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The Movie Was Better

Both Doctor Strangelove and the Movie Fail Safe had their origins in the book Fail Safe but Doctor Strangelove morphed into the famed black comedy we know and love today while the movie failsafe aka the movie with the similar plot minus a soviet doomsday weapon with but the president deciding to nuke New York destroying the financial capital of the world not to mention where the UN as 'appeasement' to the soviets for rouge bombers Nuking Moscow is less known.
 
LA Confidential is one of my top-five favorite movies. I hesitate to use the word 'tight' to describe it, if only because that word has been thrown around a good bit in this thread. But even with its 2.25 hr running time, it makes every scene count for something and never wears out the welcome of any of them. All of the elements fit together like the components of a pinned and recessed S&W revolver.

It's brilliant, without being flashy.

The book, on the other hand, is a bit of a mess. I'll have to make allowances for the fact that it's the third part of a loose quartet (which I have not read the other parts of), but there's just so much more going on and not necessarily in a good way.

The main plot of the movie is not fully wrapped up in the book, but that can be forgiven due to the nature of it. However, in the movie all of the various pieces are tied together, where in the book there are multiple plotlines that only intersect due to the relations of the three main characters. Characters that get a scene or two in the movie are parts of various subplots, subplots that are barely related to any of the most important events.

And this last bit is mostly personal taste, but in the movie the three detectives are given greater dimension. I hate to use the word 'likable', because a likable character is not necessarily good. But in the book White, Exley and Vincennes are all pretty terrible, protagonists just because they're good at solving crimes in their own ways yet loathsome in their own ways. In the movie they're deeply flawed but each has a spark of goodness in them that makes the viewer care beyond 'I'd like to see this mystery solved'.

I should probably read the rest of the LA Quartet and see if my opinion of the book changes with the new context. Particularly since I really like the works of Richard K Morgan, and when I read LA Confidential I thought to myself "Oh, I see where he formed a lot of his writing style. Also, Takeshi Kovacs is basically Bud White."
 
Alane1 said:
Both Doctor Strangelove and the Movie Fail Safe had their origins in the book Fail Safe but Doctor Strangelove morphed into the famed black comedy we know and love today while the movie failsafe aka the movie with the similar plot minus a soviet doomsday weapon with but the president deciding to nuke New York destroying the financial capital of the world not to mention where the UN as 'appeasement' to the soviets for rouge bombers Nuking Moscow is less known.
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Actually I heard it was the novel Red Alert that Strangelove was based on, which Fail Safe was actually so close to that the author got sued.
 
I'd say the Shining. It's a good book, and I like King, but nobody looks good compared to Kubrick. A Clockwork Orange is the same way. Good book, amazing movie.
 
Apocalypse Now was better than Heart of Darkness. Not that the latter was bad, but the former is the best film of all time.
 
Best film of all time? I felt was a good film but I am not sure I would consider it the best war film ever made myself much the best film of all time but such things are subjective and to each their own I guess.
 
Alex said:
Its a better told story but I do feel the adaptation missed out on some of the most important bits (IMO) to the comic. In the movie the registration act would affect... little over a dozen people (not counting agents of shield) where as in the comics the law would apply to hundreds of people one way or another. There was a much larger scope and weight that I feel was lost when its range is reduced to such a small crowd.
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Not just that. The specific way in which it applied to them was more in line with an international police force than Comic Civil Wars encroachment of civil rights.

Because really, that was the only 'freedom' the Zakovian accords were going to strip from the Avengers. Their 'right' to act unilaterally in the world's best interest. And all of the avengers were already immensely high profile excepting Black Widow and maybe Hawkeye, two heroes who are more like the team's badass normals.

Although I at least thought Tony's behavior in the movie, excepting maybe the end where he was already pretty emotionally unstable, was a far more logical progression from the events of Age of Ultron than his arbitrary holding of the antagonist ball in the comic version.
 
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Broken Base said:
SIlence of the Lambs was a decent book that got turned into a mesmerizing and fascinating movie that somehow, I feel, deserves even more love than it gets.
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Speaking of, Red Dragon into Michael Mann's Manhunter (which is the best Hannibal Lecter film, don't @ me). Red Dragon is a schlocky silly book with a few good conceits - Manhunter is one of the greatest thrillers of all time, with the best Hannibal. Yes, better than Hopkins, like I said, don't @ me). Better than that though, its Dolarhyde is a fantastic villain in that he's tragic but is, as Will Graham says in the sadly deleted scene, irredeemable. A slight mar on the film is the climax, but as they'd literally run out of money by that point and Michael Mann was having to throw and scatter the food and effects stuff on the ground himself, I'm willing to forgive it.

Seriously, words cannot describe how good Manhunter is. If you haven't seen it, go do so. Now.
 
Weirdly, the animated adaption of Martin the Warrior from Redwall is superior to the book.

This may be because the book, while by far the best-written of the series, is...rather bleak and not particularly enjoyable. The series tones things down, not very much, but enough to notice.
 
Night said:
Weirdly, the animated adaption of Martin the Warrior from Redwall is superior to the book.

This may be because the book, while by far the best-written of the series, is...rather bleak and not particularly enjoyable. The series tones things down, not very much, but enough to notice.
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Wow, someone actually remembers those. Yeah, It's definitely the best of the three they adapted, but I still like the book better on that one. I mean, it's a prequel so we know that they aren't going to end together, and it's Redwall, so at least one crazy badass heroic death is required.
 
Night said:
Weirdly, the animated adaption of Martin the Warrior from Redwall is superior to the book.

This may be because the book, while by far the best-written of the series, is...rather bleak and not particularly enjoyable. The series tones things down, not very much, but enough to notice.
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I haven't actually seen that one, but I was shown the ending and it was...much less awesome.
 
Spacehillbilly said:
This might be considered blasphemous by some, but Prince of Egypt is better then the actual Book of Exodus!
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This is fair and accurate assessment.
SeptimusMagisto said:
How to Train Your Dragon is just a lot deeper and well put together than the children's books it's based on.
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I will disagree with that somewhat spectacularly. Legitimate question, how many of the books have you read? Because my usual opinion is that the books handle deeper issues than the movies, or at least handle them with the same degree of care that the better scenes in the movies do.

To this day I still hold out vague hope that Furious will make some sort of appearance in the third movie. Even just as the villain's motivations.
Night said:
Weirdly, the animated adaption of Martin the Warrior from Redwall is superior to the book.

This may be because the book, while by far the best-written of the series, is...rather bleak and not particularly enjoyable. The series tones things down, not very much, but enough to notice.
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...Redwall got a movie? I would ask how I missed it if I wasn't sure I was learning to walk and/or not born yet when it was made.
 
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Solsticegelan said:
...Redwall got a movie? I would ask how I missed it if I wasn't sure I was learning to walk and/or not born yet when it was made.
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It got a TV Show, the first season* of which got edited down into a movie.

*Adapting Redwall; the second adapted Mattimeo; the third Martin the Warrior. To my profound irritation I was unable to watch them as they aired.
 
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Sol Zagato said:
You know how
the narrator is insane in Fight Club?
The book is written like the stream of consciousness from a madman. Completely incoherent.

In the visual medium, we could at least enjoy the well-filmed madness.
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Never read Fight Club, but having read several other Palaniuk books I've found him to be pretty good with a twist ending but otherwise overrated.
 
Wicked the Musical is better than Wicked the Book in just about every respect.

I didn't need to know what snuff films in the Land of Oz would look like, but that's what I got.
 
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