UKC

Personally, (where books have been adapted for film) I find the book always better than the film. But then it depends on whether I've read the book first..... As an example, I've never read 'No Country for Old Men' but what a great film. It makes me wonder if I'd find the book a disappointment. Usually it's the other way around.

How about the many headed here? I'd love to see a Coen Brothers grown up version of Huckleberry Finn. I think they might just do justice to the book.

Lots of nondescript books that don't catch global attention, get optioned via recommendations from studio readers, maybe just for a single aspect, and turned into good films where a lot of folk don't realise there was an original book, because the book wasn't famous. 

Specific example that comes to mind. Fallen Angel, by William Hjortsberg. It became the 1987 Alan Parker film Angel Heart, which was somewhat silly with its hammy De Niro "Louis Cyphre" character but also incredibly atmospheric and one of the few films in the horror/thriller genre that actually is a bit scary. The novel is lurid pulpy prose with lasy dialogue etc but one strong central idea. 

This happens LOADS. 

Full Metal Jacket is based on The Short Timers. I doubt many folk have read the book but it's worth a read (if you can find a copy). It's a fair bit darker with a different storyline.

Don't ever read the Godfather - unless you have a particular interest in gynaecology (come to think of it, you may do...🤔)

It's dreadful.

I don't usually think of one as better than the other because they're so different it's difficult to compare. 

Example of a book and film that were equally brilliant: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Sometimes what works in a book doesn't work on film and visa versa.

I've read Lord of the Rings several times but still found that Peter Jackson added to it with the characterisation of Gollum. Where as The Hobbit as a film was stratched too thin, like butter scraped over too much bread

In reply 

The reason for the musing partly was I just finished reading Robert Harris' Conclave. It's by no means a classic, but it is very readable. Somebody I recommended it to instantly went off and watched the film online. I've not seen it myself but I did wonder quite how the nuance and detail would come over in a film. I suppose I'll have to give it a go. 
 

Depends on which is better, obviously, but generally it's the books for me.

Also depends on how close it follows the source material. Jackson's LotR trilogy? Really, really bad* in all its battle scenes and acting, but at the very least it generally follows the books' plot.

* JRRT served as a soldier in WWI after all, and knew quite a bit about logistics and order of battle. Peter Jackson wouldn't know army logistics if it had bitten him in the arse, and battle scenes were always only a visual spectacle for him, the totally unrealistic icing on the cake.

Though some books can have really good plots, but their author is a terrible writer or really, really unlucky with translators. Consider Mick Herron's Slough House novels – the Slow Horses TV series is hundred times better than the books, whose English editions are frankly painful to read.

The same with Jussi Adler-Olsen's Dept. Q book series. The writer's or translator's style is mediocre at best, yet both the Scandi film adaptations (and the British TV series, apparently) were great.

(I'am giving both of the authors above a benefit of doubt, since plenty of books get totally mangled by inept English translators)

Still,  there are a few films where the director elevated the source material above or away from the book source, thus creating a masterpiece on its own. Think Stanisław Lem's Solaris or Strugatskys' Stalker (Picnic by the road). Both books are really, really great, yet Tarkovsky's films of them stand on their own as equally great, even though they deviated from the sources considerably.

Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code' is a better read in the French translation. But probably an exception 

One of my favourite films.  

The acting and cinematography are so brilliant that I'm not sure that my brain would be good enough to create an improvement.  Same with Shawshank, another film favourite. 

Ive read neither book.

I've read NCFOM.  I finished it because I'm stubborn like that, but can't recommend you do anything other than avoid it.

Of course, that might just be me.  The recommendation given about avoiding the book The Godfather is a good one too; terribly dated, gushing prose that does its best to obscure the storyline.  The film hits it for six; by comparison, the book hits a few singles and then gets itself run out.

I found Catch-22 unreadable, but then again I found the film not worth the time it took to watch it either.

T.

I can be positive about things but not these three books 

Hah, really? Though that's not really a high bar to cross, given how Brown's prose being the equivalent to a midnight burnt sausage at some dubious joint outside of the clubs. I can see how any half‑competent translation might actually improve it...

The film is at least as good as the book, possibly better.

Sometimes the source 'book' is just a little scrap of a short story - thinking here of various adaptations of Philip K Dick stories originally published in 'pulp' magazines. 

I'm not sure whether Total Recall counts as a masterpiece exactly, fun though (the original, not the remake).  Cinematic masterpiece or no, I really enjoyed The Adjustment Bureau.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was at least a full length novel - Blade Runner is not what you'd call a faithful adaptation exactly.

Cormac McCarthy was a superb writer but not everyone gets on with his style. I thought NCfOM was a very good film but not one of McCarthy's better books.

I think LotR needed and deserved a more subtle/cerebral director than Jackson. The first film was a decent stab at the book but I found the rest pretty much unwatchable. The less said about The Hobbit, the better.

What about the ones where both are good? Or at least decent?

I thought Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas worked pretty well in both formats.

I'll need to have a think for any others.

I agree, the subjectivity in books seldom resemble that of film makers. But, if and when they do coincide, both book and film can be re-read and re-watched several times over with little subjective loss, I find.

Personally, I dislike reading a book after watching the film version because the cast characters and landscape depictions have already been handed to me on a plate - which, try as I might, can be almost impossible to reset in my own imagination. It's too easy and not as stimulating, a bit like having a work of art explained to you.

