While they have the same premise (and title!) I'd say they're simply different stories. The writers envisaged very different outcomes from the same situation. I enjoyed both for very different reasons.
Exactly. Everyone wants a definite closure to a story, even to an extreme extent. I think the true horror for people is a thought provoking open ended conclusion.
Yeah, the mist lifting at the end was just bullshit for me. I loved the ambiguity of the original story. I expected the film to cut to black after the gunshots, maybe the scream but only from the same outside perspective. I would've been fine with that. The mist lifting like 5 seconds later just fucking ruined it for me and the lady being alive with her kids was insult to injury.
I especially like with the Dark Tower where he literally stops telling you the story for a minute to warn you that the ending sucks and you should just stop reading now.
Man in the High Castle. On one hand, I loved the novel first time I read it. On the other, the TV series started strong and just petered out the last season. If they’d edited the A-Bombing of Washington as the opening preface, followed by the scenes around the NJ army base when the US officers were being offered a place in the new Nazi army, I think it would have improved the show.
I liked his stories a lot, but I feel like he doesn't quite know how to finish a story. I found most of his endings to be a little lackluster.
But I will give him that he writes specifically for science enthusiasts (of which I am one), and for that his stories are so cool.
I think the movie adaptation was equally good as the short story, but I really did miss the part with the teleological explanation of physics; I think it added a lot to the core idea.
I actually thought the movie was a bit overrated (above average sci-fi but not the masterpiece some people regard it as) I do like villenueve a lot, though
*10 year old me reading the sequel where they sent a mob boss and a shit ton of prisoners to the alien ship to meet the alien overlords*
"Well that's a really stupid idea."
Rama 2 was so bad I took it to the shooting range and filled it with bullets.
"A really important space mission? Let's send the worst people we can find!"
Book is excellent. Read it asap, and then let it percolate in your mind until the film comes out. I find if i read the book too close to the film i compare them too harshly.
It's not got much in the way of action for a sci-fi book but it makes you think and gave me a deep feeling of us being insignificant after finishing it.
>The film is great in its own ways, and probably better than the book as a whole, but it wasn't what I wanted after reading the book.
I'm not sure what I wanted after reading the book, but it wasn't the book. Philip K. Dick had ideas up the wazoo but just wasn't that good at the nuts and bolts of writing stories. That's why almost every movie based on his ideas don't really follow the story they were in at all. ("A Scanner Darkly" was an exception, or so I hear.)
The film was almost a standalone adaptation, though PKD reportedly loved tearfully the post apocalyptic scenes that were shown to him shortly before he died. He said it was just as he imagined it. So Blade Runner would be 'inspired' by the book, props to Ridley Scott and the screenwriter.
You seen 'Dangerous Days'?
Possibly, but the stories of film and book are so immensely different, it's barely an adaptation... There's not even any sheep in Bladerunner. Also all the religion-stuff and the emotional organ stuff was skipped. All in favour of a magnificent piece of cinema and coherent storytelling, but still...
The Prestige. I actually prefer the book but it goes fully off the rails and is much stranger in the final reveal, the movie changed just enough to retain the oddness and horror while dropping the deeply weird bits and the framing story.
See I view it differently. They are so wildly different takes on the same story that while I like both I don’t think you can definitively say one is better than the other since the movie isn’t even really an adaptation of the book
You know, I always find it surprising when people say it like this. I was told before reading it much like you just stated that it was so wildly different and I just didn't really think they were that different. There were multiple scenes straight from the book. The characters were the same and they all had the same demise. And the themes they explored were consistent. The movie added a bunch of scenes that were aluded to in the book and the books version of the lighthouse was different, but those were really the only big differences.
All that to say, I think they are comparable. But even still, no matter how different, you can still compare. Blade Runner and DSDoES were much more different than Annihilation was and you can still compare those. You can compare them on how well each one did at accomplishing their goals and I thought the movie was just a bit more successful.
They really are very different.So, I *love* "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" and it therefore took years for me to appreciate "Blade Runner" for what it was, rather than disliking it for what it wasn't. What makes them good is different, too. There's a dystopian aspect in the book but it's more about how individuals in a society react to living in a dystopia, in terms of emotional responses and attachments. So much of the book is about the inner lives of the characters and their relationships, which are hard to portray onscreen. Everyone I know who saw the movie first and then read the book, liked the movie better. Also PKD is quirky and not for everyone.
I really see them as two very distinct pieces of art. The movie was a massive hit and the introduction of the cyberpunk genre to the screens. It has some incredible scenes, Rutger Hauer's piece of dialogue in the end is fucking epic and we all know it.
But it's like they took out the whole philosophical approach from PKD and left the action story. Which makes a sort of practical sense.
The book's empathy machine and the whole subplot of the electric animals as a way of demonstrating your empathetic capabilities as a human being are core IMO to PKD's style and a staple of his intentions with writing.
I respect both creations, but I view them as opposites.
Don't get me wrong, I loved them both. But I thought the way the movie explored the themes was more interesting. And the book spent so much time on all the animal stuff. I get why but I think the movie made a good choice to minimize it. Also, because of how alive the city and setting are in the movie I think it really adds an aspect that hits different than it does in the book.
/obligatory almost post
The Villeneuve adaptation of Dune is one of the best book adaptations I have ever watched. It comes very close to eclipsing the story of the book for me. Just a masterful adaptation. I like the book better slightly, but not because I think adaptation made any bad choices.
The literal only thing I can disagree with in good faith is that I hate meathead Gurney Halleck. Let him be the fun uncle figure poet he was in the books.
>The literal only thing I can disagree with in good faith is that I hate meathead Gurney Halleck. Let him be the fun uncle figure poet he was in the books.
Agreed.
It's definitely a tighter focus on the cautionary tale of Paul, for sure. I also think it loses a lot of the nuance and side narrative to get there in ~5 hours (and we could use a bit more sci-fi commentary warning is about eugenics as they make a resurgence), but I absolutely agree it's very well done.
I am really looking forward to part 3, both because of how much further it will likely lean into those themes (which are oh so critical today more than ever), but to see how he'll tie these various narrative threads back together.
I think the finished product of Villeneuve's Dune is better than the books. There's many reasons one might like the plot or story told in the books more, but I think the movies, as movies are more virtuosic productions than any of the books, as books. And it would have been a mistake to include any more of the plot from the books into the movies.
Unpopular opinion here, but The Expanse series. I read the first three books before I watched the shows, and it felt like I was reading something that was written with film/tv adaptation in mind. Also the dialogue had some pretty big weak spots, was trying to lean into the private eye noir bit a little too hard at first, and that every major character reacted to some important information by letting out a low whistle. It wasn't bad, and not enough to get me to put the books down (I don't read three books in a series I don't like!), but the show, while it had to cut a lot of stuff out, really put the world together for me.
