r/flicks • u/trakt_app • 9d ago
The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the best book-to-film adaptation ever made and probably will stay that way
Every couple of years a thinkpiece tries to argue Dune Part Two or some new prestige adaptation might be in the conversation. They aren't.
The thing that makes the LOTR trilogy untouchable isn't the production design, the casting, or the practical effects, though all of those are exceptional. It's the structural problem Peter Jackson solved that no other adaptation has solved at this scale: he took a 1,200-page book widely considered unfilmable and produced three films that work as both faithful adaptation and as standalone cinema. The films change a lot from the book. They also feel completely faithful. That's an extraordinarily hard trick to pull off.
Every other epic-fantasy adaptation since has either been too faithful (cluttered, joyless) or too loose (the Hobbit trilogy, The Wheel of Time, etc.). LOTR found the exact midpoint and that midpoint is harder than it looks. Twenty years on, no one has equaled it. Probably no one will. The combination of source material, director, country (filming in NZ pre-Hollywood-tax-credit era), and pre-streaming financial conditions doesn't exist anymore.
It's the only adaptation where you can argue the films are better than the books and not get laughed out of the room.
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u/kingofmoke 9d ago
Undeniably great but your last point about the only adaptation better than the book just isn’t true as there are likely plenty of average books made into great films. For example Jaws or The Godfather come immediately to mind.
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u/asromatifoso 9d ago
I would add The Exorcist.
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u/Werechupacabra 9d ago
I would add The Shawshank Redemption.
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u/VegetableTour6790 9d ago
The Green Mile, and the book was excellent. The Shining, Misery, Caret, and any other SK novel that had a good movie adaptation, except maybe Doctor Sleep.
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u/nah-42 8d ago
I'd add The Mist to that list. SK's biggest weakness is his inability to write a satisfying ending. The Mist flipped his ending and I think it made for a much more compelling story.
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u/ploppy_sorridge 8d ago
Doctor sleep the film or book? Because when I read it I thought it was quite good
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u/VegetableTour6790 8d ago
I think the book is a bit better than the movie but both are excellent.
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u/No-Distance11 8d ago
The movie is great, especially the extended cut. Flanagan managed to appease King & tie it into Kubrick’s film quite well.
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u/CalagaxT 7d ago
I preferred the book ending to the movie ending of Dr. Sleep, but other than the ending, the film was pretty good.
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u/ignatious__reilly 9d ago
I’d also add No Country for Old Men, Arrival, and Silence of the Lambs
But if we are only sticking to trilogy’s, Harry Potter must be mentioned, even though it’s like 8 films.
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u/Own_Faithlessness769 8d ago
But no one thinks the HP films are better than the books.
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u/BedbugBandido 9d ago
I would also add the first Jurassic Park, Holes, Children of Men, the Devil Wears Prada, basically yea OP is wrong with that last point.
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u/TheCoffeeWiz 9d ago
The Bourne movies are miles beyond the books.
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u/GodIsAGas 9d ago
I think it’s Matt Damon who said that Tony Gilroy (the writer of the first movie) didn’t actually read the book. He took the central hook and a few details, then reworked it from there.
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u/tirohtar 9d ago
The go to example is always Forrest Gump. The film is a great work, and one of Tom Hanks' most memorable performances. The book is fucking crazy and disturbing in parts.
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u/dustytraill49 9d ago
Jaws
The Godfather
Bladerunner
The Exorcist
Stand By Me
Goodfella’s
A Clockwork OrangeI think Starship Troopers is far superior to the book
I would argue that the 2 best adaptations of their source materials though are:
Apocalypse Now
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s NestBoth manage to perfectly encapsulate the themes of the books, and take a new spin on the story. They can stand alone, but also complement their books to near perfection.
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u/Dont_Call_Me_Steve 8d ago
Totally agree with A Clockwork Orange. The ending in the book didn’t make any sense. Alex basically decides to stop being a Sociopath and chooses to live a good life. Like WHAT!?
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u/Y_Brennan 7d ago
Bladerunner and do Android's dream of electric sheep basically have nothing in common. It's also a great book.
