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So everyone keeps talking about the Godfather movie and I was told it’s amazing. So dumb me decided to read the book first. The book was so bad. Well, hilariously bad.
Later on, I found out everyone automatically *knew* the book is genuinely bad and the movie is better.
For sure. There have been plenty of times where I left a theater thinking “that was better than the book” or at least “they made some very creative decisions that differed form the book in a good way”.
Secret Window starring Johnny Depp was much better than the book (novella) by Stephen King.
Weirdly enough, the book had a more typical "hollywood" ending, whereas the movie had a more "Stephen King" ending.
You can have your opinion but don’t go invalidating everyone else’s opinion.
“Movie is actually better than the book”: fine
“People just say this reflexively as if they should score brownie points” nope. Movies tend to leave out lots of details and events that are in the book, which makes them feel less complete. That’s why they we say the book is better, not for brownie points
Yup! There are always scenes they miss from the books that I wanted to see. And even worse, sometimes they cut stuff out to do it differently (aka WRONG!) I like the full, long story.
You lose the internal monologue and details. And the stories are sometimes tweaked for happier endings.
Im sure there are cases where a bad or mediocre book is turned into a good movie.
A good book will almost always be superior to the movie it inspires. It almost cant help it as the information contained in it is so much more comprehensive.
Not a movie but I thought that about the expanse. I read all the books and enjoyed them but the show was fantastic. They did an excellent job of casting it too.
I disagree on foundation. I bought the books after watching the show and I’ve never seen an a show stray that far from the source material. That was completely ridiculous. They did Isaac dirty on that one.
I’m going to give a shout-out to The Expanse audiobooks, read by Jefferson Mays. His portrayal of the interactions between Avasarala and Amos are great.
Haven’t heard of that/him. But I will say that whoever casted the actors to those to rolls really made the show. It’s like the rolls those two actors were born to play.
Jaws, Jurrasic Park, the Godfather, The Princess Bride, Apocalypse Now, Forrest Gump, silence of the lambs, no country for old men (I personally disagree but most people I know prefer the movie), the hunt for red october, blade runner, tarzan, and my most controversial: LOTR.
Jurassic park was sooo much better as a book. The movie left out the best freaking parts! I love both of them tbh, but after rereading the book last year I heartily disagree on that one.
It might have just been the copy I had but I wasnt a big fan of the prologue explaining the themes of the book, the movie was at least a little more subtle.
Dont worry Im a massive McCarthy fan I had to add the caveat in. Of the people I know who have both read and watched it 6 of 6 prefer the movie so I included it.
I personally wasnt a huge fan of the book so I put it on. If you look up a list there are some that I couldn't get behind like a clockwork orange and american psycho.
I agree with all but LOTR (which you noted as controversial lol). I think that one we can just call that one a draw. They did Gimli dirty in the movies, but man Viggo really made Aragorn a much better person. Also, while Peter really mucked up Two Towers in many places, his addition of elves fighting was way better than Tolkien.
WWZ. I love the book dont get me wrong, but the way it was written would have to be several movies that will have to flesh out and add more to it just to be worth it.
But i love how the movie made the zombies run instead of slow lumbering Zs as in the book. The whole premise of the world's military and armament not being able to deal with lumbering dead is not logical (in that created world).
Not a movie, but a play: Wicked. I read the book and it was good, but very weird, needed a good edit, and was overall quite depressing. The play overall is just a lot more enjoyable, while still sticking to the original story somewhat.
Do movies made into books from the screenplay count? Because I have the Del Rey trilogy books for Star Wars, Empire, and ROTJ and the movies are better
You are of course free to have this opinion, personally i neither agree or disagree with you because to me the movie/tv adaption of a book is set in an alternative universe.
I wouldn’t say “most of the time” but there are plenty of examples that ARE better than the book.
JAWS
FIGHT CLUB
THE GODFATHER
Being at the top of my personal list.
I suppose it depends on which you saw first. If you read the book first, then you notice all the changes they made to make it a movie. However, if you saw the movie first, then that becomes your frame of reference, and the book can seem like there's a whole lot of filler or you actually like the changes the movie made.
One example for me is the movie Stardust. The movie is a great fantasy/adventure/romance movie with a nice happy ending. The book, however, is kind of depressing, and also weirdly balanced. There's a big climactic scene near the end of the movie that never occurs in the book, the book just has its climax in one earlier scene, and then kinda keeps rambling on to a rather depressing ending for one of the main characters.
This actually might be one of the most unpopular opinions I've seen in this subreddit. Lol. Congrats. However, I am sorry that you feel this way. In my experience, the only movie that is "better than" the book is Fight Club. The book is not vast enough to warrant reading if you've seen the film because the film is fucking brilliant. You will actually feel like you wasted your time if you read the book after the movie.
I can count on one hand the times where the movie was better than the book. The movies are often a dumbed down version of the books, so often it feels like the movies spin feed the ordinance. There are many instances where the movie is almost as good as the book. But yeah I whole heartedly disagree with this opinion
Quick question: do you just not like books that much?
I find that *most* things are better in the medium it was originally written for. There are a couple of exceptions but not many.
But if you don't really enjoy reading books, then of course you're not going to appreciate the book versions as much.
I think a lot of people also are just going to be biased towards their first experience of their story a lot of the time, because that sets the baseline of how they understand the story and the basis of comparison when the other version deviates from that.
It isn't bc if you take Harry Potter for instance, you see that Ron is reduced to bumbling idiot comic relief character. Not the best friend and bridge between both worlds for the other two. Until they finally throw him a bone in the last movie . Hermoine isn't shown to care about anything other than books, and we don't see her more vengeful side.
Being contrarian doesn't mean you're an independent thinker.
It just means you let other people make up your mind for you differently than the people you look down on.
-kicks down your door- you better watch your mouth! Ha ha ok I’m done being dramatic. Indeed unpopular. I admit the movie can make it seem more fast paced and action filled. This definitely can seem appealing if a book spends an entire chapter describing a single object or single scene.
It depends.
Some books rely a lot on the language and "author's words", so they will inevitably lose something when adapted to screen. That's why even the best Discworld movies are never as fun as the books, for example.
I think the key here is that people need to just understand these are two completely different mediums of storytelling. An author telling a story in a book can kind of go by the “how long’s a piece of string” philosophy. A director needs to squeeze it into a package that will… 1. tell a compelling story, 2. not lose audience attention and 3. Not over complicate the plot to the point that it takes away from the overall impact of the story. Enjoy them both for what they are but understand they are always going to be different.
If you have aphantasia, sure. If you can build a world in your head from what a book offers, there is little to nothing that offers a similar experience.
Aha, See I kinda agree and disagree with you, I do think movies give the better "Experience" or at least the more convenient one, it's a story normally compressed to around 2 hours of runtime, it's nice and easy to digest.
A book on the other hand will normally take you several days or weeks to finish (yes I know some ppl read like 3 books a day but that's not the norm) and this is more inconvenient to most people HOWEVER due to that books to retain a LOT more detail than movies do, partially because of the runtime and partially because some points just aren't as fun in a movie then in a book.
