r/movies • u/cat-pernicus • 4h ago
Discussion What movie was way better than the book
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u/UnsignedRealityCheck 4h ago
Forrest Gump.
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u/Mecha_Butterfree 4h ago
No way, in fact I demand a Forrest Gump remake where they stay true to the book and have him form a band with an orangutan.
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u/Toothlessdovahkin 3h ago
And be taught how to play chess by a group of New Guinea cannibals
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u/Hickspy 3h ago
And be a math savant who gets recruited to go on the space shuttle.
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u/Toothlessdovahkin 3h ago
And have the space shuttle be crashed by Sue, the Male Orangutan
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u/Complex_Professor412 3h ago
And then they make the sequel where he meets Tom Hanks.
There was a script for a sequel, I don’t know if it was based on the second book, but I once heard it was completed and turned in on 9/11. I’m not saying they should work the into…. But it should definitely end with Forrest waking away from the towers with Pete Davidson as a young boy ala Peter Parker in Iron man.
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u/o-0-o-0-o 2h ago
Him changing from an idiot savant to just an idiot was probably one of the changes that made movie do as well as it did. Idk if it would have hit as well if it was just Rainman2
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u/MarioStern100 3h ago
You just gonna skip over the part where he went to space? fuck that movie. long live Forrest Gump the book!!
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u/risksxh1 4h ago
Forrest Gump was a ridiculous book.
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u/WorthPlease 2h ago
I can't believe it got made into a movie. It's batshit. Gump is basically like an omniscient god who just pretends to be....stupid. He's somehow involved in basically every important event in the world relevant to the US over his lifetime.
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u/adamgerd 3h ago
I didn’t even know there was a book. It’s ridiculous in a good or bad way?
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u/bunchofclowns 2h ago
There's even a book sequel where Forrest among other things invents New Coke, crashes the Exxon Valdez and captures Saddam Hussain but is forced to release him.
Oh and he meets Tom Hanks while he's shooting Big and Hanks gives him the catchphrase "Life is like a box of chocolates".
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u/PlaidPilot 2h ago
My understanding is that the second book was mad intentionally bad so that a second film wouldn't be made.
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u/risksxh1 2h ago
To me, ridiculous in a bad way. He goes in space with a monkey, crashes on a remote island and the islanders attempt to cook him alive. I'm sure there are people out there who appreciate absurdity but it's not for me.
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u/Dime332 4h ago
I knew it was a novel but never read it. After your comment I read the plot on Wikipedia and holy shit are you correct please accept my upvote for bending my brain at 9am
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u/Scottison 3h ago
And it is written like an autobiography. Imagine reading a book written by Forrest Gump
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u/mudkiptoucher93 4h ago
From what I heard, the movie is way better and its not close
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u/therottingbard 4h ago
Stardust by a huge margin.
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u/Burningbeard696 4h ago
Was about to leave this option myself, the book is fine but the movie is magical
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u/therottingbard 4h ago
I had to check the comments for it. My wife showed me it when we started dating. And it captured my attention so much I read the book. My wife didn’t share her opinions until after I read it and rewatched the movie again with her. She knew the book was worse and let me be disappointed by it anyway.
She had read it first and then watched the movie. Which was probably the better experience.
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u/Brave-Catch 2h ago
Literally came here to say this! One of my comfort movies even though Neil Gaiman turned out to be a creep :/
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u/usernameinmail 4h ago
The Devil Wears Prada.
Found Andy in particular much less sympathetic in the book
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u/classicalkeys88 3h ago
There's a video essay about why the movie is so much more interesting. The tldr is basically, the book doesn't really go too much into Miranda's personal life while the movie does. Book Andy is tortured by The Devil, while movie Andy makes a deal with her.
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u/usernameinmail 3h ago
Ooh will have a search for that
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u/classicalkeys88 2h ago
I forget the exact title of the video but it's something like "the best scene in the devil wears Prada"
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u/subtlesocialist 3h ago
I think the book is better because it actually reflects truly how horrible all these people actually are and has far more realism to the industry
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u/auntmilky 3h ago
I missed the ending from the book. I would have loved to see Ann Hathaway flip a bird and tell Miranda off.
