Which adaptation do you think has surpassed its source material in quality?

Fight Club. Even the author preferred some of the changes made for the movie.
- The reveal for example.
  Been a while since I read the book, and the reveal was similar, but a lot better in the movie

The Stargate movie was good, but SG-1 far surpassed it.

Arcane, the animated Netflix show that was based on League of Legends.
- TBF that was a low bar to clear. They just had to make sure the show was better than a bunch of screaming children.
  However it is truly fantastic

Starship Troopers - the book was extremely meh - the movie is excellent (and very relevant to modern day).
Clue - an excellent movie based off a fucking boardgame... ditto for Barbie now as well!
Mage the Acension is a TTRPG love letter to Ars Magicka and it blows it out of the water.
- Paul Verhoeven really upped the ante on that one.
  
  How would Hannah Arendt be relevant here? I read a short blurb about her philosophy especially in regards to authority but I haven't seen starship troopers
- Helldivers 2 is heavily inspired by the movie... And I would say it's better than it.
  PS: Mage - The Ascension ♥️
  
  While I like the theme etc. of Helldivers 2, I do wish they went a bit further than that. This kind of satire is best when it forces small bits of unease on the audience, like the ending of Starship Troopers - "it feels fear!", and everyone celebrates. There are bits and pieces surrounding the gameplay loop (e.g. something like "never talk to the enemy, destroy them for democracy", forgot the exact line), but it's rare enough to be easy to ignore.

Johnny Cash's version of Hurt
- Trent Reznor even said it's no longer his (Trent's) song
  
  I don't know what Reznor and Cash's relationship was, but that has to feel so surreal for Reznor. You never see older artists cover newer ones in general, let alone such a legendary country artist cover a young alternative rock artist. If I were Reznor, that would be the thing that lets me die happy.
  
  I’ve heard both versions probably a hundred times each and only hear Johnny Cash’s voice anymore.
- Yeah he really brings feeling to this song
- I had never heard Trent Reznor's original or Johnny Cash's cover so thank you for mentioning it. What an incredible music video!

The Mist
That ending was one of the most brilliant gut-punches in film history. Stephen King himself said he wished he had written it.
- Came here looking for this.

The Muppet Christmas Carol
- I wasn't sure what the right answer to this question would be until I saw it.
- Only version to actually feature a Dickens character that acts as a narrator. It just works better even if the narrator is Gonzo

Controversial, but Lord of the Rings. Tolkien wrote great stories, but his writing style always seemed kind of lackluster.
- I encourage you not to view him as an author but as an imaginative creator confined by language.
  
  Also a racist
- I can't fault him for any of his depth and character building and poetry and storytelling and descriptive environments it was all very thorough and for the right person wonderful. I think the movies did a giant justice to making his work accessible. There are a lot of people out there that can't manage to make their way through his poetry sections. And you can't not read the poetry sections because there's definitely content in there you need.
- I came to this thread expecting to see this, and even with that expectation it makes me sad to see; to me the books are unarguably superior, to a large degree because Tolkien is such an excellent writer. I'd encourage anyone who's bounced off the books a time or two to go back to them and try reading them aloud, even quietly to yourself: even though it's prose, the text has meter and flow almost as strong as poetry. It's undeniably a slow read, but it's just such a beautiful one that the films, fun as they are, don't hold up.
  Plus, Jackson's Two Towers is garbage.
  
  It being better when read aloud actually nails what I dislike about it and, far more so, The Hobbit. They read like they were written to be told as tales around a fire, not to be read. So they don't work particularly well as books that you read quietly to yourself (imo, obviously).
- This was mine, but I'm assuming you weren't referring to the BBC radio play, which is the best version of LotR ever made. The films had major distortions on the themes of the story and completely unbelievable characterization that destroyed all suspension of disbelief.
  Sure, the CG was nice eye candy... but Gandalf getting into a shouting match with Elrond? Really? We're okay with that?
  Plus, skipping the correct ending of Frodo and Sam coming back to the Shire in industrialized dystopia missed key parts of their character growth and Tolkien's anti-industrial themes.
  And the massive over-focus on a love story that was barely relevant in the story? And a half hour epilogue of useless wide shots showing how amazing the wedding was and how everyone is doing so great now that they won? What a waste of time. They skipped one of the best parts of the book for that shit.
  I could go on if I had watched the films more than twice and could recall all the other huge problems.
  The books don't hold up, either. Ain't nobody got time to read 3-page info dumps of dense descriptive writing about plot-irrelevant details, or dense blocks of ancient history that demolishes any semblance of pacing left over.
  He founded a lot of tropes of fantasy, so I know why he included all those descriptive details, but it just doesn't hold up. Elf, big tree house, got it. You've got me for two paragraphs to fill in the descriptive details, but then let's move on with the plot, tyvm.
  If you're a fan of LotR, give the 13-hour BBC radio play a listen. And of you've watched/listened to/read all three and disagree with me, I'd love to hear why (out of interest). Full disclosure: you probably won't convince me, but I'm still waiting to hear someone who knows the source material justifying why the movies are so adored.