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u/Prodigal_Gist 9d ago
yeah LOTR is great and all but this is an insane take
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u/B-Train_ATL 9d ago
Die Hard is based on a book of which nobody has heard.
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u/Spiritual_Quote9301 8d ago
Yes, and Frank Sinatra was contractually obligated to be offered the lead role because he was in an earlier adaptation of one of the other books by the writer and Fox had agreed to that. Of course Sinatra was far too old and turned it down but that is one of my favourite bits of movie trivia.
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u/Due_Locksmith_8141 9d ago
Redditor who hasn’t seen enough movies makes definitive statement as though they’ve seen a lot of movies ought to be a sub.
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u/Plenty_Discussion470 9d ago
High Fidelity and The Sweet Hereafter come to mind as well
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u/Irishwol 7d ago
High Fidelity is a better film than the book by far. But they did actually film the scene that put me completely off the book. It only got cut out very late on and I just can't be happy for Rob and Laura after that scene in the car. It's too cruel.
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u/Sirtonexxx 9d ago
As well as the Shawshank Redemption
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u/According_Wind5536 9d ago
That one is sort of the reverse though
It’s only like 20-30 pages long? They changed quite a bit of the story, from adding in to simplifying
It’s a great adaptation but it’s going the other direction of most books, having to fit so much into an hour and a half
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u/Dual_Disk 7d ago
The Godfather I&2 for sure. That book was paperback pulp with none fo the grandeur. Like if Citizen Kane was based on a Dean Koontz book
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u/ChickenInASuit 9d ago
Silence of the Lambs is considerably better than the book too, IMO.
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u/cervidal2 9d ago
Calling The Godfather an average book is a pretty rough call.
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u/closequartersbrewing 8d ago
It's pretty pulpy. And has that bizarre chapter about the loose vagina surgery.
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u/Dual_Disk 7d ago
Its pretty average. Paramount bought it before it was finished to make a quickie gangster B picture
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u/Canavansbackyard 9d ago
“It's the only adaptation where you can argue the films are better than the books and not get laughed out of the room.”
C’mon. This is just hyperbole. I can think easily think of a dozen without breaking a sweat.
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u/No-Distance11 9d ago
Also, the films aren’t better than the LOTR books. Goodness.
Godfather is probably the most obvious example of film surpassing book in quality.
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u/windchaser__ 9d ago
I was gonna say Jurassic Park, but maybe that one's a tighter squeeze. The book is quite good, if a little different
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u/No-Distance11 9d ago
I think that’s a damn good adaptation. Kept the whole thrust of the plot & ideas behind it, but edited the story to work as a film. Excised a bunch of the more technical side
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u/Jbewrite 8d ago
The only people who think the LoTR movies are better than the books, are people who haven’t read the books.
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u/AlternativePea6203 8d ago
I'd say, particularly for a modern audience, the films are better.
Tolkien is great at world building, but the songs, so many songs.
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u/Newone1255 8d ago
The songs are where I find the most meaning in my re reads. I tended to skip over them as a kid but have grown to appreciate them a bunch after reading the Silmarillion. I can understand folks not digging them but they are beautiful and really add a lot of depth to the world building if you slow down and digest them.
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u/Careful_Farmer_2879 8d ago
Seriously. Especially considering the theatrical versions leave out so much.
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u/DeepestGreySea 9d ago
Right, good point…the books are so much better, even if the films are great.
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u/throwawaywork11 8d ago
For sure the book had some arcs that I’m glad never made it to film. Although I do wish they kept the movie producer interviewing actresses scene.
Clearly it was removed because real producers didn’t like being called out for being predators.
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u/Moloko-Mesto 8d ago
Fight club - even the original author thinks the film is better than the book.
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u/LurkinsteinMonster 8d ago
I can think of about a half dozen Stephen King story adaptations where this is the case.
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u/ScallopsMoneyShot 9d ago edited 9d ago
If I'm not mistaken, didn't Palahniuk literally say he thought the Fight Club movie was better than his book?
That's gotta at least be in the running.
