"The Movie Was Better Than the Book."

[jscoggins]

(This thread was inspired by the posts in the thread for The Fault in Our Stars. https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=235944)

We often hear people complaining about how a film adaptation did not live up to the book. ("The book was better.") Usually, they're really complaining about how their favorite parts in the book didn't make it into the final cut of the film rather than evaluating the movie as a movie.

How about the other way around, though? Which movies were better than their source story/novel/poem?

Some would say that Stanley Kubrick frequently made movies that were better than their source materials.

Spartacus (based on the novel by Howard Fast)
Lolita (based on the novel by Vladimir Nabokov)
Dr. Strangelove (based on the novel Red Alert by Peter George)
2001: A Space Odyssey (based on the short story The Sentinel. The book was actually adapted from the movie, lol.)
A Clockwork Orange (based on the novel by Anthony Burgess)
Barry Lyndon (based on the novel by William Thackeray)
The Shining (based on the novel by Stephen King)
Full Metal Jacket (based on the novel The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford)
Eyes Wide Shut (based on the short story Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler)

Nowadays, it's far more common to hear people talk about Kubrick's movies rather than the novels, though that may simply be due to people not ever reading those books. It must be said, though, that Stephen King is not a fan of Kubrick's adaptation of his book, lol.

I think that Divergent and The Hunt for Red October are better than the books.

MikeScott prefers the film version of The Perks of Being a Wallflower to the book. (https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...&postcount=193)

benbess prefers the film versions of The Wizard of Oz and Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby to the books. (https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...&postcount=194)

AaronJ prefers the film version of The Hunger Games to the book. (https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...&postcount=195)

What are some others? (This isn't about your favorite adaptation but about movies that improved upon the books. We can include adaptations of comic books/graphic novels and theatrical plays. Stuff like the Jason Bourne movies and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit don't count, though, because they only keep the character names but are entirely different/new stories altogether.)