Movies based on books

[innate]

What are some good movies based on books?

 

[J-Sun]

Oddly, books-into-movies rarely work for me, especially if I know and like the book. Bladerunner is about the only example I can think of and it basically takes certain visual/verbal symbols and certain thematic concerns and entirely recasts the book into film format but isn't at all literally "faithful". Then there are movies made from books that are at least well-known but that I haven't read - everything from The Maltese Falcon (which I'll read some day) to The Hunt for Red October. Then a lot of movies are either based on almost unknown books or are credited as being based on them but have little if anything to do with them, like Dr. Strangelove being based on Red Alert (though I have heard something vaguely good about that book).

Maybe if you explained what prompted the question people could give more targeted answers.

 

[Moonbat]

2001: A space Odessy
American Psycho
The shawshank Redeption
The shining
The godfather
Jaws
The notebook
Of Mice and Men
Schindler's List
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
Fight Club
Transpotting
Harry Potter
Lord of t' Rings
Rear Window
Silence of the Lambs

the list goes on and on. I just checked the top 250 movies on 1mdb, and over the top 20 more are based on novels or short stories than aren't.

I think loads of good films have been based on books, they are not always faithful to what the book says, but if they are in any way based on the book then does that count?

 

[iansales]

2001 isn't a novel adaptation. The film was inspired by a short story, 'The Sentinel', and Clarke wrote the novel alongside the script.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Precisely Ian,

I seem to remember he wrote quite a few movie synopsis which you can read in his short story collections. He definitely got the movie bug round that time.

It does annoy me the number of people who still struggle with the end of film and not get it - it's spelt out in black and white in the novel, go and goddamn read it!!

 

[TomS]

I realize that many people have problems with movie adaptions of novels. It's probably a mixture of the "what I saw/read first is the better one" syndrome and the expectation that two different people with different value systems are going to have the same visions concerning a certain jumble of words in their heads. Speaking for myself, I don't have that particular wall to break through and therefore can appreciate the efforts of both the novel writer and the movie director of the same particular story without having any pre-conceived biases to taint my personal enjoyment.

I can make similar statements about cover tunes or bands that change personnel.

It cuts down on the possibility of bitterness on my part.

I'll take from Moonbat's list and give three recommendations (only because those are the books I've read along with watching the movie)

2001 (and 2010 for that matter)
LOTR
Harry Potter

p.s. Yes, it's true. 2001 wasn't a true movie adaption of a novel. The two creators of the work collaborated on the idea(s) at the same time but they also both had two separate visions of the same story.

 

[TomS]

Precisely Ian,

I seem to remember he wrote quite a few movie synopsis which you can read in his short story collections. He definitely got the movie bug round that time.

It does annoy me the number of people who still struggle with the end of film and not get it - it's spelt out in black and white in the novel, go and goddamn read it!!

What I found most intriguing is that in the movie, Dave is fast forwarded and reborn whereas in the book, he is rewound, uploaded, then chooses his form by his own free will. The movie version is spiritual while the book is humanistic.

 

[Venusian Broon]

What I found most intriguing is that in the movie, Dave is fast forwarded and reborn whereas in the book, he is rewound, uploaded, then chooses his form by his own free will. The movie version is spiritual while the book is humanistic.

I can see where you are coming from, but it's also conceivable that movie version also follows the book version - just we're not privvy to Dave's thoughts. (Special effects at the time were just not up to doing the raging surface of a sun though...)

I think the problem I have with adaptions is that because film and prose are different mediums with different tempos, requirements and issues it's difficult to translate effectively between the two.

Generally IMHO most film adaptions were worse than the novel/short that they came from (and vice versa most film novelisations are pretty dire.)

There are exceptions. I too would rate LotR as an excellent adaption of an unadaptable good book (I should keep stumm on this, as I'm sure there are plenty of people who vehmently disagree with this view on this site ).

I can't remember the book of The Shining, but the film is utterly brilliant - watch it in the dark by your self with that really evil soundtrack cranked up loud, brings shivers to your spine. (I do know that Stephen King didn't like Kubricks film, WTF ?!?!?!)

And I'm also going to stick my neck out and say that Total Recall was a good attempt on, again, an unfilmable short story. A different spin, yes, but the cartoon violence is justified if it is all a memory implant!

 

[iansales]

There are cases where the film is better than the source novel - eg, Marnie and The Commitments.

 

[Muphry]

There are a lot of people saying that "the movie is never as good as the book" and this is true in some cases. But there is actually a surprising number of great films based on books, it just so happens that the books aren't hits in the way the films are.

For example, The Godfather or a more recent gem, Drive.

 

[Venusian Broon]

There are a lot of people saying that "the movie is never as good as the book" and this is true in some cases. But there is actually a surprising number of great films based on books, it just so happens that the books aren't hits in the way the films are.

