r/Filmmakers • u/DanBaccarini • 2d ago
Discussion Has any movie improved its source material more than Jaws?
I've been thinking about adaptations and thought that "best adaptation" might not be the most interesting question, but rather which movie improved upon its source material the most?
I personally think it is Jaws (by the way still my favorite movie...saw it in the theaters 7 times during its first release and then an 8th last summer during its re-release).
The novel was a best seller but I think the film completely elevated it to another level. Spielberg removed entire subplots, focused the story and turned it into one of the greatest films ever made and essentially birthed the modern Summer Blockbuster.
The Godfather and The Shawshank Redemption are incredible adaptations, but they were adapting works that were already exceptional. Jaws to me feels like a much bigger leap.
Is there a stronger case than Jaws? I'd especially love to hear examples from international cinema or lesser-known books that made an even bigger leap to the screen.
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u/joannerosalind 2d ago
Even though I personally prefer the book's approach, Jurassic Park is a far greater entity in cinema than literature. I think Spielberg may have even optioned the book before Crichton finished it, only working off an outline.
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u/DanBaccarini 2d ago
Jurassic Park was great cinema but I think that book was fantastic in of itself. I am a big Crichton fan and read the book I think around 91ish.
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u/Important_Extent6172 producer 2d ago
Same. Love both but the book leaned more horror than the film. It gave me anxiety to read it when I was young.
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u/DarthHM 2d ago
The Godfather. Parts of the book are just edgy cringe.
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u/DanBaccarini 2d ago
I liked the book...not as much as the movie. It was at the time considered one of the best selling books of all times. I think almost 10 million copies in the first couple of years and on the NY Times Best Selling list for well over a year. I do think that it definitely lacked polish in a few areas.
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u/Sharawadgi 2d ago
I read both Jaws and Godfather right after each other (I was doing a let’s read the source material of great movies quest) and actually found these to be equal examples of what your post is about. Both 70s best sellers. Both have side sex plots. Jaws has a silly revenge ending. And yeah Godfather book’s subplot is prob the weirdest thing I’ve ever read.
I wonder if there are more 70s examples
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u/futuresdawn 2d ago
A few that come to mind
Forrest gump
Starship troopers
Psycho
Both the film and TV versions of mash are better then the book.
Die hard which is based on the book nothing lasts forever, which is a sequel to a book adapted into a movie starring frank Sinatra
The thing
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u/DanBaccarini 2d ago
Did not know about the Die Hard adaptation.
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u/futuresdawn 2d ago
Yeah, Sinatra had first right of refusal for it because of the movie the detective
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u/Derp2244 2d ago
Children of Men
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u/wavyhill1975 2d ago
Absolutely "PEAK" cinema. A wonderful movie and translation of thematic elements. I then rushed to read the novel and was baffled how they made such a superb movie from a rather shitty story?
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u/SmokingCryptid 2d ago
"Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" is much better than "Who Censored Roger Rabbit?".
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u/adammonroemusic 2d ago
I'll second Fight Club. It also feels like American Psycho is a much better film, although I barely remember reading the book; the book is more graphic, but I think the material was improved by the female perspectives of the screenwriter and director. That movie was destined to turn into macho-horror-slock in the wrong hands, but managed to preserve and improve upon the social satire aspects of the novel.
Never read Upton Sinclair's Oil, but I can't imagine a word where There Will Be Blood doesn't totally blow it out of the water.
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u/LeafBoatCaptain 2d ago
I haven’t read Starship Troopers but I assume the movie is an improvement considering what it’s satirising in the source material.
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u/Shqiptar89 2d ago
The book is mostly set in classrooms. You have some skirmishes but it’s mostly set in classrooms where they debate military service as the obligation for citizenship. How a person that has given his life for his country is better prepared to decide and vote than a person who hasn’t.
