Is The Book Really Always Better Than The Movie?

With two anticipated autumn releases around the corner based off of widely acclaimed books ­ Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones from the Alice Seabold novel and the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road ­ one is likely to hear a dire warning regarding those films: The book is always better than the movie. Is that true? Is “The Lovely Bones” and “The Road” guaranteed mediocrity due
to the nature of adapting the film from a novel?

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One thing that becomes fairly obvious when first examining the statement is that it is a prime candidate for being over-used due to its simplicity, generalization, and the unfortunate belief by some that literature is a more intellectual endeavor than film. As someone that has read between three and five thousand books and has watched between three and five thousand movies, I find the truth derived from comparing the two mediums simply boils down to taste from one moment to the next.

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The first fact that stands out comes after examining various Best Films of All­ Time lists. For our purposes we will use the easily accessed IMDb Top 250. It might surprise one who is a buttress for the book over movie belief that 23 of the top 51 movies on the IMDb 250 are based on novels or short stories. Before the thought even occurs that maybe these movies are genre fanboy films (varying opinion on “The Lord Of The Rings” trilogy, for instance), let’s list a few examples so we can move past that:

The Godfather
Shawshank Redeptionthe godfather posters 238x300 Is The Book Always Better Than The Movie?
Shindler’s List
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
Goodfellas
City Of God
Rear Window
Psycho
Silence Of The Lambs
Forrest Gump

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Film also has the unfortunate side effect of sometimes showing the weakness of a book. That effect is often confused with inferiority whereas it is actually the different presentation that allows one to assimilate the circumstances differently. One who believes that the films, “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels & Demons” are trite and contrived suddenly because the screenwriters dropped the ball are mistaken. The two films based off of Dan Brown’s massive sellers only accentuate the weakness of the written contrived plotting and sensationalistic triteness. Those that bemoan soulless Hollywood need to look no farther than Brown to find its literary equal. Michael Crichton and Thomas Harris are two others that composed empty work where Hollywood’s only fault was that there was an immense amount of money to be made.

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The full argument at the link. Comments welcome!