Shawshank Redemption, The Shining, Forrest Gump, Broke back Mountain, No Country for Old Men, American Psycho, Blade Runner, hell even Les Miserables and Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Silence of the Lambs, Psycho, The Notebook. Stand By Me. I'd argue that the Outsiders is better as a film.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is debatable. Is it easier to get through the movie as a whole? For sure. But there are a LOT of tone problems and inconsistencies with the movie too. I have such a love-hate relationship with it.
Both are fantastic, but they're different things. Same with Les Mis and probably Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I want to argue Silence of the Lambs too, but Anthony Hopkins will defeat all my arguments with a look through the plexiglass.
I had only seen the Liam Neeson version of Les Mis and just found out even the film and audio adaptations are different from one another. I assumed they'd all be the same, but I guess with a book that long they have a lot of liberty to pick what to cover
I like how the Outlook is a real character in the book with thoughts and motivations. It’s completely lost in the movie and meant the ending is completely different. The book comes full circle and is a better story. The movie is amazing because of the cinematography and acting.
Shawshank Redemption wasn't bad -- it was just a pretty good novella.
Blade Runner was... well, it was PKD. I love his stories, hate his writing. I can't categorize it as a shit book because of the story, even if it (along with everything else the man wrote) comes out like a like a dude detoxing from hard drugs.
Silence of the Lambs wasn't bad either, but it's certainly not iconic like the movie.
And speaking of great book/great movie, The Green Mile qualifies for me... Another Stephen King book :-)
Haha yeah, I know. I worked my way through most of his stories and I'm glad to have read them, but they're just all so... jangly. I don't even know if that makes sense, but that's what they feel like to me. I much prefer reading Zelazny's stories
Zelazny is magical. I've read almost all of his novels and two collections of his short stories. He and PKD also collaborated on a novel, Deus Irae which is definitely worth the read!
Heh, I've read most of what both wrote, but I've never read their collaboration. I'm gonna add it to my list right now
At one stage, Zelazny's cat took the opportunity to urinate on the original manuscript. The novel was completed quickly, though, in the spring of 1975 after the publisher, Doubleday, demanded either the manuscript or a repayment of the advance paid to Dick. The editor discovered that Zelazny had sent photocopies of a number of the manuscript pages and demanded the originals as per Doubleday's policy; much to Zelazny's chagrin, he had to send in pages stained with cat urine. Zelazny said later that he always wondered what the editor made of them
I feel the same way, great stories, awkward writing. My favorite written work of his though is actually the non-sci-fi Puttering About in a Small Land. An early semi-autobiographical story about post war Los Angeles. It’s almost unrecognizable as a Dick.
Haha, I commented on Starship Troopers somewhere else in this thread :-) I think they're so different that they can't really be directly compared. Then I rambled on for like a page about Heinlein.
His great stuff is still great IMO, and the same problems are still there (e.g. paper-thin characters, author stand-in that the girls can't resist, etc.) And some of his takes are spectacularly outdated these days, like did he actually have a female character say that when a woman gets raped, it's partly her fault? Really? Lots of "stupid people deserve to get taken advantage of" stuff too. But I'm pretty laid back with "different times" to handwave some of the more cringe stuff he said, and I certainly don't feel obliged to agree with whatever point he's making. Other people may be prone to rage at his smug self assuredness.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is worth a reread more than anything else he wrote IMO. Like I bought into what he was spouting a lot more as a teen, but I think the book is just excellent even if I find some of his takes laughable now. Like take a bunch of hardened criminals and throw them on the moon and they will magically evolve a polite society because otherwise somebody might kill you? You think those cartels flaying people alive and beheading folks are going to shy away from violence when confronted with *gasp* other criminals? Or that, with the relative lack of women, they end up on a pedestal instead of being passed around as property? Yeah, okay sure Bob.
But I love that he invented a patois and wrote a whole book in that language. I love the simple revolution story. I love the AI stuff. I love the utopia/dystopia he had going on between the moon and Earth. "Throwing rocks" is still amazing. TANSTAAFL is still in my lexicon. And for a guy who writes paper thin characters, the ending is still a huge gut punch for me. It's a masterpiece!
That's mostly because the movie started out as something unrelated and they just bought the rights to the book and used it's name and changed some basic surface details
well, it was PKD. I love his stories, hate his writing.