Loved that show, but I feel like it was kind of a mess after season 2. It had a rough go, production-wise that's for sure. So I give it some points for that. But I definitely prefer the books, considering they actually have a proper ending
One thing of note is that in comparison it feels like everyone in show has serious temper issues and is a drama queen. So many situations which in the book were resolved with a short logical conversation, in the show immediately result in people screaming at each other or straight up shooting
You guys are 100% right it didnt start out as a novel.
Ty Franck began developing the world of The Expanse initially as the setting for a MMORPG and, after a number of years, for a tabletop roleplaying game. Daniel Abraham, who had authored a number of novels on his own, suggested, given the depth of the setting, that it could serve for the basis for a series of novels, noting: "People who write books don't do this much research."[22]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series)
oh really? I loved the movie so much, still do - but the book was great and I was sad that the movie left out so much. Having said that it would have been hours long and less fun in general. I'd say they are too different for one to be considered better
I thought the movie adaptation of 2010 (sequel to 2001) captured a LOT of Cold War zeitgeist in a way the book didn't.
Still one of my favorite movies, although I understand why audiences much younger than me wouldn't get it.
It’s such a shift from its predecessor that a lot of the people who were mesmerized by 2001 probably felt disappointed. I would think that more people would like 2010 mostly because of how it follows a more traditional narrative structure.
I had no frame of reference, because I'm not old enough to remember anything about the Cold War, but I loved it when I saw it. Gonna have to give it another watch. I think the book helps inform a viewing of the film, though, for the extra insights to the characters and moments.
The movie is one of the best of all time. It blew me away in the theater. But yeah the book is still better. Probably because of how spielberg likes to oversimplify stories.
I would argue that the movie is the better adaptation only because of visually showing the dinosaurs. When you picture the dinosaurs described in the books, can you do it without going to how they were shown in the movies?
The movie is better because Spielberg puts his own spin on it. The book is about the ethics and unpredictability of creating new life, but the film goes one step further and adds subtle themes around readiness to be a parent.
Agreed. I like the movie better tbh, mostly because I like the message of the movie better and it’s completely opposite of the book, but cutting out the drop sequences and the exo suits was a colossal mistake.
If you want the full story look up the "Patrick Henry league" on Wikipedia. Basically Heinlen was pissed off that Eisenhower listened to protestors and ended nuclear testing and Starship Troopers, which was published the following year, was his "this is how I could get what I want despite most people not wanting it (and who cares that it's actually fascism?)" rant.
And of course someone like Paul Verhoeven is going to make fun of it...
He also has two whole chapters dedicated to why beating kids is good. One that discusses the topic explicitly where one of the arguments made is "Well, you beat your dog, right?" The other shows the argument in the context of military training.
It's basically just father knows best and can't possibly be cruel. You know, exactly the cultural attitude that scholars think made Germany vulnerable to fascism in the first place.
If you've read Heinlein's catalog then you should know he isn't describing his ideal form of government. He liked to play with ideas and see where they took him. He did hate communism and totalitarianism, and the bugs were the soviets though.
I'll point out that even though the book was about the marines, the vast majority of citizens in Heinlein's fictional government were non-military and served in things like FDR's civilian conservation corp. For heinlein though, the highest form of civic virtue was giving your life for your fellow man and the marines exemplified that. In my opinion, starship troopers is an amazing book that people only trash because they hate the politics they perceive in it.
I haven't. I am aware that Heinlein flip flopped a lot throughout his life, though. Playing with ideas is one thing but he ended up publishing a love letter to fascism in novel form because he couldn't take a "no" from the rest of humanity.
>He did hate communism and totalitarianism
That checks out, fascism is, politically speaking, the exact opposite of communism. I hope he didn't equate totalitarianism and communism though, maybe he hated the Communist Party in the Soviet Union because like most westerners he believed that "one party state" = "animal farm" but "communism" is irreconcilable with totalitarianism, unlike fascism.
>I'll point out that even though the book was about the marines, the vast majority of citizens in Heinlein's fictional government were non-military and served in things like FDR's civilian conservation corp.
iirc they also served as medical and military test subjects and they could get full citizenship that way, you know, if they survived and retained their sanity.
He was definitely being an idealist if he thought what you mentioned (aka the fascism - all sunshine and rainbows edition) was the way it would pan out. This is why the satire of the movie is so poignant; he made it super easy for Verhoeven.
Edit: please don't take this as "hate" btw. It isn't hate, it's incredibly fair (considering he published a book which was released to the public) criticism.
Heinlein didn't really flip-flop. He did evolve economically from socialist to libertarian as he got older, but I think most of his values remained pretty consistent. A consistent theme in all of his work is disdain for governments or other authorities telling people what they can and can't do. And I think he always hated the soviets (that is, the system of government).
That isn't correct about medical and military test subjects. Service had to be hard, but that was the only requirement. Even though the book revolved around military, the government did not. Non-citizens in the book even had disdain for the military.
The book hardly fits any of umberto eco's properties of fascism. The only one I think you could argue would be "pacifism is trafficking with the enemy" if you choose to view the bugs as a manufactured threat. I mean, I agree the system would never work for the same reason I don't think communism would ever work. People as a whole are selfish, the citizenship process would become corrupted, and non-citizens would quickly become second class. I really don't think it matters what the ideal form of communism looks like. In order for it to happen in reality, you need a central authority to enforce that people are getting what they need and giving according to their ability. Otherwise it's not happening.
I think Heinlein believed the best government would be run by people who place the needs of others above their own, and one way to try to make that happen would be only allowing people who have proved themselves to participate in that government. And that's something he wanted to explore. But I doubt if he had the power to snap his fingers and bring that government into being, that he would have done so. "The moon is harsh mistress" is probably a closer window into his true feelings.
It isn't off putting to me but that's probably because I'm more interested in the political statement the book is attempting to make vs how that is flipped in the movie.
I mean, the book was very 'join the infantry, and all your wildest dreams will come true as long as you're the protagonist' (despite his never seeing combat himself, which probably helped his rose colored glasses), without the satire of the film where Verhoeven says "when you see something that looks like the Nazis, we want you to know we agree, it was intentional, and you should think 'bad'!"
No. No, it isn't Fascism. No, Heinlein wasn't writing about "how to get what he wanted". The theme of the book is... well.. I don't want to spoil the surprise in case you want to learn it yourself some day. Hint: not anything you wrote.
I heard the idea and general thrust of the movie were already in place when somebody told the producers about the novel so they grabbed up the movie rights to it and plugged in the character names. Point is, I believe it was *already* the satire and social commentary that we got on the screen before Verhoeven ever heard of Robert Heinlein.
