Yahoo Lifestyle 19 Movies That Utterly Butchered The Book They Were Based On, And 18 That Actually Made The Stories Better
A while back, Reddit user u/theyusedthelamppost asked about movies that butchered a great book — and another user asked about movies that were actually better than the book. Here are some of their hottest takes.
1.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: Ella Enchanted
Suggested by u/Bellanarislavellan
"It was my favorite book growing up, and I was absolutely gutted to see that monstrosity on screen instead."
"I saw it in theaters with friends, and kid-me was shocked at how bad it really was. ... The evil uncle and his...snake? The...lawyer...elf? The dance scene was...there. The hall of mirrors??? God. The book was near and dear to my heart. I loved that she was good at languages because she just was, and how friggin stubborn she was! But yeeurgh."
"My sister and I love the book. I think the moment that killed me was the medieval fantasy shopping mall."
2.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (book title: Who Censored Roger Rabbit?)
"The book's plot is very different, and the characters are all unlikeable. Eddie isn't a tragic character who's dealing with his brother's death by drinking his life away and alienating all the toons he used to befriend. He's a hard-bitten, hard-drinking asshole just because. Roger is dead, and the character who killed him doesn't really make any sense. The producers of the movie took the idea of a world with toons and humans and threw away the plot. They made the right choice; the movie turned out amazing."
3.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: Artemis Fowl
"What Disney did was a fucking monstrosity."
"These books involve the character of a dwarf who digs tunnels by literally eating dirt and shitting it out. You cannot — you should not — try to turn this into a live-action movie."
"Aertemis's first introduction in the book had him going 'fucking sunlight.' Not in quite those words, but it's pretty much 'he's not an outdoor guy,' and the movie has him...surfing. And activity that usually involves a degree of sunlight...Most of the time, I don't think they read the book, but they usually at least make someone read it. Maybe an intern or an assistant. I don't even think they did that."
"They dropped Butler's name like 10 minutes in, and my girlfriend started crying, so I turned it off. Fucking ridiculous, LOL. I get changing stuff for screen pacing versus book pacing, but where's the point in ruining a reveal that doesn't happen for several books just to change a guy's name?"
4.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: Big Fish
Suggested by u/TheswayzeTrain
"The movie was great and touching. The book was whiny and slow."
"Tim Burton's masterpiece. But I could not get through the book."
"It was such an interesting movie that I couldn't wait to read the book, and I was just so disappointed.."
5.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: Eragon
Suggested by u/lucerndia
"This was one of my biggest disappointments as a teen. I knew when it got a PG rating, it was going to be bad."
"I really loved those books, even after I watched the movie. After reading them, I gave the movie another watch to see if I could appreciate it, [but the] movie was even worse when I knew what it could have been."
6.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: Jaws
"The book is not bad, don't get me wrong, but the characters in it are extremely unlikeable. I think Spielberg was right to eliminate some of the subplots and to buff the characters up to be more likable/relatable. Also, the end of the book kind of sucked. I won't spoil it, but compared to the movie, it's extremely anti-climatic.
I still like both. The book is still a very good read, and I understand why it was such a phenomenon, but I'll always say the movie was better."
7.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: The Hobbit
"I'm gonna go ahead and say it, as much as it pains me to...The Hobbit. The worst part, to me, is that they tried so hard, and there are elements that, if you isolate them out from the rest of the films, you'd have a pretty damn good movie or even a pair of movies — but they didn't. They chose to go [with] three films, which added way too much filler and absolutely ruined what could have been two really solid movies."
8.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: Children of Men
"The book was good. The movie is top 20 all time."
"PD James is a fantastic author, but the movie managed to make the general story (with heavy alterations) and premise work so goddamn well. The movie was able to build out the setting better than the book, or most other books, since Cuaron packed so much detail into the background (down to the newspapers that they use to cover up windows in one scene!). There's so much information presented in a way that doesn't damage the pacing at all. Masterful."
9.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: Ender's Game
"The lack of emotion in the movie upset me."
"That movie butchered two books, not just one. On the station, it should have been a buddy film that merged Ender's Game with Ender's Shadow. Also, the complete elimination of the Demosthenes and Locke subplot eliminated so much of what made the book interesting. I had been hopeful early with the casting because I thought it would be solid. While I wasn't sold on Harrison Ford being Graff, I was excited to see Asa Butterfield as Ender because of Hugo, and I was confident in Hailee Steinfeld because of True Grit."
"I waited my whole life for that movie, and then we got a crappy smashed-together action flick peppered with key lines from the book and none of the feeling. Probably no other movie has made me so mad from beginning to end."