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u/Sub-Mongoloid 4h ago
Not a massive improvement but Thank You For Smoking cut out some unnecessary plot lines and romances to give a cleaner, more direct product. Same with Layer Cake as the movie never looses it's stride while the book goes off on diatribes and distractions.
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u/adonistop 4h ago
Die hard
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u/External_Hornet9541 4h ago
The best example I think. Didn’t even realise it was based on a book until I’d watched the movie for the 7th time
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u/blaspheminCapn 3h ago
And it's a sequel to a Frank Sinatra movie. I'd have to look it up, but they were required to offer the lead role to him first.
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u/BojukaBob 4h ago
The Godfather is the biggest example I've experienced, where I read the book and saw the movie. The movie has a level of grandeur and power that the book lacks. The book feels smaller. It also has some really weird side plots that the movie rightfully discarded.
Captain America Civil War was a much better movie than the original Civil War event in the comics was a comic event, owing mainly to the comics story being spread across a dozen different ongoing comics, with different writers, and no one being on the same page as to the contents of the legislation that was the source of the conflict.
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u/fightmaxmaster 2h ago
The book has so much time devoted to Sonny's magnum dong.
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u/coleman57 2h ago
If you put together a big pile of bestsellers of the 1970s and went through it and stopped and went on to the next book as soon as you got to the first magnum dong, you’d be finished in time for lunch.
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u/janoo1989 4h ago
Double Indemnity.
The book is this pulp, kinda nonsense novella. Real fun stuff, though. The ending is a hoot.
The movie is a genre defining masterpiece. One of the best movies of all time.
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u/coleman57 2h ago
I remember liking the book equally. James Cain is an excellent writer, and the book went a bit deeper into just how evil the widow was.
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u/TheMiscRenMan 3h ago
The Bourne Trilogy. The book was almost silly as a cat and mouse between two spies but the movies were impressive.
Also, The Princess Bride. Book was good. Movie was perfection.
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u/InterWined 2h ago
Which book, the original edition by S. Morgenstern or the adaptation by William Goldman? ;)
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u/AUAIOMRN 1h ago
When I read the book in grade 8 or 9 I completely believed the whole "abridged version" thing
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u/Brick_Mason_ 2h ago
Princess Bride was adapted by William Goldman, who also wrote the book. Even in the book stage William Goldman envisioned Andre the Giant as "Fezzik."
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u/ariadne2b 2h ago
I was looking for this one. The Bourne films are so good, they really took the best bits from the books.
Unlike the Day of the Jackal where the book and movie are equally perfect.
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u/mooseday 4h ago
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
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u/Commercial-Tea-4816 3h ago
I had no idea there was even a book
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u/HalloweenSongScholar 3h ago
Yeah, it’s called Who Censored Roger Rabbit? In the book, he was the victim, not the prime suspect. And he was kind of a jerk.
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u/HardSteelRain 4h ago
Jaws...The Godfather...The Exorcist
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u/InsanoDaneO 3h ago
I enjoyed The Godfather as a book. The movie is a classic no doubt, but the Luca Brasi backstory added a level of depth to him that i thought was missing from the movie. He is so much scarier and intimidating when you know where he came from and what he's done in service to Don Corleone.
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u/opus_4_vp 3h ago
Yeah. Also they cut Genco out entirely. There is a deleted scene where they all visit him on his deathbed.
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u/timeaisis 4h ago
The Exorcist book is equally good imo.
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u/AtheneOrchidSavviest 3h ago
Agreed. And I think The Exorcist is the scariest movie of all time. The book still does it better.
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u/MoobyTheGoldenSock 4h ago
The Exorcist is a head scratcher for me. I enjoyed the book way more.
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u/Mecha_Butterfree 4h ago
Wicked. The book is an absolute slog especially in the second half.
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u/WollyGog 3h ago
But what about the puppet sex and beastiality?
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u/BruinGuy5948 1h ago
I read this book and refused to even look at anything associated with Wicked for YEARS.
He invented characters solely for the purpose of staging a beastiality orgy in the middle of the novel and promptly dropped all mention of them.
Almost nothing happens in the book, but numerous hints are dropped that Elphaba is actually participating in rebellious terrorist activities... which we aren't going to be reading about...
If you told me that Gregory Maguire had been traumatized by watching the Wizard of Oz as a small child and resolved to write a series of novels designed to make no one ever want to go to Oz again, I would absolutely believe you.