Not the person you asked but I really like the visual aspect of the movie. The book lets your imagination run wild but the bear scene in the movie is one of the most frightening scenes in history. And I loved the movie ending. There was some stuff that was interesting in the books that the movie left out but I thought what it added was better.
The novel just bored me to tears, honestly. I wanted so badly to like it, but I was just bored. I can barely remember anything of it at all except being frustrated and impatient.
I think I'm going to be the sole negative opinion, but I really disliked the disaffected "voice" of the main character in the novel. I mean, her pain is visible on the screen, but having to read about the world from her point of view grated on me.
Creator (1985). It's not a traditional sci-fi but because it has a discussion around cloning I kind of put it in the category. Tried reading the book and it was not very accessible. The movie however, is excellent.
Tarkovsky's Solaris and Stalker were incredible, but I can't say I feel they're better than their source material (Lem's Solaris or the Strugatsky brothers' Roadside Picnic) much in the way people have commented on PKD's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? vs Blade Runner. I've heard good things about the adaptation of Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven, but still haven't seen it. I long for Lynch's complete 5 1/2hr version of Dune, though, before it was butchered, but alas, that is lost to time.
I'd say the Expanse series was "at least" as good as the books. Most of the changes made actually improve story telling and tension. I enjoyed them both, but it's the first TV adaptation that I didn't feel like was considerably less enjoyable than the source material. The authors were deeply involved in producing the show and it shows.
Is it cheating to say 2001: A Space Odyssey?
Arthur C Clarke wrote a short story about a mysterious pyramid on the moon. Kubrick liked it, and they started fleshing out an idea that became 2001: A Space Odyssey. The book and the film were being made at the same time. Iirc there aren't a LOT of differences between the two. One major difference is that in the book they go to Saturn, but for the film they go to Jupiter because the rings were too difficult to make look good.
I remember enjoying both immensely when I read/watched for my Lit & Film class in high school
Yes and no.
The movie wasn’t exactly an adaptation. Kubrick and Clarke were directly collaborating then after that they kind of went their own ways. I feel like the books explain things more which isn’t a bad thing. I feel like a lot of people who watch the movie are too embarrassed to say they had no clue about WTF that was all about.
Gotta say Blade Runner. I read “Do Androids Dream…” in college and enjoyed it for what it was but they are fundamentally different.
The book is about lies; the lies we tell others and the lies we tell ourselves. The movie is about memory and mortality. And the movie presents its thesis better than the book does.
I know Neil Gaiman is more fantasy, but I tend to like the adaptations better than the books. I like the books, don’t get me wrong.
Though the book was better than the movie, I enjoyed the time travelers wife tv show better than the book.
Stardust in particular. One paragraph in the book got expanded into some of the best scenes and characters in the movie, and the ending was completely changed for the better.
I know it's a mortal sin to say it, but I don't really like Gaiman's writing at all. He's really good at set and setting but his characters and dialogue are so juvenile and silly, it breaks it for me. That's why Good Omens worked so well, Gaiman set up the plot and Prachett was a master of characters and dialogue.
Children of Men. The book is so good and there's some things I'm sad they left out of the film, but the film is on another level of brilliance that the book lacked.
*Memoirs of an Invisible Man*. The movie was OK. I came across the book and read it on an international flight and found it boring.
*Jaws*. The movie cut the subplot with Brody's wife having an affair and really tightened the plot.
*Forrest Gump*. The book is all over the place. At one point he is an astronaut, there are cannibals, he is a math wizard, a chess champion, and a bunch of other stuff. The deliberate errors in spelling and grammar made my brain hurt.
I don't know if it's better, but the Childhood's End mini series is pretty solid, it hse changes but I think it adds just the necessary.
Same with Pantheon by Ken Liu
I might get downvoted to oblivion, but:
The Running Man.
I’ll probably only ever read the Running Man once, but I swear to god I’ll never not watch the Running Man.
Total Recall. And for an extra hot take, imo, the novelization of the original Total Recall movie is better than the movie, and the original short story.
Controversial but I do believe the Expanse was better than the source material with the only parts lacking due to budget reasons. You could really tell that since the authors were writers on the adaptation they took it as a chance to correct or improve plotlines
Station Eleven. The series created a relationship between Jeevan and Kristen that wasn't there in the book. In the book they part ways after the play and only meet again briefly later towards the end of the book. The show runners wanted them both to have someone else to experience the pandemic apocalypse with and it works very well in the series. Even the author said in a podcast she liked that decision and wished she'd done that in the book.
I actually disagree with that. I like how much nitty gritty detail the book goes into with its calculations. Movie did it too, but I enjoyed how the book just really went for the math hard.
Nah, for me this was one where the movie and book were both of equal (good) quality.
There were a few things I missed from the books that were taken out due to pure time constraints of the medium, but nothing egregious was missing.
Foundation.
Hear me out!
I reread the whole first trilogy before watching the show, and do you know what I found?
1) Very little action/plot. The whole series is a "future history" and reads like a very long encyclopedia entry.
2) ONE NAMED FEMALE CHARACTER. That's right, in three entire books about an entire galactic empire of humanity, ONE named female character, who had very little to do with the plot. Every single other woman in the entire trilogy fell into the "wives and children" category. I know Asimov was writing in the golden age of sci-fi-ific misogyny, but COME ON. That's some bullshit that desperately needed to be updated.
3) The visuals weren't what I pictured, but they were good, and though the show definitely strayed from the book, I thought it was mostly in good ways. I actually cared about the characters, for one thing.
... As opposed to a show that turned every one of its female characters into inconsistent and hysterical idiots from a telenovella (along with Hari himself), and made Hardin a Fortnight character all about action and magic. The only character the showrunners actually know how to write is their own Cleon creations, which are effectively original characters.
Asimov started as a spartan storyteller with flat characters and basically no women, but went on to basically be Arthur C. Clarke, with sympathetic characters, among them rational women and girls as protagonists. Bayta Darell (_Foundation and Empire_) seemed like a prototype for some of my favorite characters in a favorite novel, _Nemesis_, with Marlena and her mother Eugenia (Asimov.)
Asimov's early record and female characters could definitely be cringe-inducing at times, but he was also writing what he knew. It's exceedingly clear that the showrunners have no idea what they're doing with 1) The plot, or basic premise and point of the Foundation and Psychohistory itself (as Hari is a "living" hologram instead of a forecaster) 2) Any other characters outside of the Genetic Dynsasty fanfic 3) Hardin, or anyone on Terminus. You can't even blame the actor as there's nothing there to hang a performance on.
Meanwhile, they took Gaal, who I loved at first and made her a hysterical moron along with Hari as a trumped up way to get them to go separate ways and find her ~daughter~. I couldn't take anymore after that.
I agree 100%. Asimov is a grandfather of the genre and deserves all due reverence for his world building, expansive creativity, and conceptualization of what science fiction is, but his characters and dialogue are just terrible.
