maxfisher

I'm assuming everyone posting here is a reader and it astounds me how many have said The Shining. Visually, Kubrick's take is a masterpiece, but Jack, Wendy & Danny are reduced to 2-dimensional caricatures. I can see how someone could appreciate the book and movie on equal levels for different aspects, but can't comprehend how someone would say the movie's definitively superior.

jjcool

Never read Nothing Lasts Forever, but I did read 58 Minutes, which is the book that Die Hard 2 was based on. If memory serves, it is tough to compare the two as they were only very loosely similar in plot. It was an enjoyable read, a good thriller if memory serves. Book plot is roughly ivorced cop from NY waiting for his daughter at the airport, when it gets taken over by bad guys. No John Mcclane, or Col. Stuart or any of the other characters (like Al Powell) that give the Die Hard movies their charm.
In the end, I would have to say that I found the movie more enjoyable than the book. I havent reread the book since.

One question this discussion brings up for me, is does it matter which you experience first? For instance, if you read the book first are you more likely to think the book version is better than the film?

Rockmjd23

Psycho

inri222

From : A Companion to Literature, Film & Adaptation by Deborah Cartmell

...your own works include a great many adaptations, but mostly they are popular or light entertainment novels, which are so freely refashioned in your own manner that they ultimately become a Hitchcock creation (Francois Truffaut interviewing Alfred Hitchcock).

Truffaut's phrase "freely fashioned" implies that Hitchcock rejects any obligation towards fidelity in his adaptations so that instead of reproducing a film version of a novel or short story,
he produces something new, something in his "own manner" that effectively eradicates the original author's authority and gives Hitchcock full ownership of the adaptation.

From : A Comparion to Literature, Film & Adaptation - Deborah Cartmell

Shannon Nutt

I think nine times out of ten, you usually almost wind up thinking the book was better. This thread provides some of the exceptions.

Don't know about others, but I'm more likely to read a book before a film than after it. Sometimes I'll read a book just because I know a film is coming...for example, I read GONE GIRL a few months back in anticipation of Affleck screwing it up (thankfully, it's a Fincher movie, so hope remains).

GoldenJCJ

As much as I love Jack Nicholson I wonder how the film would have been better if another actor was cast in the role. Nicholson played the character as pretty much crazy from the very beginning. I think it might have worked a bit better if Jack Torrance was played as a normal person in the beginning and slowly turned crazy as the movie went on instead of starting crazy and just getting crazier.


As someone who gets far more enjoyment out of watching movies than reading books I prefer to see the movie first and then read the book second almost as a companion piece to flesh out the characters and subplots more. If I read the book first I'm usually disappointed in the movie for how much is left out. I'm rarely disappointed in the book after I see the movie.

Decker

Psycho - way better as a movie (and doesn't "cheat" the way the book does with Norman's mother)

Hunger Games - Catching Fire. The cast really elevates the material

The Right Stuff - I liked the book a lot, but seeing those flying sequences and space flights really brought the story to another level.

TomOpus

I've always said that was one of main problems with the film. Jack looks nuts from the get-go. It's all about the hotel slowly taking over Jack. The book is all about the hotel as the evil. The movie makes it feel more like it's something evil that takes place in the hotel.

Paff

I'll need to read The Shining again. I only read it once (30+ years ago!), but have seen the movie several times since, of course. From my memory, I think this is one of those times where the movie is just different than the book, not necessarily better or worse. The comments that Jack Torrance seems like a psycho from the opening frames are accurate, but that plays better in a film than it does in a book. Or the other way around. The slow burn of King's novel just doesn't work as well in a film.

But while we're talking King, why no mention of Carrie (the DePalma version, of course, and I hate that I have to qualify it that way)? The novel is meandering with all of the book excerpts, the interviews, etc. It's also impossible to believe that the Carrie White of the book (overweight, pimply) could be as gorgeous as Sissy Spacek played her at the prom. The removal of the destruction of the town is a vast improvement, as we see that Carrie directs her anger only at her immediate antagonists, her classmates and her mom. Carrie killing her mom is so much better in the movie too. Much more stylistic and representative of Margaret White as a character. Finally, the movie removes all references to early appearances of Carrie's power, and has it coincide exactly with her first period in the shower, making the great allusion to Carrie's power being the power of a woman (since that first period is often the defining line of when one becomes a woman)

Supermallet

I have to disagree on this. American Psycho the novel has some very specific goals and hits all of them successfully. The film is more accessible, less dense, and the satire is more immediately evident as a result. However, the impact of the book, at least for me, was more effective than the film. And I love the film.

I would add V For Vendetta to this list.

dugan

The Exorcist (theatrical cut).

Solid Snake

I dunno about that.

V for Vendetta was a much more simpler tale as a film than the comic. Not something to hurt a plot all the time but for this one it did. It relied too much on emotion or immediate reaction to create the emotion. It was very American as well. While I do enjoy the last V fight, the story with its themes is so childishly blunt that there is very little for the audience to think about.

hanshotfirst1138

VFV is an adaptation produced by Joel Silver. It's a superhero action film. It's a superhero action film with some smart ideas, but IMO, it doesn't measure up to the erudite source material by Alan Moore by a long shot.

Ash Ketchum

I've seen both DIE HARD movies and read both books after seeing the movies. The books in each case were pretty lightweight. The movies took the overall plot frameworks from the book and reimagined them as Bruce Willis vehicles and modern action blockbusters. It's quite a stretch from "Nothing Lasts Forever" to DIE HARD, when you consider that the central character in the book was the same cop character as in "The Detective" by the same author (Roderick Thorp) that was turned into the police drama THE DETECTIVE (1968), starring Frank Sinatra!

