Great author loved The Eagle Has Landed much better book than movie but isn’t that usually the case ?
Almost always.
Just trying to think of a few that maybe buck the trend, or at least hold up as well :
Blade Runner
LOTR
Both change certain aspects but certainly in the case of Tolkien's story I felt the movies removed a lot of the material that made the books a bit of a slog at times.
Of course, they then put it all back in when they made The Hobbit a trilogy
Another Northern Soul wrote:LOTR films better than the book?????
Blasphemy! (Sort of)
The Exorcist, the first two Omen films, MASH, Shawshank Redemption (I'm cheating with that TBF), any good Shakespeare adaptation
No, I think they both are superb.
I did say hold up as well as in the original post.
I stand by the "editing" done by Jackson for the movies, though - they were better paced than the books, I thought.
I really love the middle one where we spend time with Gollum as the party splits and everyone makes their separate journeys across Middle Earth.
Another Northern Soul wrote:LOTR films better than the book?????
Blasphemy! (Sort of)
The Exorcist, the first two Omen films, MASH, Shawshank Redemption (I'm cheating with that TBF), any good Shakespeare adaptation
No, I think they both are superb.
I did say hold up as well as in the original post.
I stand by the "editing" done by Jackson for the movies, though - they were better paced than the books, I thought.
I really love the middle one where we spend time with Gollum as the party splits and everyone makes their separate journeys across Middle Earth.
I love the LOTR films, quite like The Hobbit ones as well, they're all astonishingly good.
I suggest that in a way comparing books with films is like comparing grapes with wine. That's a silly analogy I know. I remember reading the LOTR trilogy for the first time when I was out of work in my teens and felt even then that 'there's too much bleedin' singing' in the books
Just remembered one film I think is miles better than the book and that's the original Frankenstein. Whale's 'take' on the book is so different to the novel - it's hardly even a novel IMO - while Dracula the novel is miles better than any of the million films, IMHO.
Oh, I disagree completely about Frankenstein.
I thought the book was amazing !
So much more human than any movie depiction IMHO.
Similarly, Dracula as a novel is astounding - one of the finest pieces of fiction I've ever read.
The Coppola movie with Gary Oldman and Keanu Reeves is the only film that gets anywhere close to the original plot, though the 1970s BBC adaptation was remarkably similar too. Apparently they're doing a new version soon - I won't hold my breath ..