Entertainment
12 Books That Were Better Than The Movies, Because Your Imagination Is Always Your Best Guide
We all know that learning one of your favorite books is due to hit the big screen can give rise to some really complex emotions. After all, the film could be an awful, steaming, wretched pile of... well, you know what. And even if you're excited to see what cool things a filmmaker might do with a great pre-existing story, the possibility that the film will fall short of your own imaginative responses is a very real one.
So while bad movie adaptations are irredeemable pieces of sacrilege and blasphemy by definition, sometimes even the good films just can't compare to novels from which they derived. (We're BOOK people here. Come on.) I bet that if you saw any of these films that were adapted from the books, you're probably a loyalist to the pages forever.
Image: Warner Brothers
All Seven Harry Potter Books by J.K. Rowling
Yes, I know, (most of) the Harry Potter movies were awesome. I enjoyed them a lot. But nothing, NOTHING can compare to the pure, transportive joy of delving into J.K. Rowling’s meticulously realized fictional universe on the page. Especially for those of us old enough to have read the first four books before the Sorcerer’s Stone film was made, and actors permanently replaced our private renderings of the characters and their world.
Image: Warner Brothers
'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Many adaptations of this Great American Novel have been made, with Baz Lurhmann’s being the most recent, and also the biggest and loudest and most…. Baz Lurhmann-y. Lurhmann’s work is almost always divisive, and while I thought this adaptation had many good qualities, an almost complete lack of nuance and subtlety made it fall short of Fitzgerald’s great accomplishment.
Image: Warner Brothers
'The Scarlet Letter' by Nathaniel Hawthorne
This 1995 interpretation of the Hawthorne classic is frequently cited as one of the worst film adaptations of all time. Need I say more?
'The Rules of Attraction' by Bret Easton Ellis
Although not as well known as some of his others, The Rules of Attraction is actually my favorite Ellis novel. He manages to make his protagonists both extremely distasteful and deeply sympathetic at the same time, and the book’s insights on the social mores of college students rang very true when I read it at that time in my own life. The movie, on the other hand, was seriously meh — despite that incredible face James Van Der Beek is making.
Image: Lionsgate
'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Brontë
When you love a book as deeply and truly as I love Wuthering Heights, pretty much any film adaptation is bound to be disappointing. The 2011 version directed by Andrea Arnold got some things right — she didn’t shy away from the explicit physical and psychological violence of the novel, and she fully explored way Brontë used nature as an emotional mirror — but the film was so slow and dull that I barely made it all the way through. And I like slow and dull. Cary Fukunaga’s Jayne Eyre , released the same year, did a much better job with a lot of the same thematic ideas.
Image: Film4
'The Hunger Games (Part 1)' by Suzanne Collins
Yeah, I know. But when this movie was announced I was nervous for a very specific reason: in order to deliver the mainstream PG-13 project that the studios would need, they’d have to excise the extremely graphic violence, dense political detail, and unrelenting psychological darkness that made the books so shocking, different, and genuinely terrifying to read. My fears largely felt validated — the movie is entertaining and intense, but the book is a brutal and politically complex tour de force, and a lot of that got lost in translation.
Image: Lionsgate
'Gone with the Wind' by Margaret Mitchell
The movie’s legend is (rightfully) so titanic that discussions of Mitchell’s novel tend to get pushed to the background. But I think this is a mistake. Though the racial politics of both book and movie are troubling to say the least, the book achieves more depth and nuance on every front. Particularly in its extremely progressive gender politics and the character of Scarlett O’Hara, one of the strongest, messiest, and most psychologically realized women ever depicted in popular culture. It’s also absurdly thrilling and propulsive — the shortest 1,000 pages you’ll ever read. Seriously!
Image: MGM
'Lolita' by Vladamir Nabokov
Lolita is one of those books whose greatness is almost entirely dependent on the particular literary gifts of its author, and the beguiling voice of its unreliable narrator. This is why Lolita is a masterpiece, rather than just a creepy and distasteful story. A few respectable adaptations have been made, and Kubrick’s loose take on the novel is widely considered a great film, but none of them can touch what makes the book so extraordinary.
Image: Pathé
'Matilda' by Roald Dahl
One of my absolute all-time-favorite children’s books, Roald Dahl’s Matilda is dark, funny, and weird. By contrast, the 1996 movie was fun and frothy, but very forgettable. The way that Dahl can be both delightfully imaginative and distinctly unsettling (and just, like, SO weird) all at one time was totally lost.
Image: Sony Pictures
'The Virgin Suicides' by Jeffrey Eugenides
I actually think that Sophia Coppola’s Virgin Suicides is a very good movie, and a solid adaptation of the kind of dreamy, impressionistic, tone-rich book that should be very difficult to film. I saw the movie first and read the book as an afterthought, and it turned out to be everything I liked about the film and much, much more. In my opinion it’s Eugenides’ best — even more impressive given that it was also his first.
Image: Paramount
'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' by Milan Kundera
This is another case of a very good and widely respected movie being made from a difficult book. But the particular qualities that make Milan Kundera’s novel what it is — the gorgeous writing, intense psychological intimacy, and the way it seamlessly combines narrative and philosophy to create something more than just a fictional story — is impossible to capture in a film. And apparently, Kundera agreed.
Image: MGM
'Emma' by Jane Austen
This 1996 adaptation, which helped launch Gwyneth Paltrow to superstardom, is pretty and polite and fine, but maybe a little bland — a respectable but forgettable take on an immortal classic. While it’s more of a reimagining than a straight adaptation, Clueless comes closer to capturing the energy, biting wit, and enormous heart of Austen’s voice.
Image: Miramax
