I LOVE Alfonso Cuarón’s sci-fi action movie Children of Men. I’ve watched maybe six times and every time, the ending always almost brings me to tears. So when I learned it was adapted from P.D. James’ book of the same name, it was a no-brainer deciding what my next book would be.
After finishing the book, it wasn’t difficult to reach to the conclusion that I enjoyed the movie better.
While James’ book gives a more in-depth look at how human infertility and humanity’s slow death march towards extinction affects the sexual dynamic between men and women and almost demented ways humans try to cope with a world without children or a race of dead men walking, I feel the book dedicates WAY too much time describing the failing of human civilization and the Regrets and guilt of Theo Faron. It’s not even until after 2/3 through the book where it feels like the plot and story are properly paced and stuff of consequence actually begin to happen.
The film’s adaptation by, comparison, feels consistent in its pacing and the world building and woe-is-mes of Theo feel more compact a take up less of the audience’s time.
What books do you feel were worse than its film adaptation and why?
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The Prestige
Andromeda strain. Crichton has a preface even explaining it’s supposed to be more of a lab note collection instead of a scifi/thriller.
I liked the miniseries of Station Eleven way more than the book.
Seriously that show was so damn good.
Not many for sure, but some were definitely inferior such as
Misery - I like King but this is one of his worst I thought and of course an amazing movie. The paper Annie Wilkes can’t compare to Kathy Bates creation.
The Bourne Identity - I just find Robert Ludlum unreadable and dull as dirt where as the films were just the opposite, accessible and fun.
Ready player one. Actually kinda liked the movie
I disagree. The book was more nostalgic and cohesive. The movie was meh.
The edgy atheism rant did it for me.
I’m not religious at all, but Wade’s character is written to be so pretentious I couldn’t handle it.
Fair point. I listened to it as an audiobook with narration by Wil Wheaton who I guess does a convincing edgy and pretentious atheism! lol
Def Jaws.
But also No Country for Old Men. Great book by a fucking legend, but I just think the film is absolutely flawless, so it technically qualifies
Annihilation.
The movie is simply a better story while the book just felt unnecessarily obscure. The sequel even worse so. I couldn’t finish it.
I liked Fight Club the book, but I definitely felt like the movie was just on a different level entirely
Starship Troopers is the first one that comes to mind for me, although the movie is very different from the book, so maybe it doesn’t count. Where the movie is a satire about war, violence, and authoritarianism, the book more seems to be celebrating the nobility and adventure of it all, and is generally much less intellectual (it’s possible I misread it though).
Good Omens. Okay, it’s a series and not a movie but that book did nothing for me. I have never been a fan of either Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman and the combination of their voices and the combi ation in one book was a disappointment. The series is great in a big part because of the actors who play the angels. They are solid.
The Godfather. I was pretty underwhelmed by the book if I’m being honest - like it was maybe a 6.5/10 for me. And that’s after going in wanting to love it after watching the movie, and expecting it to be better since that’s usually the case.
The movie is an absolute masterpiece and so well done.
Shawshank Redemption
Wristcutters: A Love Story was a teeeeny tiny bit better than the book. I love Etgar Keret, he’s one of my all-time favorite authors, but I always thought Kneller’s Happy Campers was a little bit too short (it’s like 90 pages I think), and should have been a full novel rather than a long short story. So basically, the only reason would be that the movie had some more time to play with the absurd idea of the book and it truly made the comedy shine.
Fight club !
Has anyone read the Edge of Tomorrow novel? I would think that movie would be a hard one to best.