticed what others have mentioned - they can tell Merry and Pippin apart, somehow, and recognize which one is speaking. I don't try to differentiate them by voice, but they can tell anyway.

 

A book springs from the mind of one author (usually) and therefore has a certain worldview and internal logic throughout. An author is not limited by any constraints but his imagination. But a movie is more of a group project, and while groups can sometimes perform remarkably well (see emergence), that is not always the case and can result in a muddled mess of a movie.

 

Demographics, budget, and other issues

Any number of reasons. Two that stand out, though: Demographics and budget.

Demographics, in Hollywood terms, predict what the audience will like. Thus, while Dean Koontz's Watchers is a better book than its movie version, the producers thought it would be better to cast Corey Haim as a teenage hero, rather than go find someone who can play a thirty-something former soldier. Of course, when they filmed a sequel, they cast Marc Singer. Not sure what to tell you, there.

To use an example I've dwelt on recently, I can't figure out how to bring Steven Brust's books to the screen. Part of this is because he likes to show you the results of certain schemes, and moving this from book to page is especially difficult. One of Brust's methods is to essentially say, He explained the plan to them, and several hours later they emerged victorious, and then either continue the present scene, or cut to the plan in action. It makes for a cliché on-screen. So does the part where a character says, "No, that work, but I know what will," and then he cuts to a new chapter.

The audience generally won't stand for this. (Try reading Orca and figure how to cut the scenes together.)

In terms of budget, Hollywood generally cuts scenes that, while they might be necessary to the story in a literary context, the viewing audience can do without. These are often boring visually, or something you would likely cut together as a montage in order to show certain processes. Some books, though, would require expensive scenes for a two-second segment in a montage. And, believe it or not, some of this goes back to the days of filmstock. Sometimes you just didn't shoot a scene because it wasn't worth the expense of the filmstock and developing. But there are still set and effects considerations to the budget.

Beyond those, though, another issue that stands out is the question of why a book is so good. I liked Hellraiser, for instance, but anyone who has read The Hellbound Heart knows just how different the written and cinematic presentations are. Yet Clive Barker himself stewarded this transformation, so I accept the differences. But so much of The Hellbound Heart is internal; that is, it is concerned with the thoughts and perspectives of the characters. It would be a far different movie if it was a faithful, page-by-page adaptation.

When I was ... six, I think, I met Walt Morey (Gentle Ben), and asked him about the movie. Thinking back, it's clear he wanted to use harder language to make his appearance clear, but what he told me was that, "Hollywood will always screw it up."

 

Interesting, must be a thing, the detail oriented get hung up on.

 

I've been disappointed by every Stephen King movie. None have been better than the book.

 

But the director's intentions were different than the author's. The whole thing was ironic. I don't think he ever intended to recreate Starship Troopers, but to use it as a base to make a variation on. Like Verhoeven or not, he does have a running theme about technology/fascism -robocop, total recall. I am not saying you should have liked it, but it seems you missed that it was aiming to do something else than the book.

The funny thing is that many people liked the movie and missed the irony. They saw it as another kill the bad guys sci fi flick and read it as literal.

By the way. I am not a big fan of the movie, but I had a good time. I think the book is middling Heinlein, not one of his better books. The movie is a decent apple and the book is a decent orange.

I thought American Psycho was better than the book. Loved neither, but the movie was pretty good. Again, a lot of irony.

Great books will generally be trashed by a movie, but I think both movie versions of Lolita are excellent.....
Kubrick and Apted (I think) - the latter version going for realism and not funny irony and is heavier than the first movie. He had to go at it a different way.

With a great book, you have a great artist working on everything, again and again, over and over, with help from intelligent spouses and friends and editors generally, but everything ultimately going through them. A movie would need to gather such talent in at least the whole cast, the director and the DP and editor. Also no director gets to make the movie as long as they would like. They have to kill so many darlings, something writers have to do also, but famous writers can write 1000 page novels and to hell with the publishers, every damn darling is in there.

No director can compete with that.

Books also can do things that will get censored in movies. I am thinking less of sex, etc., but rather things that will challenge the least common denominator in the audiance. Movies are under tremendous pressure to dumb down.

 

Kubrick's the Shining, for me, is so far past the book it is a joke. I am so glad he could see the story he saw in that book somehow. Of course, this is a taste issue, but the kinds of horror Kubrick creates in the film sat with me much longer. Hell, the opening sequence with Jack N. selling himself to the hotel people in an interview is creepy beyond belief. You just do not like this guy and in a profound way. All this pushed at us indirectly. We begin with real life horror. A slimy man.

Then those girls in the hallway.

 

The movie ended up being incomprehensible. The book, on the other hand, actually explained what the hell was going on. I maintain that there is no way a person could discern what was supposed to be going on with the whole portal/acid trip sequence without having some outside source of information (the book, DVD commentary, etc.)

 

I have to agree.

I didn't fully understand that part, or the role of the Monoliths, until I read the book.

I remember being a kid and my [born again] Aunt telling me that she loved 2001 & 2010, especially when "God warned humanity to stop making war." I had to break her heart and tell her that Clark was a passionate atheist. The Monoliths were the remnants of an advanced civilization who took it upon themselves to judge species and in the end it selected the life on Europa over the life in Jupiter.

The movies NEVER explained those details.

~String

 

If you want closure and a clear message the film is problematic. I don't think this was Kubrick's goal. Ambiguity is something many people have trouble with aesthetically. Novels, especially great ones are much more comlicated and often leave things unresolved.

Personally I think Clarke was an OK writer and Kubrick was a great director.