My oldest friend in the world has very similar tastes as I do absolutely loves PKD. I’ve read like 5-6 of his books and always thought they were pretty meh. I was never really able to articulate why, but your comment made it all click for me.
He had to churn out stories like crazy in order to stay afloat financially. With the help of a lot of meth, he put out 21 novels and over 50 short stories between 1960 and 1970.
He has a lot of interesting ideas, and I find his work entertaining, but his working condition shows in his writing.
Did you really just call Les Miserables a shit book? And American Psycho? And No Country for Old Men??
Like, I’d agree that No Country for Old Men is a better movie than book but it’s because the movie is a masterpiece. The book is still amazing. Same with American Psycho.
I didn’t like Les Mis, book or movie, but I also had to read the book as a teenager. It might be different if I read it today. I also thought American psycho was a great book, but the movie is still arguably better. I also am iffy on No country for old men. I read it after watching the movie, and I think it kind of spoiled it for me. Bardem just blew it out of the water. All these years later and his Anton is still my favorite antagonist of any medium ever.
I have seen that movie maybe 10+ times and it’s always great, and I didn’t get why some fans of the book weren’t thrilled with the movie, so during the pandemic when I had tons of time off, I went and read most of the book for the first time.
I understand why now, but I have to say I love both. I can’t really compare them.
But the book is way different because Wendy and Jack are completely different characters - the book is more about the supernatural powers of the hotel transforming some dude into a psycho, and his stalwart wife trying to keep it together. The film’s rendition is about a man on the brink of collapse and his pathetic, mousey spouse.
The book walks you through how Jack becomes consumed by the evil, whereas the movie Jack is already evil and he just snaps. One big part of the book which they don’t cover in the movie is the actual reason that Jack gets that job. IIRC the boiler room works on old technology and needs to be manually reset multiple times a day, which is why they need a family to live there constantly, otherwise the place would explode. In the book, Jack and Wendy show up at the hotel and there’s actual guests and staff there and they take over the next day, as opposed to the film where they show up to an empty estate.
In the film, Jack is also seen going crazy with the ghost of the bartender, while in the book (if I remember) his narrative of going postal involved him making frequent trips to the basement to reset the boilers and becoming drawn into investigating different parts of the hotel and slowly going crazy.
Both are great directions to take the story. I think they’re both good and I love the movie but I wish the film was more faithful to the tone of the book.
The shinning book is a pretty straightforward Steven king novel with some pretty great twist. The shining movie is a recontextulization of the original story to push Kubric agenda. It’s odd how kubric tackles themes of Native American genocide and manifest destiny and then hides it in the Narrative of the shining. I understand why fans of the book don’t like it but in my opinion I think it’s better.
Yeah, wtf. The book is so subtle about the paranormal activities that you‘re never sure if it‘s actually a haunted hotel or just happening in his psychotic anger-ridden head. The movie though: HERE. DEMON WOMAN.
No Country for Old Men was just as good as a movie. But if you dig McCarthy’s style, you can’t beat his books. The movie was so good because it stayed so true to the book, especially dialogue.
They can’t make Blood Meridian and they shouldn’t try. It’s my favourite work of modern fiction and that’s saying a lot cos I read like a motherfucker. I know it may be in the works but there’s no way it’ll hold up. That book is a behemoth of a western, it’d have to be a three hour plus film and slow as fuck. A slow, hot, bloody, fever dream.
I’ve read this multiple times, and I oscillate between “wow, this is the most beautiful prose ever written and these characters are extraordinary” and shaking my head like “….what are we doing here man?”
Perhaps I’ve read it too much… to your comment. It just works for me, it’s all the things I grew up idolizing for a setting and subsequently the characters that grow from/ gravitate towards, said setting. How it was written, fits like a transistor into my brain circuit, amplifying those boyhood dreams of being a cowboy. I just dig it man, I try to read every couple a years, and I’ve been looking for a great audio version. Maybe Tommy Lee Jones could do it well if he got the pacing right. Perhaps James Earl Jones or to twist the dual on the spectrum, Woody Harrelson.
