Young Writers Society

"The movies are never as good as the books."- Almost everybody.

What are movies that you think are better than the books they are based off of?

Here's my list below. Personal opinions below

Fight Club- Okay book, great movie.
Catching Fire- Enjoyed the movie, hated the book.
The Hobbit- Didn't like the movie, hated the book.
No Country For Old Men-I enjoyed both, but the Coen Brothers did better.

What is yours?

The Neverending Story. Really liked the movie, was kind of meh about the book.

The Hunger Games. The books were OK, but the films were what really got me hooked.

Apart from the Hunger Games films I can't think of any examples where the film is actually better. Most of the time I've read the book beforehand, so go into the cinema with really high expectations. Then I get annoyed about everything I think the director has done "wrong" (from the casting to the cut scenes to the ruined lines to the music score...) The result? I'm (almost) always disappointed with how bad the film is.

I agree about The Hunger Games, although I may be bias towards the movies because I read the books afterwards. Some things were better in the books while some where better in the movies but I still think the movies take the cake.

Well, I'm of the personal opinion that the books are pretty much always better. I mean, I do have a few movies (the Harry Potter movies, for example) that I think are totally equal with the books.

But most of the time, I feel like the movies are always trying to fit too much plot into too little screen time. And sometimes (AHEM AHEM The Lightning Thief AHEM AHEM) they completely change the story just to make it glamorous and it ends up absolutely ridiculous.

The only one I can think of, and I'm not sure this even counts, is the movie Over The Hedge. It was based on a comic strip, I think. Anyway, I love it!

The Hobbit. The book dragged on too much for me.
I normally don't compare books to movies much becuase they are too different in my opinion to really be compared. Books are interesting because you can interpret them yourself, but movies are interesting because you can see what another person's (the director/writer/actors) interpretation was.

Winter's Tale. Not a particularly great movie, but two hours of tedious, fantastical mush is a lot more manageable than a thousand pages of tedious, fantastical mush.

To Kill a Mockingbird was a bit of a boring book in my opinion. The movie cut out a lot of the unnecessary parts and built up the ending far better.

Oooh another opportunity for me to talk about one of my favourite topics. IMO both the 1934 and 1982 movies of TSP are better than the books, mainly because they both cut out the Jewish stereotype character and other than that followed the books pretty faithfully. Plus the actors are just so good in their roles.