This may be unpopular but I was deeply disappointed in Shawshank Redemption when I read it. The movie is top tier.
Edit: In retrospect this doesn’t really answer your question as you asked about bad movies with a worse book and Shawshank is definitely not a bad film.
The story was a novella King wrote in the early 80s for a short story collection, and it was his first real attempt at writing genres outside of horror. He’s gotten better at that over the years.
Even so, I wouldn’t say it’s bad, just that the movie blows it out of the water.
Movie is definitely top tier, I also love the novella. Different Seasons is what I point to when people dismiss stephen king. Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me, and (while not on the level as the other two) Apt Pupil all in the same collection. But to each their own; pretty sure the final story is trash though haha.
Starship Troopers.
Great. Now a want to spread managed democracy some more
The movie is good though
I’m doing my part!
Damn, I missed the (which was already bad) caveat in the title. Yes, the film is great.
I do wonder how many people got hoodwinked by the film and then went to read the book only to be hit with an entire textbook of lectures from a libertarian.
That’s okay. Did you know it has sequels?
Jaws doesn’t quite fit the prompt but although it’s a good movie, the book is essentially a sub-par beach read. And there was no USS Indianapolis monologue in the book.
I’m guessing someone with enough familiarity could say this about one of the John Green books’ movie adaptations, but I haven’t seen any (?) of the movies and haven’t read the books since I was a teen so
This is a show and not a movie, but definitely The Magicians. The show is pretty incredible, and more or less abandons everything wrong with the original. The books mostly spend way too many pages following all the MC’s petty grievances, and he’s like a massive incel.
Oh, interesting! I may have to give the series a shot, then - I pretty much hate-read the books, hoping at first that he would get better and then later hoping that someone would just fucking kill him lol
Quentin is an incredible character in the show. Infuriating at times, immature, whiny, selfish, but in ways that are relatable. Everyone is immature, whiny, and selfish to some degree. Quentin’s story in the show is about getting out of his own fucking head and finding health and happiness in feeling connected to other people. His story as the MC is explicitly about him appreciating that he is not in fact the main character, and that’s a good thing.
Corollary of that is that the show ends up being a truly ensemble cast story, which is really refreshing. Plus Eliot and Margo are perfection.
Yessss, that’s exactly how I felt! I only even forced myself to finish it so I’d feel qualified to write a terrible review lol
Stuart Little was the weirdest book you could possibly read, the movie managed to make it actually make sense while both were meh.
I don’t know about worse, but the Eragon books and movie are equally terrible.
I’m a bit sick of its narratives around sexuality and state, apart from that I really liked the books, but HATED the movie.
Been a long time since I read them. What were the narratives around sexuakity and state?
Roran and Katrina have this weird martial ‘A man needs to protecc’ and tradwife dynamic.
Eragon is somewhat a minor while try-harding to flirt with Arya who is superhuman even to Eragon as a Rider. It is not out of character, but it really confused me when I read it as a teen.
Nasuada is a glorified dictator. Islanzadi, Hrothgar, Orik and Arya are glorified superhuman dictators. Human civilians have no agency and the great magic system even further cements that (Dwarfs have gods, Elves have the forest and their magic, while human magic doesn’t seem to aggregate to create a check on rulers).
I just re-read them last year. What narrative are you talking about? Is it to do with Eragon not understanding that he’s a teenager and he shouldn’t hit on the elf princess who is literally 80 years older than him?
Arya is not a viable partner for him for at least another five to ten years, IMHO actually for like 20-30 years. Eragon is still a displaced peasant with power not seen for millenia and Arya is a monarch of a superhumanity, who was stuffed with knowledge and experience since birth while having a very different mind. Eragon might not even fully understand yet how relationships work and how truly different elves are.
Roran’s martial masculinity and Katrina’s clicheed submission, Sloan’s power trip etc.
I think the whole point was that Eragon wasn’t right for Arya, I thought that was quite refreshing and a pretty important message for adolescents. It’s a pretty big deal, imo that they don’t end up together at the end, and eragon has to get over it. I think thats an original part of an overall cliche but enjoyable book. I do agree with roram and Katrina’s plot though.
Granted the author was quite young when he started the series (15) to when the first book got published (18, first self published then republished by an established publisher a couple years later). He’s came out with a new series recently, but I don’t know how much better it is.
And while I’m not saying the books are anything great, they’re still a far cry from the movie imo.
I’m not gonna go claiming that the Eragon books deserve a prize, but I loved them as a kid, and comparing them as equals to that movie is bordering on insanity.
The movie was good because it dropped all pretentiousness about where he was stealing his plot from.
Eragon was my first foray into proper swords and sorcery fantasy after Harry Potter.
Are the books really that bad in your opinion? By no means do they reinvent the wheel, but I enjoyed the magic system and enjoyed the aspect of Dragon + Rider and that relationship we see between the two.
I haven’t read much other Fantasy besides LotR and Stormlight Archive, but I enjoy the Inheritance Cycle.
