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The Count of Monte Cristo. Sorry Dumas, but I loved the movie much better.
There has never been a movie version I've liked better than the book, and I've seen every dramatization, and read probably every version, abridged and unabridged, since I read the Classics Illustrated comic book when I was six.
Nothing I saw on film or tape was as suspenseful as reading about Dantes' troubles at the hands of Danglars, de Morcerf, and Villefort, or as inspiring as his salvation through coming to know and learn from the Abbe Faria. I will grant you that his eventual disappointment by the end of the book is perhaps better expressed dramatically, but this is a great, great book.
There has never been a movie version I've liked better than the book, and I've seen every dramatization, and read probably every version, abridged and unabridged, since I read the Classics Illustrated comic book when I was six.
Nothing I saw on film or tape was as suspenseful as reading about Dantes' troubles at the hands of Danglars, de Morcerf, and Villefort, or as inspiring as his salvation through coming to know and learn from the Abbe Faria. I will grant you that his eventual disappointment by the end of the book is perhaps better expressed dramatically, but this is a great, great book.
Which versions are you comparing?
The 2002 version with Jim Caviezel. It's the only one I've seen.
I read the book first. I admit that the book was wonderful, but I after seeing the movie, I find I actually enjoyed the movie's conclusions to the subplots much better.
I only remember one, The Man Who Would Be King. I saw the movie first and really wished to read the book which I assume would be much better. It was a terrible disappointment. There was so much less in it than in the movie.
Do you know of any examples of books made into movies, and the movie was actually better than the book in your opinion? You read the book and you saw the movie, and you liked the movie better. What was better about the movie?
JAWS. One of the greatest movies ever made. The book is ... well, let's be honest. It's bad. In the movie, Brody is a flawed hero who is totally sympathetic. In the book, Brody is just pathetic. In the movie, Matt Hooper is one of best examples of smart comic relief ever put on film. In the book, he's a total <expletive>. In the movie, Quint is one of the most memorable characters of all time. In the book, he's just a mean old coot with no charm whatsoever. About the book, Steven Spielberg actually said it best: "I hated the characters so much that I wanted the shark to win."
THE GODFATHER. May be the best American movie ever made. The novel meanders all over the place and is just plain badly written in places.
FORREST GUMP. Not a great movie. But it has its charm. The book has none. The book is a total dud.
BLADE RUNNER. The best science fiction film ever made. Based on a boring, almost impenetrable novella. Creative writing students should be forced to read Philip K. Dick, then told, "See, kids. This is why you shouldn't do drugs."
PSYCHO. I actually like the book. But the film ... unmatched. One of the best movies ever made.
L.A. CONFIDENTIAL. Great movie. Maybe it's just me, but I actually cannot stand James Ellroy's prose. It reads like the first draft from a really angry eighth grader.
PLANET OF THE APES. Book isn't horrible. But it isn't good. Maybe it was a bad translation? But the original movie is a classic.
JACKIE BROWN. I'm actually a big Elmore Leonard fan, but Rum Punch (the book on which the movie was based) was not one of his better efforts. The movie is great.
All of the JAMES BOND movies. Ever read one of the Bond novels? They're boring! But even the bad James Bond movies are seldom boring.
While I agree that there is some qualitative difference between a book and a movie, I strongly believe that there is often a BIG difference, quantitatively, between how much I enjoy one over the other.
Of course you cannot compare a steak dinner with a piano concerto, but I can certainly compare my personal level of enjoyment and satisfaction when enjoying said steak dinner to said piano concerto (i.e. the music may have caused a bit of a stirring in my heart, but the medium rare steak with bleu cheese was positively orgasmic). And the experience of a story in a book and the same story on the screen is much closer qualitatively than the steak and the music.
I think the concept of a film being better than the book on which it was based - or vise versa - is a flawed premise to begin with. It's like comparing a concerto to a steak dinner, or having a cat as opposed to a telescope.
Very true. The written word is often not easily translated to film. Am thinking of what's been recently written about the passing of E.L. Doctorow, and how his style of writing, for example, with Ragtime, was not particularly successful as a film.
Winter's Bone: the movie with Jennifer Lawrence is really good, the book is ridiculous. Gone With the Wind: I don't think that the film is actually better than the book but it is probably the best film adaptation of a book in existence. Atonement: I hated the book; the film made the story palatable. Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day: I like the book better than the film but, again, a really great film adaptation. The Jungle Book: Disney actually did a better job than Kipling (I think b/c the film has jazz-singing orangutans). Dracula: any film adaptation is better than the book, which is frightfully (teehee!) boring. Hamlet: I know that this is sacrilege but, as I am not a fan of Shakespeare, Branaugh's adaptation made me like the famous story much more than I did when reading it.
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