I’m guessing someone with enough familiarity could say this about one of the John Green books’ movie adaptations, but I haven’t seen any (?) of the movies and haven’t read the books since I was a teen so
My spouse says “Stardust” the book is nowhere near as good as “Stardust” the movie. We both love the movie, but it’s surprising the book wasn’t nearly as good.
My partner hateread Where The Crawdads Sing, but we haven’t seen the film, so probably that.
I haven’t read the book but enjoyed the movie. 🤷
I found the movie a bit sappy. A weaker version of To Kill a Mockingbird. What I couldn’t get over was the nonsensical geography and impossibly frequent bus service.
The Mission, though I haven’t seen the movie yet.
50 Shades of Grey.
The film is silly and mediocre but the book is next level terrible.
I’ve never consumed either media of that story. But I thoroughly enjoyed Dan Olson’s take.
Just so you know, everything in that link after ?si= is purely tracking information so Google can know who you send links to, and when they open them.
Thanks, forgot to delete that.
Thank you. I ended up watching the whole trilogy (of videos).
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/qzk9N7dJBec?si=zp_SQRQ3jBbOUWab
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Yep. This is probably the best take of showing how the movie’s writing process changed the writing for the better, then the books’ author put a stop to that.
I think you could make a credible argument that some of the Harry Potter books are worse than the movies. The best example that comes to mind is making fun of Hermione for wanting to free slaves, and the other characters claiming being slaves is in their nature or something. If you had only watched the movies instead, you’d get to see the slaves are miserable, most of the good team characters don’t own slaves, and Harry Potter tricks a slave owner into freeing their slave.
I know that I was almost an adult when Harry Potter came out, but I really tried to get into them as everyone else loved them, but the writing was flat af.
In the later books Harry gets a slave and doesn’t free him but its ok because the slave is rude.
Kreacher really wants to be a good slave, he just wants to be a good slave for the bad guys. So it’s okay to abuse him, see?
Jk rolling made some really strange decisions. Some of it really makes you wonder if maybe she was being a little too honest or just too unaware to see the implications.
and Harry Potter tricks a slave owner into freeing their slave.
That happens in the books too. He only does it because the slave owner is a mean slave owner, though, not because slavery is wrong.
The thing is that Rowling hadn’t really thought it through yet. Having the hero save a slave is pretty clearly heroic and good, and it’s a nice way to wrap up the Dobby story arc, but then the fans were all like “wait WHAT!? there’s slaves under Hogwarts!?” and she was forced to think it through, and it turns out JK’s pretty awful so the result of her thinking it through was to make it worse.
Starship Troopers.
The movie is good though
Damn, I missed the (which was already bad) caveat in the title. Yes, the film is great.
I do wonder how many people got hoodwinked by the film and then went to read the book only to be hit with an entire textbook of lectures from a libertarian.
That’s okay. Did you know it has sequels?
I’m doing my part!
Great. Now a want to spread managed democracy some more
Dine. The book is terrible, I couldn’t read it at all after trying twice… way back decades ago, the recent movie was good.
I’ve started reading Jumper by NameDoesNotMatter. I would like to formally apologise about all the harsh things I’ve ever spoken about that film.
Fine, the cast is unlikeable and the action scenes are just fisticuffs in the air, but my god, in comparison to the teenage dreck that is the book, it’s a masterpiece. At least they tried to build a credible back story for the main character.
In the book, he literally thinks everyone is out to sexually assault him (and somehow they seem to want to), he solves his problems by throwing money at it, instead of any actual creativity, and the author desperately tries to portray him as a mature-for-his-age adult, despite the fact that his first reaction to anything is crying followed by petty revenge.
I’m just flicking through the pages, pausing at any plot bits, and then flicking on.
The classic would be fight club, I think even the author has said they enjoyed some of the symbolism that was added.
Starship Troopers was a far different story in each medium, but I think the movie is much more worthy of your time
There’s also an anime adaptation in 6 episodes, Uchuu no Senshi, made by Bandai. It was directed by Tetsurou Amino (Iria, Macross 7) and the mechas were designed by Kazutaka Miyatake (designer of spaceships and power suits for Macross, Gundam and Battleship Yamato).
