can anyone think of an instance where the movie was better than the book?

 

The "Starship Troopers" movie was better than the novel. The novel was so packed with that bizarre futuro-rightwing ideology, it often felt like Heinlein was trying to teach the reader, instead of telling a sci-fi action story.

Maybe I'll come up with some other examples later.

 

That one witch craft movie with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. I don't remember the title, but the movie was a lot better than the book.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by CBeyond
[B]The "Starship Troopers" movie was better than the novel.

 

I don't like Heinlein quite frankly. His novels seem generally childish, and not very substantive. I also read "The Puppetmasters" and I would have to say the movie was better than the novel in that case also. I started reading "Stranger in a Strange Land" once, but I put it down because the writing style was annoying me so much. It was packed full of odd 1960's-era "hep-dialogue," even though the story was set far in the future. It just felt very dated to me.

Also, I get sick of Heinlein's pontificating and lecturing of the reader. Starship Troopers is filled with this stuff. It's quaint at best, and extremely annoying on most occasions. I don't think "Starship Troopers" warranted any great authoritative source-faithful motion picture. There just wasn't enough there that was worth preserving. At least by turning it into a pure action film, Verhoeven ensured that the audience would stay awake.

 

my vote is for the Wizard of Oz......... :-)

 

Scott Orson Cards version of "The Abyss" packed a bit more than the film in to it.

Most books of films are not the final version of the films and have bits that didn't make it in to the final print (e.g. Alan Dean Foster's "Alien").

I loved the book "Starship Troopers" when I was growing up (some of Heinlein's books are for kids and I love his conversational style of writing, even if he is overly sentimental). The film was a travesty. Granted Denise Richards is totally lickable from head to toe but they didn't have enough of a budget to do the troopers suits or the arachnids and their tunnels properly. The bad guys were shown as viscous, dumb animals not as an equally intelligent alien enemy.


Typical Hollywood, take the title of a book and a few general ideas and then F**k it up. They seem to have given up on trying to convey ideas and just hope that flashy visuals will distract the majority of the audience. (Phillip K. Dick adaptions anyone? "Blade Runner - Do androids dream of electronic sheep?" excepted).

 

Are you talking about movies based on books? Jurassic Park. The story as told by the book wasn't anything special - but the movie as a spectacle was amazing. Story was still somewhat limp, but that's okay. These days, I get the feeling that Crichton simply writes books in the hopes that they'll get turned into movies, and specifically structures them along the lines of screenplays.

 

Jaws

 

I personally liked the movie version of Starship Troopers over the book.