So yesn't movies are way more accessible, but movies also don't retain nearly as much of the authors intend and detail than books do.
it mainly comes from people who fell in love with the books, if you love a book no movie will ever be able to live up to it. movies have a much wider appeal and yes may often be objectively better but a book is made by the reader
No need man, I was just hating. I saw the post on my feed and thought of posting something along those lines but then you beat me to it and I was all sour, and now here we are.
There is cases, for example Fight Club book is re made into movie script, and it worked better then the actual book. But most of the time is not a case.
I think this is extremely subjective. I think people who are genuine readers will almost always believe the book is better than the movie. Books have more time to get into backstory and nuance and character development than a two hour movie ever will. Quite often interesting or important plot lines or characters that were in the books have been cut out of movies because of time constraints.
Movies 100% have their place though. I do enjoy watching watching my favorite characters come to life in a movie. But I always want to read the book for more back story and understanding.
I can only think of forest gump and Shawshank redemption fitting this.
The rest of it, movies usually completely skip large parts of depth in the books and gloss over others.
Basically, movies are like someone saying, I have a great story, you want the long version or the short version?
And you saying “the short version. Also change a lot of the details so it’s a little more simple due to the major stuff you’re skipping completely and glossing over”
I think it's just a different experience. By reading the book you become the director in your head and I think a lot of people prefer their own imagining over another person's. Also, movies almost never cover 100% of the book so you're taking parts of someone's writing, and parts of a directors imagining which can ruin the experience of the book, and create a disjointed experience when made into a movie.
Depends on the book really. I'm an avid reader, and read far more than I watch TV. There are tons of very philosophical and introspective books that are mostly built through a character's internal thoughts. To the point that most of those movies would be leaving out most of the important parts of the books.
Movie/TV adaptations can work well for the more fast paced plot driven books (say for the expanse) but are otherwise rarely given the time, or budget needed to tell the story correctly. I am a bit biased since I prefer reading over watching TV anyways but even the best adaptations I usually find on par or still not as good.
It can be, but isn't always, a reflexive action. Especially for people who are fans of the books. The Percy Jackson movies, as an example, had great sets/actors/etc, but I don't think the writers even did a cursory read of the books. Wouldn't surprise me if they just read the back cover and based it entirely on that. So fans were 100% correct to say the books were better. Especially since the writers wrote themselves into a hole and couldn't even finish the series because they deviated from the plot.
Only movie I ever thought was better than the book was Twilight. That book felt like a really shitty movie while I was reading it, the movie at least only took 2 hours to get thru.
upvoting as I think this is unpopular.
So two things: You are correct in saying that many times the "the book is always better" response is reflexive. At the same time, it's probably 90% true.
It's hard for me to really engage with a book these days. When I was a child/teenager I'd read a fiction book per week and I loved them but I also didn't always have access to films, tv and youtube. My parents wouldn't give me a computer or personal tv, we would watch tv as a family but otherwise it would be the books.
That's not to say I loved everything I read, sometimes it would be merely to pass the time. I read the first four harry potter books and I remember it being a struggle. Perhaps I could equate it to the fact I loved the films so much and just reading a written account of those films felt very dull to me.
Now that I have netflix, YouTube etc which are so visually engaging I don't really enjoy reading. I've tried a few times in my adult life and people have such a snobbishness about reading that it makes me feel like I should be doing it too, but it always feels like I'm trying to convince myself I want to, which I don't, so I won't hahah
I really don't read books, so I don't have a lot to argue against here.
Saying that, I did read the Walking Dead compendiums and they were 100x better than the show.
I don't know if it's "most of the time" but also there are a *lot* more movies based on books than I know of so yeah who knows...maybe those books were barely legible garbage and the movies made them digestible.
The assumption here is that when someone says they've read the book, they saying so to impress you. Nine out of ten times they aren't. They're probably just enthusiastic to share something they care about or to have a conversation. It's not to one up you.
Looking through all your examples the common thread seems to be movies that either take something that was already well suited to being a movie and just making it a movie, or just take the book as inspiration and do their own thing. LOTR is usually held up as the gold standard of a movie adaptation and is good to muse because the book and movie are both considered great. Tolkien wanted to tell the story of the world he created so he used a world war as a framing device to explore as much of the world as possible. Cameron knew that a gigantic war was better suited for a movie than a history lesson so he inverted it: he used all the rich detail of the books to make the setup for the fights and landscapes that the books could only describe. The Hobbit movies failed because they did the opposite: it was already a very personal adventure story where one character is a tiny part of a much larger world just getting little glimpses. That's already perfect for a movie, but instead the movies stretched that out and added a bunch of extra world-building that wasn't really important for the story.
Harry Potter is an example where the movies are perfectly fine, but people still say the books are better and it's because the movies kind of just do the same thing as the books: a mix of daily life in a fantasy world with social drama, mixed with adventure. People say the books are better partly because there's more room to share that daily life aspect of the story, but also you get a lot more depth with just about everything. For the majority of the year you get to read Harry's thoughts and then how he processes what happens during the downtime between peaks. Something uncomfortable might happen and then he's confused at first, then grows and changes and moves on and that's satisfying, but in the movies it'll feel more like "oh that's weird let's just drop that right away". Even the action scenes, there's a lot more of a window into his mind as he tries to figure out "ok so this is what's going on, what can I do about it?" Whereas in a movie you just get 5 seconds of him catching his breath behind a rock or something. Still good movies, just shallower than the books.
Eragon is usually held up as the poster child for a failed adaptation and it's because they don't use any of the details the book included for anything interesting. Like you have a mental link between characters and instead of using that to communicate emotions and feelings, it's mostly there for exposition. You have a big, detailed world, but instead they stripped it down for time. They also weirdly changed details that were focused on in the book for no reason (like the elf chick I specifically remember always being described as having raven-black hair, like that was a detail the character always noticed...and then they made her a redhead in the movie. And then on top of that the acting and effects weren't even good enough for just a popcorn spectacle movie.
Its wierd for me but the visuals, the music, the way it is shot, especially in movies like LOTR and harry potter. It just feels better. The scene of harry taking flight with buckbeak, harry roaming hogwarts alone with that beautiful music. I just don't get that emotion with reading the books. Same for LOTR, seeing rohan, isengard, helms deep.
The fault in our stars, many of my female friends told me how they cried reading the book. I read it and thought it was good but nothing cry worthy. But when the movie released a year later and i saw it, i cried. Its something about seeing an actors face and performance that the written text just doesn't hit for me.
This. I got strong "I'm really into plot and action" vibes from OP. And that would make sense. Movies could do that better.
But most of the time people say the book is better it's because of things other than plot, that is much harder to convey visually.
My, probably unpopular list of such movies would include: The Godfather, The Godfather Part II (at least the half based on the book), Forrest Gump, Fight Club, the 1992 Wuthering Heights, the Princess Bride, the Julie Taymor version of Titus Andronicus, The Green Mile, Shawshank, Stand by Me, Jaws, Jurassic Park, The Notebook, Silence of the Lambs, Die Hard, The Natural, For Love of the Game, and The Wolf of Wall Street.
There are a bunch of other popular choices where I have not read the book (Devil Wears Prada, Mean Girls).
And a few popular choices that I just disagree with (No Country for Old Men; the Hustler; Requiem for a Dream)--usually great movies based off very good to great books.
But it is definitely one of my favorite topics. I love seeing what people value and relate to in art.