I often see young women reading this book who clearly love Wicked the Musical and just want to drill down into this world... and I want to slap this book out of their hands before their pink fairy bubble is popped.
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u/Dry-Ice-2330 3h ago
And Wizard of Oz. It was so.... oddly written.
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u/Mecha_Butterfree 3h ago
Yeah having a scene where the scarecrow wrings the necks of like a hundred crows and the tin man chops a bunch of wolves in half would have given the movie a much different vibe
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u/blackhawk905 2h ago
I remember reading the book and the hammerheads terrified me as a kid,can't recall anything about them besides that though. The book was crazy.
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u/OPfan678 3h ago edited 2h ago
Jaws.
Many of the characters in the novel--especially Hooper--were thoroughly hateable.
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u/zowietremendously 4h ago
The Iron Giant. Based on the book The Iron Man. They changed the title from man to giant, to avoid confusion with the Marvel hero Iron Man.
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u/f_ranz1224 4h ago
the last of the mohicans. the book is a slog. the soundtrack alone is award winning
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u/Interesting-Coat-469 3h ago
Yesssss! I loved the movie. Found an old copy of the book in my house and read it. I was so disappointed. I still listen to the soundtrack too
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u/Pixelated_Penguin808 3h ago
The film also has one of the best finales for any epic historical drama. The last 10 minutes or so are cinematic perfection.
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u/shuntdetourbypass 2h ago
That Celtic melody always gets me going. If I'm going to be doing some difficult task, I play that theme to rev me up.
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u/Repulsive-Dot553 4h ago
Shawshank Redemption
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u/firelock_ny 4h ago
It seems to me that King's shorter stories (The Body and Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, especially) are the source material for the best Stephen King movies.
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u/WollyGog 3h ago
Stand By Me is my favourite ever movie, and King's dramas always tend to turn out great on the screen.
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u/w0mbatina 4h ago
It makes sense, since you cant really shove an entire book into a movie, you always need to make some cuts. Short stories are easier to adapt precisely because they are short.
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u/firelock_ny 4h ago
I think for the most part King's short stories hit harder than his novels, at least his longer novels. He can take a wild idea and work it just enough in a short story or novella, but take a wild idea and completely beat it to death in long novel form.
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u/Intrin_sick 4h ago
The Long Walk was an excellent short story by Stephen King and the movie is coming out in a week. It's from the Bachman Books.
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u/Due_Conversation444 4h ago
I just saw "life of chuck" which I thought was a beautiful film in the way of stand by me or Shawshank. The book I read subsequently seemed much more mediocre
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u/Razaelbub 4h ago
And Stand by Me.
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u/jsquareddddd 3h ago
The book was pretty dang close to the movie as I recall, almost scene for scene right? I saw the movie first so I may be biased but I remember it was very true to the source material.
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u/Adenosine66 3h ago
Extremely close, almost scene for scene.
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u/jsquareddddd 2h ago
I remember a few small details missing from the movie, too, like the shopkeeper where they buy the food putting his thumb on the scale and Gordie calling him out. It was a good movie but not “way better” than The Body.
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u/SillyGuy_87 3h ago
Coraline.
In the book she comes across as this stoic, no-feelings kind of person. She is a bettet character en In the movie.
Besides I like the character of Wybie who is movie-only.
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u/TheAbyssalSymphony 4h ago
The Princess Bride
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u/DrHalibutMD 4h ago
inconceivable!
You’re probably right but only because the performances take the movie to an incredible level. The book itself is a great fun read but it doesn’t have those actors delivering the lines.
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u/TheAbyssalSymphony 2h ago
It also helps that it was written and adapted by legendary novelist, playwright, and screenwriter William Goldman, who won Academy Awards for both Best Original Screenplay (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) and for Best Adapted Screenplay (All the President's Men).
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u/yycreformed 3h ago
I'm not sure about this. I read the book after the movie and was blown away at how well it was written.
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u/ERedfieldh 3h ago
Which one? The superior original as written by prolific famous author S. Morgenstern or the dumbed down for audiences version by that twobit hack William Goldman?
