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MichelleW
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| Posted: May 16 2014 at 8:46pm | IP Logged
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We almost always think the BOOK is better around here. However, we watched Ender's Game together and loved it and the consensus was that it was better than the book. My son in particular didn't like the book--loved the movie. This got us talking about movies that were better than the books they were made from. We started a list and I thought I would ask here. Anyone want to play?
Here is our list:
Ender's Game
How to Train Your Dragon
The Last of the Mohicans (Daniel Day Lewis version)
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Michelle
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guitarnan
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| Posted: May 16 2014 at 9:48pm | IP Logged
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The Last of the Mohicans (DDL version) is better than the book, IMHO. My high school American Lit class went on strike (I know, Catholic high school girls should not do this!) because the book was so boring. Our teacher finally gave up (yes, this also should not happen, but this is how things went in L. A. in the 1980s, when our teachers were 1) incredibly young and 2) ridiculously underpaid).
The film was so much more interesting!
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SeaStar
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| Posted: May 17 2014 at 5:36am | IP Logged
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I've always heard it said that Shakespeare was never meant to be read- his plays were meant to be watched.
My movie is better vote is for:
BBC version of "Pride and Prejudice" with Colin Firth
Although the book is awesome, this screen version brings it all to life in a magical way. Can you ever forget Mr. Collins once you've seen him simpering on your TV 
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SallyT
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| Posted: May 17 2014 at 7:24am | IP Logged
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Funny story -- my now-20-year-old daughter was saying to me the other day that she remembers my reading P&P to her when she was about 7 (I know. First Child Syndrome.), and that she spent most of the book wondering why Elizabeth didn't want to marry Mr. Collins, because really he seemed like a nice person.
I do think seeing that version with Colin Firth (could Mr. Darcy really be anyone else?) was what crystallized for her who Mr. Collins really was.
I was talking to someone recently about James Fenimore Cooper -- I think the best way to read him is to read Mark Twain's "The Literary Offenses of James Fenimore Cooper," and then to identify them while actually reading James Fenimore Cooper.
Watching a movie of mold growing would probably be more interesting than actually reading Last of the Mohicans . . . Daniel Day Lewis with the flowing locks is just icing on the cake. :)
Sally
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SallyT
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| Posted: May 17 2014 at 7:31am | IP Logged
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Same child also reminded me that when she was 11, she went out for Halloween dressed as Trinculo, from The Tempest, because we had just seen a local production of it. Apparently she amuses her friends at college with stories like this about herself -- "Were you a weirder kid than I was? I don't think so!"
We laughed for a good while at the scenario of her going from door to door in Memphis, TN:
"And who are you, little girl?"
"I'm Trinculo!"
"Ohhhhh . . . well, have some Milk Duds . . . "
Anyway, I guess that speaks to the imaginative power of the performance vs the reading. Same child wanted to be Puck -- in life, not for Halloween -- when she was six, because we'd been to see a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream in which Puck was this cute girl in a kind of bikini-top costume. Forget Hermia and Helena! Forget even Titania! Puck had it all going on.
We agreed that obviously she was predestined to be an English major. I totally set her up for it.
Sally
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cheesehead mom
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| Posted: May 17 2014 at 6:07pm | IP Logged
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I am a book nerd normally in all things but do admit to liking the movie version of Sense and Sensibility more than the book:)
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stefoodie
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| Posted: May 17 2014 at 6:54pm | IP Logged
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I am not allowed to read Ender's Game yet (23-year-old daughter's orders -- she has a keen sense of what books will depress me more than help me)
Loved Last of the Mohicans but don't remember much -- watched it years ago.
Don't agree totally with P&P the movie being better than the book, though I agree 100% that Colin Firth is THE quintessential Darcy.
Read To Kill a Mockingbird earlier this year and just trying to find time to watch the movie. So... book better? Or movie better?
And I'm still working on watching Brideshead Revisited (Jeremy Irons version) after reading the book. Haven't decided yet if book or movie (series) is better. Any thoughts?
I just wish SOMEONE would make Jane Eyre "the right way" LOL. Every single Jane Eyre I've watched has been great, but there's always been one or two things that's just WRONG. So frustrating. 
Haven't decided yet if the Hunger Games movies are better than the books. I go back forth on those.
