'When was the movie better than the book?': The internet shares their opinions about terrible books that were turned into iconic movies

Giuliana Tiscioni • Writer

Nov 5, 2026 10:30 AM EST

I bet you didn't know that some of your favourite movies were originally books…

As a certified bookworm that I am, it's virtually impossible to convince me of the fact that a movie based on a book can be better than its source material, but like with everything in life, there are exceptions.

Most of the time, when I find out that a book I like is being turned into a movie or TV show, my first reaction is to say, 'Oh no, they're gonna mess it up big time,' and that's because, 9 out of 10 times, they actually do. Writers and producers tend to make unnecessary changes, misinterpret or misrepresent the characters, forget key parts of the plotline, and sometimes just make things up as they go, ruining an otherwise well-established story. The casting is a completely different topic, and it's not even worth delving into it.

However, on rare occasions, it looks like all the planets of the solar system align and movie producers actually set out to do their jobs right when adapting a literary piece, respecting the spirit of the source material and making an accurate and sometimes even better representation of the same story. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it's worth applauding it. Besides, I have to acknowledge the fact that, just like there are mediocre movies, there are also mediocre books, as much as it pains me to say it. These screenplay writers sometimes have the ability to take all the good stuff from an apparently irrelevant comic book or novel and turn it into a fantastic work of fiction. I have to give credit where credit is due, and in most of these cases, a round of applause is well deserved. So much so that I had no idea some of these were actually books.

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Movie clapper.
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What are some instances where the book came first and then a movie based on said book but the movie was better than the book?
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Fight Club

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The Princess Bride

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I'll tell you a little story here: when I first watched The Princess Bride, I had no idea that it was a book. I loved the movie, and when I found out that there was, in fact, a book, I set myself on a mission to get it. I grabbed the first copy I could find and started reading without knowing what was really ahead of me. At first, I was really confused, because I had no clue that the author was blending himself in with the narrator, or that it was supposed to be a sort of satire. I definitely bought the tale that he was just telling the fun parts of a story that his grandpa used to read to him. A few Google searches later, I confirmed that the book was purposefully written that way, and I thought it was genius. That kind of narration, with the layers and resourcefulness of telling the reader that they're reading something that someone else wrote, fascinated me, and to this day it's one of my favourite books. It's a style of writing that you don't see very often, and I loved both the book and the writer for it. In fact, the only other book in which I've seen anything remotely similar was Don Quixote. Nerdy reference, I know, but look it up if you want! That one is even more intricate, but the general basic idea stands. Anyway, all of this is to say that the movie is beautiful, but I can't really say that it was better because I loved the book so much.
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The Godfather

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Now, a disclaimer here: a good adaptation doesn't mean that the movie was, in fact, better than the book. When it comes to a book like The Godfather, I wouldn't dare say that the source material was bad or mediocre, because we all know that's not the case. What we have here is an excellent book with an adaptation that was very well accomplished, which is hard enough to do when you're working with complex books. In general, you don't have enough time in a movie to include all the details that give a complete sense of the story, so you forcefully have to leave things out. Doing that while still maintaining the spirit, and for the movie to stand as an independent work, that makes complete sense, and it's well developed, is the one thing most adaptations fail at, and what makes this one so good.
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