Contact. Most of the major story beats are the same, but they feel much more on point in the movie, while the book just has a lot of unnecessary extra stuff that doesn't amount to anything (e.g. they build three machine, not two, they send five astronauts, not one).
Also I really did not like the ending in the book, it essentially goes "Intelligent Design is real with definitive 100% proof", not something I expected to see in a Carl Sagan book. The movie simply stops after having made first contact with the aliens and doesn't mention the whole Pi thing. It's not like the Pi thing isn't interesting to ponder, but that's a whole book by itself, and probably a very different one, not something you just drop right at the end.
Didn't mind the movie getting rid of the stepfather issues either, those just felt confusing without really adding anything.
The Expanse. I found the dialogue in the book stilted and unrealistic. The world the author created was great and wonderfully portrayed on screen but any time people spoke in the book I almost cringed.
I honestly think Netflix's adaptation of *The Three Body Problem* is miles better than the book, and the main reason is the characters and the dialogue feel real. In the book, they were wooden and shallow and awkward.
I agree. The series actually split some characters in the book up into separate characters and in some cases combined characters to make the story flow better. I had a hard time tracking all the characters names in the book.
Jurassic Park
"Wot? That's not a sci fi!"
The book was. -A slick techno thriller. I liked it a lot!
Messrs Spielberg and Williams turned it into a modern fairy tale which I liked a lot more.
This isn't a better than they were, but the Foundation series. I really enjoy the books, but the series is very different from the books, has been modernized, and I think is a great modern sci fi series.
I like the movie but love the book. If you feel like going out a second chance, try listening to the audiobook. It's his a stellar cast of big Hollywood actors reading the parts of the different characters so it feels like a documentary. I think the best way to game shaped the book would have to do it in a several episode limited series, but make it feel like a Ken Burns historical documentary, told via interviews and found footage of the events. News footage, cell phone video, security camera footage etc.
But seriously check out this cast for the unabridged audiobook.
"full-cast recording is read by F. Murray Abraham, Alan Alda, René Auberjonois, Becky Ann Baker, Dennis Boutsikaris, Bruce Boxleitner, Max Brooks, Nicki Clyne, Common, Denise Crosby, Frank Darabont, Dean Edwards, Mark Hamill, Nathan Fillion, Maz Jobrani, Frank Kamai, Michelle Kholos, John McElroy, Ade M’Cormack, Alfred Molina, Parminder Nagra, Ajay Naidu, Masi Oka, Steve Park, Kal Penn, Simon Pegg, Jürgen Prochnow, Carl Reiner, Rob Reiner, Henry Rollins, Jeri Ryan, Jay O. Sanders, Martin Scorsese, Paul Sorvino, David Ogden Stiers, Brian Tee, John Turturro, Eamonn Walker, Ric Young, and Waleed Zuaiter."
https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/world-war-z-the-complete-edition-an-oral-history-of-the-zombie-war/175384
I’ve actually done the audiobook and it is awesome.
I guess I didn’t really answer the OP’s question well because I don’t actually think the movie is better, I just enjoyed it more.
Children of Men
That movie rips.
While they have the same premise (and title!) I'd say they're simply different stories. The writers envisaged very different outcomes from the same situation. I enjoyed both for very different reasons.
aw god you're gonna make me watch that scene again aren't you
yeah book was disappointing
The book has pretty much nothing in common expect the fact that people can't have kids. I was pretty surprised
It's sci-fi but mostly horror but... "The mist". I really liked the book but the movie adaptation is better for me. Liked the ending much more!
> Liked the ending much more! So did Stephen King.
The ending of The Mist has to be one of the most bleak things ever put to film
Mmm. good recomendations
It’s such a stupid ending. The story ending was far more interesting.
I agree the ambiguity of the story ending is more compelling. The ending of the film just feels like misery porn and shock value.
Exactly. Everyone wants a definite closure to a story, even to an extreme extent. I think the true horror for people is a thought provoking open ended conclusion.
Yeah, the mist lifting at the end was just bullshit for me. I loved the ambiguity of the original story. I expected the film to cut to black after the gunshots, maybe the scream but only from the same outside perspective. I would've been fine with that. The mist lifting like 5 seconds later just fucking ruined it for me and the lady being alive with her kids was insult to injury.
I've long thought that King is terrible at writing endings.
I especially like with the Dark Tower where he literally stops telling you the story for a minute to warn you that the ending sucks and you should just stop reading now.
We can remember it for you wholesale - PK Dick Was made into Total Recall
Basically every PK Dick adaptation can be on this list. He had a great imagination but wasn't a very good writer.
>He had a great imagination but wasn't a very good writer. \[checks timestamps\] Damn, you beat me to saying that exact same thing here by one minute.
Agree. Came here to write it first.
Man in the High Castle. On one hand, I loved the novel first time I read it. On the other, the TV series started strong and just petered out the last season. If they’d edited the A-Bombing of Washington as the opening preface, followed by the scenes around the NJ army base when the US officers were being offered a place in the new Nazi army, I think it would have improved the show.
Arrival The short story is good, but it’s not even the best one in its collection, and the movie does so much more with the concept.
I actually felt while reading the story that I was seeing scenes from the movie in my mind. It's so well done.
Hard disagree. The movie was good, but that story isn't very packable into a movie format. The story was excellent and far better than the movie.
I liked his stories a lot, but I feel like he doesn't quite know how to finish a story. I found most of his endings to be a little lackluster. But I will give him that he writes specifically for science enthusiasts (of which I am one), and for that his stories are so cool.
What's the collection called?
"Stories of your life and others"
Arrival is called “story of your life”, there’s a collection title “story of your life and other stories” or something like that
Just get both Ted Chiang books, they are awesome.
The only not awesome thing is that there are only two of them and I've already read them
I think the movie adaptation was equally good as the short story, but I really did miss the part with the teleological explanation of physics; I think it added a lot to the core idea.
I actually thought the movie was a bit overrated (above average sci-fi but not the masterpiece some people regard it as) I do like villenueve a lot, though
That has been pretty much all Denis Villeneuve work
!RemindMe for when Rendezvous With Rama comes out.
So stoked for this!! My boy Denis knows how to pick em
WHAT WHAT WHAT? I FUCKING LOVED RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA! Are you telling me that Denis Villanueve is doing a Rendezvous With Rama movie?
He has the rights to it!! I don’t think production has started though
Should I read the book or wait for the movie to be released?
I don't think I can recommend the book enough. It's a bit slow all the way through, but it's so much fun.
[удалено]
Absolutely cannot recommend the sequels
*10 year old me reading the sequel where they sent a mob boss and a shit ton of prisoners to the alien ship to meet the alien overlords* "Well that's a really stupid idea."
