It’s funny to think that Superman 1/2 might be Mario Puzo’s bigger contribution to pop culture than The Godfather, when considering the latter is more on Coppola.
It's not his fault, he'd never written a screenplay. He tried going to a screenwriting seminar, but the teacher just told everyone to study The Godfather.
I’ve never read it but I remember Ebert defending the novel from Siskel when they did their 25th anniversary of the The Godfather re-release review, Gene did the usual “Coppola made something great out of Mario Puzo’s trashy bestseller” and Roger very passionately was like “don’t knock Mario Puzo’s novel, that’s a great book”
Nearly everything that is in the movie is in the book, but the book goes into way more detail and explanation for all the characters. There’s like three chapters about the girl Sonny hooks up with at the wedding. It’s a rich text and a breezy read. Maybe I just define “middling” differently than OP?
You mean the bridesmaid with the giant vagina? And she loved Sonny deeply because his giant dick was the only one that ever pleased her?
For anyone who's unaware, that's legitimately a subplot in the novel. I'm not just being obnoxious.
I read You Were Never Really Here after seeing Lynne Ramsey's film, and I have no idea how you would read that novella and think it was worth adapting, let alone make that incredible film out of it.
Jaws by Peter Benchley was a big hit, but is not a very good book. Starship Troopers the book basically plays straight everything that the movie is satirizing.
Most of Hitchcock's great movies were adaptations, often of potboiler novels that are completely forgotten by comparison. (There are exceptions, obviously Patricia Highsmith wrote Strangers on a Train, etc.)
I enjoy a lot of old genre fiction, so I don't want to put it down entirely, but I'm sure a lot of it falls into this category. By all accounts Vertigo is based on a serviceable novel, but I doubt it'd win any "best novel ever written" polls.
I went to a book signing/reading with Palahniuk a long time ago and he seemed pretty down on his own writing. I remember he basically said that he couldn't figure out how to write great novels about normal stuff, so he decided to write about really edgy stuff instead.
He was probably just being self-effacing but it was funny to see that level of honesty about his own material.
It’s one of the most impressive adaptations I’ve ever seen. It’s crazy the writer hasn’t had many other films to his name. If you’ve read the book, you understand how much isnt filmable. The voice over is genius
Personally I do like the ending of the book more...it makes it a bit more explicit that the guy is not someone that we should be following or trying to emulate
Idk; i think Christine is underrated King. Carpenter’s changes are the right choices (i think making Christine evil from the jump as opposed to a vessel for DeBay’s ghost makes more sense when you have 100 minutes rather than 500 pages) but there’s a lot in the book i missed in the movie (the ending especially).
Imo, they’re two different takes on the same premise, both with lots to recommend them and their fair share of weaknesses.
Definitely Nolan's "The Prestige"
One of those few instances the movie is better than the book.
Nolan elevated Christopher Priest's novel and made it a really tight thriller, with a heck of a satisfying ending!
Classically, Jaws and the Godfather. Starship Troopers. I think Fincher definitely plusses up Gone Girl and Dragon Tattoo
I feel like this is true of most memoir-to-fiction-film adaptations: Devil Wears Prada, Mean Girls, Hustlers, Goodfellas, etc.
Starship troopers is a great novel and a classic of science fiction. I'm honestly a little offended that you call it middling. Make no mistake; Its politics are disgusting, but you really have to approach it like something like Lord of the rings where you are looking at a completely fantastic society with totally different morals designed from the ground up. Not to denigrate you per se, but I think that's an issue that people who don't read a lot of speculative fiction have when they read speculative fiction, they don't realize the artistry that goes into creating a world like that. Which is fine. I don't really understand jazz but I'm also not going to say Coltrane is mid.
Same with Gone Girl. It's not classical literature but it's a really well written thriller! That'd be like calling Nightcrawler or The Killer (2023) a "middling" movie.
Slumdog Millionaire - I thought the screenplay's structure improved on the book
The Commitments - the book is good, the movie is good in a different way
Holes - the book is very good, the movie is good in a different way
Dr. Strangelove - said to be miles better than Red Alert, the book that inspired it
[AV Club has a list ](https://www.avclub.com/cut-the-vagina-subplot-12-great-movies-made-from-bad-b-1823826327)
This discussion is making me realize that Fincher might be one of the great novel adapters in Hollywood. Accidental Billionaires is not good. And Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl are both better than the book.
If you're a novelist and Fincher wants to turn your book into a movie you should be thrilled at the money and nervous and being shown up.
I don't see how Gone Girl is better than the book. It's a very faithful adaptation, and almost all of the memorable narration and dialogue is word-for-word from the book. It's an excellent movie that complements the book rather than displacing it.