Pretty much everyone who’s discussed it agrees The Godfather (film) blows the Puzo novel it adapted away.
Runner up is Adaptation, an adaptation of the novel The Orchid Thief that expands its scope significantly.
- Adaptation was one of those movies I watched and then caught myself thinking about it through the year...a very well done movie.
- The movies made me want to read the book. I still haven't yet though.
  I still get chills when I hear "you're nothing to me now, Fredo."
- The Godfather book has a lot of great character nuances but it also has a subplot of Sonny's enormous dong being the only thing that could satisfy his wife's bridesmaid's enormous vagina.

Jimi Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower
- In 1995, Dylan described his reaction to hearing Hendrix's version: "It overwhelmed me, really. He had such talent, he could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them. He found things that other people wouldn't think of finding in there. He probably improved upon it by the spaces he was using. I took license with the song from his version, actually, and continue to do it to this day."
  Source

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), at the time of its release, was based on a short story called The Sentinel by Arthur C Clarke. In that story, the roots of the Tycho Monolith plot segment of 2001 of is sketched out, and then expanded as both a screenplay and a full-length novel.
- Oh, and then I guess it inspired Bowie's single, Major Thom

The sequel to Trump screwing Stormy Daniels...Stormy Daniels screwing Trump.

The Princess Bride was a pretty good book but an amazing movie.
- One thing that always stuck out to me about the book is the introduction of certain editions. The author writes about himself researching the history of the country the story takes place in and describes it as real, saying he took his son to a museum with Inigo's sword and everything.
  I was Googling furiously when I read it because I was so confused. I was astounded that the place (and people) was "real". It took a bit of research to find that the author just does this bit and hasn't let it go since he wrote the book
  I'm still so charmed that he tricked me. It made reading the book that much sillier, for me
  
  I had a teacher that worked for the publisher and talked about how they'd have a series of responses for people who wrote in for the part of the book where the author says he wrote his own fanfiction scene and to write in if you wanted it.
  Like maybe the first time you write in they'd respond that they couldn't provide it because they were fighting the Morgenstern estate over IP release to provide the material, etc.
  So people never would get the pages, but could have gotten a number of different replies furthering the illusion.
  
  I have a similar story from a different medium:
  Frank Zappa has an album called Francesco Zappa. On the back of the sleeve, Frank describes finding out about a distant relative who composed and played music during the 18th century. After telling some friends about it, I got to thinking that Frank had invented another character (á la Ruben and the Jets), because that's the kind of thing he would do, and felt very foolish for repeating this information uncritically.
  Years later I looked the album up on Wikipedia, and it turns out Francesco Zappa was a real musician in the 18th century (who was not actually directly related to Frank).
  He got me twice with one album.

Ill be killed for this but...Lord of the rings. Like, im sorry book purists but even after reading the books twice. Tolkien, is and always will be, THE high fantasy author, the one who basically made things we take for granted today. But the music from Howard Shore. So many scenes like from how fellowship began, to DEEEAAAATTTTHHH to Sam just being the broest bro to ever exist. I dont mind all of the cuts and changes they did, i happily return to the movies all year every year, the books? not so much.
- The movies are awesome, but as a bookworm I would rather say they're doing justice to their source material. I'm rereading more than rewatching, but I guess I'm not normal (And no worries, we book purists don't kill people who have actually read the book)
- I am an avid reader of books, and not a movie buff, but I stand on this hill with you. The LOTR movies are better than the books.

heres a controversial opinion: The American Office vs the UK Office.
While I respect the original, Gervais' external antics and the much meaner, darker humor just don't create as good a comedy vehicle that enables the viewer to laugh and have fun and enjoy themselves watching the show
- On that note, wasn't Whose Line is it Anyway originally British? Because Drew Carey's was peak!
  
  Huh, so it is! Growing up in the UK, the US version seemed to be on more, and I'd assumed that that was the original.
- The American office is watered down drivel.
  
  Agree to disagree - to me the Uk office was a Gervais vehicle with the Tim/Dawn romance Christmas special episode as a nice bonus and Gareth as an occasional funny victim of his own hubris. Keith and Finchy having a couple of good scenes. Neil, Donna, Rachel, Jennifer, Jamie, Ralph... all very forgettable.
  In the US office, as mentioned, I think its a well rounded ensemble comedy where you can feel it's a collab of a writers room and a complicit cast. Everyone has their favorite moments from pretty much any character..
  In the early 2000s I probably would've liked the UK office more because I was an edgy teen. 25 years later and after an 8 year run, 200 episodes vs 14 - I feel like I'd much rather turn on the US one if I wanted a laugh.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit
- Pretty sure that movie is what set me on the path to radicalization......
- Yeah, that's a good one. Better by a large margin.

The Magicians: The books were good, but the TV show really was in a class all its own. And it did away with using obscure words just because, that was annoying.
Game of Thrones: At this rate, ASOIAF is never getting done, so I'm by default giving it to the show for actually finishing the job.
Good Omens: The first season brought the book to life, but there wasn't source material beyond that. The second season did a great job fleshing out the characters and moving the story forward into the final season.
- I’d rather the five released ASOIAF stay as they are, perpetually unfinished than anything close to the hatchet job that was the GoT show ever be released in book. For me, sometimes just finishing isn’t enough. The books > than the show 10,000 times.
  