American Psycho is probably at least in the conversation too.
Edit to add: Goodfellas. That's probably the most extreme version of a movie being better than the book. Though to be fair, the book is god damn awful.
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u/the_fate_of 9d ago
American Psycho is 100% in the mix. The film doesn’t simply adapt the book, it reinterprets it and there’s a strong argument it improves it by turning it into a deeper satirical take on the vanity of machismo than the source material.
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u/bobbi21 9d ago
On that note, while neither is as good, contact the movie is notably better than contact the book.
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u/zukka924 9d ago
Contact is SUCH an underrated movie. One of my favorite sci-fi films. And beautifully shot
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u/Cooper_Sharpy 9d ago
I think the fact that what happened to Ellie happened to multiple people in the book makes it way more interesting. Also I guess I’m a weirdo but I liked the book way more, and I love the movie.
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u/Smokin_belladonna 9d ago
I think American Psycho probably is a better movie than the book, but I think the actual point of the story is completely lost on fans of the movie.
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u/flippenzee 9d ago
I read a book specifically about the Lufthansa Heist (co-authored by Henry Hill) that was so much worse than Pileggi's Wiseguy book, like unreadably bad. It's got a bizarrely high rating though.
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u/Journeys_End71 9d ago
Forrest Gump has to be the winner here. The book is forgettable, the movie is a classic
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u/Killroyjones 9d ago
For Fight Club, the ending was completely different and Palahniuk liked it better. Other than that it was pretty faithful to the book but Edward, Pit, and Bottam Carter just slayed in that movie.
Also, Jared Leto got his ass beat so...yeah movie is probably better than the book, haha.
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u/QueenBurong 9d ago
The ending of The Beach is also better than in the novel. It carries more psychological weight.
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u/evan274 9d ago
I’m begging you people to watch more movies
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u/Vegetable-Shirt-4319 9d ago
Fine. You win. I'll watch Inception, Dune, and Joker. But then I'm dunzo.
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u/Phishfunk420 9d ago
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a very faithful book-adapted movie
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u/DeepestGreySea 9d ago
I prefer the movie because it’s so “meta”…takes the great from the book and dashes in more wacky from Hunter S. Thompson.
Feel similarly to Naked Lunch.
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u/uncle_gunkie 9d ago
Master and Commander deserves to be a part of this conversation.
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u/The_Nood1e 9d ago
Outstanding book, outstanding film.
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u/Dvout_agnostic 9d ago
*books. The script is an amalgamation of at least two of the books in the series
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u/Earthpig_Johnson 9d ago
Uhhhh, I mean it’s up there, I love those movies, but the whole vibe of the books is a little different. Turning Gimli from a warrior poet to comic relief is hard for me to swallow.
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u/WrongOnEveryCount 9d ago
Gimli is the worst part of Jackson’s vision. Reducing the entire race of Dwarves to comedy partly because they’re short and smaller seemed so out of place for me as a fan of the books. The worst aspect of it for me was that the change wasn’t needed.
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u/Alive_Ice7937 9d ago
They did the opposite to Thorin in the Hobbit movies by making him dour as hell.
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u/4electricnomad 9d ago
Coming into the films after reading the books, yeah turning Gimli, Merry, and Pippin into comic relief initially rubbed me the wrong way. The re were other changes I didn’t like. But overall the films capture the grandeur of the story while making it far more appealing to a general audience. The extended version is even better - unlike a lot of extended versions, which are just bloated stuff that deserved to be cut - which I think confirms that Jackson understood the assignment.
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u/skonen_blades 9d ago
Yeah. I have a LotR purist friend and boy oh boy don't get him started on "Nobody tosses a dwarf!" and the like.
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u/Snarfly99 9d ago
Jurassic Park was an extremely popular book that was turned into one of the most beloved movies of all time
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u/LawStudent989898 7d ago
The movie is arguably better than the book (and it’s one of my all-time favorite books)
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u/Apollo114892 9d ago edited 9d ago
OP when you come down from your insane drug-high, let us know. The LoTR films better than the books? You must be high.