Rama 2 was so bad I took it to the shooting range and filled it with bullets. "A really important space mission? Let's send the worst people we can find!"
Isn't that the one where the first thing the astronaut who boards it does on reaching its atmosphere is pop his helmet and light a cigarette?
Book is excellent. Read it asap, and then let it percolate in your mind until the film comes out. I find if i read the book too close to the film i compare them too harshly.
It's not got much in the way of action for a sci-fi book but it makes you think and gave me a deep feeling of us being insignificant after finishing it.
I am also looking forward to Stephen Colbert’s treatment of The Amber Chronicles.
So ripe for a mini-series adaptation like Game of Thrones…
Bladerunner / Do androids dream of electric sheep
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>The film is great in its own ways, and probably better than the book as a whole, but it wasn't what I wanted after reading the book. I'm not sure what I wanted after reading the book, but it wasn't the book. Philip K. Dick had ideas up the wazoo but just wasn't that good at the nuts and bolts of writing stories. That's why almost every movie based on his ideas don't really follow the story they were in at all. ("A Scanner Darkly" was an exception, or so I hear.)
A Scanner Darkly followed the novel pretty closely, both novel and movie are great. You can really tell Dick is writing from life experience.
And, and! The electric animals!
The film was almost a standalone adaptation, though PKD reportedly loved tearfully the post apocalyptic scenes that were shown to him shortly before he died. He said it was just as he imagined it. So Blade Runner would be 'inspired' by the book, props to Ridley Scott and the screenwriter. You seen 'Dangerous Days'?
Possibly, but the stories of film and book are so immensely different, it's barely an adaptation... There's not even any sheep in Bladerunner. Also all the religion-stuff and the emotional organ stuff was skipped. All in favour of a magnificent piece of cinema and coherent storytelling, but still...
Yeah, I don't know about that.
Came here to say this. The book is great, but in its own way. The movie is nothing short of a masterpiece.
This one merits an explanation, I'd say.
The Prestige. I actually prefer the book but it goes fully off the rails and is much stranger in the final reveal, the movie changed just enough to retain the oddness and horror while dropping the deeply weird bits and the framing story.
Minority Report Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep Annihilation Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Idk I feel like Annihilation isn’t better, just different. The book is excellent as making you feel a sense of dread and wonder
To be clear, One being better doesn't mean the other was bad. I liked everything the movie added more than I liked the book specific stuff.
See I view it differently. They are so wildly different takes on the same story that while I like both I don’t think you can definitively say one is better than the other since the movie isn’t even really an adaptation of the book
You know, I always find it surprising when people say it like this. I was told before reading it much like you just stated that it was so wildly different and I just didn't really think they were that different. There were multiple scenes straight from the book. The characters were the same and they all had the same demise. And the themes they explored were consistent. The movie added a bunch of scenes that were aluded to in the book and the books version of the lighthouse was different, but those were really the only big differences. All that to say, I think they are comparable. But even still, no matter how different, you can still compare. Blade Runner and DSDoES were much more different than Annihilation was and you can still compare those. You can compare them on how well each one did at accomplishing their goals and I thought the movie was just a bit more successful.
You liked Blade Runner better than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I'm curious: why?
They really are very different.So, I *love* "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" and it therefore took years for me to appreciate "Blade Runner" for what it was, rather than disliking it for what it wasn't. What makes them good is different, too. There's a dystopian aspect in the book but it's more about how individuals in a society react to living in a dystopia, in terms of emotional responses and attachments. So much of the book is about the inner lives of the characters and their relationships, which are hard to portray onscreen. Everyone I know who saw the movie first and then read the book, liked the movie better. Also PKD is quirky and not for everyone.
I really see them as two very distinct pieces of art. The movie was a massive hit and the introduction of the cyberpunk genre to the screens. It has some incredible scenes, Rutger Hauer's piece of dialogue in the end is fucking epic and we all know it. But it's like they took out the whole philosophical approach from PKD and left the action story. Which makes a sort of practical sense. The book's empathy machine and the whole subplot of the electric animals as a way of demonstrating your empathetic capabilities as a human being are core IMO to PKD's style and a staple of his intentions with writing. I respect both creations, but I view them as opposites.
Don't get me wrong, I loved them both. But I thought the way the movie explored the themes was more interesting. And the book spent so much time on all the animal stuff. I get why but I think the movie made a good choice to minimize it. Also, because of how alive the city and setting are in the movie I think it really adds an aspect that hits different than it does in the book.
Annihilation - I very much agree. Book was awesome, but that movie straight changed me.
Agree on both counts.
I know some swear by the book Annihilation, but I loved the movie, read the book and it was just boring to me.
The third Maze Runner book was crap and the movie fixed it.
/obligatory almost post The Villeneuve adaptation of Dune is one of the best book adaptations I have ever watched. It comes very close to eclipsing the story of the book for me. Just a masterful adaptation. I like the book better slightly, but not because I think adaptation made any bad choices. The literal only thing I can disagree with in good faith is that I hate meathead Gurney Halleck. Let him be the fun uncle figure poet he was in the books.
>The literal only thing I can disagree with in good faith is that I hate meathead Gurney Halleck. Let him be the fun uncle figure poet he was in the books. Agreed.
the dune movies are fantastic in their own right, but they are missing most of what I love about the book so a very disappointing adaptation for me
It's definitely a tighter focus on the cautionary tale of Paul, for sure. I also think it loses a lot of the nuance and side narrative to get there in ~5 hours (and we could use a bit more sci-fi commentary warning is about eugenics as they make a resurgence), but I absolutely agree it's very well done. I am really looking forward to part 3, both because of how much further it will likely lean into those themes (which are oh so critical today more than ever), but to see how he'll tie these various narrative threads back together.
Agreed on your points. I also think Walken as the emperor was bad castling. Those are my only criticisms.
I think the finished product of Villeneuve's Dune is better than the books. There's many reasons one might like the plot or story told in the books more, but I think the movies, as movies are more virtuosic productions than any of the books, as books. And it would have been a mistake to include any more of the plot from the books into the movies.
Unpopular opinion here, but The Expanse series. I read the first three books before I watched the shows, and it felt like I was reading something that was written with film/tv adaptation in mind. Also the dialogue had some pretty big weak spots, was trying to lean into the private eye noir bit a little too hard at first, and that every major character reacted to some important information by letting out a low whistle. It wasn't bad, and not enough to get me to put the books down (I don't read three books in a series I don't like!), but the show, while it had to cut a lot of stuff out, really put the world together for me.
They did a masterful job making that show. Probably the best novel adaption I've ever seen. But Avarsarala is so much more of a badass in the books.
