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I have to post this in the Books forum to my fellow bookies, and not in the Movies forum, where most will just say they saw the movie but never read the book (or "what's a book?")
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?
I've been one of those people who almost always likes the book better. But I was recently reading something by one of my favorite writers, Dan Simmons (former sci-fi writer turned brilliant historical speculative fiction writer who has an immense amount of literary knowledge which is reflected in his works). He mentioned having a master list of movies based on books that were better than the books. I'd like to know what's on that list, but he did say that #1 on his list was Jaws. He said the book itself was kind of a cheesy sex-filled story with a shark in the background, but the movie corrected that and made it the classic story it's become known as, and it's one of the classic movies of all time.
I guess the first one that comes to my mind is Sense & Sensibility. I love Jane Austen's books, but her writing can become a little tedious when she comments on extraneous details. Emma Thompson wrote a wonderful screenplay that was moving and stirring and emotional where Austen was not. (I guess another bit of evidence that it's a great movie is that I totally don't care that Emma Thompson is about twice the age that her character is supposed to be, and she and Kate Winslet play sisters who are two years apart very convincingly.) The movie retains the language of Austen's books and times, and even some of the dialogue is exactly the same. But the movie takes the whole story to a higher level, in my opinion.
In most cases where I've seen the movie and read the book, I care much more about, and get much more involved with the characters in the book, and feel less for the characters in the movie. But with S&S it's the opposite.
So, I'm sure it's a very, very short list, but what tops your list of "movie was better than the book"? Why?
James Agee's A Death in the Family, repackaged as All the Way Home (1963) comes to mind here; the book had to be summarized and simplified, of course, but it was presented in such a way as to make the story better-understood by young readers. I was about to enter high school at the time, and I'll never forget this work.
The original Godfather novel is a fun pulpy read, but it has some subplots that go on way too long and take away from the main story(Sonny's mistress Lucy Mancini and her whole plot is ridiculous). The film on the other hand is an outright classic.
The movie, first shown at the big screen, is much better but the Director's Cut, with everything that wasn't included on the first run, is much like the book, only that the book is much worse.
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