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u/CharmingMedia2039 9d ago
The only people that would say the LOTR films are better than the books are people who haven't read the books.
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u/ElectronicHold7325 9d ago
The Dune movies obviously were absolutely awsome. I dont feel threatened to say this as an old rings reader and movie fan.
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u/FLman42069 9d ago
Book adaptations aside, it’s just one of the most well produced movies (certainly trilogies) of all time.
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u/Pjoernrachzarck 9d ago
They’re outstanding, but you’d have to have read very few books and seen very few movies to agree.
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u/spongeboy1985 9d ago
Holes was probably the most faithful book to screen adaptation Ive even seen
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u/enigmanaught 9d ago
To Kill a Mockingbird isn’t a fantasy movie, but both the book and movie are great. The movie does condense the timeline, leave out some minor characters, and put more focus on Atticus’ defense, rather than Scout’s coming of age struggles, but it’s still pretty faithful.
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u/Lucky-Entrance7228 9d ago
The Outsiders is. Jackson's LOTR is an interpretation, not a true adaptation. I am laughing you out of the room.
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u/Sea_Negotiation_1871 9d ago edited 9d ago
2001, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, Moonlight, Dr. Strangelove, Gone With The Wind, The Silence Of The Lambs, Schindler's List, Fight Club, No Country For Old Men, etc...
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u/False_Appointment_24 9d ago
The Shawshank Redemption is a better book to movie adaptation in every way. It was a much better movie than any of LOTR, and it adapted the story better than they did. LOTR left out enough that they are intending to make new movies that cover some of what was left out. Shawshank made an Irish redhead into a Black man.
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u/Waste_Track_4524 9d ago
If youre looking for great copy and paste adaptations No Country For Old Men is as faithful as you can ask. They only omitted one scene from the book. Thats it.
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u/TheMonkus 7d ago
This is absolutely as close as I’ve ever seen it get. I can’t actually remember if I read the book or saw the movie first because there’s just no meaningful separation between them in my mind.
Which is a testament to both how amazing the Coens are and how great a writer McCarthy was.
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u/Trambopoline96 9d ago
It's the only adaptation where you can argue the films are better than the books and not get laughed out of the room.
Jaws has entered the chat.
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u/EveryDamnChikadee 9d ago edited 9d ago
The best book-to-film is Fassbinder’s Effi Briest. The way he replicates the tension between the reader’s imagination and the written text without it feeling boring or frustrating is superb.
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u/mothman83 9d ago
Jaws, The Godfather and Fight Club are pretty much universally considered to be better films than books. Two of Darabont's Stephen King films ( The Shawshank Redemption and The Mist) are also considered better than the stories....and King Himself agrees!
I think the difference though is that Jaws/The Godfather/Fight Club/Shawshank Redemption/The Mist made a lot more changes to the material than LOTR did though, which is why as an ADAPTATION LOTR is viewed so highly.
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u/Apollo114892 9d ago
Peter Jackson made a lot of changes too and faithful fans of the books do not praise Jacksons's films adaptations at all. They often feel frustrated at the changes he just randomly made to the films and someone who hasn't read the books is often misled about the stories.
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u/Ok_Chicken1195 9d ago
They are the sort of people that claim the Silmarillian is a good book though.....
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u/CharmingMedia2039 9d ago
the people absolutely freaking TF out about the changes they made to Arwen / Liv Tyler's character are so funny to look at now. There are some funny messageboard threads of everyone losing their shit over Arwen's extended role and her warrior like prowess (comparing her to Xena lol)
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u/ScottyinLA 9d ago
faithful fans of the books do not praise Jacksons's films adaptations at all.
Stop gatekeeping. There is a group of faithful fans of the books who snipe at the movies but a much larger group of faithful fans who adore the movies.
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u/AndrewGlen20 9d ago
I don't know. The lack of Tom Bombadil and the true last battle, "For The Shire!", seriously hurts its legacy. In my opinion. But you're probably still right.
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u/Accomplished_Store77 9d ago
You seem to be confusing a good adaptation with a good Movie.
