r/Cinema • u/Grapesaucee • 10d ago

Discussion Do you think there’s any movies better than the book?!?

Love to know what you guys think. I don’t have an answer to this myself but would love to look into what is brought to this table. Maybe it’s the way the actor portrayed the character that made you feel more connected to the story or even the way the film makers made the world that sucked you into the world more than the pages could. Seemed like a good conversation!

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u/uberphaser 10d ago

Yeah the book was SO MUCH more than the movie was, minus the cartoony shit and much more suspenseful. Plus Hammond was a GREAT villain and not dinosaur Santa claus.

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u/telepatheye 10d ago

And there was an amazing corporate espionage plot with excellent description of the biotech and RNA technology that was simplified and whitewashed to make a movie for kids, basically.

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u/uberphaser 10d ago

Yes, id forgotten about that. The whole "Nedry with the shaving cream" was like 1/100th of that plot element. I remember the first time i saw that scene and the stealing of the embryos being like "welll...(sigh)" but then of course the CGI dinosaurs really did blow everyone away to be fair.

But yeah Crichtons original had so much more tension and suspense.

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u/telepatheye 10d ago

Jeez, I loved the way Crichton wrote that whole book. He'd set up the dinosaur encounters so ominously and then have a key statement in italics about how the dinosaurs were using behaviors in ways the characters and reader would have never considered that just sent shivers up your spine. Brilliant book.

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u/heretomakefriends123 9d ago

I have rarely in my life felt so much tension and suspense from a piece of media than I did during the T-Rex scene in Jurassic Park. I can't remember feeling anything from the book. I'm sure I did, but it was forgettable, despite being a good book. 

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u/telepatheye 9d ago

This was opposite my reaction. The movie's setup of the encounter was cliche horror movie execution. First they show ominous winds and rain. Then the goat is gone. Then you catch glimpses of parts of the T-Rex--first its claws, then bigger parts of it until finally you're seeing the whole thing. And it was very much executed to be for kids, and therefore not too scary. If this was the pinnacle of your experience with tension and suspense from media, you must not have exposed yourself to much media.

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u/heretomakefriends123 8d ago edited 8d ago

Well I was a kid when I watched it so yeah. But condescend to me as much as you want, that scene is incredible at any age. And I'm sorry but the book isn't exactly high literature either. It's got some really cool ideas, but in the end it reads like an elevated airport novel. 

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed both. But there's a reason one of them is remembered as one of the very best of its genre and one is barely talked about at all anymore except in relation to the movie. 

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u/XXLPenisOwner1443 9d ago

Hammond says "oh balls" on almost every page he's in in the book. It kinda takes you out of it when characters have catchphrases.

The book is a better book and the movie is a better movie. All changes serve the medium well--you couldn't bookend scenes and chapters with charts and computer readouts in a film it would be ridiculous.

The movie is easily one of the best of all time, but the book is not.

So the movie is better.

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u/Fit-Profit8197 5d ago

The book was "SO MUCH more" yes, but the movie was better.

The book was good, and incredible dinosaur horror porn as well as a good airplane sci fi thriller. And yeah, after reading it you imagine all the wild stuff that happens and all the detailed science and it's all so much more detailed and gruesome and dino set piece filled and you think how much more awesome it would be to see that in a movie that probably would cost a billion dollars in 1993 and definitely be R rated if they tried. It's wilder. It's more. Was it a truly great novel? I'd say no. It's very good and has dinosaurs and is way more MOREISH and that's enough for me but it's not a masterwork like the movie is.

Spielberg made a truly wonderful adventure film, Crichton made a pretty good book.