10.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: The Martian
"The book was excellent, but after a while, Mark Watney started to feel like Wile E Coyote with things constantly falling on him. The movie kept just the right amount of adversity to keep the story moving along and never got too bogged down in the details the way the book sometimes did."
"A guy I knew described it thus: Remember that scene in Apollo 13 when they had to make a square filter fit a round hole, and all they have is a random array of parts? The Martian is a whole book of that scene, told by an engineer.
To be fair, I love that shit so much, which is why I love The Martian. But I know it isn't for everyone."
11.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: The Lovely Bones
"I am not exaggerating when I say that this film single-handedly killed all enthusiasm I had for Jackson as a filmmaker. The afterlife is a '90s music video, the dialogue and acting are uneven, and the fact that they disrupted the film (about a family dealing with the death of their teenage daughter) with a zany comedy scene — INCLUDING WACKY MUSIC AND AN OVERFLOWING WASHING MACHINE — just made me wonder if LOTR was some kind of fluke."
"When I heard Peter Jackson was directing, I had high hopes he'd capture the mood and then fix the plotline to make it more suspenseful. Instead, he destroyed the mood and over-emphasized everything about the plotline that made the book suck."
12.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: The Godfather
"The book was obviously a best seller, but it had some really — REALLY — cringey side plots (involving huge dicks and huge vaginas; Puzo seems to have had a fetish about outsized sex organs), which Coppola wisely dropped in the film."
13.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: A Wrinkle in Time
"Please take my word for it if you haven't seen it. It is an abomination. Imagine whatever you love about the book being stomped, shat upon, then stomped again by a bunch of otherwise talented actors."
14.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: Forrest Gump
"The book was…something."
"That whole section when he crash-lands a space shuttle in the jungle and lives with cannibals for years is something else."
"It's Absurdist literature. The movie isn't true to the book, but the book set out to do something...absurd. It's really hard to compare the two, but I enjoyed the movie more than I enjoyed reading the book."
"The movie is my absolute favorite (the soundtrack is killer, too), so of course, I had to read the book. The narration being from his perspective killed me. I had to reread several passages. The movie was believable. The book wasn't. I think it mentioned that Forrest's daddy was killed by a crate of bananas? Of all the books I own, I never tried to read this one twice. Yet I've seen the movie well over 100 times."
15.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: The Neverending Story
"The Neverending Story isn't too bad, but it does ditch almost the entirety of the book and crudely rams a handful of plot elements together to make a movie. It skips from halfway through the book ('why is it so dark? ' in the beginning, it's always dark') straight to the ending. I would love to see the whole thing adapted as, say, a two-season, 24-episode HBO miniseries with a big fat budget."
16.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: The Mist
"The book is better for most of it, but the ending in the movie knocks the socks off the book ending."
"I read somewhere that even Stephen King said that and wished he'd thought of that ending. ... I LOVED the movie ending. It felt like real decision-making — to make decisions only based on what you know and not assume everything will work out."
17.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: Water for Elephants
"Water for Elephants is a fantastic book and absolutely worth reading. The movie adaptation had a great cast but somehow managed to rip the soul out of the story. It makes the circus boring. Like, I didn't even know that was possible."
18.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: Fight Club
Suggested by u/BCF13
"The adaptation was pretty faithful to the source material, but the film brought it to life even better than I imagined, which is hard to do."
"While the book and movie are very similar. Brad Pitt brought a level of charisma to Tyler that he doesn't have in the book. In the book, Tyler isn't likable at all."
"Fight Club, the book is an interesting, messy concept. Fight Club, the movie is a fucking masterpiece that messes me up for days after each watch."
"Edward Norton and Brad Pitt brought some amazing dualities to the screen in the way Palahniuk really hinted at. I feel like the physical embodiment made the story so much more tangible."
19.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: The Golden Compass
"As a child, I really enjoyed all of His Dark Materials. I was really psyched when The Golden Compass was going to be a movie. Holy shit, it was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. And not in a ha-ha-funny kind of worst movie, like The Room, but just bad."
"Which is a shame, because it had some perfect casting choices, like Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter and Sam Elliot as Lee Scoresby."
"Also Eva Green, Ian McKellen, Daniel Craig, Ian McShane, Christopher Lee, Kathy Bates!!! The movie was just lousy with acting talent. Short of something like Movie 43, I think Golden Compass is the best-cast work of garbage I've ever seen. What a colossal loss of potential."