It’s considered an important milestone and a progenitor in the mecha genre. It has a very… anime approach to the adaptation, focusing mostly on the action and scifi with very little of the original drama or politics.
there’s so much different I’d almost consider them related and not an adaptation.
would you like to know more?
I’m doing my part
+1 the movie is pure epic satire
I do like PKD as an author, I just never quite liked Starship Troopers the book, even though it’s got some nice Forever War vibes to it
Heinlein not PKD.
Probably because Starship Troopers isn’t PKD. It’s Heinlein.
Kind of funny to imagine what it would have been like if it had been written by PKD. Johny Rico would have spent 1/3 of the book going through a divorce and the troopers would have all been on halucinogens.
oh whoops, I’ve made that mistake for X years then. Solves a mystery too - I hate Heinlein. Stranger in a strange land was dull.
Yeah I found it boring as well. But yeah that would explain it!
The only book of his I’d recommend is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It’s quite Anarcho Capitalist, and sexist in places but it’s an interesting revolution story regardless and has some interesting ideas in it
Funny thing, The Forever War is considered a direct reaction to Starship Troopers, the former as a pacifist take to the latter’s militarism.
Learn something new every day!
The Forever War is a book that I’ll always point to as a gateway into reading sci-fi, not just watching it.
Such a good book.
Starship Troopers is Heinlein not Dick, and it’s fascist nonsense. Verhoeven was right to throw the book in the bin after two chapters and the movie rules.
Heinlein experiments with loads of social structures and governments. Starship Troopers is the fascist example, not an example of all his work.
It’s been a while since I’ve read it but what was fascist about it? That only people who served got to vote? It was either/or iirc, you could not vote while in the military, only after you left, and if you did you could not return. Not exactly Nazi Germany.
Only ex military caste have power because they are the only people who can vote or hold public office.
There’s this respected teacher guy in it who goes on about how violence solves everything, hero’s main trajectory is for him to become really on board with that setup. Bunch of capital punishment, whipping etc.
I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. There were other paths to citizenship (iirc something akin to the peace corps and perhaps even business success? It’s been a while since I read it). But it wasn’t just military. It’s just that military was the easiest for most people.
Been a long time since I read it too but basically you had to do federal service and military was the most popular branch of that. But the book is mostly interested in military and high up characters talk about their military background etc. It’s definitely fascist.
The movie is great but I’m curious as to why you think its better than the book?
I think the story and messaging of the movie is just amazing. We get to see the decline of Rico into a fascist mouthpiece, the casual disregard for human life and the way society warps us all. What starts out as perceived funny-ha-ha jokes in the opening act (the kid saying “I’ll serve too”) is retroactively depressing by the end of the film where Herr Commisar NPH shows how trivial the whole war is.
Haven’t read the book, but watched a guy discuss the differences between The Devil Wears Prada and the movie.
His contention was that there were absolutely no redeeming traits about Miranda in the book and she had somehow failed upwards with no true talent. Andy the protagonist spends the whole time rebelling against the magazine and its people.
In the movie we see Miranda to be a horrid person but we see that overlays a keen eye and talent that has led her to the top. Moreover, Andy spends effort to fit in with the magazine people and she evolves as a character.
That’s a good example. A filmmaker saw a 2D character and added a layer to save the story
maybe shrek? i never cared for the book though its not bad
The name of the rose. The movies…fine, I guess. The books at least 300 pages too long and frequently segues into long-winded discussion of the political minutiae of the warring monastic orders during the reign of Pope John XXII.
If you want to read about the time period you’ll be annoyed by the murder mystery shoehorned into your dry long winded historical fiction. If you wanted a murder mystery set in a historical setting then you’ll be annoyed by the history lesson being shoved down your throat like a dehydrated fig newton.
I really liked the book. I thought it was clever to use the murder mystery to explore the world of the abbey. The minutiae was the point of the book for me.
Jaws doesn’t quite fit the prompt but although it’s a good movie, the book is essentially a sub-par beach read. And there was no USS Indianapolis monologue in the book.