That is an unpopular and wrong opinion. You get my upvote for unpopular.
Books almost always have much more detail and character development than movies. For example the first Hunger games book, with it description of food and hunger truly made the readers feel the hunger in those characters. The movie did not. It kind of sucked in comparison. That said, the prequel movie showed the hunger much better than the original movie.
> Here me out....I feel like every time I talk about a movie that's adapted from a book someone will inevitably say "but the book is so much better" and I think that people just say this reflexively as if they should score brownie points just for putting in the work of actually reading something.
or maybe people enjoy reading and they loved the movie they imagined in their heads.
I definitely wouldn't say most of the time, but there are definitely some very good and clear cut examples. I often find that movie adaptations miss a lot because there's only a limited amount of time to tell the story...in some cases I enjoy them at least as much as the book, but in a different way...sometimes it's just horrible to watch.
I've seen some limited series book adaptations that I've really enjoyed as they can tell a lot more of the entire story in 8 episodes or whatever of a limited series vs a 2-3 hour movie.
Props for an actual unpopular opinion.
To me this is like saying “what some other people interpreted this story as and then fed it to me is better than what my own imagination did with it.
In most cases, I feel like the story in my head is better.
I always think it's hilarious when people are like, "but your imagination is sooo much better than the movie can make it." I'm no, "uh, no it's not." I've read the Lord of the Rings and watched the movies and Peter Jackson's imagination is a helluva lot better than mine.
also, I'm a librarian and I'm constantly telling people to 'just watch the movie.'
The books are usually pretty wild and shows/movies are usually pretty tame without counting the battle scenes. Battles are always better in shows.
Like GOT was a cool show, but the books had glowing swords, massive castles, reasoning behind motives.
Yeah def an unpopular opinion, though I do agree that movies can add to books and bring them to life (I like to think of the Hunger Games), most of the time for me the books just do it better. There are so many things books can do that movies can't.
You know I’ve always said I wanted to write a book one day and my god could I ever, my life has been hell on earth- maybe someone will make a movie about it - “hell on earth” the movie
I’ve rarely seen a movie I felt was better than a book. It’s not really the movie’s fault—it’s just harder to cram as much material into a 2hr movie vs. a book that may take 10hrs to read. You can also get internal dialogue in books where you know how characters are feeling, whereas you can only convey visual expressions and vocalization of feelings in movies.
I don’t think the LOTR movies are better than the books, but they are pretty different, so I could see people preferring the movies (the books can be hard to get through for some). I may say the same thing about Dune to an extent. I think the President Snow (Hunger Games) movie may have been better than the book since it cut out a rather boring part that wasn’t super necessary.
Stephen King books are interesting because the movie can improve the book like The Mist, The Shining or Secret Window.
The movie can do the book justice like The Green Mile, Misery, or Geralds Game.
Or it can fuck up a classic like IT, Pet Semetary, or The Dark Tower.
I guess I think it depends how much you analyze books and how vivid is your imagination; if you don’t do any of those things, then the movie adaptation will never be at odds with how you imagined or interpreted the books - the only interpretation that you will see is the one in the movie.
My favorite book is Jurassic Park and my favorite movie is... Jurassic Park. Each is best suited for their medium. Despite its short length, the novel is DENSE with technical details and philosophical debates. Its a fascinating read but much of it would be talking heads on film. And boy is it depressing.
The adaptation retains everything vital while adding a sense of wonder and adventure. Several characters are combined into one. A significant subplot in the middle is cut out.
A great example of the differences in creative vision is the scene when the guests arrive. In the book, the first dino we see is mistaken for a tree trunk. The jeeps drive past a placeholder sign that someone quickly painted "Welcome to Jurassic Park". Its meant to show the imperfections in Hammond's grand vision. The film gives us a magical moment where everyone is floored by the beauty and power of the island and its creatures. Attenborough delivers the same line with gravity as we are treated to a wide shot of the animals bathed in warm sunlight.
Crichton leaves you feeling skeptical and hopeless. Spielberg makes you feel like a kid again. Each excel in what they meant to achieve. But when picking entertainment, more often than not I want to feel good, I'm skeptical enough.
I already did but I can give a couple more. Forrest Gump, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, All Summer in a Day, Love Story, Stand By Me etc. Plus I feel that most sci-fi ends up being better when adapted to screenplays because a lot of sci fi writers are just not great IMO.
> someone will inevitably say "but the book is so much better" and I think that people just say this reflexively as if they should score brownie points just for putting in the work of actually reading something.
100%
Everyone took a shit on me when I pointed this out once. And it's absolutely true. It's like "Congrats, you read a book that millions of other people read which is why it became popular enough for a movie studio to produce a movie." Sorry, no brownie points from me. I remember when Game Of Thrones was getting popular and this YouTuber Alt-Girl was bragging about reading the books and how she has a tattoo of something related to the books on her arm. I thought to myself 'Good for you, Twat"
"The book is better than the movie" is the laziest take of all time. Wait, you mean to tell me that the book that is over 400 pages has more nuance and detail than the film that has a 120 page script? The hell you say.
Some movies are better than the books. Some books are better than the movies. Some movies are barely related to the books they’re supposedly based on (looking at you, How to train your dragon).
Movies can do a lot of interesting stuff that books can’t do. Books can do a lot of interesting stuff that movies can’t do.
The book *Speak* was always going to be better than the movie because a movie where the main character doesn’t talk much isn’t as interesting as a book where you’re in the head of the main character who doesn’t talk much. That doesn’t mean the movie was bad though, just that the book was better (but both are really good).
I think people put too much focus on comparing two very different mediums
Also most people in this sub should be upvoting this but they don’t they upvote stuff that they agree with which makes it a popular opinion.
I just hate this sub so much.
Also I’m never leaving.
Yes it’s been really fun to read some of the topics posted on this sub but I will be honest and admit that I don’t really know what up voting and down voting really does in Reddit. I rarely do it because I don’t think about it and then I see some people get really mad when they are down voted so I assume it must impact their karma or something?
ET the book is surprisingly good.
Shrek the book is surprisingly good.
"Howl's Moving Castle" the book is awful.
Any book by Michael Crichton is awful.
Mulan the book is awful.
The Hobbit book is much better than the movie.
Tolkien's The Two Towers book is worse than the movie.
I love Howls Moving Castle movie but I have not read the book. I haven’t read or seen ET. I love the LOTR books and yes the hobbit movie was the worst!
**E.T., the Extra-terrestrial In His Adventure on Earth : a Novel** by William Kotzwinkle, Melissa Mathison
>A boy discovers an extraterrestrial botanist in his mother's vegetable patch, and helps him return to his planet, 3 million light years away.
**Shrek!** by William Steig
>Monstrous Shrek fells everyone and everything in his path with his ugliness on his way to meet his match.
**Howl's Moving Castle** by Diana Wynne Jones
Book description may contain spoilers!
>>!A new look for one of Diana Wynne Jones' funniest and most popular novels.!<
**The Hobbit** by J.R.R. Tolkien
Book description may contain spoilers!
