Books What movies/shows do you prefer over their book counterparts?

[Bloodporne]

13 minutes ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

I think people need to have read some of it, but I don't need to go through the thousands of pages of LotR and GoT to know I don't care for them and I enjoy the screen medium better. Sorry, but nope. I made the thread. Plus, I assume that most people posing here in here have read, or at least read part of these books. Duh.

 

It was actually the trailer for the remake that made me want to read the book. Only my third Stephen King book and the first one I've read in probably 15 years, but it was great. However, I probably shouldn't have been reading the gravedigging scene during a lunch break. That was bad. 

The amount of crazed grief displayed in that book is really quite harrowing in the context of the story. The lengths he's willing to go and how insane the losses drive him never carry any weight in the original film because it leaves out the most disturbing parts. 

[Chairslinger]

Just now, Bloodporne said:

The amount of crazed grief displayed in that book is really quite harrowing in the context of the story. The lengths he's willing to go and how insane the losses drive him never carry any weight in the original film because it leaves out the most disturbing parts. 

 

 

Apparently the book was inspired by a road King lived by when Owen was young, and one day the scene from the book basically played out, only King managed to get to him in time.

 

King at his best, when he is mixing the horror and tragedy of the supernatural with the very real horror and tragedy we all eventually go through in life. 

[number305]

21 minutes ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

I think people need to have read some of it, but I don't need to go through the thousands of pages of LotR and GoT to know I don't care for them and I enjoy the screen medium better. Sorry, but nope. I made the thread. Plus, I assume that most people posing here in here have read, or at least read part of these books. Duh.

 

Well okay.  You can set the rules.  I think the premise of the thread is interesting - but I think the ability of someone to compare two things after only having knowledge of one is somewhat limited.  

[CastlevaniaNut18]

2 minutes ago, number305 said:

Well okay.  You can set the rules.  I think the premise of the thread is interesting - but I think the ability of someone to compare two things after only having knowledge of one is somewhat limited.  

I didn't set any rules. I didn't think they were needed, because this thread is for people who read, so I assume they're going to have experience with the books. Some books just aren't that interesting and you don't need to waste your time if you're not enjoying them. 

[Nokt]

Just realized that I haven't read a lot of books that have been turned into movies/shows.

 

I agree with LOTR. I didn't reach much growing up, it wasn't until my late teens that I started reading for fun and by then the movies had already been out. I attempted to read the Fellowship and couldn't force myself through the slower parts. It would get to the point I would force myself just to read a page or two, I gave up about halfway through.

Also the entire beginning in Hobbiton is probably one of my favorite parts of any movie ever, it would be pretty hard to top that.

 

The only other books off the top of my head that were made into movies were Holes, Harry Potter, and Dune.

Holes is pretty on par with itself, I remember enjoying it as a book when I was younger, the movie is likewise.

Harry Potter is a little weird for me. While I admittedly agree the books are better, I can't have one without the other.

Dune is..... yeah. Hopefully Denis Villeneuve's version will be a hit.

 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

The HP movies will always hold a special place in my heart, but they don't hold a candle to the books. But it's still quite a lot of fun seeing the books come to life.

[Chairslinger]

I read most of the way through the Two Towers.

 

I think it's fair to say you need to be familiar with the source material to make a judgement, and I generally lean towards the written works in my preferences, but I defy any fan to tell me what exactly in the last bit of the LotR's that is going to drastically change my comparison.

 

Especially since, having a friend who is a big proponent of the written work and discussed this with him many times, I am well aware of the Scouring of the Shire which sounds like just about the most ridiculously anti-climatic, pace killing, unnecessary ending to a book I've ever heard.

 

8 minutes ago, Nokt said:

The only other books off the top of my head that were made into movies were Holes, Harry Potter, and Dune.

Holes is pretty on par with itself, I remember enjoying it as a book when I was younger, the movie is likewise.

Harry Potter is a little weird for me. While I admittedly agree the books are better, I can't have one without the other.

Dune is..... yeah. Hopefully Denis Villeneuve's version will be a hit.

 

 

 

My opinion for Harry Potter is that, not that surprisingly, as the books "grew up" and became more complex and just plain longer the series basically crisscrossed. 

 

So the first two movies are better than the books, three and four are about equal, and then five, six, and seven the movies increasingly have trouble keeping up with the books.

[Nokra]

10 hours ago, Chris- said:

 

 

The notion that Tolkien wrote in an intentionally archaic fashion is probably the biggest fanboy retcon I've ever seen. For as good as he was at world building and crafting a compelling narrative, he was objectively bad at writing prose. And the latter isn't a function of the former; even The Hobbit, which was written before he conceived of the series, isn't particularly well written. LOTR isn't a chore to get through because it's long and dense with lore, it's difficult to get through because he can't pace the reader through it.

 

I'm not quite sure why you're picking this particular fight, but game on.  

First it's a bit bizarre to me that you say he's good at worldbuilding and crafting a compelling narrative but that he's "objectively bad at writing prose". Besides not being sure how one objectively measures prose quality, as @number305 pointed out his writing has received mountains of accolades over decades. It's cool if you don't like it. But to say "he was objectively bad at writing prose"?

 

I'm also not sure why you object to my usage of "archaic". Tolkien explicitly stated he wrote them partly to be an English mythology (see letter 131 in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien). But even just looking at the texts themselves, Tolkien named many things in his world specifically based on archaic English words: Brandywine (brandy), Tom Bombadil (braggart), Harfoots (hairy foot),  Éowyn (horse-joy), Frodo (old-wise).... And besides this penchant for using old word roots to name things (he was a philologist after all ), he used many archaic words in general in his writing, in fact. He very clearly did write in an intentionally archaic style, and I was simply pointing out that this might put some people off. Did you misunderstand what I meant? 

 

 

 

[RedSoxFan9]

the only thing I can think of is Dexter (at least the first few seasons)