I loved DIE HARD, but didn't like DIE HARD 2 at all. It's easy to forget that Willis was not a surefire movie star when DIE HARD came out. It was seen as a risky venture to cast Willis and pay him as much as they did, but it sure worked out, didn't it?

hanshotfirst1138

Though the characters in Die Hard 2 at least nominally based on the ones from the first film extrapolated from the Thorp novel, the second film is actually credited as being based on a novel called 58 Minutes by Walter Wager.

Supermallet

I don't think the V For Vendetta comic is as erudite as say, Watchmen or Miracleman frankly. It was a broad shot against Thatcher and I found it to be just as polemical as the film.

mndtrp

I agree. I didn't care for most of the book, although if I would have known that most of it was supposed to be skipped, maybe I would have liked it more. Of course, that's kind of dumb, a book being written with the point of not reading parts of it.

It's also certainly possible I prefer the movie because I've seen the movie more times than I can count, and have only read the book once.

brayzie

Books I've read first:

V For Vendetta Graphic novel was much better
Lord of the Flies Original B&W film and 1990 version were good but book was better
The Mist The novella was better and Stephen King is wrong in saying the film ending is better. It was much scarier with the
The Outsiders I liked the book a little better because it was werid to see the Karate Kid, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise and Patrick Swayze all in the same gang.
Peter Pan The book was great to read as a kid, but the 2003 nearly matches it, if even equals it with it's own additions.
300 Movie was way better than the original GN.

Movie I've seen before reading the book:

American Psycho Loved the movie and it's almost a tie. The book is overall better because it covers a lot more ground as far as what it's trying to say and developing what little complexities Bateman has. But the movie did an excellent job with translating some difficult portions of the book.
Dead Ringers The movie's great but I feel like the book is more complex and gives more reason why
Conan The Barbarian First movie was awesome but after reading more of the REH books, the world that Conan exists in is made to look even grander. God in the Bowl is my favorite story.
The Crow

brayzie

V For Vendetta by Alan Moore made you think more. Evey in the graphic novel is young woman just turning to prostitution to get by when she's stopped by authorities. In the film Evey has a nice job and gets into trouble just because she's out to late. That right there sets a different tone. The character the reader identifies with is poor. In the film it's someone who's working/middle class.

In the GN Evey soon helps V, but it's more out of dependency for a fatherly/protective figure (which some could argue is the role of the state). When she sees how ruthless he is, and how he abandons her she takes refuge with an older man. She thinks she can avoid the madness of V, and the fascist state by living comfortably. But the outside world comes to her regardless. She can't run away from it, nor can she depend on others to protect her from it.

The TV speech was also better in the graphic novel. In the graphic novel V is talking directly to the people, or humanity in regards to what they allow, and how it has gone on for so very long. In the film he's talking to the citizens of that country only in regards to the Chancellor. Graphic novel speech is more encompassing of man's nature. The film speech is far more limited and narrow in aim.

Inhumans99

Paff...I actually think the destruction of basically a small town by Carrie could have added something to the De Palma film. I saw the film first, then read the book...and King's description of Carrie walking down a road instinctually lashing out at anyone and anything that is in her path is chilling. I could picture how the scene might look in a movie, alas...even the remake did not do a good job of representing this scene. A discussion for another day, but I admit that I enjoyed the Carrie remake (I have no regrets buying it the week it was released in blu).

Supermallet

I agree those are differences. I do not agree that it makes the comic better.

wd40cloud

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

hanshotfirst1138

The fundamental difference-this isn't necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, just a difference-is that the dichotomy of the comic is fascism vs, anarchy, and the dichotomy of the film is fascism vs. democracy. I think the comic allows a somewhat broader range of things because of just how polar opposite those extremes are, forcing you to muddle in a much more gray area than the movie necessarily does. What the film is preaching is more of a social revolution about people overthrowing the government. Which has a more realistic appeal, but of course begs the circular question of how you know what you install in its place will be better or what to do once you've torn it down. Both versions, however, do at least try to avoid black-and-white moralizing somewhat-V does many horrible, highly morally reprehensible things, making you ask whether or not he's "the good guy," and indeed whether he's doing the right thing. Let's face it, no one wants fascist nazis as any kind of governing body (I would hope), but as with Watchmen, I think that what Moore is arguing is that you shouldn't allow any outside force-government, religion, superpowers, ideologies, fear, etc-be what controls your life and that you should ultimately be responsible for your own destiny. The film has sort of reconcepualized the anti-Thatcher stuff into the context of a similar government. I think while Moore originally wrote the book as a reaction against those particular political forces, his themes are slightly broader. You could argue, of course, that the film then recontextualized them AGAIN and therefore showed their universal applicability. But Moore obviously saw the the approach the film took as limiting (I'm not necessarily saying that I agree with him).

Perkinsun Dzees

Disagree. It is a very solid adaptation and Walken is excellent, but the movie lacks the depth and emotional power of King's book. A big part of the problem is that Martin Sheen is way too hammy as the lead villain and his character is poorly scripted. In the book, Stillson came across as mysterious and very imposing, but in the movie he just seems comically over-the-top.

The one King book that works better as a movie is Cujo, only because the book is an unrelentingly dreary read and although the movie has a cop-out ending it's still more entertaining watching a rabid dog trap two people in a car then reading about it.

hasslein

I posted this in another thread, I think To Kill A Mockingbird is a better film than book. I haven't read it in decades, but remember too much filler with the kids.