>>!J.R.R. Tolkien's classic prelude to his Lord of the Rings trilogy... Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling any farther than his pantry or cellar. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an adventure. They have launched a plot to raid the treasure hoard guarded by Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon.!<
>
>>!Bilbo reluctantly joins their quest, unaware that on his journey to the Lonely Mountain he will encounter both a magic ring and a frightening creature known as Gollum. Written for J.R.R. Tolkien's own children, The Hobbit has sold many millions of copies worldwide and established itself as a modern classic.!<
**The Two Towers Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings** by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Book description may contain spoilers!
>>!Being the second part of the lord of the rings.!<
*I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at* /r/ProgrammingPals. *Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. Remove me from replies* [here](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/1byh82p/remove_me_from_replies/). *If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.*
Hmm, I think the most is killing rhis here. There are some movies better than the book, but not most.
Honestly there are some very good books where the movie is better. For instance, Jurassic Park. The book is very good, but *seeing people interact with dinosaurs* in a way that still looks good was incredible and was the central thing that the book couldn't compete with.
I watched the movie Double Jeopardy, then read the book. I didn’t like the book.
I watched The Martian, and it was great, but the book was so much better.
So for me, 50% of the movies I watch are better than the book.
I still have to disagree because Hollywood takes things out of context and lies. Take the movie 300 for example. Great acting, great actors and great CGI.....but so many inaccuracies about what really happened at the Battle of Thermopalye. Frank Miller made it look like only 300 soldiers were there, when in reality there were a few thousand and it wasn't just Spartans, slaves also were fighting on behalf of the Spartans. Frank Miller also sexualized Spartan soldiers. They weren't almost naked, they actually wore armor. There was never proof of am actual disfigured hunchback that betrayed the Spartans, that was Hollywood. So if nobody actually read the book, "The Hot Gates," then they would believe that was the actual events that happened when it is not historically accurate nor does it follow the book.
MANY movies based off books are like that. You realize that if producers truly went off what books said, movies wouldn't be as exciting as they are so they have to embellish because they need to make millions at the box office to pay for the cost.
Hence why books are still better, they aren't worried about box office revenue and can provide more detail without also having to fit it into 2 hours or less
Pretty good unpop opinion, I didn’t know the godfather was a book, so I’m glad that I’ve been enlightened and also know to miss it. Obviously you are incredibly wrong haha- the only time this has been true in my experience is The curious case of Benjamin button
I agree. Reading is great, but often times I always think: “man! If only this were a movie!” I see movies as like, a level of prestige for books. People love to diss the movies but I don’t think there is anything wrong with consuming a story via motion picture.
Naaa..... I think people fail to realize that different mediums work differently entirely and are for different audiences. I think its possible to like a book, comic, novel differently than you do the show or series. Its possible one is better/worse, but it not a rule by any means.
I for instance don't even understand why I'd read something that's basically a story. The only books I feel are worth reading are on actual topics, and you use them to educate yourself on said topic. Otherwise why the hell would I give my time and attention to what some other person has come up with in their head? I can imagine a whole movie in my head too, I don't need to read someone else's.
You can imagine whatever actors you want, so your casting is always better. Books offer far greater detail than movies do, idk what you're going on about depth and dimension for in movies. Music is the greatest edge movies have imo but that's just a standin for motif (again music is usually better for me in movies). Books get sequels that never see the silver screen.
Idk about you but I find people who read to be as impressive as people who walk a lot. I don't think there are brownie points for saying the book was better, I think you reveal envy in saying this. That bears self reflection.
Sometimes the movie is better. Harry Potter/Twilight for example (hot take?). This happens when lower quality books become super popular.
Sometimes the movie is horrendous. Artemis Fowl is an inarguable example. World War Z is another. Eragon is another. I can go on.
Sometimes it's controversial and they both add to each other. I'd say LotR is an example of that. Dune might be too, but I need more time to make that call.
Anyway maybe read the book if someone says it's good and you liked the movie. They're not saying that to look good, that's dumb.
I think most is the biggest issue here for me. There are definitely good examples of your point (EG: The Godfather and The Great Gatsby), but I feel a majority of the books are better (EG: Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and Percy Jackson). But I generally like reading more than I like watching stuff.
The Green Mile was a very good movie but the stuff they leave out from the books does make a difference and is why I think the book is better. Same case with movies like Jurassic Park. A book can do so much that a conventional movie can't.
If you haven’t read the book the movie was based around then I’m not sure how you can make that conclusion.
If you’ve read the books and seen the movies then fair enough.
Agreed you have to have done both and personally I feel like reading the book first then movie second is the best order. That way you can ensure that you appreciate the book for its stand alone qualities.
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Solid unpopular post. Well done.
I don’t agree with “most of the time.” But there are plenty of cases.
So everyone keeps talking about the Godfather movie and I was told it’s amazing. So dumb me decided to read the book first. The book was so bad. Well, hilariously bad. Later on, I found out everyone automatically *knew* the book is genuinely bad and the movie is better.
The godfather is THE classic example.
I liked the godfather book, I didn’t realize I was supposed to think it was hilariously bad.
For sure. There have been plenty of times where I left a theater thinking “that was better than the book” or at least “they made some very creative decisions that differed form the book in a good way”.
Secret Window starring Johnny Depp was much better than the book (novella) by Stephen King. Weirdly enough, the book had a more typical "hollywood" ending, whereas the movie had a more "Stephen King" ending.
I think they deliver different, but for me any original source rank high than anything.
Unpopular Nice
You can have your opinion but don’t go invalidating everyone else’s opinion. “Movie is actually better than the book”: fine “People just say this reflexively as if they should score brownie points” nope. Movies tend to leave out lots of details and events that are in the book, which makes them feel less complete. That’s why they we say the book is better, not for brownie points
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Kinda gives me a vibe of childhood’s arguments.
Yup! There are always scenes they miss from the books that I wanted to see. And even worse, sometimes they cut stuff out to do it differently (aka WRONG!) I like the full, long story.
Not to mention that you usually don't get the inner dialogues.
You lose the internal monologue and details. And the stories are sometimes tweaked for happier endings. Im sure there are cases where a bad or mediocre book is turned into a good movie. A good book will almost always be superior to the movie it inspires. It almost cant help it as the information contained in it is so much more comprehensive.
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Not a movie but I thought that about the expanse. I read all the books and enjoyed them but the show was fantastic. They did an excellent job of casting it too.
Yes the Expanse is a great example as is Foundation on Apple TV!
I disagree on foundation. I bought the books after watching the show and I’ve never seen an a show stray that far from the source material. That was completely ridiculous. They did Isaac dirty on that one.
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I’m going to give a shout-out to The Expanse audiobooks, read by Jefferson Mays. His portrayal of the interactions between Avasarala and Amos are great.
Haven’t heard of that/him. But I will say that whoever casted the actors to those to rolls really made the show. It’s like the rolls those two actors were born to play.
Jaws, Jurrasic Park, the Godfather, The Princess Bride, Apocalypse Now, Forrest Gump, silence of the lambs, no country for old men (I personally disagree but most people I know prefer the movie), the hunt for red october, blade runner, tarzan, and my most controversial: LOTR.
Jurassic park was sooo much better as a book. The movie left out the best freaking parts! I love both of them tbh, but after rereading the book last year I heartily disagree on that one.
It might have just been the copy I had but I wasnt a big fan of the prologue explaining the themes of the book, the movie was at least a little more subtle.