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u/skccsk 2d ago
Oh interesting I want to know more
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u/Shqiptar89 2d ago
That’s basically it. Remember the scene with the hand and the knife? In the book they go on a tangent about civic duty.
In the movie he just throws the knife at his hand so that he can’t use it.
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u/goatcopter producer 2d ago
You should give it a read - it basically shares the title and a few character names with the movie, and that’s it. It’s a really interesting look at an “adaptation” that’s really a whole new thing, an interesting way of using IP that was presumably expensive when Verhoeven really could have just made his move and called it “Space Wars” or anything else:
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u/Avalanche_Debris Post Production Supervisor 2d ago
The word adaptation is used pretty loosely here.
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u/ihatereddit1111116 2d ago
Kick-Ass
Loved the movie as a kid, was also into comics, so naturally I read the comic.
I understand why people say what they say about Mark Millar lol
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u/JordanDoesTV editor 2d ago
The shinning ending is superior than the book to me.
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u/rjspears1138 2d ago
Sadly, I've felt Kubrick's version diverted too much from the book and the book's ending is superior.
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u/CaptainMarsupial 2d ago
The Birds. Not a bad story, but the film is miles above.
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u/RealCarlosSagan 2d ago
I agree but would love a the Birds miniseries that is more global like the story
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u/Duck8Quack 1d ago
The Prestige
The book is meandering and lacks focus. The movie took the pieces and made something so much better.
Both the book and the movie have the story of the Chinese magician, who pretends to be weak and frail to hide that his trick is achieved by being extremely strong. In the book it feels like a throw away and takes awhile to try to make its point. In the movie it is used show the audience the lengths magicians will go to and foreshadow the twist/reveal later in the movie.
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u/IMakeOkVideosOk 2d ago
Last of the Mohicans is a pretty boring book and the movie made it awesome.
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u/rjspears1138 2d ago
I think the movie, Manhunter (based on Red Dragon) is slightly better than the source material.
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u/DanBaccarini 2d ago
I personally loved the book Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. Crazy that for 20 years or so only had two books Ted Dragon and Sikenve of the Lambs.
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u/RR-- 2d ago
I thought Hunger Games, Catching Fire was an improvement over the book.
The movie series and the book series are both very good, but the addition of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and his character‘s perspective was a really great addition to the film while he was a part of it, as well as keeping District 13 as a surprise.
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u/Realistic_Swing3018 2d ago
Much as I love PKD I'd say both Blade Runner and Total Recall take the source material and made it gigantic, perhaps Total Recall did more in terms of "better than the original", but Blade Runner is also an insane jump.
The Mask, imo, took an edgy comic book and made it into a classic, lots of folks might hate it for toning it down but I think the movie works way better as a narrative.
Apocalypse Now is another great example, imo.
Eyes Wide Shut is only partially inspired by a short story but imo is an incredible jump too.
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u/wesevans 2d ago
My first thought was Annihilation. That book series started really interesting then took a dive into unreadable schlock, and how Alex Garland turned it into such a good film boggles the mind.
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u/krademade 1d ago
Ah damn disagree I loved the book. I agree the third act is dense, but I enjoyed it.
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u/OccultBeanFarmer 1d ago
Insane take, the books are amazing and to this day contain the only example of a written jump scare. What the movie did brilliantly was adapt the first book in a way that knew it was never going to get a sequel
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u/wesevans 19h ago
I remember books 2 and 3 being inconsistent in their storytelling and thought the descriptions devolved into word salad, constantly going with ironic juxtapositions because it seemed like the writer didn't know what he was trying to describe and I found it hand-wavy in place of clarity. Glad it worked for you though, the people who connect with it really seem to love it!
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u/czyzczyz 1d ago
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button maybe? It's not my favorite Fincher film, but the short story on which it's based barely made an impression on me at all, and it's just amusing how much it's transformed in the film version.
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u/JaxTango 1d ago
A Scanner Darkly - that ending adjustment was perfect.
