/lit/ - Literature

>>5353121
>Are there any movies that were better than the book

No

Life of brian

>>5353121
>Are there any movies that were better than the book

Yes

>>5353143

You must be retarded.

We have this thread semi-regularly. You might want to scan the archive (>>/lit/).).

The list I remember/contributed to:

Jaws
The Godfather
The Silence of the Lambs
Fight Club
American Psycho

>>5353143
that was a movie translated to a book...

>>5353148
what are they? Cause I can't think of one

>>5353150
Really, this happens often enough I'm tempted to just make a chart for reposting. Because we always post the same ones.

Anyway, some of my usual contributions to this thread:

The Tenant
Sansho the Baliff (a short story)
Blind Beast
The Face of Another
Floating Clouds
Kytice
Ashes and Diamonds
Heart of a Dog
Kwaidan
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
The Woman in the Dunes
The Cremator
Ugetsu
Closely Watched Trains
Marketa Lazarova

>>5353150
>The Godfather
>The Silence of the Lambs
>Fight Club
>American Psycho

No man you have to be a complete illiterate autistic man-child to think these are better movies than books

East of Eden.

>>5353150
>American Psycho
no

and this is coming from someone who, upon first seeing the film, thought it was the most amazing thing ever, and then, upon reading the book, watched the film again and could barely finish it given how flimsy and empty it was

>>5353121
Godfather
Jaws
The Shining
The Deadzone
Dead Ringers
Wild at Heart
Hard to be a God

All of Kubrick's adaptations (except for Lolita).

Gone with the wind

>>5353151
>Implying a book based on a movie must be better than the movie.
>Implying books are always better than a movie
>Implying ur deep

Much swag is headed your way

I absolutely hate film and television but I admit that Fight Club and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas surpass their source material. It's mostly because the directors significantly added to the works in a visual sense. Fight Club the film stands out because it makes dirt and grime beautiful. Fear and Loathing was able to capture the hilarity of watching someone trip while stoned and evoke the feeling of being stoned through cinematography and other techniques.

Also helps that Depp got to know Thompson for Fear and Loathing and got his character down.

Worth mentioning that both books are contemporary and contemporary literature isn't great.

You guys really need to branch out more in your reading.

There is more in the world than Kubrick and Fight Club.

The Exorcist
Howl's Moving Castle
Gone Baby Gone
2001

>>5353168
Nigga, you cant even articulate yourself properly.

>>5353169
Contemporary literature is wonderful. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is barely contemporary, being published over forty years ago.

Pop fiction, not so much.

>>5353121
1) Kubrick's The Shining
2) Anything the Coen brothers touch

>>5353154
I guess you never read The Godfather, Silence of the Lambs, Fight Club, nor American Psycho.

The Godfather (book) goes deep into Johnny Fontaine's life with an abusive wife. There's even a whole plotline where the chick Sonny bangs against the door in the beginning moves to Vegas to date Fontaine and tries to surgically make her vagina tighter. That's just one element that makes the book worse, but it's a pretty egregious one.

"Silence of the Lambs" is just poorly written. The prose is like Harris was lobotomized regularly while writing it. Same goes for Fight Club.

American Psycho is so cataloguey that actually having it all in text is banal. The full brunt of the satire doesn't really hit as hard as the movie does.

Try reading the books, bro.

>>5353169
>the movies had better visuals than the books


I can't even begin to explain how dumb you are

>>5353172
>The Exorcist

Oh, God, this. Blatty's book's prose will make you wish you were on drugs, just for the excitement alone.

>>5353178
>2) Anything the Coen brothers touch

By your logic O brother where art thou is better than the Odyssey

No

>>5353159
>could barely finish it given how flimsy and empty it was

Psst. It is flimsy and empty. That is the fucking point.

>>5353180
You're right about the first three but thinking that the movie of American Psycho is better than the book is actually so pleb and i don't even partake in that elitist bullshit but damn man come on have some self respect

of course it's cataloguey, some parts of the book ARE catalouges
and if you think it's banal i dunno i think you were the kind of person it was written for haha

seriously why do you think this i need more explanation

i don't even like that book that much

>>5353188
>that
>and the Ladykillers

definitely No County For Old Men

>>5353178
>Coen brothers

jeez louise do you people even watch films

>>5353193
>and if you think it's banal i dunno i think you were the kind of person it was written for haha

Is being retarded like being high all the time?

>>5353180
>muh prose
kill yourself

>>5353202
Why are you even on a literature board?

It's evident you don't even like literature.

>>5353181

Never wrote or implied that "the movies had better visuals than the books."

Do you suffer from dyslexia or do you need to me to further articulate a fairly simple point.