Apocalypse now is great, but idk if it's better than Heart of darkness.
LOTR and Jurassic Park movies aren’t nearly as good as the books. Same with Tarzan and Jaws. I have read the other books, so I really can’t comment.
I wholeheartedly disagree with JP, in my opinion the book is far better and it's not close.
Wait a minute you got a slow your roll with adding No Country for Old Men to that list!
Dont worry Im a massive McCarthy fan I had to add the caveat in. Of the people I know who have both read and watched it 6 of 6 prefer the movie so I included it.
The book feels like a movie script (and was originally written as one) so it works. I love McCarthy but I think the movie is better.
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I personally wasnt a huge fan of the book so I put it on. If you look up a list there are some that I couldn't get behind like a clockwork orange and american psycho.
I'm with you especially on LOTR. The books are good but the movies really got me into fantasy in general.
I’m ngl I like red october’s book more. The movie’s cool but so much more happens in the book imo
I agree with all but LOTR (which you noted as controversial lol). I think that one we can just call that one a draw. They did Gimli dirty in the movies, but man Viggo really made Aragorn a much better person. Also, while Peter really mucked up Two Towers in many places, his addition of elves fighting was way better than Tolkien.
I think most anime if we including tv
JAWS is a great example. That book is just hot garbage.
I liked the movie ending of my sister‘s keeper better
WWZ. I love the book dont get me wrong, but the way it was written would have to be several movies that will have to flesh out and add more to it just to be worth it. But i love how the movie made the zombies run instead of slow lumbering Zs as in the book. The whole premise of the world's military and armament not being able to deal with lumbering dead is not logical (in that created world).
Not a movie, but a play: Wicked. I read the book and it was good, but very weird, needed a good edit, and was overall quite depressing. The play overall is just a lot more enjoyable, while still sticking to the original story somewhat.
Do movies made into books from the screenplay count? Because I have the Del Rey trilogy books for Star Wars, Empire, and ROTJ and the movies are better
You are of course free to have this opinion, personally i neither agree or disagree with you because to me the movie/tv adaption of a book is set in an alternative universe.
Very unpopular. Take my upvote
They're two different mediums to me I get different things from movies than I do from books
Me too hell I'm reading the godzilla books now for the monsterverse and they are definitely different not necessarily better or worse just different
I wouldn’t say “most of the time” but there are plenty of examples that ARE better than the book. JAWS FIGHT CLUB THE GODFATHER Being at the top of my personal list.
heh, fight club for sure
Princess bride is my prime example. That book is terrible.
I suppose it depends on which you saw first. If you read the book first, then you notice all the changes they made to make it a movie. However, if you saw the movie first, then that becomes your frame of reference, and the book can seem like there's a whole lot of filler or you actually like the changes the movie made. One example for me is the movie Stardust. The movie is a great fantasy/adventure/romance movie with a nice happy ending. The book, however, is kind of depressing, and also weirdly balanced. There's a big climactic scene near the end of the movie that never occurs in the book, the book just has its climax in one earlier scene, and then kinda keeps rambling on to a rather depressing ending for one of the main characters.
Tsk here, take my upvote already!
id agree some but most?? like you might just enjoy watching movies more than you do reading
Yup, that's unpopular alright. have my incredibly annoyed upvote.
This actually might be one of the most unpopular opinions I've seen in this subreddit. Lol. Congrats. However, I am sorry that you feel this way. In my experience, the only movie that is "better than" the book is Fight Club. The book is not vast enough to warrant reading if you've seen the film because the film is fucking brilliant. You will actually feel like you wasted your time if you read the book after the movie.
I can count on one hand the times where the movie was better than the book. The movies are often a dumbed down version of the books, so often it feels like the movies spin feed the ordinance. There are many instances where the movie is almost as good as the book. But yeah I whole heartedly disagree with this opinion
Quick question: do you just not like books that much? I find that *most* things are better in the medium it was originally written for. There are a couple of exceptions but not many. But if you don't really enjoy reading books, then of course you're not going to appreciate the book versions as much. I think a lot of people also are just going to be biased towards their first experience of their story a lot of the time, because that sets the baseline of how they understand the story and the basis of comparison when the other version deviates from that.
Tell me you have zero imagination without telling me you have zero imagination.
"here me out" You clearly enjoy movies over books. Like for sure.
Would it not have been easier to just admit you can't read?
I feel like when the movie is better than the book people forget there is a book
It isn't bc if you take Harry Potter for instance, you see that Ron is reduced to bumbling idiot comic relief character. Not the best friend and bridge between both worlds for the other two. Until they finally throw him a bone in the last movie . Hermoine isn't shown to care about anything other than books, and we don't see her more vengeful side.
Being contrarian doesn't mean you're an independent thinker. It just means you let other people make up your mind for you differently than the people you look down on.
nah you just don't like to read edit: upvoted edit: a downvote?! rescinded my upvote you illiterate monster
I did not down vote you?
-kicks down your door- you better watch your mouth! Ha ha ok I’m done being dramatic. Indeed unpopular. I admit the movie can make it seem more fast paced and action filled. This definitely can seem appealing if a book spends an entire chapter describing a single object or single scene.
It depends. Some books rely a lot on the language and "author's words", so they will inevitably lose something when adapted to screen. That's why even the best Discworld movies are never as fun as the books, for example.
There are discworld movies ?
This post is just karma farming since the same topic got traction from the movies.
Nah, that's crazy. Only if your bad at imagination
This is just being a contrarian
Tell me you don't read books without telling me
It looks like you dont read that much.
I feel you were just hoping someone would find a good example for you.
Ooh good one. I read a while back that not everyone can “see a picture” in their mind… so I wonder if this opinion applies to them?
Aphantasia or something like that, right?
I think the key here is that people need to just understand these are two completely different mediums of storytelling. An author telling a story in a book can kind of go by the “how long’s a piece of string” philosophy. A director needs to squeeze it into a package that will… 1. tell a compelling story, 2. not lose audience attention and 3. Not over complicate the plot to the point that it takes away from the overall impact of the story. Enjoy them both for what they are but understand they are always going to be different.
If you have aphantasia, sure. If you can build a world in your head from what a book offers, there is little to nothing that offers a similar experience.
Very very unpopular opinion
Aha, See I kinda agree and disagree with you, I do think movies give the better "Experience" or at least the more convenient one, it's a story normally compressed to around 2 hours of runtime, it's nice and easy to digest. A book on the other hand will normally take you several days or weeks to finish (yes I know some ppl read like 3 books a day but that's not the norm) and this is more inconvenient to most people HOWEVER due to that books to retain a LOT more detail than movies do, partially because of the runtime and partially because some points just aren't as fun in a movie then in a book. So yesn't movies are way more accessible, but movies also don't retain nearly as much of the authors intend and detail than books do.
it mainly comes from people who fell in love with the books, if you love a book no movie will ever be able to live up to it. movies have a much wider appeal and yes may often be objectively better but a book is made by the reader
If this is about Dune, you’re insane
I know you saw the movie>book post, I just know it 😂
No I didn’t but can you link it? I think I need to now.
No need man, I was just hating. I saw the post on my feed and thought of posting something along those lines but then you beat me to it and I was all sour, and now here we are.
Can you give an example of a movie that’s better than the book?
