What are the best and worst books turned movies?

Question

The best is Jurassic Park. The only book turned movie in which I like the movie better.
The worst has got to be Ella Enchanted. The movie had all this modern crap even though its set when kings lived in castles and stuff. Like, there was a fan club for the prince and stuff. And it changed the book completely. The fact that she was cursed with obedience was the only thing that was the same. I loathe that movie with a passion.

Answer 1

To go back a ways, my best and my worst both had Gregory Peck in starring roles.

The best: To Kill a Mockingbird. B&W is still right for this book/movie.

The worst: Moby Dick. (I don't much like the book--heresy, I know--but that technicolor movie from the 1950s was even worse!)

What I wish is that there were more really good original scripts for movies rather than efforts to recapture the magic of a good read on the screen. As good as the special effects were for the Lord of the Rings series, there's no way a movie, even several hours long, can recapture the experience of two or three weeks of good reading. Nor should we expect it to.

Shakespeare took a lot of his ideas from previous works of literature and history, but he didn't try to recapture the reading on the stage. He made the stories his own and fitted them to the Globe Theatre. His plays survive and thrive; most of the original sources have been lost or long forgotten.

Let's give more credit to good original scripts -- not adaptations.

Answer 2

Although the movies are somewhat different than the books, I think The Lord of the Rings are still good movies.
Any movies based on Stephen King novels are better than his written versions.
Do Ian Fleming's James Bond novels and the movies count? Those are definitely some of the best.
Helter Skelter (the original version) is a good movie, until you read the book.
Frankenstein was good, too. But if anyone reads the book, they'll get a totally different view of things.
The new version of War of the Worlds is horrible. There's none of the horror that's found in the novel.
I loved Tom and Huck when I was twelve, but now I see how horrible it is compared to Twain's version. There's a lot of stuff omitted and altered in the movie.
Disney's version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is totally different than the book.
They shouldn't change things from the novel to the screen; it takes something away every time they do it, and it's usually for the worse.

Answer 3

Some of the worst were all three JR Tolkien novels. Excellent books but way too much info to make into a movie, even if there were three. The FX were hot but the story line got lost. Same for Harry Potter.

The Da Vinci Code was much better in a book.

The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned were much better than the movies.

I agree with you about Jurassic Park. The first time I saw that movie I was blown away.

Answer 4

Without a doubt the worst was the original version of "The Shining" with Jack Nicholson. My God, was that horrible!! Even Stephen King who wrote the book never liked it.

While I can certainly see why you'd like "Jurassic Park" since it did stick failry close to the book, probably the best one is "The Da Vinci Code" for sticking to the premise of the book. Even there though, it was necessary to take some shortcuts, but that'll happen with any movie - unless it runs 4-5 hours long!

Answer 5

I'm not sure if this even counts as it's not really a book, but Dungeons and Dragons is by far the worst screen adaption of anyhting that I have ever seen. Yes, I'm one of those D&D nerds, and the game is not all that silly crap that the movie is. Yes it's a game, but that was just ridiculous.
I think best is either Gone with the Wind (wonderful book and movie) or Lord of the Rings (beautifully done movie, very well written book)

Answer 6

I believe that the best would have to be the LOTR movies; they left out the useless stuff, and they really pull you in. Except all that rubbish about a romance between Aragorn and Arwin; I read the book after seeing the movie, and none of that is in there.
The absolute WORST has GOT to be the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. That movie made me so mad...if you have ever read the original series of books, you know that the story was 95% different than the movie made it (for instance, the main villian played by John Malkovich? He wasn't even in the books). I loved that series of books, have read almost everything Douglas Adams has written, and was furious at the travesty that they made of his writing on the big screen.
Course, Queen of the Damned was pretty bad too.

Answer 7

Best: Lord of the Rings, Jurrasic Park, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was almost accurately portrayed..

Worst: Timeline, Ella Enchanted.

Answer 8

OMG!!!!!!!!
The worst for e too is Ella enchanted

The best is I don't know because all the books I've read I pretty much thought the book was the best so I guess The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, but I love the books incredibly much!

Answer 9

Most adaptations fail to live up to the original. Perhaps the best is Gone with the Wind which was most faithful to the original, and did not fall into the trap of 'ending happily'.

The worst of all is Tarzan, which transformed the 'ape man' into a beefy superhero, when the point of the original work was to question the nature of what is meant by 'civilised upbringing' and to create an anthropological debate.

Answer 10

The best was, in my opinion, The Godfather Saga. I loved all the books and the movies. The second best would have to Lord of The Rings. The books were extremely long and little challenging to read, but the movies were epic and great.

The worst was, in my opinion, Harry Potter. I love the books to death but the movies really sucked, especially the fourth one. They seem to steadily be getting worse............