>>5353178
>>5353195

Cohen brothers are shit m8

>>5353200
not really, because we're not degenerates. go back to >>>/tv/

>>5353153
great films but have you really read all the original literature?

>>5353169
>surpass their source material
>because the directors significantly added to the works in a visual sense

>>5353207
>Never wrote or implied that "the movies had better visuals than the books.

Yes you did

>>5353201
i guess so are you the guy i was responding too? please explain why you didn't like the book more i am genuinely interested.

>>5353153
>all these Czech books/films

Why not include Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále while you're at it.

mimochodem, kytice je smetí

>>5353214
lol

>>5353212
I have, why? Obviously not all in the original languages, because I don't know that many.

>>5353207
uhhmm yes you did. That was the whole premise of your argument.

Dr. Strangelove

>>5353221
I don't read them in Czech, sorry anon. Most were published in English by Twisted Spoon Press, is how I know them.

And I just like Hrabal regardless. Was that one really better than the book? Haven't watched it yet.

>>5353214


You took everything I said out of context so I'll elaborate.

Fincher's adaptation of Fight Club contributed to the source material, and in my opinion surpassed it, because he used impressive visual queues to set a solid tone. The novel was all over the place with its tone, perhaps intentional because much of it takes place in Tyler's head, but it detracts from the overall piece.

Gilliam succeeded at invoking a feeling of paranoia and intoxication through clever cinematography effects. Thompson did something similar in his novel accept the reader did not actually feel stoned. Furthermore while Thompson's clever writing is hilarious through dialogue Gilliam was able to add to the hilarity through visual effects; see the scene where the hotel worker tells Depp he can't park in that spot.

>>5353242
why would you damage control on anon? just go back to >>>/tv/ and make game of thrones memes or whatever you manchildren do over there.

>>5353242
>You took everything I said out of context

No you said it just how it was interpreted by most people in this thread.

>>5353245


Not damage control. If you can't understand a simple point I'm happy to help. If you'd prefer to use ad homonym arguments that's fine too, it reaffirms your dyslexia.

>>5353253


Here's what the initial response said... "the movies had better visuals than the books."

That sentence makes no sense.

The point is that the visual techniques used by the directors strengthened the overall work.

>>5353231
Sorry to doubt you, it just seemed unlikely. You have very good taste, similar to mine. Which of the source materials are best in your opinion?

Drive

>>5353266
Nice! I study Japanese literature, but I've always been fond of Central/Eastern European lit too. Almost all my film-watching comes from books I've enjoyed.

I do think Ueda Akinari's Tales of Moonlight and Rain is better/on par with Mizoguchi's Ugetsu, I just forgot to remove it from my "good movies based on books" list I used to make that post. Kobo Abe's a fine writer too.

The Trial

>>5353294
Thanks for your insight. I have read Abe and agree that he is a fine writer, and really enjoyed how he and teshigahara collaborated on the literary and cinematic versions of a work.
and a rec to you for czech films, ivan passer is good but lighter fare than the things you listed. though I have a feeling you already are aware of him. If only there werent so many films to watch and books to read! :)

>>5353121
2001 Space Odyssey.
Though the book and screenplay were written at the same time, the book was published after the movie premiered.

Blade Runner

Has anyone mentioned Psycho? Or The Spy Who Came in from the Cold?

Forrest gump

>>5353143

apocalypse now was better than heart of darkness. i love the book and ive read it several times but come on, apocalypse now! its a shame no other conrad novels have had decent adaptations

>>5353162
has anyone actually read the short-timers? (the book full metal jacket was based on). it seems impossible to find on paper

Jules and Jim

Most of Kubrick's movies were adaptations of books, and with the exception of Lolita and maybe A Clockwork Orange all the films are better than the source material.

Solaris and Stalker

Inherent Vice (pepper your angus)

Drive

>>5353417
Yes. I've read it online. It never had an editor (you can tell because it has a lot of typos and misspellings), and yet it's still really good. So is the sequel, The Phantom Blooper, where Private Joker (he was briefly a Sergeant, but was demoted) gets captured by the Viet Cong and turned into one of them.

Books are very straightforward, very sincere, very brutal.

There are some differences between the first book and the movie, but I'd say they're about equal in quality. The book is significantly edgier (but in a serious way); before Pyle shoots the drill instructor, the drill instructors says, "Private Pyle, I'm proud--" *bang*. He was proud because turned Pyle into a killer. Also, Joker kills Cowboy: Cowboy is wounded in the field and there is sniper fire, and Joker kills him to stop anyone from trying to save him and getting killed. He doesn't recover the body, so he gets demoted back to private.

Nolando sama's Batman trilogy was better than the comics.