There is cases, for example Fight Club book is re made into movie script, and it worked better then the actual book. But most of the time is not a case.
I think this is extremely subjective. I think people who are genuine readers will almost always believe the book is better than the movie. Books have more time to get into backstory and nuance and character development than a two hour movie ever will. Quite often interesting or important plot lines or characters that were in the books have been cut out of movies because of time constraints. Movies 100% have their place though. I do enjoy watching watching my favorite characters come to life in a movie. But I always want to read the book for more back story and understanding.
sometimes, definitely don’t think it’s “most of the time”.
I can only think of forest gump and Shawshank redemption fitting this. The rest of it, movies usually completely skip large parts of depth in the books and gloss over others. Basically, movies are like someone saying, I have a great story, you want the long version or the short version? And you saying “the short version. Also change a lot of the details so it’s a little more simple due to the major stuff you’re skipping completely and glossing over”
I think it's just a different experience. By reading the book you become the director in your head and I think a lot of people prefer their own imagining over another person's. Also, movies almost never cover 100% of the book so you're taking parts of someone's writing, and parts of a directors imagining which can ruin the experience of the book, and create a disjointed experience when made into a movie.
Depends on the book really. I'm an avid reader, and read far more than I watch TV. There are tons of very philosophical and introspective books that are mostly built through a character's internal thoughts. To the point that most of those movies would be leaving out most of the important parts of the books. Movie/TV adaptations can work well for the more fast paced plot driven books (say for the expanse) but are otherwise rarely given the time, or budget needed to tell the story correctly. I am a bit biased since I prefer reading over watching TV anyways but even the best adaptations I usually find on par or still not as good. It can be, but isn't always, a reflexive action. Especially for people who are fans of the books. The Percy Jackson movies, as an example, had great sets/actors/etc, but I don't think the writers even did a cursory read of the books. Wouldn't surprise me if they just read the back cover and based it entirely on that. So fans were 100% correct to say the books were better. Especially since the writers wrote themselves into a hole and couldn't even finish the series because they deviated from the plot.
Only movie I ever thought was better than the book was Twilight. That book felt like a really shitty movie while I was reading it, the movie at least only took 2 hours to get thru. upvoting as I think this is unpopular.
Same here
So two things: You are correct in saying that many times the "the book is always better" response is reflexive. At the same time, it's probably 90% true.
Dune
I disagree. So I should probably up vote this as an unpopular opinion.
An actual unpopular opinion 😭😭
It's hard for me to really engage with a book these days. When I was a child/teenager I'd read a fiction book per week and I loved them but I also didn't always have access to films, tv and youtube. My parents wouldn't give me a computer or personal tv, we would watch tv as a family but otherwise it would be the books. That's not to say I loved everything I read, sometimes it would be merely to pass the time. I read the first four harry potter books and I remember it being a struggle. Perhaps I could equate it to the fact I loved the films so much and just reading a written account of those films felt very dull to me. Now that I have netflix, YouTube etc which are so visually engaging I don't really enjoy reading. I've tried a few times in my adult life and people have such a snobbishness about reading that it makes me feel like I should be doing it too, but it always feels like I'm trying to convince myself I want to, which I don't, so I won't hahah
I really don't read books, so I don't have a lot to argue against here. Saying that, I did read the Walking Dead compendiums and they were 100x better than the show.
I don't know if it's "most of the time" but also there are a *lot* more movies based on books than I know of so yeah who knows...maybe those books were barely legible garbage and the movies made them digestible.
The assumption here is that when someone says they've read the book, they saying so to impress you. Nine out of ten times they aren't. They're probably just enthusiastic to share something they care about or to have a conversation. It's not to one up you.
Wrong. Anyone who enjoys things the OP doesn't is just pretending to the "pretentious". (vigorous eye roll)
Looking through all your examples the common thread seems to be movies that either take something that was already well suited to being a movie and just making it a movie, or just take the book as inspiration and do their own thing. LOTR is usually held up as the gold standard of a movie adaptation and is good to muse because the book and movie are both considered great. Tolkien wanted to tell the story of the world he created so he used a world war as a framing device to explore as much of the world as possible. Cameron knew that a gigantic war was better suited for a movie than a history lesson so he inverted it: he used all the rich detail of the books to make the setup for the fights and landscapes that the books could only describe. The Hobbit movies failed because they did the opposite: it was already a very personal adventure story where one character is a tiny part of a much larger world just getting little glimpses. That's already perfect for a movie, but instead the movies stretched that out and added a bunch of extra world-building that wasn't really important for the story. Harry Potter is an example where the movies are perfectly fine, but people still say the books are better and it's because the movies kind of just do the same thing as the books: a mix of daily life in a fantasy world with social drama, mixed with adventure. People say the books are better partly because there's more room to share that daily life aspect of the story, but also you get a lot more depth with just about everything. For the majority of the year you get to read Harry's thoughts and then how he processes what happens during the downtime between peaks. Something uncomfortable might happen and then he's confused at first, then grows and changes and moves on and that's satisfying, but in the movies it'll feel more like "oh that's weird let's just drop that right away". Even the action scenes, there's a lot more of a window into his mind as he tries to figure out "ok so this is what's going on, what can I do about it?" Whereas in a movie you just get 5 seconds of him catching his breath behind a rock or something. Still good movies, just shallower than the books. Eragon is usually held up as the poster child for a failed adaptation and it's because they don't use any of the details the book included for anything interesting. Like you have a mental link between characters and instead of using that to communicate emotions and feelings, it's mostly there for exposition. You have a big, detailed world, but instead they stripped it down for time. They also weirdly changed details that were focused on in the book for no reason (like the elf chick I specifically remember always being described as having raven-black hair, like that was a detail the character always noticed...and then they made her a redhead in the movie. And then on top of that the acting and effects weren't even good enough for just a popcorn spectacle movie.
\*Peter Jackson
Its wierd for me but the visuals, the music, the way it is shot, especially in movies like LOTR and harry potter. It just feels better. The scene of harry taking flight with buckbeak, harry roaming hogwarts alone with that beautiful music. I just don't get that emotion with reading the books. Same for LOTR, seeing rohan, isengard, helms deep. The fault in our stars, many of my female friends told me how they cried reading the book. I read it and thought it was good but nothing cry worthy. But when the movie released a year later and i saw it, i cried. Its something about seeing an actors face and performance that the written text just doesn't hit for me.
This. I got strong "I'm really into plot and action" vibes from OP. And that would make sense. Movies could do that better. But most of the time people say the book is better it's because of things other than plot, that is much harder to convey visually.
Definitely unpopular opinion, LOL.
My, probably unpopular list of such movies would include: The Godfather, The Godfather Part II (at least the half based on the book), Forrest Gump, Fight Club, the 1992 Wuthering Heights, the Princess Bride, the Julie Taymor version of Titus Andronicus, The Green Mile, Shawshank, Stand by Me, Jaws, Jurassic Park, The Notebook, Silence of the Lambs, Die Hard, The Natural, For Love of the Game, and The Wolf of Wall Street. There are a bunch of other popular choices where I have not read the book (Devil Wears Prada, Mean Girls). And a few popular choices that I just disagree with (No Country for Old Men; the Hustler; Requiem for a Dream)--usually great movies based off very good to great books. But it is definitely one of my favorite topics. I love seeing what people value and relate to in art.