The books end that bad. The first couple were pretty good, but the ending was awful and ruined the whole series.
I enjoyed the magic system at first, but it kept expanding and expanding to basically undo its own limitations. I remember being disappointed with the last book, but being especially disappointed by how it ended. It felt like a very forced attempt to have the same bittersweet ending Tolkien gave us in Lord of the Rings, but unlike in that, it felt completely unearned and illogical.
Take my opinion with a slight grain of salt because it’s been at least a decade since I read the book and a half of the series that I got through, but from what I recall the books just didn’t really have much to them - flat characters, awkward dialogue, and the actual prose itself was pretty bad. It was also boring enough that I just didn’t care about anything that was happening, and I’d read enough good fantasy by the time I read Eragon that its flaws were hard to look past - I know the dude was a teenager when he wrote it, but that doesn’t make the work magically better. Not trying to shit on anybody’s parade, but it just really wasn’t my thing.
Howl’s Moving Castle. Not that I didn’t enjoy the book, I just preferred the movie more.
Same. I remember the book being actually kind of unimpressive and wondering “Really, this is what inspired that amazing movie?”
My partner hateread Where The Crawdads Sing, but we haven’t seen the film, so probably that.
I haven’t read the book but enjoyed the movie. 🤷
I found the movie a bit sappy. A weaker version of To Kill a Mockingbird. What I couldn’t get over was the nonsensical geography and impossibly frequent bus service.
Haven’t read the book, but watched a guy discuss the differences between The Devil Wears Prada and the movie.
His contention was that there were absolutely no redeeming traits about Miranda in the book and she had somehow failed upwards with no true talent. Andy the protagonist spends the whole time rebelling against the magazine and its people.
In the movie we see Miranda to be a horrid person but we see that overlays a keen eye and talent that has led her to the top. Moreover, Andy spends effort to fit in with the magazine people and she evolves as a character.
That’s a good example. A filmmaker saw a 2D character and added a layer to save the story
Ready Player One I guess. There’s a big difference between seeing a fuckload of pop culture artifacts on screen and reading multiple pages of somebody rattling off their knowledge about them. The worst part is that RP1 doesn’t even really engage with the culture it utilizes in any kind of interesting way, it’s all just surface level references that you’d learn from reading Reddit comment sections where people quote memes at each other. The movie on the other hand kind of makes it work because the pop culture artifacts aren’t dwelled on, they’re used more like an aesthetic choice, while the main focus of the movie is on its paint-by-numbers plot.
This is probably the best example of the OP’s thread topic. Ready Player One book is really bad gaming nostalgia on the order of the Brick by Brick meme novel by Bob Chapman. Just absolute consumerist trash with nothing interesting to say. The movie is still bad, but better then then the book.
I can’t think of a more perfect example.
When the iron giant shows up in your story as a reference and you have him
checks notes
Choose to be a gun
I actually really liked the book over the movie. I felt like the book did a much better job of describing the dystopian world and how the MC (can’t remember his name and too lazy to look it up) and the world at large more or less dealt with it.
Iirc the movie doesn’t even go into the history of the digital world and why the MC was obsessed with it. I get that movies and books are different but it seemed like the movie was “inspired” by the book and not based on it.
The Mission, though I haven’t seen the movie yet.
My spouse says “Stardust” the book is nowhere near as good as “Stardust” the movie. We both love the movie, but it’s surprising the book wasn’t nearly as good.
Battlefield Earth. The movie is awful but it’s a much smaller time commitment than the book.
Fight Club, book is decent but the film seems a more complete package.
Even Chuck Palahniuk agrees.
Now that I see the movie, especially when I sat down with Jim Uhls and record a commentary track for the DVD, I was sort of embarrassed of the book, because the movie had streamlined the plot and made it so much more effective and made connections that I had never thought to make.
Source: https://www.dvdtalk.com/interviews/chuck_palahniuk.html
…is Chuck Palahniuk the director of the Truman Show? The show?
Chuck Palahniuk
Not that im aware of, he wrote the fight club book and then sold the rights too it, this is him criticising David Finchers adaption and saying the Chinese censor of it is actually closer to the orginal book lol.
There was a picture of him in the link you shared, he looks almost exactly like the director guy in that movie. Wouldn’t be surprised if he was the model they based it on
There is a Fight Club 2 in the form of a graphic novel. I normally don’t believe a shitty sequel can ruin my opinion of a movie I enjoy, but this one really put that to the test, boy howdy.
The film’s problem was casting Brad Pitt as Durden and changing the ending so that he’s successful. The movie made him attractice and charismatic. The book makes it clear the narrator is completely unhinged and fixated on his hatred of women and femininity.
The book is very clearly a story about straight men not being ok. “straight guys would rather punch each other naked Ina basement instead of go to therapy.” The movie doesn’t translate that well, so it reads more like a criticism of 90s work culture. Which is fair, but it often misses what Palahniuk intended.
To also be fair though Palahniuk seems to like the movie, but really despises young straight men admiring Durden as some antihero. He elaborates that feeling in the comic sequels.