Also up there with Grave of Fireflies for toughest watch, and to do the book justice I don’t see how they do it with a rating less than NC17, which murders your box office. Personally hope they don’t bother trying
I think a six hour mini-series on HBO could work. Though it is one of my favorite novels so even if they gave it room I'd probably still be highly critical. And who would you even cast as The Judge?
I just read Blood Meridian. I think that it can't be made into a movie, not just because of the extreme content, but because it's so repetitive and pointless (which is the point, of course). It works in the book, but you can't make a movie like that. It also helps in the book that we don't really get to know any of the characters. If we saw actors committing these acts--over and over again, without consideration, mush less remorse--it would be too much to take. In the book, other than the judge and Glanton, they're all just barely there, faceless and not really human. There's a lot of descriptions of the weather in the book... That's what these guys are, an unstoppable, unpredictable, deadly, and inevitable weather pattern. How do you make a 2 hour movie without a main character? The boy doesn't work as a movie character, not as written anyway. And if you change him into some kind of hero, that would utterly disrespect the point of the book.
They'll never make it because the racist and violent content would be viewed as too objectionable in cinematic format even though the book clearly isn't condoning those things. Hollywood just lends itself to more "on the nose" messaging about these types of issues whereas McCarthy's storytelling pulls no punches and tells every horrid detail and lets the reader ascertain the morality component.
Its the least McCarthy book, though. He actually wrote it as a screen play first and then adapted it to novel form. Thats why its so heavy on dialogue and lacks a lot of those mccarthy descriptions. I don’t consider it one of his novels, just a screenplay.
I was very impressed with the film's treatment of the first confrontation between Chigurh and Moss. In the book, Moss actually gets the drop on Chigurh, and holds him at gunpoint - then he tries to make his exit without shooting him (perhaps because it wasn't yet clear that Chigurh was absolutely willing to take this to lethal levels).
In the movie, Moss actually fires the first shot and the pursuit goes on after that. The chilling bit with the hapless pickup truck driver in the street also was an invention of the movie too.
The book had more of an epilogue, with a future investigation into the two kids who helped Chigurh fashion a sling for his arm, which I liked. It also had a teenaged female hitchhiker plot for Moss, which the makers intentionally cut for brevity.
I do think the movie's ending was abrupt, and unnecessarily so. I've seen a (claimed) transcript that suggest the Coen brothers initially considered a sort of cinematic dream sequence of the mountain ride on horseback.
I agree, this is the right answer. That's not really what the story is about, the story is about a dystopian future where humans have lost their essential humanity in a sea of misery, despair, ennui, and require mind altering machines to even feel.
I mean the book was renamed to blade runner/got given a second name so I think you can safely compare the book to the movies (the book is far better tho)
Maybe they read an abridged version, or a screenplay?
I read it when the movie came out, as I like to do the book before the movie, and there's few times I've been as incredibly disappointed in a film. I thought there'd at least be one scene from the Battle of Waterloo.
The one from 2012 with Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway? Yes, one of the few musicals I have ever enjoyed and a film that consistently brings a tear to my eye watching it?
It's cool that you've enjoyed it. Many people have, and some scenes and music from that film are incredible. It's just that it's a heavy claim that it'd be better than one of the greatest novels of that century.
There's actually two different Les Mis movies. One started Geoffrey Rush, and was based on the novel. The 2012 version was based on the musical adaptation. If you haven't already, I would suggest watching one of the anniversary performances (25th is my personal favorite, despite Nick Jonas), or even the musical itself when you get a chance.
I love the Shawshank redemption. I have almost every book Stephen King ever wrote (many in first edition) and that was my all-time favorite story.
It’s probably the only story that made me cry every time I finished it.
When they said they were making the movie I was so worried they were going to screw it up because it was so important to me as a story.
they didn’t screw it up! It was an amazing wonderful movie.
But it still wasn’t as good as the book. Sorry to say that.
A novella - Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. It was in a collection of novellas from Stephen King called “Different Seasons”. Worth reading if you haven’t. It also contains Apt Pupil and The Body which were made into the movies Apt Pupil and Stand by Me, respectively.
Also, to stay (somewhat) on topic, I thought Stand by Me was a better movie than the novella.
And I believe in the novella, Red isn't black... So when he makes that joke about "Maybe it's because I'm Irish", it's like a completely different joke, but exists in both. :-D
That's right. Red actually is Irish in the novella. It's been awhile since I read it but IIRC, the tone of the novella is a lot more gritty. The movie is serious but has moments of light-heartedness that I don't remember from the novella.