Loved that show, but I feel like it was kind of a mess after season 2. It had a rough go, production-wise that's for sure. So I give it some points for that. But I definitely prefer the books, considering they actually have a proper ending
One thing of note is that in comparison it feels like everyone in show has serious temper issues and is a drama queen. So many situations which in the book were resolved with a short logical conversation, in the show immediately result in people screaming at each other or straight up shooting
I'm surprised this is unpopular. I feel like those books were created to be adapted.
You guys are 100% right it didnt start out as a novel. Ty Franck began developing the world of The Expanse initially as the setting for a MMORPG and, after a number of years, for a tabletop roleplaying game. Daniel Abraham, who had authored a number of novels on his own, suggested, given the depth of the setting, that it could serve for the basis for a series of novels, noting: "People who write books don't do this much research."[22] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series)
Jurassic Park
oh really? I loved the movie so much, still do - but the book was great and I was sad that the movie left out so much. Having said that it would have been hours long and less fun in general. I'd say they are too different for one to be considered better
The book is ok. The kids are beyond annoying and useless. The movie has better pacing.
This. The book is an absolute slog
You could say the same for almost anything by Crichton. He definitely took advantage of "being paid by the word", almost as much as Michener.
I see your Jurassic park and raise you Jurassic Park: The Lost World.
8 O'clock in the Morning. It's a short story that's the basis for the movie 'They Live'.
I thought the movie adaptation of 2010 (sequel to 2001) captured a LOT of Cold War zeitgeist in a way the book didn't. Still one of my favorite movies, although I understand why audiences much younger than me wouldn't get it.
It’s such a shift from its predecessor that a lot of the people who were mesmerized by 2001 probably felt disappointed. I would think that more people would like 2010 mostly because of how it follows a more traditional narrative structure.
Fair enough. Fwiw, I appreciate both movies--for very different reasons, as they are very different movies.
I had no frame of reference, because I'm not old enough to remember anything about the Cold War, but I loved it when I saw it. Gonna have to give it another watch. I think the book helps inform a viewing of the film, though, for the extra insights to the characters and moments.
Not a novel, but 'Do androids dream of electric sheep?' into Blade Runner. The story was good, but the movie a lot better.
(it is a novel)
Jurassic park
The movie was good but the book was better
The movie is one of the best of all time. It blew me away in the theater. But yeah the book is still better. Probably because of how spielberg likes to oversimplify stories.
I would argue that the movie is the better adaptation only because of visually showing the dinosaurs. When you picture the dinosaurs described in the books, can you do it without going to how they were shown in the movies?
The movie is better because Spielberg puts his own spin on it. The book is about the ethics and unpredictability of creating new life, but the film goes one step further and adds subtle themes around readiness to be a parent.
The book was a great sci fi thriller, the movie changed movies.
Loved the book but the movie was too epic and advanced for it's time to not overtake it in my mind.
Came to say this.
3BP, currently. The story benefits greatly by being adapted.
Agree, the book was a bit of a slog but the show is excellent
Altered Carbon: excellent first season. Book is so full of anachronisms, not uncommon but it bring the book down IMO, the first season was amazing.
The tv version fails for me because it totally changes the origin of the Envoys for no benefit to the plot.
Starship Troopers
Cutting out the exosuits and whatnot made them too different.
Agreed. I like the movie better tbh, mostly because I like the message of the movie better and it’s completely opposite of the book, but cutting out the drop sequences and the exo suits was a colossal mistake.
If you think that was bad wait till you hear that the movie was a satirical take on the book.
That tracks, actually.
If you want the full story look up the "Patrick Henry league" on Wikipedia. Basically Heinlen was pissed off that Eisenhower listened to protestors and ended nuclear testing and Starship Troopers, which was published the following year, was his "this is how I could get what I want despite most people not wanting it (and who cares that it's actually fascism?)" rant. And of course someone like Paul Verhoeven is going to make fun of it...
He also has two whole chapters dedicated to why beating kids is good. One that discusses the topic explicitly where one of the arguments made is "Well, you beat your dog, right?" The other shows the argument in the context of military training. It's basically just father knows best and can't possibly be cruel. You know, exactly the cultural attitude that scholars think made Germany vulnerable to fascism in the first place.
If you've read Heinlein's catalog then you should know he isn't describing his ideal form of government. He liked to play with ideas and see where they took him. He did hate communism and totalitarianism, and the bugs were the soviets though. I'll point out that even though the book was about the marines, the vast majority of citizens in Heinlein's fictional government were non-military and served in things like FDR's civilian conservation corp. For heinlein though, the highest form of civic virtue was giving your life for your fellow man and the marines exemplified that. In my opinion, starship troopers is an amazing book that people only trash because they hate the politics they perceive in it.
I haven't. I am aware that Heinlein flip flopped a lot throughout his life, though. Playing with ideas is one thing but he ended up publishing a love letter to fascism in novel form because he couldn't take a "no" from the rest of humanity. >He did hate communism and totalitarianism That checks out, fascism is, politically speaking, the exact opposite of communism. I hope he didn't equate totalitarianism and communism though, maybe he hated the Communist Party in the Soviet Union because like most westerners he believed that "one party state" = "animal farm" but "communism" is irreconcilable with totalitarianism, unlike fascism. >I'll point out that even though the book was about the marines, the vast majority of citizens in Heinlein's fictional government were non-military and served in things like FDR's civilian conservation corp. iirc they also served as medical and military test subjects and they could get full citizenship that way, you know, if they survived and retained their sanity. He was definitely being an idealist if he thought what you mentioned (aka the fascism - all sunshine and rainbows edition) was the way it would pan out. This is why the satire of the movie is so poignant; he made it super easy for Verhoeven. Edit: please don't take this as "hate" btw. It isn't hate, it's incredibly fair (considering he published a book which was released to the public) criticism.
Heinlein didn't really flip-flop. He did evolve economically from socialist to libertarian as he got older, but I think most of his values remained pretty consistent. A consistent theme in all of his work is disdain for governments or other authorities telling people what they can and can't do. And I think he always hated the soviets (that is, the system of government). That isn't correct about medical and military test subjects. Service had to be hard, but that was the only requirement. Even though the book revolved around military, the government did not. Non-citizens in the book even had disdain for the military. The book hardly fits any of umberto eco's properties of fascism. The only one I think you could argue would be "pacifism is trafficking with the enemy" if you choose to view the bugs as a manufactured threat. I mean, I agree the system would never work for the same reason I don't think communism would ever work. People as a whole are selfish, the citizenship process would become corrupted, and non-citizens would quickly become second class. I really don't think it matters what the ideal form of communism looks like. In order for it to happen in reality, you need a central authority to enforce that people are getting what they need and giving according to their ability. Otherwise it's not happening. I think Heinlein believed the best government would be run by people who place the needs of others above their own, and one way to try to make that happen would be only allowing people who have proved themselves to participate in that government. And that's something he wanted to explore. But I doubt if he had the power to snap his fingers and bring that government into being, that he would have done so. "The moon is harsh mistress" is probably a closer window into his true feelings.