For example, The Godfather or a more recent gem, Drive.

Murphy, I was thinking about The Godfather. Of course Mario Puzo did collaborate with Francis Ford Coppola with all of the movies, but I'd be wary about reading the book, in case it just doesn't stack up to the first two movies. We can ignore the third of course.

The other one I was thinking about on a similar line is The Thin Red Line which I find mesmorising and captivating - again really helped by a wonderful soundtrack (the reason The Commitments makes a much better film too!) Would the Jame Jones 1962 novel break the spell of the movie?

 

[Mouse]

Nobody's mentioned Stardust? Or Coraline? Or Mirrormask? (Does that one count?) I like Neil Gaiman.

What about The Picture of Dorian Gray? Or The Time Traveller's Wife? Or The Lovely Bones? Or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? Or The Da Vinci Code? Or Bridget Jones' Diary? Okay, okay, you said 'good movies,' but you get the point.

 

[Anathem]

Some other good ones ...

Scarface
A Beautiful Mind
Stand By Me
The Green Mile
Jaws

 

[SiobhanT]

The ones that spring to mind for me are The Secret Garden and A Little Princess, not really the board's target genre, but even with changes (London becoming New York in A Little Princess) the movies capture the spirit of the books perfectly, real comfort fiction, and both movies look beautiful, especially A Little Princess with all the beautiful clothes and dolls Sara has, the sort of thing a child might not be able to imagine reading it.

 

[The Procrastinator]

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, based on various of the Aubrey-Maturin books by Patrick O'Brian. Captures the spirit of the characters and the feel of the nautical world of His Majesty's Royal Navy in the early 1800's rather nicely. A good adaptation.

 

[Dave]

Hmmm! Just thinking out loud that maybe the best films are always those that are based on short stories?

That gives the screenwriter/director plenty of scope to add his own ideas/update/give background while still keeping the "meat" of the original story in place. However, when a novel is adapted as a movie some of it has to be cut out, and someone will always miss their favourite piece. I think TV series are a better way to adapt novels for the screen.

 

[Gordian Knot]

Then, of course, there are the infamous movies based "loosely" on books. Which usually means they got rights to the title of the book and made everything else up from there.

One of the better movies that was completely overhauled was I Robot. Bout the only item that remained besides the title were the Three Laws. I must sheepishly admit I actually liked the movie quite a bit.

But then I knew going in this had nothing whatever to do with Asimov's book. Actually it would have been hard to make a movie that was based on the book itself as it is a series of short stories, with no connection between them that I can remember.

 

[Metryq]

Actually it would have been hard to make a movie that was based on the book itself as it is a series of short stories, with no connection between them that I can remember.

Harlan Ellison wrote a script tying all the stories together as a newspaper reporter interviews Dr. Susan Calvin. (That's what the book did, but Ellison embellished it.)

The movie I, ROBOT was basically Roger MacBride Allen's CALIBAN, a novel set in Asimov's robots universe. As I have commented at length elsewhere, the fatal flaw of the movie was the silliness of Sonny having two brains, thus allowing him to choose whether or not to follow the Three Laws.

Aside from the Three Laws, the movie also hinted at the situation in the short story "Little Lost Robot" (from the book) where Spooner and Calvin are in the Nestor factory.

 

[Boneman]

Generally IMHO most film adaptions were worse than the novel/short that they came from (and vice versa most film novelisations are pretty dire.)

There are exceptions. I too would rate LotR as an excellent adaption of an unadaptable good book (I should keep stumm on this, as I'm sure there are plenty of people who vehmently disagree with this view on this site ).

There are cases where the film is better than the source novel - eg, Marnie and The Commitments.

There are a lot of people saying that "the movie is never as good as the book" and this is true in some cases. But there is actually a surprising number of great films based on books, it just so happens that the books aren't hits in the way the films are.

For example, The Godfather or a more recent gem, Drive.

I agree with Mouse about 'Stardust'. (Jonathan Ross's missus, Jane Goodman, had a lot to do with writing the film script.) The film was ten times better than the book (and not just because it had Michelle Pfeiffer in it!), though generally I find the reverse: But two films that are waaay better than the books are: 'Tell No One' - brilliantly shifted from America to France, and well worth trawling the DVD extras which talk about how this came about - and 'Salmon Fishing in the Yemen'. The latter is almost unreadable, and whilst accepting the happier ending in the film is a bit schmaltzey, it's probably down to the actors that it works so well - Ewan McGregor ansd Emily Blunt are excellent.

ps: I revived this thread, rather than starting a new one entitled: Which films are better than the books they're based on?

 

[Foxbat]

Don't think anybody's mentioned The Thing yet....based on John Campbell's short story Who Goes There.