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SallyT
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| Posted: May 17 2014 at 7:16pm | IP Logged
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To Kill a Mockingbird: the movie is wonderful. Really, really well done. And Gregory Peck! It's just fantastic. But all the times I taught that book, to 11th grade classes who always complained that I didn't show nearly as many movies as all their other teachers, and we'd read the book and then watch the movie . . . every single class I polled voted for the book over the movie.
And these were largely Future Felons of America classes, too. I was always amazed.
Sally
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stefoodie
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| Posted: May 17 2014 at 8:26pm | IP Logged
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cheesehead mom -- the Emma Thompson one or the Hattie Morahan version? i prefer the latter :)
Thanks for the info, SallyT!! whoa! "Future Felons of America"???
what about Kristin Lavransdatter? stick to the book, or watch the movie?
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SallyT
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| Posted: May 17 2014 at 9:24pm | IP Logged
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There's a movie of Kristin Lavransdatter? I had no idea! (I'm not sure I could bear to watch it, though . . . I can't watch the LOTR movies, either . . . not that I think they're bad, necessarily, but I don't want to kill the world those books made in my imagination!).
And I'm being unfair to some of my long-ago students, though, yeah . . . as entire classes, they were quite the experience. I was the youngest teacher in the high-school English department, so I got all the classes nobody else wanted. Which, I must say, always contained some really nice, cool kids, including a number who were falling through cracks, and there wasn't much I could do to stop them. I was only four years older than some of them. On the other hand, some of them were already criminals, and there wasn't much I could do to stop that, either. One kid kept missing class because he was in court for beating up his girlfriend . . . he would have been scary if he hadn't, in truth, been so very pitiful: illiterate, probably developmentally delayed but not enough to be in special ed . . . I have thought about him a lot over the years and wondered if he was even still alive. And on reflection, I would guess that, if he was there that day, he probably liked the movie of To Kill a Mockingbird better than the book, because I'm not sure he could have read the book.
For a job I haven't missed for one minute since I walked away from it, twenty-five years ago, that teaching gig sure did imprint itself on my consciousness.
Which one is the Hattie Morahan version of S&S? Is that the one that aired on public TV about . . . seven? eight? or more? years ago? In a whole series of film adaptations of Austen novels? I think I remember liking that one a lot, but they all run together in my mind now. I think I remember not liking the Northanger Abbey one . . . it's not my favorite Austen novel anyway, but I have a vague impression of the filmmakers' having turned the gothic novels Catherine is always reading into bodice-rippers, and showing those scenes as they play in her mind. I probably didn't like that because I was watching it with the kid who was Trinculo for Halloween . . .
Sally
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cheesehead mom
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| Posted: May 19 2014 at 8:39am | IP Logged
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Steph I was talking about the Emma Thompson one but will have to check out the other too!
Laura
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: May 19 2014 at 9:31am | IP Logged
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I am going to go out on a limb and say there is NO WAY a movie of Kristen Lavransdatter could be better than the books. There is just too much there.
I like the PBS/BBC version a lot, but I think that the Emma Thompson screenplay was so perfect! And I think it is better than the book, though not by much. 
I really like the recent Elizabeth Gaskell adaptations as well. The books are quite good and flesh out things for which there is not time in the film, but they aren't in that category where you are hugely missing out if you don't read the book.
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Willa
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| Posted: May 19 2014 at 9:32am | IP Logged
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Movies at least as good as (or better than) the book:
--Wizard of Oz
--Gone with the Wind
--Captains Courageous
--Fantastic Mr Fox
--The Iron Giant
--the second Harry Potter (Chamber of Secrets) -- all the other HP movies I've watched were worse than the books (except possibly the first), but Kenneth Branagh is an unforgettable Gilderoy Lockhart.
--possibly Ben Hur
--Cranford
--Under the Greenwood Tree
Stef, I haven't watched the first Hunger Games, but I liked the second movie better than I liked the book -- the second and third books were disappointing to me in comparison to the first, and the movie held up way better IMO.
My teens liked Ender's Game the book, better than the movie -- they thought the movie ruined the message. I haven't seen the movie -- the book was disturbing, but good.
I guess I am about the only female in the universe who does NOT think Colin Firth is the definitive Mr Darcy. Fine actor, handsome man, but not truly Mr Darcy, to me -- just not the right type. I don't prefer any of the others, though -- still waiting 
Sally, my firstborn son felt somewhat the same about Mary Bennett as your dd did about Mr Collins. I always feel sort of sorry for her myself.
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4Real Forums : Tea and Conversation
Topic: The Movie is Better
