Controversial, but Lord of the Rings. Tolkien wrote great stories, but his writing style always seemed kind of lackluster.
this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2024
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I encourage you not to view him as an author but as an imaginative creator confined by language.
Also a racist
I came to this thread expecting to see this, and even with that expectation it makes me sad to see; to me the books are unarguably superior, to a large degree because Tolkien is such an excellent writer. I'd encourage anyone who's bounced off the books a time or two to go back to them and try reading them aloud, even quietly to yourself: even though it's prose, the text has meter and flow almost as strong as poetry. It's undeniably a slow read, but it's just such a beautiful one that the films, fun as they are, don't hold up.
Plus, Jackson's Two Towers is garbage.
It being better when read aloud actually nails what I dislike about it and, far more so, The Hobbit. They read like they were written to be told as tales around a fire, not to be read. So they don't work particularly well as books that you read quietly to yourself (imo, obviously).
This was mine, but I'm assuming you weren't referring to the BBC radio play, which is the best version of LotR ever made. The films had major distortions on the themes of the story and completely unbelievable characterization that destroyed all suspension of disbelief.
Sure, the CG was nice eye candy... but Gandalf getting into a shouting match with Elrond? Really? We're okay with that?
Plus, skipping the correct ending of Frodo and Sam coming back to the Shire in industrialized dystopia missed key parts of their character growth and Tolkien's anti-industrial themes.
And the massive over-focus on a love story that was barely relevant in the story? And a half hour epilogue of useless wide shots showing how amazing the wedding was and how everyone is doing so great now that they won? What a waste of time. They skipped one of the best parts of the book for that shit.
I could go on if I had watched the films more than twice and could recall all the other huge problems.
The books don't hold up, either. Ain't nobody got time to read 3-page info dumps of dense descriptive writing about plot-irrelevant details, or dense blocks of ancient history that demolishes any semblance of pacing left over.
He founded a lot of tropes of fantasy, so I know why he included all those descriptive details, but it just doesn't hold up. Elf, big tree house, got it. You've got me for two paragraphs to fill in the descriptive details, but then let's move on with the plot, tyvm.
If you're a fan of LotR, give the 13-hour BBC radio play a listen. And of you've watched/listened to/read all three and disagree with me, I'd love to hear why (out of interest). Full disclosure: you probably won't convince me, but I'm still waiting to hear someone who knows the source material justifying why the movies are so adored.
The Muppet Christmas Carol
I wasn't sure what the right answer to this question would be until I saw it.
The sequel to Trump screwing Stormy Daniels...Stormy Daniels screwing Trump.
The Princess Bride was a pretty good book but an amazing movie.
One thing that always stuck out to me about the book is the introduction of certain editions. The author writes about himself researching the history of the country the story takes place in and describes it as real, saying he took his son to a museum with Inigo's sword and everything.
I was Googling furiously when I read it because I was so confused. I was astounded that the place (and people) was "real". It took a bit of research to find that the author just does this bit and hasn't let it go since he wrote the book
I'm still so charmed that he tricked me. It made reading the book that much sillier, for me
I have a similar story from a different medium:
Frank Zappa has an album called Francesco Zappa. On the back of the sleeve, Frank describes finding out about a distant relative who composed and played music during the 18th century. After telling some friends about it, I got to thinking that Frank had invented another character (Γ‘ la Ruben and the Jets), because that's the kind of thing he would do, and felt very foolish for repeating this information uncritically.
Years later I looked the album up on Wikipedia, and it turns out Francesco Zappa was a real musician in the 18th century (who was not actually directly related to Frank).
He got me twice with one album.
Pretty much everyone whoβs discussed it agrees The Godfather (film) blows the Puzo novel it adapted away.
Runner up is Adaptation, an adaptation of the novel The Orchid Thief that expands its scope significantly.
Adaptation was one of those movies I watched and then caught myself thinking about it through the year...a very well done movie.
The Godfather book has a lot of great character nuances but it also has a subplot of Sonny's enormous dong being the only thing that could satisfy his wife's bridesmaid's enormous vagina.
The Magicians: The books were good, but the TV show really was in a class all its own. And it did away with using obscure words just because, that was annoying.
Game of Thrones: At this rate, ASOIAF is never getting done, so I'm by default giving it to the show for actually finishing the job.
Good Omens: The first season brought the book to life, but there wasn't source material beyond that. The second season did a great job fleshing out the characters and moving the story forward into the final season.
Read the magicians after watching the series and it was such a drag. As mentioned in the Amazon ratings the writing style is just tedious to read... The emotional extent of the series was so much deeper in my opinion.
Jimi Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower
In 1995, Dylan described his reaction to hearing Hendrix's version: "It overwhelmed me, really. He had such talent, he could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them. He found things that other people wouldn't think of finding in there. He probably improved upon it by the spaces he was using. I took license with the song from his version, actually, and continue to do it to this day."
Blade runner. Much better than "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" but it is only loosely based off it.
PS: when reading a book after watching a film, it usually feels like the book is much better, fills in details, separates scenes which a film had mixed together or altogether done away with. E.g. The Shining, LotR, Dune...but for Androids I just felt "what, that's it?"