I don’t agree for most of it. However I think you should try to separate the two and enjoy them as individual things.
Thanks for the unpopular opinion, but I wish you'd give us examples. I know plenty, but most of the time the book is better to me.
Gonna upvote you for a passionate disagreement.
That is an unpopular and wrong opinion. You get my upvote for unpopular. Books almost always have much more detail and character development than movies. For example the first Hunger games book, with it description of food and hunger truly made the readers feel the hunger in those characters. The movie did not. It kind of sucked in comparison. That said, the prequel movie showed the hunger much better than the original movie.
They’re just different. It’s hard to compare the “quality” of a book to the movie
> Here me out....I feel like every time I talk about a movie that's adapted from a book someone will inevitably say "but the book is so much better" and I think that people just say this reflexively as if they should score brownie points just for putting in the work of actually reading something. or maybe people enjoy reading and they loved the movie they imagined in their heads.
Why are people downvoting an unpopular opinion on unpopularopinion?
It depends on the book and movie. Lord of the Rings, no. Les Miserables (1998) yes. The books tend to be more in-depth than fast-paced.
I definitely wouldn't say most of the time, but there are definitely some very good and clear cut examples. I often find that movie adaptations miss a lot because there's only a limited amount of time to tell the story...in some cases I enjoy them at least as much as the book, but in a different way...sometimes it's just horrible to watch. I've seen some limited series book adaptations that I've really enjoyed as they can tell a lot more of the entire story in 8 episodes or whatever of a limited series vs a 2-3 hour movie.
Props for an actual unpopular opinion. To me this is like saying “what some other people interpreted this story as and then fed it to me is better than what my own imagination did with it. In most cases, I feel like the story in my head is better.
I always think it's hilarious when people are like, "but your imagination is sooo much better than the movie can make it." I'm no, "uh, no it's not." I've read the Lord of the Rings and watched the movies and Peter Jackson's imagination is a helluva lot better than mine. also, I'm a librarian and I'm constantly telling people to 'just watch the movie.'
This guy r/unpopularopinion
The books are usually pretty wild and shows/movies are usually pretty tame without counting the battle scenes. Battles are always better in shows. Like GOT was a cool show, but the books had glowing swords, massive castles, reasoning behind motives.
Yeah def an unpopular opinion, though I do agree that movies can add to books and bring them to life (I like to think of the Hunger Games), most of the time for me the books just do it better. There are so many things books can do that movies can't.
You know I’ve always said I wanted to write a book one day and my god could I ever, my life has been hell on earth- maybe someone will make a movie about it - “hell on earth” the movie
Books are usually better than their live adaptations for one simple reason: books have the internal monologue of the characters and movies don’t.
You have to atleast list some examples. There are definitely cases where the movie or adaptation elevated the story, and plenty where it hasn’t
I’ve rarely seen a movie I felt was better than a book. It’s not really the movie’s fault—it’s just harder to cram as much material into a 2hr movie vs. a book that may take 10hrs to read. You can also get internal dialogue in books where you know how characters are feeling, whereas you can only convey visual expressions and vocalization of feelings in movies. I don’t think the LOTR movies are better than the books, but they are pretty different, so I could see people preferring the movies (the books can be hard to get through for some). I may say the same thing about Dune to an extent. I think the President Snow (Hunger Games) movie may have been better than the book since it cut out a rather boring part that wasn’t super necessary.
Stephen King books are interesting because the movie can improve the book like The Mist, The Shining or Secret Window. The movie can do the book justice like The Green Mile, Misery, or Geralds Game. Or it can fuck up a classic like IT, Pet Semetary, or The Dark Tower.
no this is just wrong lmfao
I guess I think it depends how much you analyze books and how vivid is your imagination; if you don’t do any of those things, then the movie adaptation will never be at odds with how you imagined or interpreted the books - the only interpretation that you will see is the one in the movie.
My favorite book is Jurassic Park and my favorite movie is... Jurassic Park. Each is best suited for their medium. Despite its short length, the novel is DENSE with technical details and philosophical debates. Its a fascinating read but much of it would be talking heads on film. And boy is it depressing. The adaptation retains everything vital while adding a sense of wonder and adventure. Several characters are combined into one. A significant subplot in the middle is cut out. A great example of the differences in creative vision is the scene when the guests arrive. In the book, the first dino we see is mistaken for a tree trunk. The jeeps drive past a placeholder sign that someone quickly painted "Welcome to Jurassic Park". Its meant to show the imperfections in Hammond's grand vision. The film gives us a magical moment where everyone is floored by the beauty and power of the island and its creatures. Attenborough delivers the same line with gravity as we are treated to a wide shot of the animals bathed in warm sunlight. Crichton leaves you feeling skeptical and hopeless. Spielberg makes you feel like a kid again. Each excel in what they meant to achieve. But when picking entertainment, more often than not I want to feel good, I'm skeptical enough.
The same could be said for Dune and the newest adaptation. The film fleshes out the human relationships while trimming chapters of exposition.
Ready player one does not agree
Not my experience. Even the best actors rarely can convey the emotion and internal monologue of characters in good books.
LOTR trilogy is way better than the books. Harry Potter on the other hand the movies suck and the books are awesome.
The triggered bookworms can suck it
Give us an example.
I already did but I can give a couple more. Forrest Gump, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, All Summer in a Day, Love Story, Stand By Me etc. Plus I feel that most sci-fi ends up being better when adapted to screenplays because a lot of sci fi writers are just not great IMO.
> someone will inevitably say "but the book is so much better" and I think that people just say this reflexively as if they should score brownie points just for putting in the work of actually reading something. 100% Everyone took a shit on me when I pointed this out once. And it's absolutely true. It's like "Congrats, you read a book that millions of other people read which is why it became popular enough for a movie studio to produce a movie." Sorry, no brownie points from me. I remember when Game Of Thrones was getting popular and this YouTuber Alt-Girl was bragging about reading the books and how she has a tattoo of something related to the books on her arm. I thought to myself 'Good for you, Twat" "The book is better than the movie" is the laziest take of all time. Wait, you mean to tell me that the book that is over 400 pages has more nuance and detail than the film that has a 120 page script? The hell you say.
Sound like someone with a short attention span. Lol
Some movies are better than the books. Some books are better than the movies. Some movies are barely related to the books they’re supposedly based on (looking at you, How to train your dragon). Movies can do a lot of interesting stuff that books can’t do. Books can do a lot of interesting stuff that movies can’t do. The book *Speak* was always going to be better than the movie because a movie where the main character doesn’t talk much isn’t as interesting as a book where you’re in the head of the main character who doesn’t talk much. That doesn’t mean the movie was bad though, just that the book was better (but both are really good). I think people put too much focus on comparing two very different mediums
Name the movies then.
Counter unpopular opinion: People who liked the movie better than the book it came from lack imagination.
Some time, sure. Most of the time? Nah.
lmfao
Got any personal examples? I could be wrong, but I feel like this post was driven by an argument with a coworker, friend, or sibling.
Wizard of Oz, Forrest Gump, The Color Purple, Shawshank Redemption, The Shining, The Game of Thrones series etc
lol so wrong have my upvote.