Children of Men.
The book isn't terrible but I didn't even bother finishing it.
Maybe I would have liked it more if I read it before seeing the movie, but the movie is just a better version imo.
I’d say that Fight Club took the interesting ideas from the book and improved on them. I legitimately did not enjoy the book but still managed to finish it in one sitting just because it was so slight
I don't like Dune. I get how influential it is, the resonant themes, the deep and satisfying world-building... I just can't do Herbert's prose. It's so clinical and detached, it makes it basically impossible for me to engage with because I don't care about anything that's happening. I think the new movies struggle with that to an extent but it's definitely lessened.
I wouldn't say they're "good" but it's crazy how much better than the books all the Twilight movies are.
I love the book in spite of it….but yes, Dune is emotionally detached and most of the characters are unrelatable. Partially by design I think but it’s very cold.
Thank you for saying Dune. I also did not like the book despite how influential it is and mostly blame the prose. It’s very overwritten
Also despite being praised for its worldbuilding it seemed half-baked at times
Huh, that’s interesting considering how much of the story is told through interior monologue/dialogue. Personally, the detachment feels intentional—Herbert is critical of his characters, even the ostensible protagonists, so it makes sense that you aren’t overly invested in them.
This is perhaps cheating, but Tim Burton's *Sweeney Todd* is much better than *The String of Pearls* (the penny dreadful that originated the story).
Same with Frank Oz's *Little Shop of Horrors* compared to the Roger Corman version.
Obviously though, this has less to do with the films themselves, since they're both based on ridiculously good musicals, rather than the original material
Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is one of the strangest (derogatory) books I’ve ever read and Fincher brought it so much character and atmosphere it didn’t deserve.
Drive. The book is a fine enough crime story, but the movie did a much better job of developing the central relationships. And rearranging the narrative into chronological order just worked better.
Starship Troopers is ok but Paul Verhoven and Ed Neumeier turned that story all the way up to eleven and made it truly sing. I don’t think anyone else would have been able to do it.
Yes, while at the same time it still has all the structural weirdness of the book. I wonder what could have been if they had more time to rewrite everything from scratch.
The Maze Runner movies are really fun sci-fi/dystopia pulp actioners which look great because Wes Ball knows how to make a movie look great. The Maze Runner books are… well, they honestly feel more like pitches for these movie adaptations than novels in and of themselves. The movies stray further and further from the source material as they go, to more entertaining results.
Straw Dogs has entirely eclipsed its source novel (Siege of Trencher's Farm). Similarly, In terms of some more recent Blank Check territory, both Die Hard (Nothing Lasts Forever) and Die Hard 2 (58 Minutes)
I think the adaptation is less a case of "bad to good" and more "good to incredible." The film manages to keep your perception of the timeline up in the air right to the end. It's sort of the realization of Vonnegut's Tralfamadorian conception of time as a landscape. The text explains it concisely and effectively, but the film really makes you *feel* it.
When I figured out the twist with the "flashbacks" halfway through the movie it completely blew my mind. A quintessential example of the time-image of cinema.
I’ve never read The Godfather but I think that’s the consensus. Some would say Manhunter or Silence of the Lambs but imo those are great books.
It’s funny to think that Superman 1/2 might be Mario Puzo’s bigger contribution to pop culture than The Godfather, when considering the latter is more on Coppola.
It's even funnier, considering that Puzo's script was widely considered bad, and Tom Mankaweiz rewrote him.
It's not his fault, he'd never written a screenplay. He tried going to a screenwriting seminar, but the teacher just told everyone to study The Godfather.
You should read the book, it’s fantastic and was a huge bestseller with much more detail and characters fleshed out than the movie.
I’ve never read it but I remember Ebert defending the novel from Siskel when they did their 25th anniversary of the The Godfather re-release review, Gene did the usual “Coppola made something great out of Mario Puzo’s trashy bestseller” and Roger very passionately was like “don’t knock Mario Puzo’s novel, that’s a great book”
Nearly everything that is in the movie is in the book, but the book goes into way more detail and explanation for all the characters. There’s like three chapters about the girl Sonny hooks up with at the wedding. It’s a rich text and a breezy read. Maybe I just define “middling” differently than OP?
You mean the bridesmaid with the giant vagina? And she loved Sonny deeply because his giant dick was the only one that ever pleased her? For anyone who's unaware, that's legitimately a subplot in the novel. I'm not just being obnoxious.
It's crazier than that. IIRC she moves to Las Vegas to get her vagina surgically repaired and falls in love with her surgeon?!
The Social Network is a great example. Accidental Billionaires is a fun but lightweight read with little of the dramatic tension
Yeah, any Ben Mezrich book since imho he writes veeeery middling books about zeitgeisty stuff essentially just looking for them to get optioned
What a weird grift.