They're almost too different to compare imo, but both the book and the movie are top-tier.
A solid chunk of Philip K Dick's output worked better as movies/TV than as books.
There's definitely something there, but the books feel somewhat unfinished/unpolished. Which makes sense, his books weren't popular in English until after the release of Blade Runner, which coincided with his death. Maybe the popularity of the movie would've given him more time and resources to revise future works.
A Scanner Darkly is the only one where both the book and the movie felt about the same quality.
I welcome the controversy, but World of Warcraft.
Needs a sequel though
Big time, it's gotten staler than moldy bread.
Hoboy, that's an arguement I'm not even remotely willing to approach. So instead I will respect your opinion, fight away the mental imagery of "crow of judgement", and move along. Have a good day.
I hear ya. In its heyday it was something else. It's been bastardized, dumbed down, littered with microtransactions and mass marketed to hell now by a company that bears only the name Blizzard...a rotten husk of its former self that deserves all the hate it gets...but before all that, it brought some great memories and feelings of group achievement that are still irreplaceable to me.
Jaws the movie is much better than the book. None of the characters in the book are remotely likeable.
I just went through my entire favorite movie and show list and couldn't find a single one. I can only find ones where the adaptation is great, because it limits its focus while still keeping the overall spirit of the original. Or ones that tell a very different story, but manage to do it well.
Dune, all quiet on the western front (1930s one), total recall, it's a wonderful life, blade runner, I claudius.
Total recall (1990) was better than the book it was based on IMO.
It wasn't even a book, more a sketch, a joke even. A lot (most?) of the adaptations of PKD's writing are better than the original. And yet, the core concepts, about the nature of humanity and reality, break through and inspire some truly great work.
Fargo?
Or what we do in the shadows
Haven't seen what we do in the shadows, but fargo would be a tough call for me. Both the film and the show are wonderful.
Invincible. The comics are great, but I think the show dramatically improves a couple characters
Buffy
They Live.
The Thing but not The Thing From Another World.
Most things based on the work of PKD.
A lot of Lovecraft adaptations have to be a bit loose (because his stories tend not to lend themselves to films and he wasn't a good person) and are all the better for it - Re-animator, From Beyond, The Color Out of Space, Dagon, etc. plus quite a few fan films.
Flash Gordon film.
The first two Blade films - they struggle to make great Blade comics.
The Legion TV series.
I think the anime adaptation of Frieren: Beyond Journeyβs End was genuinely better than the manga. Which is saying something, because the manga was already pretty damn good.
Freebsd
Attack on Titan anime better than the manga. I love them both, but the musical cues, the animation, the voice acting all take the anime way over.
"The Manchurian Candidate" isn't a great book.
Gotta disagree, the book is extremely entertaining, and has an element of satire that's missing from the movie. I agree that the movie is one of the best ever made tho, and I'm not sure which one I like better, because it's so well done.
The Ten Commandments
Haven't read the comics, but everyone says that The Boys tv show is way better
I haven't read it, but I've heard the Forrest Gump movie is much better than the novel.
Manhunter (1986)
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, baby.
I think the TV series of Station Eleven is better than the book. Not that the book is bad at all, but the show is something else.
I actually disagree on this one. The show made such bizarre choices and had unrealistic scenarios, it took me out of the story. I actually read the book because I was watching the series and was so confused by some of the story beats that I was convinced the book would explain the reasoning behind them.
Ended up just being mad at the series for not following the book more closely. The changes to the Prophet are just wild - taking a pedophile and making him a protagonist is just a poor choice, from my perspective... Even if you write out the pedophilia why you gotta make him have an army of kids?
Stalker. The movie, not necessarily the games.
Roadside picnic is a fantastic book that feels thrilling for a scifi story. There's everything you could hope for, from deep philosophical questions to fictional technology that's described in a way that fascinates but doesn't attempt to over-explain; there's political implications to the geopolitics of the time that the authors consider. And at the center, an anti-hero who just wants to get his wish fulfilled and get out of this place, who's willing to make a deal with the devil for it.
To take all that and reimagine it as a long trialogue in an eerily deserted nature reserve/post-apocalyptic wasteland that touches upon all sorts of deep philosophyβfrom the divine to whether we can truly know ourselves; the struggle between logic and creativity; the vast ineffability of the natural world, not so much as Man vs. Nature conflict but as a reminder of how large and apathetic the natural world is to humanityβwhile maintaining a strained atmosphere of invisible threats that we never see. I could draw parallels to Dante's Inferno and Sartre's No Exit.
chef's kissStalker ending spoiler
Then for the protagonists to leave empty-handed after it all, too afraid to find out who they truly are deep down.
It is one of the most aesthetically beautiful films I've ever seen, and does something I wish more filmmakers would do: focus on atmosphere rather than plot and action. It sounds boring, but it was a transformative work of art.
It's dark, it's broody, it's strangely serene. I love it so much.
If covers are allowed... I will always love you by Whitney Houston was so good people outside the US forgot/didn't knew it was a cover.