The book is better than the movie...

Guys, you are KILLING me with liking the LOTR movie better then the books. I saw the movies first, then read the book and I still love the books better! But I can understand. I like Tolkiens style because I can envision a real world with real background.

I can't believe that I'm saying this, but The Count of Monte Cristo. I really, really like the book, but I also really like the movie. Better pacing and I kinda like the ending a little bit better then the book.

Cynthia85 said:

Guys, you are KILLING me with liking the LOTR movie better then the books. I saw the movies first, then read the book and I still love the books better! But I can understand. I like Tolkiens style because I can envision a real world with real background.

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Tolkien is great with regards to description and detail, not to mention world-crafting. There aren't too many people out there who'd whip up thousands of years of meticulously detailed history and mythology just to give a self-invented, fictional LANGUAGE some proper background.

HOWEVER (and I'm saying this with all due respect, as a great admirer of Tolkien), his pacing and his feel for the build-up of tension within an extended plotline leaves much to be desired. Just think of the way the Fellowship of the Ring commences: between Bilbo's birthday party and Frodo's leaving the Shire, whole DECADES pass, LITERALLY. Decades that are of little consequence to the development of the plot, or to anything else, actually. And even after the Black Riders show up in pursuit, Tolkien pretty much breaks the tension by letting the Hobbits visit Farmer Maggot and have a taste of his mushrooms. It's approximately 150 pages into the novel, and the hobbits haven't even crossed the Brandywine!
I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. Personally, I've grown quite fond of this novel, simply because it does break all the rules of storytelling. Yet nobody can deny that the film adaptation, particularly the first installment, is MUCH better paced. (I didn't like The Two Towers that much; the alterations didn't make much sense and created unneccessary plot holes; the battle of Helm's Deep was virtually endless and boring as anything, and so on and so forth. The Return of the King redeemed Peter Jackson to a certain degree, although I would have loved to see The Scouring of the Shire on the big screen. It was hinted at in Galadriel's mirror in the first movie, after all.)

Wicked Willow said:

Yet nobody can deny that the film adaptation, particularly the first installment, is MUCH better paced. (I didn't like The Two Towers that much; the alterations didn't make much sense and created unneccessary plot holes; the battle of Helm's Deep was virtually endless and boring as anything, and so on and so forth. The Return of the King redeemed Peter Jackson to a certain degree, although I would have loved to see The Scouring of the Shire on the big screen. It was hinted at in Galadriel's mirror in the first movie, after all.)

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Ummm... I would deny that the film adaptation is better paced. Simply because when I'm reading the book it's almost as if I'm reading a history book rather than a fiction book because it's so life like. Some things take time to build up and it's one thing that I absolutely love about the book. I think that a lot of people just want to read the book and be done with it rather than go slowly and savour it. But that's simply my opinion.

But I do agree with you about the Two Towers. I was horribly disappointed with it. I think that the thing I hated the most was how Faramir took Frodo to Osgilith when it never happened in the book. Why don't I like that one bit out of the other horrible parts? Because it made all Men seem weak. It made it feel like Aragorn was the only good Man and all the others were corrupt, when that wasn't the case. Faramir was noble and resisted the Ring. Okay, end rant, lol.

Cynthia85 said:

But I do agree with you about the Two Towers. I was horribly disappointed with it. I think that the thing I hated the most was how Faramir took Frodo to Osgilith when it never happened in the book. Why don't I like that one bit out of the other horrible parts? Because it made all Men seem weak. It made it feel like Aragorn was the only good Man and all the others were corrupt, when that wasn't the case. Faramir was noble and resisted the Ring. Okay, end rant, lol.

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Oh, but Aragorn didn't resist the ring so easily because he was good. Nobility doesn't help you resist the Ring - that's the point: the Ring can tempt anyone, can bend the most noble motifs, corrupt the truest causes to its own purposes.
The reason why Aragorn, out of all people, could resist the Ring more easily was because It couldn't offer him what he wanted. If you read the appendices, you see that Aragorn's quest is all about winning Eowyn's love and Elrond's approval, and he could only gain these by (aiding in) destroying the Ring and overthrowing Sauron for good - and these are the things that the Ring could hardly grant.
Faramir's curious resistance to temptation, however, is never sufficiently explained. Where Galadriel struggles, and Gandalf retreats in horror, Faramir just shrugs it all off without a second glance. It doesn't really make sense.

So in that sense, the de-tour to Osgiliath would not have been such a big pet peeve of mine - if it wasn't for the presence of the Ringwraiths and the fact that they spotted Frodo and the Ring on the battlements. With that revelation, all should have been lost, even if you stick strictly to the internal logic of the films and ignore the novel's portrayal of the Wraiths' growing powers. There is no way the hobbits could have escaped that death trap, not with supernatural beings whose whole purpose revolved around recovering the Ring.

Wicked Willow said:

Oh, but Aragorn didn't resist the ring so easily because he was good. Nobility doesn't help you resist the Ring - that's the point: the Ring can tempt anyone, can bend the most noble motifs, corrupt the truest causes to its own purposes.
The reason why Aragorn, out of all people, could resist the Ring more easily was because It couldn't offer him what he wanted. If you read the appendices, you see that Aragorn's quest is all about winning Eowyn's love and Elrond's approval, and he could only gain these by (aiding in) destroying the Ring and overthrowing Sauron for good - and these are the things that the Ring could hardly grant.
Faramir's curious resistance to temptation, however, is never sufficiently explained. Where Galadriel struggles, and Gandalf retreats in horror, Faramir just shrugs it all off without a second glance. It doesn't really make sense.