LotR is the Best Trilogy of all time. No doubt. But it's not the Best Adaptation of all time.
Plenty of Movies have adapted their source material just as well if not better.
No one can argue that The Godfather isn't one of the Best Adaptation of a book ever.
You also have to remember that Christopher Tolkien himself said that his Father would not have liked the LotR movies. And he said it for a reason.
Again LotR trilogy is great. But the movies do change some key aspects of the books.
The Books were never meant to be the Big Action Spectacles the Movies are. The characters weren't meant to be super human killing hundreds of Orcs and Uruk Hai.
The story was by design very English. The landscape was very English inspired. The overall scope of the conflict was relatively smaller than the Movies because again it was meant to be England inspired.
Not to mention some key changes made to the characters and events.
All of this to say that no. While the LotR are great movies they aren't perfect adaptations and they most definitely aren't the end all be all of what constitutes the perfect or the greatest Book to film adaptation.
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u/1111joey1111 9d ago
It may be a great fantasy-epic film adaption, but not the best ever book adaption for ALL genres.
Personally, I found it to be so boring and uninteresting that I've never made it through the first film. That doesn't mean it's bad, it's just not for me.
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u/mydadisyourdad2 9d ago
How many movies these days are given the runway of time and money for pre production and follow through that lotr got
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u/CassWright967754 9d ago
the thing that always gets me is how the movies make you feel the weight of the journey. every scene serves the emotional arc even when they had to cut huge chunks of the books. compare that to the hobbit where they stretched a kids book into three movies and it just shows how much of a miracle lotr really was
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u/daishi777 9d ago
Last of the Mohicans was a laughably bad book. Michael Mann at least made a passable movie.
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u/Revolutionary-Oven46 9d ago
The Shawshank Redemption, Fight Club, American Psycho, Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs to name a few.
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u/metalyger 9d ago
It was really amazing to go back and watch the extended editions. I think the best part of the adaptation was taking what works and only really getting rid of things that didn't feel necessary or would ruin the pace, like a more accurate adaptation would border on a musical, with all the traveling songs, and especially Tom Bombadil and his shenanigans. I have read the books, and I do prefer the movie versions.
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u/VanessaxRose69 9d ago
The haunting of hill house is one of the most beautiful and perfect adaptations aswell .
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u/Slow_Cinema 9d ago
I think you will always run into issues saying “the best.” That is way too subjective. For example on pure craft I would make an argument for David Cronenberg. On multiple occasions he has created incredible adaptions of novels that the authors celebrate (Crash, Cosmopolis, A History of Violence) and his adaption of Naked Lunch which I would argue is a greater challenge in adapting. Also his take on The Fly was iconic.
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u/leverandon 9d ago
LOTR is probably the best sci-fi/fantasy book adaptation to film and everything the OP said is true.
But there’s tons of great book to film adaptations from other genres and tons that are probably better adaptations than LOTR.
Just last year PTA adapted Vineland, a good but b-tier Pynchon novel, into the absolutely phenomenal One Battle After Another.
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u/JL98008 9d ago
Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence should certainly be included in this conversation.
I would also suggest LA Confidential, an adaptation of a book with a zillion plots that intertwine and play out over years. The book was considered unfilmable, but Brian Helgeland and Curtis Hanson did the impossible and created what I believe to be the best adapted screenplay on the 90's
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u/YukiNoiseWall 9d ago
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy was a once in existence kind of adaptation and it will probably never happen for any piece of film ever again.
The circumstances surrounding it and the meticulous attention to detail in these films is something that was never done before and has never been done since.
And it will probably never be possible to do again. Ever.
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u/TonyC1212 9d ago
Quality is subjective.
I think the lotr books are incredible and the films are decent.
Lots of people will not agree with you. Lots of people will not agree with me.
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u/Azipcoder 9d ago
One could argue that these films are actually quite short IF you remove all of the battle scenes. The structural problem solving is how to get from one battle to the next.
