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Quoted for so much truth.

I don't actually watch movies very often, and I watch movies of books I've read even less often than that--and I guess I don't read moviefied books very often.

That said, I can only think of a few times that a movie adaptation of a book I liked really pissed me off. One of those times was Ella Enchanted, in which Fox felt some overpowering need to re-write the entire book, keeping only the main character, her curse, and her love interest intact. They took a book I found very unique and turned it into a slightly WTF'd-up Standard Fantasyland. And for some reason decided to insert Carey Elwes as a moustache-curling villain who smells faintly of brimstone and offs himself in one of the most idiotic displays of idiocy I've ever seen. I'd classify it as, in Erika's words, "doing weird s**t with good material." I was, and remain, extremely disappointed in it.

That's the only time that stands out in my mind, though. Usually I can accept a movie adaptation as a separate telling of a similar story and live with it (Howl's Moving Castle is one case of this; The Princess Bride is another). I usually prefer the book simply because there's more material in it, or character development, or cute scenes, or whatever. For instance, I liked the extra exposition and character development offered for each character in The Princess Bride, as well as the entire Zoo of Death segment, which I acknowledge would have transferred very badly into the movie as a pointless disruption of pace.

Unlike some people I know and respect, I liked the recent film adaptation of Prince Caspian. Some people argued that they killed the plot by adding too much extra shiny visual-effects candy, but personally, I felt that all the additional battle scenes and character development (erroneous and badly executed as it was) was necessary to make the story work in that format. I mean, seriously, has anyone here read Prince Caspian? The main characters spend half the book walking through the forest and bickering, then fight two short battles, are saved by deus-ex-Aslan, and go home. It's the shortest book in the series (aside from maybe The Last Battle), as well as the least popular, and nothing happens. I think I once read the entire book in an hour. There's really not much there. I think it's only natural that they had to find a way to pad out the plot to make a movie out of it.

Though I still maintain that Caspian is blonde, I don't care what color his hair was in the ancient cover art, or that his hair color isn't mentioned until The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Damn it.

And at the risk of making this post too long, I'd also like to say that probably the one time I liked a movie better than its book is in the case of Stardust. Even before the movie came out, I was disappointed by that book. It felt as if Gaiman had written a fairly epic fantasy novel, then cut out the middle with a dull X-acto knife and instead pasted in a note reading, "And then they had some grand adventures, but since this is a romance and not an adventure, we're just going to skip all that." This left me with the feeling of having read a book with a long and tedious beginning and a rather so-so ending, with absolutely nothing in-between. The book started. Then it ended. And not much happened.

The movie, however, I felt really got the chance to play around in the world Gaiman had set up in the book. They expanded on the idea of traveling by candle-light with the Babylon Candles, they turned the fratricidal princes into morbid comic relief, they gave the witches a decent role and actually made them a threat, the romance between Tristan and Yvaine was properly developed, they actually told us about some of the adventures the main characters had on their way back to England on Shakespeare's ship, and it all got wrapped up with the satisfying ending the audience, in my opinion, deserved. What I'm trying to say is, there was a plot in the movie. Things were developed. The world felt like it actually affected the characters that lived in it. The pace was better, the character development was better, and everything was much more vivid. The movie trumped the book.

So...yeah. Books and movies. I am opinionated.

ETA: Okay, I also like the live-action Disney Peter Pan with the same burning passion as the unabridged novel, but that's more for the fact that I'm a big Peter Pan nerd and can appreciate all the places where they included details from other Pan movies, or subverted something from the text, or played with aspects of the original play. Also, I thought the lighting in the final battle scene was trippy and expressive at the same time. And it's the only movie that really does Captain Hook justice, in my opinion. He's a much more complex character than all the other movies would lead you to believe.

Okay, now I'm done.

I actually liked Timeline, both the book and the movie, but for (mostly) different reasons. I felt like the romance was done better in the movie, but Andre Marek was so much more badass in the book. He's the whole reason I watched the movie, so it was really disappointing to see them delegate all his awesomeness to other characters.

I just watched the movie of The Talented Mr. Ripley. It was...kind of ugh. Even if I hadn't read the book, it would probably be ugh. Tom was painfully awkward almost the whole way through, and for being based off a book where the audience spends most of the time in the main character's head, it was kind of odd how little of a connection we were offered. Also, Tom seemed to get through the whole movie entirely on dumb luck. He didn't even do a very good job of impersonating Dickie. He hardly lived up to the title of "Talented." And then it seemed like everything the movie lacked, they tried to make up for in gay.

There were some fun little visual tricks that I thought were kind of neat--Tom's reflection splitting into two on the piano cover, things like that. But overall the movie was way too tense. Uncomfortably tense. Mainly in the musical score--it was kind of making me squirm. Also, I'm surprised I didn't have nightmares last night of Jude Law with his face sliced open.

It varies. Drastically. Sometimes it's influenced by what I encountered first--while I like both versions of The Princess Bride, I like the movie better partially because I saw it before I read the book.

ELLA ENCHANTED PISSED ME OFF. It is one of the few times that I have ever gotten pissed off at an entire movie--usually it's just a detail that bugs me, like the "Velociraptors" in Jurassic Park.

...On second thought, all of the carnivores in the Jurassic Park series bugged the hell out of me. WHAT THE ******** DID YOU DO TO MY T. REX'S BITE FORCE?! THAT SPINOSAURUS SHOULD BE DEAD. WHY IS THAT SPINOSAURUS GOING AFTER PEOPLE? ARE THERE NO FISH ON THAT ISLAND?! SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE, WHAT. THE. CHRIST. *frothing raeg* A movie about dinosaurs SHOULDN'T GET SO MANY THINGS WRONG. gonk

They won't. They can't. There's no possible way they can continue from where the movie left off and not have to force Paolini to write a whole 'nother Inheritence series. In fact, the only thing I felt was any good about the movie was the fact that there won't be another one. Okay, yeah, and Baby Saphira was cute for all five minutes it was on-screen.

I think, at the root of it all, there are only two big problems with the Eragon movie. Firstly, that it was based off something Christopher Paolini wrote, and secondly, that Paolini sold the rights to Fox.

Speaking of Fox screwing over their book adaptations, I have very low expectations for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I have this sickening premonition that they'll try to incorporate an antagonist into the plot, which will naturally ruin everything, because unlike all the other Chronicles of Narnia, Voyage is the only one that deals mainly with Man vs. Nature and Man vs. Self rather than Man vs. Evil Presence Threatening to Overtake Fantasyland. And Man vs. Self/Man vs. Nature is not only more realistic, but it's also why Voyage is my favorite of the series--because it doesn't follow the tired old Fantasyland tradition of Capital-G Good vs. Capital-E Evil.

For the most part, the books are far superior to the drek that Hollywood adds on to make movies, and I don't know how many book-to-movie adaptations I've seen that had me ticked off because they did stupid s**t. That being said, there are very few examples of where the movie turned out better than the book, or where the movie turned out to be pretty decent despite the added stuff.

In my general opinion, movies made from books should really just stick to the damn story that's in the frikken' book without adding extra stuff in about 90% of the time.

Okay: now 3 exceptions.
Starship Troopers: for males AND females in the military sharing living spaces / bathrooms, and being much easier to watch than the book was to read.

Watchmen: for better costumes and glorious, glorious violence.

The Three Musketeers: A good movie in its own right, featuring memorable characters and good swashbuckling.