So in that sense, the de-tour to Osgiliath would not have been such a big pet peeve of mine - if it wasn't for the presence of the Ringwraiths and the fact that they spotted Frodo and the Ring on the battlements. With that revelation, all should have been lost, even if you stick strictly to the internal logic of the films and ignore the novel's portrayal of the Wraiths' growing powers. There is no way the hobbits could have escaped that death trap, not with supernatural beings whose whole purpose revolved around recovering the Ring.

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Faramir's resistance is easily understood, if one understands the world, the Ring and Faramir. Perhaps One should look at Hobbits for a second. Why was it so ineffective with them? Mainly it comes down to them not desiring power or glory. The same holds for Faramir. Unlike his brother, Faramir did not seek glory or power, but rather knowledge. Then there is the fortunate oath, in Tolkiens world oaths matter and have power. Faramir had the good luck to have made his oath before he knew of the Ring. In Tolkeins world such an oath does provide real strength. Finally Faramir only needed to resist the Ring for a few days. Getting back to Boromir, how long did he resist the Ring? Months.

silence of the lambs was a great movie but the book was only so so

I always thought that the LotR movies were BY FAR better than the books. I, honestly, couldn't even get through half of the first book "Fellowship of the Rings" because the author lacked a cadance.......all he did was printed out how many flowers were in each man's gardens.......useless stuff like that.

Yeah, I KNOW he was printing out a blue print of a new world....but he could've AT LEAST made it entertaining! I mean, Rowling did that and her books are all a success too!

Another good example is Twilight. I, once again, didn't even BOTHER finishing the first book. Too much immature lovie dovie cooing and cawing at each other. It was sickening!

I'm with most of you on LOTR though I still prefer the books. I almost laughed out loud when the previous post compared them somewhat unfavourably with the Harry Potter books, but I guess that's the beauty of literature. There's room for everyone.

My first response to the OP was that I'd enjoyed the film almost as much as the book in 'Atonement' and also, now I think about it, 'Perfume'. The film of the latter, while dealing with an horrific subject, was beautiful in a way. Generally though I'm reluctant to watch a film of a much-loved book. I haven't tried 'The Time Traveller's Wife' yet, and several others, because I'm afraid it will disappoint me too much. Having said that, the CS Lewis 'Narnia' books are probably my most-read, beloved books and the two films that have been released have been pretty good. A few quibbles but nothing to spoil the experience for me. In fact, TLTW&TW had me in tears.

Ella Enchanted......now there's a movie that did NOT stick to its book. I loved the book so much and the book was a MUCH better story plot line sort of Cinderella story that in the movie you didn't get a sense of what Ella felt like.

Also, Lighting Thief the book had a WAY better plot line than the book although the movie was awesome and I loved I would've loved to see Ares and Clarisse and I would've liked to see the bus scene and the the airplane. I can't believe they left out Ares and Clarisse they were like the base of the book so why couldn't they be in the movie?

The Narnia books are better than the movies

Um, the point of this thread is movies that are better then the books.

...Oh yes!

Well, how about 'Sleepy Hollow' being better than the book - although I do like both.

Go Ask Alice

Harry Potter and LOTR were good movies based on books which I could never get into liking.

The Stand movie did a good job for the book even though it wasn't as good as the book all around. Its hard to explain other than to say the movie did not disappoint.

Cats Eye was as good as the short stories it portrayed.

The Ten Commandments was better than the Bible version.

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I have to comment on some stinker movies that really should never have been made.

I am Legend and The Running Man, the books for those movies are just amazing compared to the drivel those movies turned out to be. Even Arnold and Will couldn't account for the butchery they did to the stories those movies were supposedly based off of. If they had Rick Moranis as the star of those movies and they had stuck to the original stories those movies would have been 10 times better. End of rant.

The version of Treasure Island with Charlton Heston as Long John Silver was better than the book. Also any adaptation of Dickens, since they can usually depict in a camera shot what CD used to take pages to describe (since he was paid by the page). And the movie The Great Gatsby was actually bearable for me, whereas I found the book intolerably dull and pretentious.

MacFall said:

The version of Treasure Island with Charlton Heston as Long John Silver was better than the book. Also any adaptation of Dickens, since they can usually depict in a camera shot what CD used to take pages to describe (since he was paid by the page). And the movie The Great Gatsby was actually bearable for me, whereas I found the book intolerably dull and pretentious.

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Charlton Heston knew how to own a role.

I felt the truth in the ending of the Gatsby book make up for the rest of the story.

"And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Any of Nicholas Sparks books

I try my best not to compare the movie and the book, because a movie is limited in many ways that a book is not. I have also learned that generally if you watch the movie first and then read the book, you are more able to see them as completely separate entities, rather than measuring them up against each other. Whereas reading the book first you are sorely disappointed by what was left out or changed to fit the needs of the movie.

Autumnleaf said:

Harry Potter and LOTR were good movies based on books which I could never get into liking.

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Harry Potter? Are you for real?
I mean: I can understand how people might *not* like the novels. There's no accounting for taste, after all.
However, virtually ALL of the "Potter"-films pretty much lacked what made the books special to begin with, focusing on the dazzle but losing the magic, so to speak. It's not the flying broomsticks or the raw skeleton of the plot that makes Rowling's novels stand out from the average crop of children's/young adult literature, you know?

I respect that books and movies are two entirely different mediums which is why I think movie versions of books are so crummy compared to the original source.

That being said, there are only two movies that I can think of that were almost as good as the book: Gone With The Wind and The Silence of the Lambs.