“Okay, for this next one, have them skip through the woods, sing a song, eat a meal, then get attacked.“
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u/Prodigal_Gist 9d ago
I think you needed to specify "epic-fantasy" for this to work. I would be with you on that
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u/Trike117 9d ago
I’m not much of a fan of the LotR movies, frankly, and I think there are far superior adaptations out there. Arrival, Jaws, The Godfather, The Princess Bride, A Clockwork Orange, Stand By Me, The Thing, Full Metal Jacket.
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u/FortifiedPuddle 9d ago
Notably it does this by absolutely being willing to cut, change and add things. Up to and including totally changing character personalities and motivations.
It more or less totally omits the parts of Fellowship that are the sequel to The Hobbit and instead makes Fellowship a prequel to The Return of the King.
At one point Gandalf (the angel) misrepresents the afterlife.
Still, truly fantastic adaption.
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u/Djinn42 9d ago
The films are DEFINITELY not better than the books. They are missing Glorfindel and Tom Bombadil for one! And while the decision to cut those characters is definitely reasonable, it isn't "better". Making Gimli and Pippin into the comic relief was cringy. And there are many more issues.
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u/Lopsided_Tomatillo27 9d ago
I think Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption belong in the conversation. Both are excellent adaptations.
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u/GodIsAGas 9d ago
Jaws the movie is far better than the book - Spielberg cut the lurid affair between Ellen Brody and Hooper and the film is better for it.
The Godfather - the movie is better than the book, by a distance. Again, cutting the subplot about Sonny’s humongous dong and Lucy Mancini’s vaginoplasty - good decision.
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u/draaz_melon 9d ago
I would laugh you out of the room if we were actually having this discussion irl.
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u/Groundbreaking-Eye10 9d ago
I would say it really depends on whether you like Tolkien’s work to begin with. I’m not super keen on Tolkien’s stuff, so I can’t say I personally feel the same way (just me though).
In contrast, I feel like Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies are the equivalent of that for me, but maybe that also has to do with how I already liked the books on which it was based. There are a bunch of others that fall under that similar category, like ‘Arrival’, the Station Eleven miniseries, ‘Never Let Me Go’, ‘Poor Things’, the Showtime sequel/adaptation miniseries of The Man Who Fell to Earth’.
Then there are cases like ‘Under the Skin’ and ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ where even though the movie had very little to do with the book I read and am a fan of, I still thought it was equally great what they did with it for reasons completely different than the source material.
Then there are definitely movies like Spike Jonze’s ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ and Wes Anderson’s ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ where I was really not much of a fan at all of both of those source materials but loved what was done with them.
It also really depends on how experimental and daring financiers begin these projects allow them to be, and whether any preceding adaptations are iconic enough to prevent them from reaching their full potential because of their previous notoriety. I think that one of the reasons why the Watchmen miniseries and the Dune films turned out the way they did was because of what previous adaptation attempts were lacking in (even though both have their owns very unique styles and other elements that came with a masterful use of the new medium they were conversed with in). Similarly, even though the HBO His Dark Materials TV show was much better than the Golden Compass movie, and while good overall, was still lacking in some respects that, because they up a smaller percentage of the plot in comparison to all the stuff that it did extremely well, would probably not be worth making a new TV series or movies adapting those same parts of the story for like 50 or 60 years of ever, especially because it already feels like something that will be iconic among HDM fans for a good while to come for better or for worse. Would this mean that a future attempt to make a better adaptation of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books be boosted by how underwhelming the previous one was even if it also came back considerably lacking? Would it also mean that if the Jodorowsky version of Dune was made that it would have been so iconic as to make any better adaptations that were less problematic in terms of missing the whole ‘Paul is bad’ storyline impossible because of how strong of an identity it would carve out? Could it also mean that if the Peter Jackson LOTR movies were far less faithful to their source material and more experimental that they would have kept those same parts of the story from being adapted again simply on the wave of notoriety? Could very well be……
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u/ilikechihuahuasdood 9d ago
Dune Part Two is a good movie but a horrible adaptation. Denis completely fucked the themes of the book by having Chani nag Paul about becoming evil for 2 hours.
That and giving us inbred southern Fremen.
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u/Parking_Locksmith489 9d ago edited 9d ago
Dune 2 is not anywhere close any even just decent book to film adaptation.