20.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: the How To Train Your Dragon franchise
Suggested by u/CatMom1201
"I think they're pretty hard to compare since they are very different, but… even just as a duo, I prefer the movie version of Hiccup and Toothless. The characters they did carry over, such as Stoick, Fishlegs, and Snotlout, are also just better in the films. I loved both, but you're right."
21.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: The Dark Tower
"I saw the movie, and it was like they took pieces from all the books and threw them into an AI generator and said, okay, make this one movie. God awful. Someone should be ashamed of themselves."
"This needs to be the top answer, only for having probably the largest gap between the quality of the book and the quality of the movie.
Like, my favorite books of all time, super smart stories by a master storyteller at the peak of his powers, to a dogshit leather-bound action movie of the style popular in the early '00s. It would have fit right along with Underworld and Resident Evil. Absolute, goddamn shame."
22.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: Jurassic Park
"Jurassic Park is a good book, but an all-time great movie."
"The book is excellent, and yet the movie manages to beat it for me. It's easily in my top three favorite movies of all time. I also prefer Lex's character in the movie. Both are exceptional, so I can see why others may choose the book, but for me, I gotta go with the movie."
"They really made Hammond a better character in the movies. In the book, he was just an asshole."
23.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: The Lost World: Jurassic Park
"The Lost World was the first Crichton book I read (I'd have been around 13 or 14 at the time), and I was immensely disappointed by the movie. The only thing I thought they got right was casting Julianne Moore. Going back and watching it as an adult, it's still pretty awful. There's a full uneven bars gymnastics routine that ends with kicking a velociraptor in the face."
24.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: The Devil Wears Prada
Suggested by u/oakcrisssy
"The book is just...I mean, I read the whole thing, but yeah, the book is like the YA version of the film."
"The book was nearly unreadable. Super juvenile and indulgent writing with idiotic subplots."
"In the book, it ends with Andrea — a lowly assistant — telling off Miranda Priestly and then walking away smugly. Like what? The writer was so overconfident it was unnerving. At least in the movie, they ended up graciously but coolly understanding one another."
25.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
"Book four is so, so, so much more detailed than the movie and just truly fantastic."
"They cast David Tennant as Barry Crouch, Jr., and he had about three lines. They missed his motive rant from the book."
"Why would you CAST A SHAKESPEARE PERFORMER and not give him a monologue???? It's been over a decade, and I'm still seething."
"I have very vivid memories of watching this in the theater for my birthday and wondering if the movie had glitched/skipped forward after Fudge did his little light thing at the World Cup. Little did I know it was just a hint at what the rest of the movie would be like. What a total disappointment."
26.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: Matilda
"Danny DeVito killed it."
"I enjoyed the ending of the book, where her superpowers were a result of her not being challenged enough and having all this brainpower and nowhere to use it. It really resonated with me as a kid who wasn't being challenged enough. But I did wish the book left some room for the implication that she could regain those powers. The movie was satisfying for me in that regard. Plus, Pam Ferris was absolutely wonderful."
"I enjoy me some Dahl for sure, but DeVito and company elevated the work in the film."
"The entire cast killed it! Just like the Harry Potter series, everyone knew a Ms. Trunchbull and Ms. Umbridge in their lives. The obscene amount of relatability in Matilda makes it such a wonderful classic for many years to come."
27.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: My Sister's Keeper
Suggested by u/planktivious
"I was just super pissed that they got rid of the twist ending. That's what made the book so phenomenal. I remember finishing it and just sitting there in awed silence for a few minutes."
"The book's ending made me sob. The movie's ending made me angry."
28.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: American Psycho
"The book really goes deep into Patrick's obsession with fashion and dining culture. It gets a little tedious."
"I think the movie brings a lot of the subtle comedy elements from the book to the forefront — it's honestly hilarious. I still adore the book, though. Brent Easton Ellis comparing the mundane awfulness of '80s yuppies to serial killers is pure genius."
"The violence in the book still makes me a little sick, and I read it about 20 years ago. The movie's violence is bad but kind of tame for a rated R American film. I definitely recommend the movie. I cannot recommend the book to anyone, unfortunately."
"I LOVED the movie, So I read the book after. The book is...disturbing, to say the least. The book cranks it to 11. ... There's some seriously fucked up shit in that book that never made it to the movie. I mean, sticking a tube up a girl's vagina and having rats eating her up from the inside kind of fucked me up. And then the next chapter is like wholesome commentary about Fleetwood Mac or Huey Lewis or some shit. It spun my head around like a goddamn dreidel...I thought I was the one who was going out of my mind. And the whole thing with the little dog? God damn. I genuinely think that the movie was better. I wasn't ready for that book, man."