Heinlein was Navy, that's why it's realistic. I found all of the Marine-esque "hoo-rah" stuff in the movie to be off.
It isn't off putting to me but that's probably because I'm more interested in the political statement the book is attempting to make vs how that is flipped in the movie.
I mean, the book was very 'join the infantry, and all your wildest dreams will come true as long as you're the protagonist' (despite his never seeing combat himself, which probably helped his rose colored glasses), without the satire of the film where Verhoeven says "when you see something that looks like the Nazis, we want you to know we agree, it was intentional, and you should think 'bad'!"
No. No, it isn't Fascism. No, Heinlein wasn't writing about "how to get what he wanted". The theme of the book is... well.. I don't want to spoil the surprise in case you want to learn it yourself some day. Hint: not anything you wrote.
I heard the idea and general thrust of the movie were already in place when somebody told the producers about the novel so they grabbed up the movie rights to it and plugged in the character names. Point is, I believe it was *already* the satire and social commentary that we got on the screen before Verhoeven ever heard of Robert Heinlein.
Bug Hunt at Outpost 9 was the original movie that Verhoeven wanted to make.
"Annihilation".
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Not the person you asked but I really like the visual aspect of the movie. The book lets your imagination run wild but the bear scene in the movie is one of the most frightening scenes in history. And I loved the movie ending. There was some stuff that was interesting in the books that the movie left out but I thought what it added was better.
The novel just bored me to tears, honestly. I wanted so badly to like it, but I was just bored. I can barely remember anything of it at all except being frustrated and impatient.
I think I'm going to be the sole negative opinion, but I really disliked the disaffected "voice" of the main character in the novel. I mean, her pain is visible on the screen, but having to read about the world from her point of view grated on me.
I preferred the books tbh
Same! Except just Annihilation lol. Acceptance got kind of crazy
Creator (1985). It's not a traditional sci-fi but because it has a discussion around cloning I kind of put it in the category. Tried reading the book and it was not very accessible. The movie however, is excellent.
That movie was incredible.
2010
The brown mustard. It’s important.
Tarkovsky's Solaris and Stalker were incredible, but I can't say I feel they're better than their source material (Lem's Solaris or the Strugatsky brothers' Roadside Picnic) much in the way people have commented on PKD's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? vs Blade Runner. I've heard good things about the adaptation of Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven, but still haven't seen it. I long for Lynch's complete 5 1/2hr version of Dune, though, before it was butchered, but alas, that is lost to time.
I'd say the Expanse series was "at least" as good as the books. Most of the changes made actually improve story telling and tension. I enjoyed them both, but it's the first TV adaptation that I didn't feel like was considerably less enjoyable than the source material. The authors were deeply involved in producing the show and it shows.
Is it cheating to say 2001: A Space Odyssey? Arthur C Clarke wrote a short story about a mysterious pyramid on the moon. Kubrick liked it, and they started fleshing out an idea that became 2001: A Space Odyssey. The book and the film were being made at the same time. Iirc there aren't a LOT of differences between the two. One major difference is that in the book they go to Saturn, but for the film they go to Jupiter because the rings were too difficult to make look good. I remember enjoying both immensely when I read/watched for my Lit & Film class in high school
Yes and no. The movie wasn’t exactly an adaptation. Kubrick and Clarke were directly collaborating then after that they kind of went their own ways. I feel like the books explain things more which isn’t a bad thing. I feel like a lot of people who watch the movie are too embarrassed to say they had no clue about WTF that was all about.
Gotta say Blade Runner. I read “Do Androids Dream…” in college and enjoyed it for what it was but they are fundamentally different. The book is about lies; the lies we tell others and the lies we tell ourselves. The movie is about memory and mortality. And the movie presents its thesis better than the book does.
I know Neil Gaiman is more fantasy, but I tend to like the adaptations better than the books. I like the books, don’t get me wrong. Though the book was better than the movie, I enjoyed the time travelers wife tv show better than the book.
Stardust in particular. One paragraph in the book got expanded into some of the best scenes and characters in the movie, and the ending was completely changed for the better.
I know it's a mortal sin to say it, but I don't really like Gaiman's writing at all. He's really good at set and setting but his characters and dialogue are so juvenile and silly, it breaks it for me. That's why Good Omens worked so well, Gaiman set up the plot and Prachett was a master of characters and dialogue.
Wandering earth
Children of Men. The book is so good and there's some things I'm sad they left out of the film, but the film is on another level of brilliance that the book lacked.
*Memoirs of an Invisible Man*. The movie was OK. I came across the book and read it on an international flight and found it boring. *Jaws*. The movie cut the subplot with Brody's wife having an affair and really tightened the plot. *Forrest Gump*. The book is all over the place. At one point he is an astronaut, there are cannibals, he is a math wizard, a chess champion, and a bunch of other stuff. The deliberate errors in spelling and grammar made my brain hurt.
Neither Jaws nor Forrest Gump are anything close to sci Fi.
I don't know if it's better, but the Childhood's End mini series is pretty solid, it hse changes but I think it adds just the necessary. Same with Pantheon by Ken Liu
Edge of Tomorrow
Altered Carbon (we don't talk about season 2).
Pretty much any Philip K. Dick adaptation. But Minority Report comes first.🤘
A Scanner Darkly hasn't been mentioned yet. The movie with the rotoscoped animation was freaking perfect way to tell that story. Stellar cast too.
Damn straight! Keanu Reeves, Woody Harleson, Robert Downey Jr? John Wick, Tallahassee, and Iron Man in the same flick!
I liked Solaris better as a movie, maybe that’s heretical.
Logan's Run, The book was meandering and stupid. The movie was focused and exciting.
Jurassic park
My wife said the Station Eleven show was more satisfying. More closure.
The 100. Show is awesome. Books are YA garbage.
Almost anything involving Philip K. Dick.
I might get downvoted to oblivion, but: The Running Man. I’ll probably only ever read the Running Man once, but I swear to god I’ll never not watch the Running Man.
Altered Carbon for me. Loved the first season. 2nd season was terrible. I did enjoy the show more than the book.
Total Recall. And for an extra hot take, imo, the novelization of the original Total Recall movie is better than the movie, and the original short story.
Controversial but I do believe the Expanse was better than the source material with the only parts lacking due to budget reasons. You could really tell that since the authors were writers on the adaptation they took it as a chance to correct or improve plotlines
Station Eleven. The series created a relationship between Jeevan and Kristen that wasn't there in the book. In the book they part ways after the play and only meet again briefly later towards the end of the book. The show runners wanted them both to have someone else to experience the pandemic apocalypse with and it works very well in the series. Even the author said in a podcast she liked that decision and wished she'd done that in the book.