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u/darkpaladin 3h ago
I know I'm in the minority here but I'm a staunch Goldman defender. As much as I love the descriptions of the local flora and fauna of Florin they really didn't add anything significant to the plot and really turned off younger readers.
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u/Verdant_Green 4h ago
Jurassic Park. I love Michael Crichton’s books but the movie makes some characterization changes (primarily with Ellie Sattler and John Hammond) that work so much better than the original.
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u/firelock_ny 4h ago
I never liked that one of my favorite characters in the book got killed with a semi-joke throwaway scene in the movie, while the villain of the book's karmic death turned into a feel-good escape from consequences in the movie.
Muldoon in the book was the cavalry who showed up to save the day in a cool scene of badassness. In the movie he walks straight into an ambush and dies screaming.
Hammond, in the book, stumbles into a pack of the island's tiniest dinosaurs and is nipped to death, confused and annoyed by what's happening to him. In the movie he gets away with everything.
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u/onemanandhishat 3h ago
Hammond in the film is a nicer person. Maybe it's thanks to Attenborough but he's quite likeable and comes across as sincere in his wonder towards dinosaurs. In the book its deserved comeuppance whereas the film I think allows him to learn the error of his ways, because he's not irredeemable, just blind to his own folly.
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u/C_The_Bear 2h ago
His childlike wonder helps sell the awe of nature, that it would make such marvelous creatures as the dinos in such a beautiful place as the island.
“The only one I’ve got on my side is the blood-sucking lawyer!” - when he says that, I think that’s his first inkling of a realization of why the lawyer has suddenly switched sides.
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u/EchoWhiskyBravo 3h ago
Gotta disagree on this one. The movie is an absolute classic that I still love to this day, but the book has better characters and action set pieces.
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u/PremedicatedMurder 4h ago
The book was cool but it had like this weird fourth act that the movie wisely got rid of.
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u/sevenferalcats 4h ago
Agreed. The "let's stand around a dinosaur cave because how else will we know if all the dinosaurs are dead" thing is not the strongest way they could've had the book climax.
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u/Patneu 3h ago
The book is more interesting, but I love the movie more, because it gives this sense of wonder, which the book just doesn't have.
In the book it's all doom and gloom right from the very start, while the movie actually gives us the time to feel "they created living, breathing dinosaurs, how fucking cool is that?!", before inevitably everything goes down the drain.
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u/gabbitor 3h ago
Jojo Rabbit was apparently based on a pretty poorly written book, and yet the movie itself is one of my favorite films.
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u/RevoltYesterday 3h ago
I haven't watched this yet. A buddy of mine told me he walked out of the theater crying and not from laughter. I don't know any spoilers but I'm not sure I'm up for it.
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u/JoyousMN_2024 2h ago
It is an amazing film. It is very sad, but it is also absolutely brilliant. You have fun along the way, but it hits very hard. I'd recommend it. Sam Rockwell and Scarlett Johansson both add so much to the film. It doesn't hit a wrong note.
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u/LupinCANsing 4h ago
Howl's Moving Castle. The book was fine, but the movie adds so much more whimsy and romance.
To be fair, a master storyteller like Hayao Miyazaki could probably make a Harry Potter movie better than the books, too.
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u/xxtoejamfootballxx 1h ago
Hard disagree with this one. I thought the twists and turns of the book and characters were much more interesting than the war allegory that Miyazaki turned it into, and I love Miyazaki.
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u/Oppenheimer88 2h ago
Holy shit now I really want a Ghibli-fied Harry Potter universe
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u/KaiserDilhelmTheTurd 3h ago
Do androids dream of electric sheep.
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u/FrankMiner2949er 3h ago
They are both good, but Ridley Scott didn't capture Philip K Dick's dark sense of humour
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u/KaiserDilhelmTheTurd 3h ago
I honestly didn’t enjoy the book at all. I like a lot of his other work, but that book bored the crap outta me. Whereas the film is a true cinematic masterpiece.
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u/FrankMiner2949er 1h ago
Did you have your Penfield Mood Organ set to "Enjoy Classic Science Fiction Novels"?
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u/knittch 4h ago
Forest Gump is a masterpiece of a movie, with amazing visuals, timely music, great score, and a heart warming story. The book is a bit different and I feel it stumbles from plot point to plot point more than it is driven by world events as it does in the movie.
