So I know there is a post about the worst book to movie transitions, so I figured I would start one about the best book to movie transitions. I personally think the best I have seen is Harry Potter. I mean some stuff was changed but somehow they managed to pull off all the crazy special effects mentioned in the books, almost exactly as they were described.
I'd disagree with you there, they slashed it about too much for me. Like the stuff with the mirrors, they changed it to fire but then had to change it back for the story to work. That really annoyed me, it was really confusing for people who hadn't read the books and I had to spend all my time after we got out of the cinema explaining it all. I think the best I've seen is I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (the same author of 101 Dalmations). Its got changes but I think its the closest adaptation I've seen of a book. However some books need changes to be adapted to screen and I appreciate that. In that sense as I had mentioned on the other thread How to Train your Dragon is the best as the film makers knew that the original concept was brilliant but needed changes to be translated to the big screen (in its original form I think it would have done well as a tv series rather than a film). Harry Potter on the other hand changed things seemingly just for the sake of it causing problems later on.
A couple nominations. First, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. There are only two points that I don't like about that movie. First, the tire pressure scene when he switches from the Red Shark to the Great White Whale, and second, Nick Nolte deciding that his screwed-up impulses were better than the source material. From what I remember, he fucked with the scene every single time they shot it, so rather than just firing his ass, they left it in. The second one is an oddball, and I know a lot of professional critics disagree with me, but the adaptation of Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge, starring Bill Murray. It changes a lot from the book. It has too much Bill Murray clowning around. But the things that it gets right, the spite for Sophie, Larry's experience during the war and later enlightenment, it gets so right that I can forgive all the weak points, because there are other weaknesses in the book that it, IMHO, corrects. Really, the book and the movie should be taken together.
As in better than the book? Never felt that way. If TV series count, I love Game of Thrones. Water for Elephants, Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, Seabiscuit, The Bourne Identity, Schindler's List, Into the Wild, Bridge to Terabithia, The Pursuit of Happiness, Holes, Jurassic Park, The Secret Garden, Little Women, Interview with the Vampire, The Crow: City of Angels, The Green Mile, Saving Shiloh, Cloud Atlas, The Color Purple, and a lot more I can't think of at the moment. All those listed I've read the book and seen the movie. Not only that, liked them both. Plenty of books I've liked and disliked the movie (Eragon). Few the other way around (Romeo & Juliet -- not my style).
The only one I can think of is The Body which hit the screen as Stand By Me. King himself said it was the first film adaptation of one of his works to 'get' what the story was about.
I thought Fight Club was better than the book. Chuck Palahniuk has brilliantly original ideas and I have enjoyed the four or five books or his I've read, but the film seemed so much more focused and coherent. Normally, if you see a film first and then read the book, you find a ton of extra stuff that adds depth but that they had to cut. With Fight Club, I seem to remember, the book had less.