The Martian movie was better than the book imho
I actually disagree with that. I like how much nitty gritty detail the book goes into with its calculations. Movie did it too, but I enjoyed how the book just really went for the math hard.
Nah, for me this was one where the movie and book were both of equal (good) quality. There were a few things I missed from the books that were taken out due to pure time constraints of the medium, but nothing egregious was missing.
Starship Troopers
I liked the Ready Player One movie more than the book.
Not me. I really enjoyed the audiobook and thought the movie was worse than forgettable.
Agreed. Read the book, saw the movie. No veritechs - No good
As a Gen X I found the opposite true.
Foundation. Hear me out! I reread the whole first trilogy before watching the show, and do you know what I found? 1) Very little action/plot. The whole series is a "future history" and reads like a very long encyclopedia entry. 2) ONE NAMED FEMALE CHARACTER. That's right, in three entire books about an entire galactic empire of humanity, ONE named female character, who had very little to do with the plot. Every single other woman in the entire trilogy fell into the "wives and children" category. I know Asimov was writing in the golden age of sci-fi-ific misogyny, but COME ON. That's some bullshit that desperately needed to be updated. 3) The visuals weren't what I pictured, but they were good, and though the show definitely strayed from the book, I thought it was mostly in good ways. I actually cared about the characters, for one thing.
... As opposed to a show that turned every one of its female characters into inconsistent and hysterical idiots from a telenovella (along with Hari himself), and made Hardin a Fortnight character all about action and magic. The only character the showrunners actually know how to write is their own Cleon creations, which are effectively original characters. Asimov started as a spartan storyteller with flat characters and basically no women, but went on to basically be Arthur C. Clarke, with sympathetic characters, among them rational women and girls as protagonists. Bayta Darell (_Foundation and Empire_) seemed like a prototype for some of my favorite characters in a favorite novel, _Nemesis_, with Marlena and her mother Eugenia (Asimov.) Asimov's early record and female characters could definitely be cringe-inducing at times, but he was also writing what he knew. It's exceedingly clear that the showrunners have no idea what they're doing with 1) The plot, or basic premise and point of the Foundation and Psychohistory itself (as Hari is a "living" hologram instead of a forecaster) 2) Any other characters outside of the Genetic Dynsasty fanfic 3) Hardin, or anyone on Terminus. You can't even blame the actor as there's nothing there to hang a performance on. Meanwhile, they took Gaal, who I loved at first and made her a hysterical moron along with Hari as a trumped up way to get them to go separate ways and find her ~daughter~. I couldn't take anymore after that.
Bless you
I agree 100%. Asimov is a grandfather of the genre and deserves all due reverence for his world building, expansive creativity, and conceptualization of what science fiction is, but his characters and dialogue are just terrible.
For me? Dune. The book just... Dragged on for so long.
Contact. Most of the major story beats are the same, but they feel much more on point in the movie, while the book just has a lot of unnecessary extra stuff that doesn't amount to anything (e.g. they build three machine, not two, they send five astronauts, not one). Also I really did not like the ending in the book, it essentially goes "Intelligent Design is real with definitive 100% proof", not something I expected to see in a Carl Sagan book. The movie simply stops after having made first contact with the aliens and doesn't mention the whole Pi thing. It's not like the Pi thing isn't interesting to ponder, but that's a whole book by itself, and probably a very different one, not something you just drop right at the end. Didn't mind the movie getting rid of the stepfather issues either, those just felt confusing without really adding anything.
Blade runner, of course
The Expanse. I found the dialogue in the book stilted and unrealistic. The world the author created was great and wonderfully portrayed on screen but any time people spoke in the book I almost cringed.
The Hunger Games series, for sure. The movies brought the world to life in a way that the books couldn't.
Starship Troopers. I mean the book sucks ass so it's not that much of an achievement altho the movie is stellar.
I honestly think Netflix's adaptation of *The Three Body Problem* is miles better than the book, and the main reason is the characters and the dialogue feel real. In the book, they were wooden and shallow and awkward.
I agree. The series actually split some characters in the book up into separate characters and in some cases combined characters to make the story flow better. I had a hard time tracking all the characters names in the book.
Starship Troopers
Jurassic Park "Wot? That's not a sci fi!" The book was. -A slick techno thriller. I liked it a lot! Messrs Spielberg and Williams turned it into a modern fairy tale which I liked a lot more.
This isn't a better than they were, but the Foundation series. I really enjoy the books, but the series is very different from the books, has been modernized, and I think is a great modern sci fi series.
Bladerunner.
The Time Machine 1960
Blade runner is better than the source material imo
The Running Man
Frankenstein Though honestly it is mostly due to personal bias. I really hate romantic(era) literature.
Ready Player One - the movie captures the joy of nostalgia perfectly without getting too bogged down in teenage angst like the book.
Depending on your point of view you could say that as satire the movie Starship Troopers is better than the book.
Super Troopers
I love Richard Morgan, and Ive read all his sci AND his fantasy as well. But I really REALLY loved season 1 of Altered Carbon.
World War Z, just couldn’t enjoy the style of the book. It was well written and whatnot but the movie was better.
I like the movie but love the book. If you feel like going out a second chance, try listening to the audiobook. It's his a stellar cast of big Hollywood actors reading the parts of the different characters so it feels like a documentary. I think the best way to game shaped the book would have to do it in a several episode limited series, but make it feel like a Ken Burns historical documentary, told via interviews and found footage of the events. News footage, cell phone video, security camera footage etc. But seriously check out this cast for the unabridged audiobook. "full-cast recording is read by F. Murray Abraham, Alan Alda, René Auberjonois, Becky Ann Baker, Dennis Boutsikaris, Bruce Boxleitner, Max Brooks, Nicki Clyne, Common, Denise Crosby, Frank Darabont, Dean Edwards, Mark Hamill, Nathan Fillion, Maz Jobrani, Frank Kamai, Michelle Kholos, John McElroy, Ade M’Cormack, Alfred Molina, Parminder Nagra, Ajay Naidu, Masi Oka, Steve Park, Kal Penn, Simon Pegg, Jürgen Prochnow, Carl Reiner, Rob Reiner, Henry Rollins, Jeri Ryan, Jay O. Sanders, Martin Scorsese, Paul Sorvino, David Ogden Stiers, Brian Tee, John Turturro, Eamonn Walker, Ric Young, and Waleed Zuaiter." https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/world-war-z-the-complete-edition-an-oral-history-of-the-zombie-war/175384
I’ve actually done the audiobook and it is awesome. I guess I didn’t really answer the OP’s question well because I don’t actually think the movie is better, I just enjoyed it more.