Better as movies than books

[melchar]

Heard a comment made on the radio that books were always better than the movies and wanted to immediately take issue with this. So wrong.

I can think of 3 movies right offhand that dispute this =

'Jaws' was tons better than the book - and made one of the characters sympathetic instead of a complete ass;
'Princess Bride' is better as a movie than a book by far [in part because the author just plays too many literary pransk with himself];
and 'The Relic' is much better than the book [which isn't saying much, this is true]

Comments

[aeto.livejournal.com]

People may not agree, but I liked Jurassic Park, the movie, better than the book. Of course, it may be because I don't really like Crichton writing... at all. :>

[melchar.livejournal.com]

Oh gosh Crichton! I very much agree with you. I keep reading his books because he has -great- ideas, but the books are so disappointing.

Just as examples - the -book- 'Andromeda Strain' took a great concept, then muddled it up with soap opera and minutia. The original novel, 'Jurassic Park' was such a good idea - and then threw in character angst, truly/absolutely -bad- chaos theory - [[tho the -compsognathus- parts were adorable & left out of the movie as my only complaint/counter-point of something nifty in the -book-]] - and very unsympathetic characters all 'round.

But both made such wonderful movies.