29.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
Suggested by u/JiggySockJob
"My oldest is eight, and that is her favorite book series. She watched the first one with me, and the instant they showed he was Poseidon's son, she goes, 'Well, if we know who his dad is now, it's no fun when he's supposed to get claimed!' When an 8-year-old is giving better studio notes, you know the movie is in trouble."
"The first one is the poster child for bad adaptations. It changed the plot all around, took everything fun out of it, and even left out the main villain — imagine filming the first Harry Potter movie without mentioning Lord Voldemort. I've always believed Chris Columbus made a detailed and accurate list of everything in the book that made it fun and entertaining and carefully omitted every single one of them from the movie. I never bothered to watch the second one."
30.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: Carrie
"It was King's first book and, although it's good, there was emotion and depth in Sissy Spacek's portrayal that went far beyond the character in the original story."
Honestly, Carrie is very different from the book. Film Carrie is extremely sympathetic. Book Carrie definitely doesn't deserve it, but my god, she's mean (understandably so, her mom is evil). One part of the book is just burned into my brain. She's left the prom and is laying waste to the town and gets distracted. She realizes the students are pushing open the gym doors and slams them shut on their fingers, and then she smiles at that. I don't know why, but that little moment is just so disturbing to me."
"I agree with this. Though the book is great, Sissy really makes you feel the anguish in Carrie. Sissy delivers that character so well."
"The diary entries in the book just messed so much with the flow of the story. I loved the film, though."
31.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
"I read it in middle school, and it was my favorite book I had ever read. I waited years for the movie, and my God, Tim Burton butchered that book. That was the most forgettable and disappointing movie ever."
"I was so excited when it was announced that Burton was working on that project, but then the result was just...ugh. The only nice thing about it, in my opinion, was Eva Green."
32.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: Coraline
"The book was alright, but the movie was iconic."
"It really is almost identical scene-for-scene...probably one of the closest book adaptations I have seen. But the visuals really turned an okay/good story into something exceptional."
"Gaiman does such a good job, but Laika shored it up and made some organizational choices to keep it crisp and a touch more cohesive."
33.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: World War Z
Suggested by u/Runktar
"The book is phenomenal. All the different places that the plague breaks out. The different points of view when talking about what happened when all these cities were overrun by zombies. The struggle to fight back and regain control of the world. All of this is lost in the movie. It's completely different. I wish someone would remake it the author's original vision."
34.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: I'm Thinking of Ending Things
"I really enjoyed the book but didn't love the ending. The movie goes much bigger and weirder for the finale. The results are unforgettable."
"I loved the book right up until the twist and then threw it across the room. I hated the ending. Kaufman makes it a little more all-encompassing and abstract. I felt like it fit with the weird tone of the rest of the story so much more."
35.BUTCHERED THE BOOK: Watchmen
Suggested by u/elerner
"I'm someone who liked the Watchmen film more than most people seem to, and while there are aspects of it that are done well, claiming that the whole film is a faithful adaptation is just dumb. The movie changes around everything that Ozymandias' scheme hinges on, for starters (also 'triggered it' — he goddamn 'triggered it,' they couldn't get one of the most iconic lines in the entire story right). I thought Rorschach was mostly pretty good, although they glossed over (and/or changed) a lot of the key trauma that made him who he is, and they Batman-ized his voice for some reason.
The biggest issue other than the Ozymandias rejiggering was just the weird-ass extremifying of everything, like the scene of them just straight-up murdering dudes and snapping limbs in the alley. Zack Snyder also just seemed to not understand how key the Black Freighter subplot was to the story, and also does not understand color palettes."
36.BETTER THAN THE BOOK: The Last of the Mohicans
Suggested by u/Fabulous_Regular_959
"The score for that movie is one of the best I've heard in my life. Without it, the movie would still be good, but not even close to the movie with it."
"The movie was beautifully shot and had a wonderful cast. The book…well, the book inspired Mark Twain to write the best negative review in history."
"The book is astoundingly boring."
"I've read a bunch of books by James Fenimore Cooper. He was not a good author by any means. The Last of the Mohicans was one of his better books, and that's not saying much. Pretty much any adaptation of his is going to be better than the original."
37.And finally, BUTCHERED THE BOOK: "All of the Bourne films after the first one."
"The first movie followed the book reasonably. Second and third...well...the titles were the same as the books, and they had Jason Bourne as the main character, but that was about it."
"I didn't buy Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. I couldn't sit through the first movie, so I never watched the others."
What do you think is the worst book-to-film adaptation of all time? What about the best adaptation? Let us know in the comments below!
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