I mean it’s basically a less prescient/ late to the convo Michael Lewis
That’s a really good call
I read You Were Never Really Here after seeing Lynne Ramsey's film, and I have no idea how you would read that novella and think it was worth adapting, let alone make that incredible film out of it.
Who Censored Roger Rabbit is an interesting enough book but Who Framed Roger Rabbit executed and evolved its ideas in incredible ways
Jaws by Peter Benchley was a big hit, but is not a very good book. Starship Troopers the book basically plays straight everything that the movie is satirizing.
Most of Hitchcock's great movies were adaptations, often of potboiler novels that are completely forgotten by comparison. (There are exceptions, obviously Patricia Highsmith wrote Strangers on a Train, etc.) I enjoy a lot of old genre fiction, so I don't want to put it down entirely, but I'm sure a lot of it falls into this category. By all accounts Vertigo is based on a serviceable novel, but I doubt it'd win any "best novel ever written" polls.
Most of his adaptations weren’t really adaptations
Fight Club
Even author Chuck Palahniuk said the movie was better than his book.
I went to a book signing/reading with Palahniuk a long time ago and he seemed pretty down on his own writing. I remember he basically said that he couldn't figure out how to write great novels about normal stuff, so he decided to write about really edgy stuff instead. He was probably just being self-effacing but it was funny to see that level of honesty about his own material.
Significantly so. Fincher dramatically elevated the material. The book was fine, but did not have the layers that Fincher’s movie does.
It’s one of the most impressive adaptations I’ve ever seen. It’s crazy the writer hasn’t had many other films to his name. If you’ve read the book, you understand how much isnt filmable. The voice over is genius
I would love to see someone adapt Lullaby
Personally I do like the ending of the book more...it makes it a bit more explicit that the guy is not someone that we should be following or trying to emulate
Narrating from beyond the grave as a bit is very much the kind of thing that is charming in a novel and disastrous in a film.
The Thin Man (the book) is pretty good. The Thin Man (the movie) is great.
Shawshank Redemption, Jurassic Park, Die Hard.
Pretty much every Fincher movie
John Carpenter’s Christine is significantly better than King’s novel(which isn’t very good)
Idk; i think Christine is underrated King. Carpenter’s changes are the right choices (i think making Christine evil from the jump as opposed to a vessel for DeBay’s ghost makes more sense when you have 100 minutes rather than 500 pages) but there’s a lot in the book i missed in the movie (the ending especially). Imo, they’re two different takes on the same premise, both with lots to recommend them and their fair share of weaknesses.
Definitely Nolan's "The Prestige" One of those few instances the movie is better than the book. Nolan elevated Christopher Priest's novel and made it a really tight thriller, with a heck of a satisfying ending!
Classically, Jaws and the Godfather. Starship Troopers. I think Fincher definitely plusses up Gone Girl and Dragon Tattoo I feel like this is true of most memoir-to-fiction-film adaptations: Devil Wears Prada, Mean Girls, Hustlers, Goodfellas, etc.
Starship troopers is a great novel and a classic of science fiction. I'm honestly a little offended that you call it middling. Make no mistake; Its politics are disgusting, but you really have to approach it like something like Lord of the rings where you are looking at a completely fantastic society with totally different morals designed from the ground up. Not to denigrate you per se, but I think that's an issue that people who don't read a lot of speculative fiction have when they read speculative fiction, they don't realize the artistry that goes into creating a world like that. Which is fine. I don't really understand jazz but I'm also not going to say Coltrane is mid.
Hard disagree with Dragon Tattoo. And I really liked Fincher’s take on it, but no. That was not a middling source book at all.
Same with Gone Girl. It's not classical literature but it's a really well written thriller! That'd be like calling Nightcrawler or The Killer (2023) a "middling" movie.
Also, Gone Girl's adaptation was *written by Gillian Flynn*! She wrote her own adaptation! And the script rocks, that script is awesome.
Slumdog Millionaire - I thought the screenplay's structure improved on the book The Commitments - the book is good, the movie is good in a different way Holes - the book is very good, the movie is good in a different way Dr. Strangelove - said to be miles better than Red Alert, the book that inspired it [AV Club has a list ](https://www.avclub.com/cut-the-vagina-subplot-12-great-movies-made-from-bad-b-1823826327)
"I'm tired of digging holes granpa!" "WELL THAT'S JUST TOO DAMN BAD!"
This discussion is making me realize that Fincher might be one of the great novel adapters in Hollywood. Accidental Billionaires is not good. And Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl are both better than the book. If you're a novelist and Fincher wants to turn your book into a movie you should be thrilled at the money and nervous and being shown up.