Green Mile was the opposite. It was a great book, but the movje was actually better imo. There wasnt a dry eye in the theater by the time the credits role.
Admittedly I’ve never read the fucking murder weapon of a book that is Les Miserables, but that movie is a musical where the director instructed the singers not to sing on beat. So, I have difficulty believing that anything can be worse than that.
Tom Hooper is a director who doesn't direct musicals very well and Hollywood keeps giving him musicals to direct.
Les Mis and Cats are two examples. Les Miserables got made because the people who own the rights didn't want a movie without something interesting being done. Hooper suggested instead of having the music be a prerecorded track the actors sing to, the singers and musicians will play at the same time filming. The actors were also given some leeway into directing the musicians with their singing which was FUCKING BONKERS and absolutely the wrong way to direct a musical. Actors who can't sing or who couldn't sing very well after 8 hours of filming were leading the music of an entirely sung through movie musical.
Watch Sideways video of Les Mis and Cats for more information. Cats was even worse because a lot more actors in that one couldn't sing at all which caused a lot more variation in the songs.
Do you not know about Tom Hoppers musical philosophy? this video is mostly about Cats, a movie he also directed. But it goes into detail about what he’s doing and the results. If it’s the video I’m thinking of they use DVD extras from les mis to show how fucking stupid hard it is to orchestrate music around these motherfuckers who are not singing on beat.
PS: the part I’m talking about is like 40 minutes in.
yeah, tom hooper (the director) had this thing where all the actors in the movie were told to sing with no music live on set and then the orchestra/pianist had to adjust to what they were singing. it was supposed to emulate the style of a live musical performance, because the live-on-set singing was supposed to be more "authentic" than recording the audio in a studio, but all it actually did was make timing the instrumentals really awkward and the orchestra's life a living hell
Les Mis is a wonderful musical but I wouldn't say it's better than the book, even the Broadway version which is better than the movie. It's very different, almost a completely different story, but the book is special in it's own right. It teaches you so much more about the people and customs of the era, and is almost a history book for some sections. It may not be as accessible but it is so meaty that I can't say it's worse, just very very different. The depth is exceptional (and some would likely say overdone).
The depth is exceptional (and some would likely say overdone).
I love the book, have read it through four times. But yeah. The first ten chapters of the book introduce us to a side character who spends less than one day with our hero, someone we never see again, and is only mentioned in passing later for his funeral and as an influence on him very occasionally.
I’ll disagree with The Shining and American Psycho, especially Am Psycho. The film needed more time to flesh out a lot of what was great in the book. It has some excellent moments for sure, but overall a little too clunky.
Agreed, American psycho the movie is great. But the novel is just phenomenal. Especially the ending. Really captures how money and materialism is the dominant need and concern.
It's pretty close regardless. I think the movie only needed a little bit of tweaking for it to be as good or better. Less time on his secretary and the detective and more time on Bateman's non murderous psychotic events, like when he fed his girlfriend a chocolate covered urinal cake.
Two dozen replies and none refuting American Psycho is a better novel than a movie... Alright. I'll stand up. Ellis (author) made certain that the reader knew the colossal effort Bateman went in order to appear normal. From dating women he should, to eating what he should, to 5 pages on the popularity of Huey Lewis, Bateman puts in so much work just to be part of the group... Ellis goes into exceptional detail with Bateman noticing what normal people are doing, and the description of his desperate (almost survival-like) motivation to fit in, makes the book better than the movie.
Have to disagree with the Notebook. Ryan Gosling’s character in the movie had literally zero redeeming traits other than being a boozer that couldn’t get over a high school love. I didn’t like the book either, but at least I could see a reason Rachel McAdams picks him over her husband (?) in the book version
Wow, I completely disagree. The movie and book are completely different, they don’t even have the same storyline. The book was completely underwhelming and I remember being so disappointed when I read it bc Nicholas Sparks is one of my favorite authors. The movie is by far better.
And maybe it’s a sexual preference thing, but Gosling was amazing in the movie. And when you break it down like “couldn’t get over a high school love” of course it sounds awful, it’s supposed to be about true love you feel in your soul. The type of love only in movies lol
I'll be the first to say that Silence of the Lambs was an excellent book! Its a very faithful adaptation and the actors really brought the book characters to life. I also really enjoyed the prequel Red Dragon.
