Best Movie Based on a Book

[Mellow Ezlo]

I apologize if this thread already exists. I did look, but did not find one.

The topic of this thread is simple. What, in your opinion, is the best film that was based off of a book. This is a very vast topic seeing as most movies are in fact based off of a book. The books could be anything from Short Stories to Novels, and even plays (like Romeo & Juliet), and Comic Books

I do not actually think that I can personally state a best one, because there are tons that I really enjoy. However, some of my favourites include:
-War of the Worlds
-Gone With the Wind
-The Outsiders
-The Lord of the Rings Series
-The Harry Potter Series
-The Dark Knight trilogy
-Pretty much every modern Marvel movie (and some old ones)

Although I am not a fan of the Twilight Saga, I have read the books, and I do believe that the movies did do the books justice. I just don't like either the books nor the movies :xd:

 

[Dan]

I'm going to have to go with twilight on this one, It's such a joy.

 

[Mercedes]

Lord of the Rings. By a mile. Do like other book to movie stuff, especially if we count comics but, Lord of the Rings is just too good. I remember seeing it years back and just being absorbed into each one. When I look at fantasy movies, books, even games, LotR is forever the benchmark everything is unfortunately compared to.

 

[misskitten]

Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Harry Potter (tho the books are much better)

 

[Hylian_Monolith]

Really? Nobody's said Princess Bride yet?

The Princess Bride. That movie is one of those incredibly rare cases where I will not say, "The book was better." The movie did the book justice, and I love them both equally. In general, I own a T-shirt that says "The book was better." for a reason, but with The Princess Bride... they're equals.

Coraline was actually pretty good, as well. The movie is my favorite book-to-move transition, book-accuracy-wise. Overall, I like it quite a bit in general. I found exactly three things that were wrong--the presence of that one boy(who didn't exist in the book), Coraline's hair color(blue in the movie, brown in the book) and the initial appearance of the Other-mother(In the move, she looked normal-ish form the start, in the book, she was always tall and gangly). I liked them both quite a bit, and although the audience it's geared towards is rather young, the morals behind it and the very ideas are both fascinating enough and dark enough for em to enjoy them even now.

 

[Hanyou]

My vote goes to The Godfather, though Lord of the Rings and Ben-Hur are close.

Really? Nobody's said Princess Bride yet?

The Princess Bride. That movie is one of those incredibly rare cases where I will not say, "The book was better." The movie did the book justice, and I love them both equally. In general, I own a T-shirt that says "The book was better." for a reason, but with The Princess Bride... they're equals.

The Princess Bride is a fantastic movie (I've watched it more times than I can count), but when movies like The Godfather, Lord of the Rings, Blade Runner, Solaris (1972), Ben-Hur, Phantom of the Opera (1925), Frankenstein (1931), The Shining, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gone with the Wind, etc. exist, one can be forgiven for forgetting The Princess Bride, I would think. It just doesn't stand up--it's not as ambitious, though it may be as successful as what it's trying to do.

Now, in at least a couple of those cases (Lord of the Rings, Phantom of the Opera) the book IS better--but it doesn't matter because the movies are so amazing on their own merits.

Also, I can't think of a single film based on a comic book (apart from Nolan's first two Batman movies and Donner's original Superman) that's even close to being in the same league as the movies I listed above.

 

[Vanessa28]

Definitely LOTR. The books were so great and so were the movies. Yes they had their flaws but still amazing movies. I always say Tolkien created Middle-Earth but Peter Jackson gave it a face

 

[Hero of Time]

My favorite book-based movies are definitely the Harry Potter movies. The movies are great and very close to the books in general; naturally, things are cut for time's sake, but all the necessary things that make the books so good are present. All the casting for the movies was fantastic.

I also enjoy all of the superhero movies, especially The Dark Knight Trilogy, the Spider-Man films, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Although none of these are directly based on comic books, they do gather plots and characters from various individual comic books, graphic novels, and story arcs and represent an amalgamation of these stories very well.

 

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

I'm going to have to go with twilight on this one, It's such a joy.

 

[Raindrop14]

There's very few that I like because movies can't really capture the epic bookness of it, so I actually hate a lot of movies based off of books, so excuse me. :p But my most favored one of all ever would have to be the Dune series (200-2003) and the Disney Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The SciFi Dune movies were really good, especially since it was done by SciFi channel. I feel they did a really good job, although it was dissapointing that they had adult actors for Leto II and Ghanima instead of children like it's supposed to be, I can understand not being able to find good child actors. So anyway, those were good, and then the Narnia movie (just the one, the others were pretty meh) was very nostalgic and I think it was the best out of the three so far that kept close to the book. :>

Other movies done from books I've read really suck and I hate them. Anyway, this isn't the hate movies thread, it's the best movies thread. Continue. :>

 

[Mudora]

Lord of the Rings definitely. I thought they did a pretty good job with the Harry Potter movies too.