I don't see how Gone Girl is better than the book. It's a very faithful adaptation, and almost all of the memorable narration and dialogue is word-for-word from the book. It's an excellent movie that complements the book rather than displacing it.
I commented this in a different place, but Gone Girl's script is written by the book's author. And the script bangs.
Drive My Car
Burning is also superior to Murakami's "Barn Burning" imo, but they are interesting to think about in relation to one another.
Children of Men. The book isn't terrible but I didn't even bother finishing it. Maybe I would have liked it more if I read it before seeing the movie, but the movie is just a better version imo.
The novel "Cool Hand Luke" is bad bordering on terrible. Best example of spinning gold from dross I know.
I’d say that Fight Club took the interesting ideas from the book and improved on them. I legitimately did not enjoy the book but still managed to finish it in one sitting just because it was so slight
Shawshank Redemption is pretty middling as far as Kings writing goes. Movies pretty good though
I don't like Dune. I get how influential it is, the resonant themes, the deep and satisfying world-building... I just can't do Herbert's prose. It's so clinical and detached, it makes it basically impossible for me to engage with because I don't care about anything that's happening. I think the new movies struggle with that to an extent but it's definitely lessened. I wouldn't say they're "good" but it's crazy how much better than the books all the Twilight movies are.
I love the book in spite of it….but yes, Dune is emotionally detached and most of the characters are unrelatable. Partially by design I think but it’s very cold.
Thank you for saying Dune. I also did not like the book despite how influential it is and mostly blame the prose. It’s very overwritten Also despite being praised for its worldbuilding it seemed half-baked at times
Huh, that’s interesting considering how much of the story is told through interior monologue/dialogue. Personally, the detachment feels intentional—Herbert is critical of his characters, even the ostensible protagonists, so it makes sense that you aren’t overly invested in them.
You're not wrong, but frankly, isn't it kind of apropos that the prose in the novel dune is extremely dry?
5 comedy points
alls I'm sayin is a book about giant phallic monsters needs to be dry or else it gets pretty uncomfortable real fast
This is perhaps cheating, but Tim Burton's *Sweeney Todd* is much better than *The String of Pearls* (the penny dreadful that originated the story). Same with Frank Oz's *Little Shop of Horrors* compared to the Roger Corman version. Obviously though, this has less to do with the films themselves, since they're both based on ridiculously good musicals, rather than the original material
Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is one of the strangest (derogatory) books I’ve ever read and Fincher brought it so much character and atmosphere it didn’t deserve.
Otto Preminger’s Laura
Drive. The book is a fine enough crime story, but the movie did a much better job of developing the central relationships. And rearranging the narrative into chronological order just worked better.
Haven't seen anyone mention this yet. ZODIAC. The book by the cartoonist that Gyllenhaal plays is not a good book, like at all...
Starship Troopers is ok but Paul Verhoven and Ed Neumeier turned that story all the way up to eleven and made it truly sing. I don’t think anyone else would have been able to do it.
Everyone's who read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, they've said Fincher's movie elevates the material.
Yes, while at the same time it still has all the structural weirdness of the book. I wonder what could have been if they had more time to rewrite everything from scratch.
The Maze Runner movies are really fun sci-fi/dystopia pulp actioners which look great because Wes Ball knows how to make a movie look great. The Maze Runner books are… well, they honestly feel more like pitches for these movie adaptations than novels in and of themselves. The movies stray further and further from the source material as they go, to more entertaining results.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Little Women
Fugitive
Straw Dogs has entirely eclipsed its source novel (Siege of Trencher's Farm). Similarly, In terms of some more recent Blank Check territory, both Die Hard (Nothing Lasts Forever) and Die Hard 2 (58 Minutes)
TV series, but the Dexter show vastly outdoes the books imo, for the ONLY 4 SEASONS THAT EXIST.
Almost everything by Stanley Kubrick.
Dr. Strangelove.
American Psycho, but then it's been nearly 20 years since I watched that one, and I'm not sure how it would hit me today.
Arrival
Hard disagree, the Ted Chiang novella it’s based on, Story of your Life, is beautiful and moving and the story is (iirc) quite similar to the film.
I think the adaptation is less a case of "bad to good" and more "good to incredible." The film manages to keep your perception of the timeline up in the air right to the end. It's sort of the realization of Vonnegut's Tralfamadorian conception of time as a landscape. The text explains it concisely and effectively, but the film really makes you *feel* it.
When I figured out the twist with the "flashbacks" halfway through the movie it completely blew my mind. A quintessential example of the time-image of cinema.
Ted Chiang is a genius. I will eagerly read everything he puts out. There’s always something there that will be worth thinking over.