Movies based on books - a good thing or not?

[juniper324]

I usually prefer to read a book and then watch the movie based on it but most of the times I get disappointed in them. They either change the story too much to make it more appealing for the audience visually and loose the essence or they try too hard to follow the book storyline and fails to get a good script making it boring. Very few have managed to get the balance right.

[Abigail Ekwetafia]

Most times the movie tend to not live up to expectations and that can be frustrating

[Linda Reyburn Shirey]

I do enjoy the debate of book-based movies. Sometimes I can watch the movie and rejoice that it prevents me from wasting time on the book (“Gods and Generals”). Sometimes I love the films even though I’m confident the books were better (“Lord of the Rings”) so I can secretly hold both in separate corners of my heart. Sometimes I shout and throw popcorn at the screen because the film has butchered the original, so I am fiercely glad when the producers get rotten reviews and piles of complaints and have to stop pillaging good literature for their agenda-driven reverse-engineered modern rubbish (“Prince Caspian”). May their scripts burn and funding dry up for any future wretched projects.

[Mary Daurio]

Stay Close by Harlan Coben is a Netflix series based on a book, so while not a movie, it is still an adaptation to screen. I saw the series first and wanted to read the book to see how the back stories were set out in the book. I was strangely disappointed in the book, since I usually prefer a book to the adaptation. Perhaps it was because I read the book second in this case. Corben didn't deal with the back stories as the screenwriters did, and the screen version had more depth and excitement and extra threads or subplots that the book lacked. There was dramatic irony in the screen version that the book lacked. Is it because Corbin is popular that producers prompt him to churn out a book, and they will work their magic on it after? I am not sure if that is the case, but I was disappointed in the book. But having read another of Corbin's, Drop Shot, one in the Detective Myron Bolitar series, I did like the Myron character, so Corbin vindicated himself in that book.
I generally prefer a book as I like to imagine things, not have them pictured in front of me.
But I liked Lord of the Flies, the book and the 1960s movie. I have not seen the 1990s version.
The Lord of the Rings, the book, was fantastic, and so was the movie.
To Kill a Mockingbird was so well written, and the movie did it justice. I do not believe there has been a remake of the 1960s movie.
Stephen King's The Dark Tower did not live up to my expectations (I loved the book series), but the movie did not live up to the book.