BRAVO NOLAN

>>5353524
Oh, also when the officer (a colonel or a general, I think) hassles Joker about having the peace sign on his helmet, Joker punches the officer in the gut and the officer shits himself and leaves. The officer doesn't say exactly what happens, but he puts Joker on the shit list for combat.

>>5353121

Mrs Doubtfire

>>5353487
>This page was intentionally left blank.
>This page was intentionally left blank.
>This page was intentionally left blank.
>This page was intentionally left blank.
>This page was intentionally left blank.
>I drive.

Jurassic Park

I thought the Watchmen movie was better than the graphic novel. I think the visual medium better told the story than the written, and there were little things on the side. Like the final attack being done by Dr Manhattan, as opposed to a giant space squid. I know the movie went a little too super hero, as opposed to costumed normals, but I think over all the movie wins out.

Fight Club

>>5353799
are you insane? i guess im one of the the few people that doesnt wish he could hate the movie to death, but saying its better than the graphic novel?

I enjoyed the film of The Thin Red Line more than the book.

James Jones is a great author though.

>>5353799

Agree.

Lord of the Rings

>>5353799

Ending of the movie was better.
The fake alien idea in the comic was stupid
also

comics aren't books

>>5353121
Blade Runner, although a very loose adaptation


Starship Troopers

A Clockwork Orange (Better than the american version it was based on)

Dr. Strangelove

Eyes Wide Shut (Schnitzler's Traumnovelle you pleb)

There are a few, but it's a complete moot point. It's two different art forms, and by proclaiming to be "adaptations" the movies are doing a disservice to themselves.

Literature is superior because it is more abstract, when reading a narrative text you are forced to fill in the inherent voids (cuz language, and onedimensional), whereas in movies you get all the data in very solid form: Visual, Audio. Now the "Adaptation" is in that twilight zone, where it has a big handicap: How can it compare to your experience with the book? It might interpret a character completely different than you imagined him when reading it, not only in terms of visuals etc, but also in the subtle things, the movements of the actor, the intonationa,... This applies to all different things in a movie adaptation, so you are bound to be disappointed by one thing or another.

If the same movie were to be made under a different title, it might even be perceived as a great movie (same applies to sequels)

The usual pleb critique of adaptations is that it's not "true to the source"; However, if you look at which ones are actually good, you will find that this is largely irrelevant; Even more so, most good "adaptations" remove themselves very far from the text.

>>5353121
James Bond

>>5354431
this

>>5353121
Stalker is most definitively better than than novel.

Also most good biographical movies are based on mediocre biographies.

>>5353530
>Nolando sama's Batman trilogy was better than the comics.


Man. Those must have been some really fucking shitty comics.

>>5353150
>American Psycho
>better than the book
>left out half the gory details

American Psycho

>>5353154
Even the author of fight club liked the movie better.

>>5353154
i only read one palahniuk's book and it was so shitty i don't find it hard to believe that fight club (film) was better than fight club (book)

>>5355026
I don't like Chuckie P but if someone turned my sonic x fluttershy slashfic into a movie I would be thrilled

>>5353161

Wild at heart was trash. David Lynch is the Tao Lin of film

>>5353150
>Fight Club

there is nothing better than reading 2 pages about how to make nitroglycerin, and then have the movie gloss over it in 2 seconds

Where the wild things are

do manga's count?

my vote is for dragonball z

>>5355200
>Dragon Ball Z
>Dragon Ball Z

Kid what the fuck.

>>5353121
>Are there any movies that were better than the book

Dances With Wolves. It was made literally because Costner's personal friends with the author who has otherwise retreated back into obscurity, and beyond the cringe of relocating the setting to where a particular helmet couldn't have been (and the author pleaded with the screenwriters to fix this), it's richer, more memorable, and generally better than the novel.

Who Censored Roger Rabbit? was cannibalized for a few character names and a semblance of a premise and otherwise pretty lousy as a book.

Almost every popular movie based on a Philip K. Dick property is pretty heavily retooled due to PKD's "plane ran out of fuel, nosediving to earth" tendency for ending novels/novellas (which is tragic because his short stories usually didn't suffer from this). The novels aren't terrible but once you've read enough of them you know he was allergic to planning for larger projects and did not give a fuck how they ended.

>>5353150
>The Silence of the Lambs

The novel is so unlike Harris' previous works in quality and readability that I'm generally convinced he didn't write it.

The movie is iconic, to be certain, but Demme didn't bring something to it that wasn't in the books or re-envision what it meant. It was a pretty straight adaptation, it just focused a lot more on fewer characters.

>>5353121
American Psycho.

