I forgot about Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation! by Catriona

What is a film adaptation that you believe is actually better than the original novel—and why? 

I quite like films. I watch one every Saturday night (movie night, right?) when I'm not out, and I try to go to the pictures every week. Usually manage it too: there's an independent cinema plus a Regal in town; a bigger indie in Scaramento that shows classics and Live from the Met (which doesn't count as a movie though); plus with a bit of planning there's the Roxy in San Francsisco.

It helps that I don't mind going to the pictures on my own if none of my movie-watching buddies fancies what's on. I couldn't persuade anyone else into The Zone of Interest, and I watched Petit Maman alone too, for different reasons. One drawback is the large category of horror films too scary for everyone else and too scary for me to watch without someone to clutch. I've missed a lot of bangers because of this.

All of which is to say that it's not because I'm not into movies that I've found it so hard to come up with answers to this question. It's just that I love books. Apart from anything else, books get cut to make movies* and - as a lifelong Stephen King fan - I believe more is more. So, even when the film is great - Trainspotting, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Name of the Rose - I'm usually going to think the book is better.

*To make good movies they do. I think the problem with the recent adaptation of The Thursday Murder Club is that the adaptor didn't do this. They snipped and trimmed away around the edges of the book and ended up with something that wasn't a functioning complete movie. Unfortunately one of the elements that got pruned with nail scissors until it collpased was character. It would have been far better, I think, to carve away whole subplots leaving a well-shaped cinematic piece. And then people could have scampred off to the library and found more to love.

My first choice of three movies I think is better than the book it came from (finally!) relates to this. 

84 Charing Cross Road is a very short book and most of it gets into the film, so the only extra treat when you read it is the epxerience of reading. Ordinarily that's enough but this book is epistolary and the letters make it into the film where they are read by Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins. Those voices! Even if you don't eat popcorn there's no contest. 

Hear me out! I adore Austen's Sense and Sensibility. I adore all six of her completed mature novels. I adore her juvenalia and could weep for what she was writing and would have written next when she died so young. But. Emma Thompson's adaptation of S&S is a masterclass in axe-wielding and in brio. She gets rid of big characters - Lucy Steele's pointless sister, the dull lady Middleton - and she gives purpose to Margaret Dashwood, who comes tumbling off the screen in a way she never did off the page, and turns Mr Palmer into a hoot. Then there's the casting. Marianne Dashwood, put off hunks for life after what that scoundrel Willoughby did, still marrys Colonel Brandon but in the film he's Alan Rickman. I put it to you that there's not a straight woman or gay man in the world who'd rather be coming out of that country church with Greg Wise.

And then there's Die Hard, which is in the I-never-knw-it-was-a-book zone mostly. It was a workaday action thriller in the 70s, then in the 80s it changed action thrillers forever. Since Die Hard, every decent thriller has humour. Since Die Hard, everyone has a favourite Christmas movie, because people who always hated Christmas movies have Die Hard now. Since Die Hard, every man who loathes dressing up has a Halloween costume he's happy with. 

We won't talk about the sequels, eh?

Cx