Name a book that's better than the film

[FuckertyFuck]

For me its Good night Mr Tom and Little Women

All of them. You lose so much world building and internal narrative. The ‘rules’ of TV and Movies are different too hence changing things, and often the changes aren’t done well.

the Hobbit adaption was spectacularly dire.

Most of them but especially The Time Travellers Wife

One film I preferred to the book was The Unbearable Lightness of Being. My favourite film, just beautiful.

A rare exception for me is Room with a View. Film did justice to the book and is a near perfect adaptation. Beautiful and with an amazing cast.
I think that the Sense and Sensibility adaptation with Emma Thompson is wonderful too.
At the other end of the scale - Persuasion. Which I sort of enjoyed but the book is several leagues above the film.

I avoided seeing it because I couldn’t imagine how the slow reveal would work in film terms — the effective part of the novel is the way in which Kathy remembers the days at Hailsham before the children knew their purpose, and her obsession with minor inequalities and injustices in the ‘system’, rather than the main horror. I also thought the refusal of the novel to focus on the science of mass cloning or the mechanics of how the clones successively donate organs before ‘completing’ would probably be lost, and it would be more graphic and bloody.

I don't normally watch a film if I've already read the book. As is generally agreed, the film is never as good.

An exception for me was The Help. Equally good.

It’s been many years since I watched it, but I remember being pleased that the slow, quietness was still very much there, the organs being almost secondary.

I also thought it was beautifully shot, the colours and sounds so every day, in contrast with the horror of the situation. For me it captured that weird reality of when there’s a horrific situation happening but the world is still the world and everything around you hasn’t changed, despite the enormity of everything.

Almost every book is better than the film!

I’ve got one where the film is better - Jaws. Helps that the original has a cringy sub-plot where Chief Brody’s wife has an affair with Hooper. Shudder.

I'd go with most of them. Especially the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I was quite enjoying the TV version, then they stopped it half way through. Steven Moffat nicked a lot of it for Doctor Who. Amy Pond is basically Clare!

I agree that the book is 99% of the time streets ahead of the film (Captain Corelli's Mandolin shudders)

The only exception I can think of is The English Patient. Silence Of The Lambs is close...as are The Queens Gambit and the TV version of Reacher. I think it's easier for TV series as they've got more time to tell the story. Slow Horses is also excellent.

Time Travelers Wife

The film is horrendous

Don't think i've ever seen a film or TV series that's better than the book!

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult - excellent book but awful film, because they completely changed the ending.

The Little Stranger
The House of Mirth
My Cousin Rachel

Hmm,. Maybe I should watch it?

Possibly unfairly, the trailer made me think about whether Keira Knightley’s character (was she Ruth?) would have ‘inherited’ that jutting-out-jaw thing she does from the person from whom she was cloned, and made me imagine them all walking the streets looking for jaw-sticking-out women…

(Actually, it’s never clear to me in the novel whether clones can be distinguished from non-clones just by looking? Is that dealt with in the film? N lots of fictional worlds involving cloning, clones are ‘marked’ to be obvious at a glance to distinguish them from the rest of the population — in Becky Chambers’ novels, the ‘menial’ clones are bald.)

I can on to say the TTTW was an absolutely dreadful film of a book I really enjoyed!

Remains of the Day
The English Patient and
The Age of Innocence
Under the Skin
Are all BETTER than the books they are based on imo

Agreed!

FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC

I agree. I can't think of any films that are better than the book

Stardust is better as film than book which I think is unusual for Neil gaiman. I love the film I think it’s so beautiful.

Does the book justice: Brokeback Mountain
Better than the book: Children of Men

I am struggling to think of one! Most of the film adaptations are a very poor substitute for the book.

One of the very worst films I can recall was Captain Corelli's Mandolin. The film completely missed the point of the book. There was also an absolutely dreadful adaptation of the first book of the His Dark Materials trilogy!

Some films have tried harder to be true to the books, but it's well nigh impossible to recreate the "feel" of a book on film. There just isn't time to develop the characters or the story in the same way.

With me I find it depends on what I do first…

If I read the book first the film will never be as good.

If I watch the film first the book will never be as good.

Whichever format reaches me first will always be “the best”.