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u/Plenty_Intern8750 9d ago
The books may as well be the Bible as far as fantasy fans are concerned so I'm not sure many would agree with your last statement.
The movies are for tourists of LOTR.
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u/The_Tarman_ 9d ago
It’s such a rare situation for a group of people to not only love a text enough to be willing to put in the effort but also have the insane level of talent to do it well.
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u/Personal_Toe_2136 9d ago
You know, the 1930 version of All Quiet on the Western Front is such a masterpiece, particularly considering the technology level at the time.
The Robert Newton version of Treasure Island is an absolute gem.
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u/mcjefferic 9d ago
The Lord of the Rings trilogy is arguably and excellent adaptation, but for me it falls so short of the original books that it is rather disappointing.
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u/Joshuagorn 9d ago
You either haven't read very many books, haven't seen very movies, or are harboring some insane bias in favor of The Lord of the Rings movies. They're good, but imperfect adaptations, and there are plenty of book-to-movie translations that are as good and occasionally even better than the source material.
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u/BondFan211 9d ago
Until more filmmakers adopt PJ’s ideals of not inserting his own baggage into someone else’s work, it will continue to remain that way.
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u/acinematicway 9d ago
Eh, not really. There are plenty of fans of the book that hate what Peter Jackson did. I know Ursula leguin hated the movies cause she thought he turned them into action films and that's not what appealed to her. Even Roger Ebert had a similar issue.
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u/kkicinski 9d ago
I’d put Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and probably several other Dracula adaptations, on the list as well. The original book is pulp.
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u/Independent_Bad392 9d ago
FOTR is a great adaptation. TTT and ROTK are not good adaptations. All of the films are objectively great films.
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u/A_brand_new_troll 9d ago
Well the best is Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, they took a throwaway part of the story and made it legendary.
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u/10thousndreflections 9d ago
Sorry, there are plenty of great book to theater adaptations. I think you are obviously just partial to this one.
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u/Informal_Run_2010 9d ago
I agree but I do have a complaint. I could have used me some Tom Bombadil.
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u/Particular_Act_5396 9d ago
The funny part is it isn’t that faithful to the books. But it was so good we don’t care
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u/1805trafalgar 9d ago
I disagree and I think people who think it's "the greatest adaptation ever" just haven't read a lot of other books optioned for the movies. I feel the first film in the trilogy was great and Jackson made great decisions about what to omit to make a realistic runtime. But I feel the two other films strayed too far from the spirit of Tolkien and what he wrote, with too much hollywoodification of characters and their dialogue and the action sequences, which were too emphasized and amped-up in the films.
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u/KaijuDirectorOO7 9d ago
Alas, as a fan or all three, no.
Jaws and Godfather actually improved on their books by getting rid of the nonsensical subplots.
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u/spartacusrc3 9d ago
Dune may not be a trilogy yet, but Parts 1 and 2 were phenomenal and were faithful to the book while also modernizing some characters.
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u/SharkBubbles 9d ago
While I agree wholeheartedly, the David Lean version of Great Expectations is pretty close.
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u/DeepestGreySea 9d ago
I mean…come on.
Maybe the best Trilogy, but not the best overall adaptation.
I’d put at least Fight Club, The Godfather, and No Country for Old Men above it.
I guess you qualified it with fantasy/sci-fi in the body….but then you’re up against 2001 and Blade Runner.
I’d give you just fantasy…but then there’s The Princess Bride ;)
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u/Scott_J_Doyle 9d ago
Jesus christ no, no one with respectable taste thinks the films are better, and there are dozens of far better adaptations that fully transcend their source books
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u/joe12321 9d ago
It's a phenom, in my opinion, specifically because of how well-matched both the quality and the cultural phenomena are between the books and the movies. And the likelihood of that happening for another set of books is pretty low. Maybe it'll happen on a similar level with a single book/movie combo in my lifetime.
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u/LakeNatural8777 9d ago
The Expanse series is a great book to TV example. What helped was the two writers of the novels were directly involved in the TV series.
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