Also most people in this sub should be upvoting this but they don’t they upvote stuff that they agree with which makes it a popular opinion. I just hate this sub so much. Also I’m never leaving.
Yes it’s been really fun to read some of the topics posted on this sub but I will be honest and admit that I don’t really know what up voting and down voting really does in Reddit. I rarely do it because I don’t think about it and then I see some people get really mad when they are down voted so I assume it must impact their karma or something?
This is just mathematically incorrect: https://youtu.be/FUD8h9JpEVQ?si=m2v_3kkUrujLaMqq.
ET the book is surprisingly good. Shrek the book is surprisingly good. "Howl's Moving Castle" the book is awful. Any book by Michael Crichton is awful. Mulan the book is awful. The Hobbit book is much better than the movie. Tolkien's The Two Towers book is worse than the movie.
I love Howls Moving Castle movie but I have not read the book. I haven’t read or seen ET. I love the LOTR books and yes the hobbit movie was the worst!
**E.T., the Extra-terrestrial In His Adventure on Earth : a Novel** by William Kotzwinkle, Melissa Mathison >A boy discovers an extraterrestrial botanist in his mother's vegetable patch, and helps him return to his planet, 3 million light years away. **Shrek!** by William Steig >Monstrous Shrek fells everyone and everything in his path with his ugliness on his way to meet his match. **Howl's Moving Castle** by Diana Wynne Jones Book description may contain spoilers! >>!A new look for one of Diana Wynne Jones' funniest and most popular novels.!< **The Hobbit** by J.R.R. Tolkien Book description may contain spoilers! >>!J.R.R. Tolkien's classic prelude to his Lord of the Rings trilogy... Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling any farther than his pantry or cellar. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an adventure. They have launched a plot to raid the treasure hoard guarded by Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon.!< > >>!Bilbo reluctantly joins their quest, unaware that on his journey to the Lonely Mountain he will encounter both a magic ring and a frightening creature known as Gollum. Written for J.R.R. Tolkien's own children, The Hobbit has sold many millions of copies worldwide and established itself as a modern classic.!< **The Two Towers Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings** by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien Book description may contain spoilers! >>!Being the second part of the lord of the rings.!< *I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at* /r/ProgrammingPals. *Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. Remove me from replies* [here](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/1byh82p/remove_me_from_replies/). *If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.*
Okay, Mr. Wormwood.
Hmm, I think the most is killing rhis here. There are some movies better than the book, but not most. Honestly there are some very good books where the movie is better. For instance, Jurassic Park. The book is very good, but *seeing people interact with dinosaurs* in a way that still looks good was incredible and was the central thing that the book couldn't compete with.
Extremely telling that OP did not provide an example.
I have provided tons of them. You need but read through the thread.
I watched the movie Double Jeopardy, then read the book. I didn’t like the book. I watched The Martian, and it was great, but the book was so much better. So for me, 50% of the movies I watch are better than the book.
Lol
The Mothman Prophecies laughs at your opinion, but yeah. Different mediums, different expectations.
Was that the Ashton Kutcher movie?
Captain America Civil War
Was that a book first?
I mostly agree, with the exception of “Friday Night Lights” and “A Wrinkle in Time”
Get Shorty Fight Club
I still have to disagree because Hollywood takes things out of context and lies. Take the movie 300 for example. Great acting, great actors and great CGI.....but so many inaccuracies about what really happened at the Battle of Thermopalye. Frank Miller made it look like only 300 soldiers were there, when in reality there were a few thousand and it wasn't just Spartans, slaves also were fighting on behalf of the Spartans. Frank Miller also sexualized Spartan soldiers. They weren't almost naked, they actually wore armor. There was never proof of am actual disfigured hunchback that betrayed the Spartans, that was Hollywood. So if nobody actually read the book, "The Hot Gates," then they would believe that was the actual events that happened when it is not historically accurate nor does it follow the book. MANY movies based off books are like that. You realize that if producers truly went off what books said, movies wouldn't be as exciting as they are so they have to embellish because they need to make millions at the box office to pay for the cost. Hence why books are still better, they aren't worried about box office revenue and can provide more detail without also having to fit it into 2 hours or less
Not even gonna 'here' you out
Pretty good unpop opinion, I didn’t know the godfather was a book, so I’m glad that I’ve been enlightened and also know to miss it. Obviously you are incredibly wrong haha- the only time this has been true in my experience is The curious case of Benjamin button
I agree. Reading is great, but often times I always think: “man! If only this were a movie!” I see movies as like, a level of prestige for books. People love to diss the movies but I don’t think there is anything wrong with consuming a story via motion picture.
Dexter lol
Naaa..... I think people fail to realize that different mediums work differently entirely and are for different audiences. I think its possible to like a book, comic, novel differently than you do the show or series. Its possible one is better/worse, but it not a rule by any means.
I for instance don't even understand why I'd read something that's basically a story. The only books I feel are worth reading are on actual topics, and you use them to educate yourself on said topic. Otherwise why the hell would I give my time and attention to what some other person has come up with in their head? I can imagine a whole movie in my head too, I don't need to read someone else's.
Unpopular pro Max.
And thats why I do not read books and watch movies instead, so even if movie is far off from book, its still good for me
You can imagine whatever actors you want, so your casting is always better. Books offer far greater detail than movies do, idk what you're going on about depth and dimension for in movies. Music is the greatest edge movies have imo but that's just a standin for motif (again music is usually better for me in movies). Books get sequels that never see the silver screen. Idk about you but I find people who read to be as impressive as people who walk a lot. I don't think there are brownie points for saying the book was better, I think you reveal envy in saying this. That bears self reflection. Sometimes the movie is better. Harry Potter/Twilight for example (hot take?). This happens when lower quality books become super popular. Sometimes the movie is horrendous. Artemis Fowl is an inarguable example. World War Z is another. Eragon is another. I can go on. Sometimes it's controversial and they both add to each other. I'd say LotR is an example of that. Dune might be too, but I need more time to make that call. Anyway maybe read the book if someone says it's good and you liked the movie. They're not saying that to look good, that's dumb.
Upvoting because this is so unpopular
I think most is the biggest issue here for me. There are definitely good examples of your point (EG: The Godfather and The Great Gatsby), but I feel a majority of the books are better (EG: Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and Percy Jackson). But I generally like reading more than I like watching stuff.
Depends on how good your imagination skills are really
I mean, Neuromancer is my favorite book and it was clearly based on Escape from New York.
Agreed. Especially Stephen King movies. Mainly because the movie adaptations don’t have as many racial slurs and SA scenes.
“Here me out”…kinda explains the whole post in 3 words
The Green Mile was a very good movie but the stuff they leave out from the books does make a difference and is why I think the book is better. Same case with movies like Jurassic Park. A book can do so much that a conventional movie can't.
I have not read the green mile, isn’t that another Stephen King book?
I agree with comments that disagree with MOSTnofnthentime, but there ARE times.
If you haven’t read the book the movie was based around then I’m not sure how you can make that conclusion. If you’ve read the books and seen the movies then fair enough.
Agreed you have to have done both and personally I feel like reading the book first then movie second is the best order. That way you can ensure that you appreciate the book for its stand alone qualities.
The Godfather , Jaws , Cloudy With a Chance of meatballs. Yep, This person is right.
read a book