Fight Club. It wasn’t fun to read it felt like the author was ploying with me trying purposefully to confuse me to a point where it forced me to become disinterested. However with the movie i was captivated every second. The book’s attempt to obscure and mystify the reader might have been an intentional stylistic choice, but for me, it didn’t translate well.
You are so wrong.
The movie is good. Iconic, even. But it absolutely misses the point of the novel, so much so that it’s hard to believe Kubrick read the damn thing.
Here’s the thing – the novel is not about a haunted hotel. It’s about fatherhood. It’s about the overwhelming fear of fucking it up. It’s about stumbling into all the ways that generations of fathers have fucked up before. It’s about fighting to be a decent person and failing.
Very little of that comes through in the movie. I love Jack Nicholson in that role, but he’s creepy and distant right from the get-go. You get very little of him trying hard to be a good father, a good husband, hell a good anything. His main struggle is with his sanity, which is fine, but isn’t nearly as engaging or universal as the theme of parenthood.
So no, sorry, this movie is not better than the book. Not by a long shot.
I get all of that and I still think the movie is the more impressive work of art. An adaptation doesn’t have to be 100% true to the source material to be good. Basically I feel Kubrick is a better filmmaker than King is a writer.