If you go back a way, Alistair MacLean wrote both the book and the screenplay for Where Eagles Dare at the same time.  Whether you think either of them are decent is up to you of course.

The Day of the Jackal was perhaps the best of Forsyth's books and a decent film too.

A number of Michael Crichton's books have been adapted and, to the detriment of many, read as though they were written with that front and centre of his mind. 

T.

Noone has really done justice to the Border Trilogy, or Blood Meridien. The Road was a decent stab in my view. 

I thought the book excellent although I took a while to get into it. The film is deeply flawed but has some good moments, the briefing by Orson Wells for example.

The problem for me was (spoiler alert) we know De Gaulle was not assassinated.

I thought the Odessa File was a better book and a much better film.

I read LotR trilogy as a teenager. It has never crossed my mind to watch a minute of the films. They were works of imagination. My imagination is probaby vastly different to Jackson's.

Have you seen Inglourious Basterds?

No, it's on my list.

Have you seen Once Upon a Time In Hollywood? 😃

In that case I won't spoil it for you, please disregard my last post.

I don't think I have, but I'm sure it's all scrupulously historically accurate.

Unfortunately, I have.

But a scrap of a short story by Dick stil contains more ideas than they can cram into a feature film! I love Blade Runner (The directors cut), but it's a very different beast to the book. I think the best films of books are where they don't try and recreate the book, because they're doomed to fail. It works best when they use the book as an idea to come up with something new. Apocalypse Now is another of my favourite films. There's not really any way to compare it to Heart of Darkness.

I absolutely hated NCFOM, despite being a big fan of the Coens. I thought it must be McCarthy I didn't like. Then I eventually got round to reading The Road and thought it was brilliant. Still not ready to try reading NCFOM though...

Skip straight to The Border Trilogy, I've read a lot of his books and I think the trilogy is head and shoulders above the rest.

Are you thinking of the same Mick Herron as me? Mick Herron is English, speaks English, I think he studied English Lit, and as far as I know his books have never been 'translated' into English. That aside, his books are way, way better than the tv program. They are nuanced, incredibly funny and the characters are so much deeper than the tv show, as you would expect. The writing is sublime. Saying that, I think the tv show is really good and probably as good an adaptation as you will get. The portayals of Cartwright Snr, Standish and Taverner are as close to the book as you could get.

I can't agree with your comments on Jussi Adler-Olsen. The books are incredibly well translated with all of the very subtle humour coming across well and the books are highly readable. The characters just jump to life. I haven't seen the tv adaptations of these but will definitely watch the one set in Edinburgh as it should be just different enough to, hopefully, seem like a new show.

I wouldn't mind putting the books into film but what I don't like was animation into live action. some of them are bad. 

I thought Last of the Mohicans was better as a film - the tidying of the story and juggling of who dies felt a little more narratively satisfying

I think LOTR worked as a film because of Tolkien's obsession with detail, don't use a sentence to describe a scene that can be stretched to a paragraph, or a paragraph for what could be extended to a full chapter.

Because of this you could cut an awful lot of length without detracting from the the story - a picture literally painting a thousand words. Also it meant that the book pretty much gave the directors a set and stage directions, allowing them recreate the scenes true to how I see them in my head (the drums in the Mines of Moira was no more/less terrifying in film than in text).

My main objection was the ending. 'and they all lived happily ever after' with pretty much no reference to the destruction of the Shire. It was also a real shame they cut Bombadil, although I accept that he isn't really needed for the story and would be very hard to portray without looking silly. 

Generally I'm very much of the view that the original book (almost) always beats the film (or TV) adaption.

I used to play a game with Da Vinchi Code: open a page at random and find the most cringeworthy quote. I should imagine any translation would struggle to make it worse.

Yeah missing out on the scouring of the shire was a shame.

I enjoyed The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings books but cannot stand the films.  I think it may be because in the books you can forget that these are stories about fantasy beings and just enjoy the adventure.  It's difficult to do this with the films as I simply cannot take seriously fairies and goblins etc.

Agree about Catch 22 being a great book and flawed but good film. The tv series (by George Clooney i think) was an abomination 

The way they end the 1947 film of Brighton Rock is superior to how the book finishes. The book could have had the same ending but it wouldn’t have been as effective as in the film.

I haven’t read Christopher Priest’s The Prestige but by many accounts, the final third of the film is very much changed from the novel (and I think Priest wasn’t happy about this). Some friends who have read it, say that the changes were an improvement. If it’s anything like the one Priest novel I have read (The Affirmation) I imagine it’s quite turgid! 

I was given to understand that the novel was never particularly well regarded insofar as “LITERATURE” is concerned. I haven’t read it. I find it notable that the 1992 Michael Mann shares the “based on” credit between Fenimore Cooper and the screenplay writers of the 1930s adaptation; presumably the latter made significant changes and Mann felt that these were improvements to the extent of using them significantly enough that he needed to credit that film. 

The film of Schindler's List is far more powerful than the book.

Interesting that you should mention the series was crap. I've seen neither the film or the series. I read the book sometime in the late 70's. It's a distant memory now. However, I generally find a drama series of a book pretty good on the whole. Obviously they're usually classics. But at least they don't have to précis a whole novel into a two hour film.