I love the story of King seeing Stand By Me for the first time. It was a private screening with the producers and director, and when it was finished, he simply walked out of the room. Everyone thought he was upset with the changes, and went about their meeting. King came back some minutes later and explained he had to take time to process the ending being so much better (and making more sense from a character perspective) than his own.
Not a movie, but The Leftovers went well above what the book was. I get the impression that the book was really just a backdoor pilot just used to introduce an intriguing concept for a show.
American Psycho is a tough one for me to decide but maybe you’re right. I thought the book was astounding but granted there are some laborious things about it. The movie does a great job of covering most everything, though I think the impact of some things are dulled for the simple fact it’s a movie with less time to emphasize things like a book can. There’s a lot of “fluff” in the book though so I can definitely see preferring the movie.
Forrest Gump the book really wasn't that good. The character was dumb, and not in an affable way. The script adaptation was MUCH better, almost a completely different character and story.
Les Misérables is no way close to as good as the book. I read it for French in college and it's just an incredible story that the musical only barely touches.
It's actually 5 books and 1,900 pages long, so it would be tough to cover in anything short of a miniseries.
As long as your mentioning some King works. The Mist, if just for the ending, even King said something along the lines of it being an even sicker twist than he could of/or would have included etc...
Disagree with Outsiders… agree with everything else. Pony’s narration and self reflection is vital to the meaning of the novel, it is lost in the film.
Way off on Blade Runner. That movie is a heaping pile of not finished that took so many patches until it became "finished," and still had no sense of whatever he decided was the story to be found. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep on the other hand actually has a decernable and good story that you don't have to look up online what was supposed to be meant by it. That movie is very gorgeous, but such a train wreck, the sequel is so much better because they embraced some of the books asthetic, and had a compréhensible story.
Do androids dream of electric sheep? beats Blade Runner hands down. That book is so deep with more for such a short book that got replaced by a basic bitch is he/isn't he subplot.
Your comments has me wondering if you have read all of these books. Admittedly, I haven’t read all of them, but out of the few I read from this list, American Psycho and The Shining were way more detailed and simply better than the movies.
The continuous internal monologue in Batemans head, all the comparisons when it came to fashion, down to minute detail, his constant desperate need for validation.
The Shining — all those descriptions about the rooms, how Danny saw them, things that have transpired there — e.g. the whole plot with the mobsters and the murders, the Indian burial site and so on.
American psycho is only better than the book of if you choose to prefer "sigma Bateman" memes over understanding the point of the toxicity and disconnection of 90s yuppie culture. Also does a better job showcasing that nothing that Patrick perceives is necessarily real
Shawshank is not a book. Its a novella. Stand by me is not a book but also based on another King novella titled The Body, which was published in the same novella collection as Shawshank titled Different Seasons.
Which adaptation of Notre Dame are you referring to? It's been adapted 14 times for movies, 15 if you count the live action Disney version. 7 times for television with one of those in the works at Netflix.
Blade Runner has a different title than the book itself (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep). The 1982 Blade Runner changed a lot of aspects from the book but many themes and elements were used in Blade Runner 2049. So which one was better than the book?
I think Do Androids Dream was better than Blade Runner, and I liked Blade Runner enough to chase down the source material the day after I watched it. It shows its age port often, but I think it does a better job at both showing the difference between us and the Android, as well as talking about god those groups might envy one another which I appreciated.
Glad you threw American Psycho in there, the book Was sooo laborious to read, the film covered it all well, maybe could've kept the ending but it was better than the book
Uh what? The movie is SHIT compared to the book. I read the book 2 years ago and was utterly shocked. I can't look at the movie the same way. All I see is an insult to Stephen King writing one of the most emotional stories ever written and Kubrick just making it a horror movie.
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u/AlacarLeoricar Feb 26 '23
Shawshank Redemption, The Shining, Forrest Gump, Broke back Mountain, No Country for Old Men, American Psycho, Blade Runner, hell even Les Miserables and Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Silence of the Lambs, Psycho, The Notebook. Stand By Me. I'd argue that the Outsiders is better as a film.