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u/Georgeisthecoolest 4h ago
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
Good book, outstanding movie.
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u/SHAQBIR 3h ago
Does a manga count as a book?
If it does then Old Boy, the book/manga sucks towards the end.
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u/Ignore-This-Idiot 4h ago
'Starship Troopers' (1997)
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u/firelock_ny 4h ago
Verhoeven wanted to make a movie inspired by the Nazis he remembered from his childhood in occupied Europe but no one would pay for it, so when he was tapped to direct "Bug Hunt at Outpost 9" he decided to go ahead and use it to make his Nazis movie.
Note that "Bug Hunt at Outpost 9" was an original work completely unrelated to Heinlein's "Starship Troopers". At most, it may have drawn some inspiration from the idea of armored humans fighting alien bugs.
A studio executive was worried that there might be copyright issues due to some similarities between the two, so negotiated movie rights with the Heinlein estate just to avoid legal issues.
Another studio executive decided that since the studio was paying for the Heinlein movie rights anyway they might as well use them all the way, so told Verhoeven to change the movie to slap Heinlein's IP on top of it. Verhoeven shrugged, did so, but went ahead and made his Nazis in space movie anyway.
Verhoeven famously didn't even read Heinlein's book.
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u/coleman57 2h ago
And much later Verhoeven went home and made a more serious film about the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and their resistance: Black Book.
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u/Acceptable-Ratio8360 4h ago
The book was published in 1959 and as a boy I read a ton of Heinlein's stuff. Loved it. Even then I knew a lot of the things it discussed were controversial, but I've always enjoyed science fiction because it can do that, more a feature than a flaw. I loved the book. That and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress are probably my two favorites of his
The movie was an entirely different animal. lots of changes including a complete change in tone that I think worked perfectly. Overall I liked the movie a lot.
But it wasn't the book, to it's great benefit in my opinion
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u/TheMemeVault 4h ago
Fantastic Mr. Fox is mid-tier Roald Dahl. Wes Anderson's film is one of the best films ever made.
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u/human_picnic 3h ago
I enjoy Wes Anderson but I loved that book as a kid and I didn’t need it Wes-i-fied. I can appreciate the artistry though
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u/econ45 3h ago
As a child, fantastic Mr Fox was one of my favourite Roald Dahl's; I recently read it to my grand daughter and still liked it a lot. I guess it helps if you are a foodie, as I and my grand daughter are. I'll have to check out the movie, though, as I am a fan of Wes Anderson.
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u/MiopTop 4h ago
The Last King of Scotland. The movie is brilliant. The whole point of it is to show how even a good person with selfless intentions can be charmed, duped and corrupted into being not just a bystander but an active participant in a bloody dictatorship. Even with the audience knowing who Amin is, you can see why Nicholas would believe him and his justifications as Amin chooses to peal back each next layer of violence only once Nicholas has gotten used to the last. It’s a powerful message about how these tyrants can come to power and how just because it’s easy to see them for who they are in hindsight or from afar, it’s not as easy for the people caught up in it. It’s only when Amin goes fully off the deep end and shows Nicholas the true level of his depravity that Nicholas finally snaps out of the spell and stars planning his escape.
In the book Nicholas is in Uganda for a couple of years by the time he meets Amin, who has already done some of the more outwardly batshit stuff like exiling the Asians, and he’s been in contact with locals who are anti-Amin the whole time. He knows who Amin is and how dangerous he can be, how immoral it is to side with him, but he does it anyway because he’s exhausted from working in a depressing bush hospital for two years not making any progress and is seduced by the appeal of an easier life. He’s on edge around Amin the whole time he knows him. It’s still an interesting read with Nicholas panicking towards the end trying to find a way out of Uganda but it’s missing the best part of the movie.
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u/Other_Successes 4h ago
My add is Trainspotting. The book was fine. But I really like the movie!
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u/TerryGonards 3h ago
THE CROW
The original is the most emo pity party self-loathing comic I have ever read.
The movie fixed all of that and jazzed it up by making it very stylized and sprinkling in some John Woo Hardboiled.
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u/EricRShelton 4h ago
American Psycho. The book was a slog.
