9 Film Adaptations That Are Better Than The Book

Of course, there is the popular axiom that “the book is always better than the movie.” There are many reasons for this: a great book can immerse you for many nights of reading, while a film has just a couple of hours to fill your time with the same story and characters. The novel or book is the primary work of one person with a small crew of helping hands, like editors. With a film, there are many more cooks in the kitchen, so to speak, making it likelier for certain aspects – from the acting to the accuracy of the set design – to not live up to readers’ expectations. Most of all, novels that come with a first-person perspective often give screenwriters a challenge, since the writer must bring the idiosyncratic thoughts and feelings of the character to life through a visual medium.

Jordan Adler

Published: Dec 2, 2013 01:27 pm

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When trailers for a movie about the boom of Facebook first appeared, some scoffed at the prospect of dishing out money to watch the story of something still so green in its development. However, author and Harvard graduate Ben Mezrich had already penned a chronicle of the controversial start of the website with The Accidental Billionaires. Even if Mezrich’s book had some great water cooler information due to the court documents he received of the scuffle between Facebook founders Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin, the story was very one-sided.

See, Saverin served as Mezrich’s consultant, so there was a natural bias against Facebook’s CEO. Zuckerberg declined to be interviewed for Mezrich’s book and since his voice is a pivotal one, Billionaires suffered as a result. With David Fincher’s The Social Network, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin focused on Zuckerberg as the protagonist, extrapolating his own research to fill in some of the gaps that Mezrich could not complete.

With Sorkin’s snappy, intelligent dialogue and Jesse Eisenberg’s fascinating performance – filled with pride and high-strung ego, so that we admire his brilliance while despising his lack of humanity – Zuckerberg gets a multi-faceted portrayal. Sorkin even structures much of the story around the legal battle, flashing back when a point of difference is made so that the audience can judge Zuckerberg’s level of guilt or innocence.

The Social Network is not just a film with exceptional acting, writing and directing. It moves beyond the limits of Mezrich’s bestseller by inserting dark irony and more dimensions to the enigmatic Facebook CEO.

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Author

Jordan Adler

Jordan Adler is a film buff who consumes so much popcorn, he expects that a coroner's report will one day confirm that butter runs through his veins. A recent graduate of Carleton's School of Journalism, where he also majored in film studies, Jordan's writing has been featured in Tribute Magazine, the Canadian Jewish News, Marketing Magazine, Toronto Film Scene, ANDPOP and SamaritanMag.com. He is also working on a feature-length screenplay.