>>5355437
Wrong

>>5355065
>Where the wild things are

> book: a fun child's power fantasy with Sendak's traditional dreamy return to reality
> movie: child stuck in a world of angst-riddled, retarded kidults

I fucking hope you're trolling

>>5353121
>Like all rules there has to be an exception

Is there an exception to that rule?

>>5354970
>American Psycho
The novel is tongue in cheek. The victims are all the characters from Ellis' contemporary shitty coming-of-age-in-1980s-Manhattan novels, the rhythm of banal-murder-banal-murder in every chapter can't be taken seriously, and for fucks sake the only interruption is an entire chapter devoted to proving the genius of Phil fucking Collins, which existed as the last ditch "This is a joke, idiots" in the book.

Naturally the film producers said "this won't sell as satire because our viewers didn't read those books, we'll play it as straight sociopath horror" which sold.

>>5353121
Blade Runner.

>>5355455
>the movie wasn't satirical

>>5353121
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is BTFO by Blade Runner

Blade Runner was better than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

>>5355455
>pure sociopath horror

It's about capitalism, stupid.

>>5353150
>american psycho
pls no

>>5355500
>>5355455
The movie was the most blandly, obviously and unsubtly "satirical" thing I've ever seen. I haven't read the whole book but based on the first 10 pages when I tried it's about as subtle too.

One of them must be better than the other, I guess, but who cares.

>>5353121
>Jurassic Park
>Fight Club
>Blade Runner

Off the top of my head, I'm sure there's plenty more.

Lord of the rings

>>5353121
Gorky Park

>>5353121
Yes. Pic related. The book was terrible, easily the worst shit I read in my life.
I picked the book because the movie was alright and I thought the book would be better. Bad mistake. I was young.

Children of Men

>>5353169
>I absolutely hate film and television
what have they done to you?

>>5353121
No way, I own that edition.

>>5354423
>(Better than the american version it was based on)
that last chapter really made the book. not that it wasn't good to begin with.

>>5353121
Yes.

Under the Skin

>blade runner
the only good thing about this movie was the visual experience
it's eye candy but boring

>>5353306
Kek

Prisoner of Azkaban.

Seriously? Nobody mentioned Satantango yet?

Tarkovsky's adaption of Anna Karenina

>>5356693
That movie was horrid

yes, the movie adaptation of "The Odyssey", the main character from which I believe is derived from Joyce's Ulysses.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

To kill a mockingbird. Because fuck that shit.

>>5356799
Only because Jack is a fucking god

>>5353121
citezen kane

>>5353162
Nabokov actually liked Kubrick's setting:

"Two years later (June 1962), Nabokov saw the film at the New York City premiere, and afterward, in a Playboy interview (January 1964), he expressed his admiration for it, while taking no credit for the excellence of its acting or production. One bit of confusion arises, however, when Nabokov’s comments in 1964 are compared with those in the 1973 foreword to his published screenplay of Lolita. In the earlier interview, he said that his only involvement with the film was the script, a "preponderating portion of which was used by Kubrick," while later he recalled that his first response to the film was "that Kubrick was a great director, that his Lolita as a first-rate film with magnificent actors, and that only ragged odds and ends of my script had been used." In the Playboy interview, Nabokov very graciously concluded that Kubrick’s cinematic approach to he novel was merely different from his own, while recognizing the unique demands, both artistic and those of the Production Code, placed on Kubrick by his medium."

"At a private screening I had discovered that Kubrick was a great director, that his Lolita was a first-rate film with magnificent actors and that only ragged odds and ends of my script had been used . . . . My first reaction to the picture was a mixture of aggravation, regret, and reluctant pleasure."

http://kubrickfilms.tripod.com/id39.html
http://kubrickfilms.tripod.com/id50.html

Tarkovsky's Solaris

Godard's King Lear

>>5356765
I keep telling myself ill find and read the book but i keep forgetting about it. What did you think of it?

Godfather, The Shining, Fight Club, Psycho, 2001: A Space Odyssey

>>5356765
I'm sure this is the case aswell, just haven't read it yet. What about Melancholy of Resistance?

Hard to be a god

Stalker

>>5357819
>2001: A Space Odyssey
I liked it, especially the beginning.

>>5354423
>and by proclaiming to be "adaptations" the movies are doing a disservice to themselves.

i prefer the term 'interpretations' myself

>>5353153

>The Woman in the Dunes

No it isn't. The Face of Another might be though.

Norwegian Wood

>>5353121
reddit tier thread mate

>>5358279
Right, I already called my error in failing to take off the Teshigahara when I pasted over my good movies based on books list.

>>5355455
You are a moron

American Psycho the movie is a satire with one gratuitous horror scene (roughly 3 minutes of the whole movie)

American Psycho the book is also a satire but an incredibly boring one

>>5358284
>Wood
he hehe hehe he he hehe