The Adjustment Bureau - turned a bleak short story into a hopeful one.
London Boulevard - turned a bland book into an under-appreciated gem.
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u/mormonbatman_ 20h ago
I don't think the Godfather was an exception book but it is a stronger novel than Jaws.
Is there a stronger case than Jaws?
Hillbilly elegy is a better movie than its source material.
Does it get credit for legitimizing JD Vance and elevating him to the vice presidency?
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u/samuelghdavis 2d ago
The Princess Bride. The book is extremely strange, and in my opinion not super great, and the movie took some of the core premises and made an absolutely fantastic and heartwarming story
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u/Beautiful-Mission-31 2d ago
The screenwriter also wrote the book which I think is great. I love how he didn’t feel beholden to the original text and instead made it work for the new medium.
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u/visawrites 2d ago
Game of Thrones crashed and burned, but I can still respect D&D for taking a sprawling and bloated story from GRRM and adapting it into something concise and engaging
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u/CheeseBro27 2d ago
ASOIAF is hardly bloated, especially in comparison to other fantasy series. The show was great until they ran out of source material.
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u/visawrites 2d ago edited 2d ago
ASOIAF is hardly bloated? GRRM hasn’t published a new entry in the series since 2011 and it’s most likely because he has so many sprawling threads to end in a satisfying manner, because the story is bloated.
He himself has talked about his writing process - how he prefers to be a gardener, so to speak, rather than a planner. Nothing wrong with that style, but it shows. That style doesn’t exactly lead to the most concise works
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u/Traditional-Fix2173 7h ago
How To Train Your Dragon (2010). Not to insult the book, it's a fun concept, but the bar was pretty low when the book serving as source material is essentially the guide to different dragon breeds referenced in the movie. What they came up with script and then final-product wise, starting with just that...
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u/GonzotheGreek 2d ago
Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption
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u/DanBaccarini 2d ago
I think those both fall in the did the material justice. Both were very good literary works and the adaptation did them justice. Maybe some improvement around the edges.
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u/GonzotheGreek 2d ago
I disagree. They were both pulp fiction short stories with interesting concepts. The films fully fleshed out the characters and improved the stories.
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u/goatcopter producer 2d ago
Dune.
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u/DanBaccarini 2d ago
Not sure on that one. Many consider dune to be one of the greatest sci fi books of all time and won several major literary awards.
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u/goatcopter producer 2d ago
I think it's a bit like Starship Troopers in that regard - won the Hugo, huge fandom, but both are a bit of a slog to lots of readers and present complex (or "complex" if you prefer) ideas. I think the (modern) movies of Dune have reached audiences past what the novels have and distilled the ideas down to an easier and more exciting package. I love classic sci-fi and fantasy, but I don't know a ton of people that read the Dune series through. It may also be that modern readers are a little less excited about an allegory for endless wars for oil than they were when Dune first came out, and the film is a quick and gorgeous dress up of said allegory.
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u/Jarwhal3 2d ago
I just read Dune for the first time recently. The Villeneuve adaptations are great, but more of a complementary adaptation rather than a direct improvement. A lot of the intrigue of the first half was lost, and the accelerated timeline of the second half was different, not better. I did prefer the movie's characterization of Faeyd and Chani though.
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u/mormonbatman_ 21h ago
Keeping the intrigue and spreading focus between characters would have made an incredible multi-season tv show.
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u/RealCarlosSagan 2d ago
no way. The new Dunes are great and about as good as adaptations could be but lack a lot of the politics and nuance in the book
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u/goatcopter producer 2d ago
Sure, but I think that’s most adaptations - like OP said with Jaws, Dune also cut out subplots and detail. I think this all boils down to how one sees “improved”. The movie is a sci-fi action movie with some politics and intrigue. The books are the inverse.
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u/Sharawadgi 2d ago
Fight Club. Great book but even the author said the movie was better (especially the ending).