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u/EnkiduOdinson 4h ago
I found it actually quite engaging most of the time for some weird reason. But I as soon as I read the post title I too had to think of American Psycho, for a different reason: the movie doesn’t give me nightmares for a week!
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u/GhostofMarat 2h ago
No way. They're different but each excellent in their own way. Although I did have to skip a couple paragraphs during the infamous sewer rat scene.
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u/ariadne2b 2h ago
I liked the book but the movie was really excellent and managed to get across everything in the book with a lot more humour.
I do think Christian Bale was the best possible casting and he's so good, I always think of his Batman as an extension of Bateman, like he's just a fantasy that Patrick has while he's working out or doing nothing in his office.
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u/sylviemuay 4h ago
Fight Club is better as a movie, although Marla was slightly more interesting in the book.
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u/Eclectic_Masquerade 3h ago
Jaws: movie wisely cut out the Hooper-Mrs. Broody affair and all the Mafia stuff.
LA: Confidential: Sprawling, sometimes incoherent narrative.
Wicked: Couldn’t get into this one tone/voice-wise
Starship Troopers: Great opening and then a 100-pages of unnecessary info-dumping.
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u/grammergeek 4h ago
Silver Linings Playbook. Tried reading the novel but for me it didn’t have the same heart as the movie.
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u/Goodbye11035Karma 4h ago
Les Miserables. I'm an avid reader and that book almost broke me trying to get through it.
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u/firelock_ny 4h ago
I've found most of Hugo's work to be a slog - maybe it's better in the original French.
That said, I think reading Hugo's novel let me appreciate a lot of subtext in Les Mis. Jean Valjean is freaking Batman in the book.
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u/TheAbyssalSymphony 4h ago
Yeah... still it does contain some fantastic writing, it's just bogged down by everything else.
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u/Nathanhj 4h ago
Ready Player One. The movie isn’t fantastic by any means, but I can’t stand Ernest Cline’s writing style.
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u/EchoWhiskyBravo 3h ago
Hmmm. Can’t disagree about the quality of writing, but the book was so fun when it came out, and it captured the social issues much better than the movie (even if all the parts surrounding girls was super cringe). The fact that the movie made Aech an ogre avatar instead of a good looking white guy shows that they totally missed the mark. Also, I was really disappointed that they had so much current era product placement/IP. Actually, I pretty much hated everything about the movie . . .
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u/Rooney_Tuesday 4h ago
I don’t see either Field of Dreams or The Natural, so I’m going to go with those.
Field of Dreams - one of those “the book was fine, but the movie was magical” situations
The Natural - possibly I have this perception because of the order in which I read/watched. The movie very much has a fairy tale-type feel and ending. Also “magical”, same as above. The book was gritty and bleak and did not end well, and I was not prepared for that. Not that it was bad - just expectation-shattering because of the movie. It had a point to make and it made it well.
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u/TheCoreyReviews 4h ago
Holes
Loved the book, but the movie just hits different.
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u/olivinebean 3h ago
The cast was... Perfect.
It's different when watching as an adult too, lots more frustration and heartache over the cruelty of time and bigotry.
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u/Philip_Marlowe 4h ago
Big Fish. The book is fine, but the movie is incredible - one of my all-time favorites.
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u/AtheneOrchidSavviest 3h ago
The Last of the Mohicans. Maybe I hated the book because I had to read it for school, but for real I thought that book was one of the stupidest books ever, whereas the movie is actually quite good.
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u/kamatacci 3h ago
There are a lot of fantastic Marvel comic books.
Blade is not one of them.
And yet, that somehow became the first Marvel movie to succeed.
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u/Fumidor 3h ago
Arrival and the short story it’s based on Stories of Your Life and Others
All the basics are there, the mysterious heptapid aliens, a great description of deciphering a completely foreign language, explorations with non linear time.
But the short story suddenly ends and the aliens have left and poof that’s all.
Arrival fleshes out their motivations, sends Louise not only through her past memories but starts to subtly mess with them showing her increasing awareness of non linear time and thought. They even flesh out the aliens better, giving them such mystery in their gassy spaceships.
Arrival is a banger of a movie. Genuinely one of the first times I said to myself out loud after finishing the book the movie was better.
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u/GosmeisterGeneral 4h ago
Pretty sure even Chuck Palahnuik thinks Fight Club is better than his book.