  Okay, fair. I'm mostly just frustrated that GRRM is taking so damn long.
- the Game of Thrones show's last 2 seasons (the ones not based on any published books) was so bad, it make people retroactively hate the entire series and the entire intellectual property lol
  
  Honestly, that's on Martin. He signed the deal, then failed to get off his arse and finish the damn series. HBO exercised their right to develop their own content when, after ~~five~~ eight years, he'd still not made any progress on finishing the series.
  The fans needed something. Can you imagine the uproar if HBO told us all to wait another few years before closing out the story?
  Martin can whinge all he likes about his creative process, and how he was shut out of the final seasons. I notice he hasn't whinged once about the money he made from selling the TV rights.
  Don't get me wrong - he's absolutely entitled to that money. It's his creation after all. But he also signed the contract that got us to where we got to.
  
  I suppose one could say Game of Thrones has surpassed the source material in quality so much that it managed to do it twice in both directions.
- Read the magicians after watching the series and it was such a drag. As mentioned in the Amazon ratings the writing style is just tedious to read... The emotional extent of the series was so much deeper in my opinion.

Blade runner. Much better than "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" but it is only loosely based off it.
PS: when reading a book after watching a film, it usually feels like the book is much better, fills in details, separates scenes which a film had mixed together or altogether done away with. E.g. The Shining, LotR, Dune...but for Androids I just felt "what, that's it?"
- The truth of the matter is that a lot of PKD and Heinlien era sci-fi was very focused on exploring a single theme - that works well literary but isn't rich enough for TV/Movie - so those works generally got richer and usually were by transitioned by genuine fans that tried to keep the theme and core message.
  
  I feel this is mostly the case with short stories (and a lot of those works were short stories). Where there isn't enough material for a full movie, the writers are free to add more to the story without messing much with the original. DADOES did have enough material but the movie decided to go a different direction while keeping the main theme. I wouldn't say one is better than the other in this case as they're pretty different.
- They're almost too different to compare imo, but both the book and the movie are top-tier.
- A solid chunk of Philip K Dick's output worked better as movies/TV than as books.
  There's definitely something there, but the books feel somewhat unfinished/unpolished. Which makes sense, his books weren't popular in English until after the release of Blade Runner, which coincided with his death. Maybe the popularity of the movie would've given him more time and resources to revise future works.
  A Scanner Darkly is the only one where both the book and the movie felt about the same quality.
- I dunno if you can still find it, but I remember there being a Blade runner TTRPG in the FASA catalog in the '90s

- Good to know. Wasn’t sure 3BP show would be good because I think the book was so slow. Probably lost in translation.
  
  Yeah, I heard it was the next big scifi trilogy, but when I read it it was like "Really? This?"

I welcome the controversy, but World of Warcraft.
- Hoboy, that's an arguement I'm not even remotely willing to approach. So instead I will respect your opinion, fight away the mental imagery of "crow of judgement", and move along. Have a good day.
  
  I hear ya. In its heyday it was something else. It's been bastardized, dumbed down, littered with microtransactions and mass marketed to hell now by a company that bears only the name Blizzard...a rotten husk of its former self that deserves all the hate it gets...but before all that, it brought some great memories and feelings of group achievement that are still irreplaceable to me.
- Needs a sequel though
  
  Big time, it's gotten staler than moldy bread.

The Bourne Identity movie > book

I just went through my entire favorite movie and show list and couldn't find a single one. I can only find ones where the adaptation is great, because it limits its focus while still keeping the overall spirit of the original. Or ones that tell a very different story, but manage to do it well.
Dune, all quiet on the western front (1930s one), total recall, it's a wonderful life, blade runner, I claudius.
- Total recall (1990) was better than the book it was based on IMO.
  
  It wasn't even a book, more a sketch, a joke even. A lot (most?) of the adaptations of PKD's writing are better than the original. And yet, the core concepts, about the nature of humanity and reality, break through and inspire some truly great work.
- Fargo?
  Or what we do in the shadows
  
  Haven't seen what we do in the shadows, but fargo would be a tough call for me. Both the film and the show are wonderful.

I would say The Expanse but them not filming the last 3 books skews that. Never had any interest in LoL but Arcane is amazing.
- You really think the TV series is better than the books? Don't get me wrong, I think they are both marvellous. I just don't think the series is better. Particularly if you are a book reader. I get how they'd potentially be a bit meaty if you don't normally read much.
  
  I think it’s the first series that’s as good as the books, maybe Outlander is close but has casting issues. Could have been better but was hampered by the cancel, move, then cancel again along with Anvar being a shitbag.
  I guess it’s sort of a low bar given things like Witcher and Wheel of Time, but I’d say it’s the one where I see what I read more than the others. Maybe not better but equivalent, which is more than most book->film treatments.
- I hate how it just... ends. I complained about it online when I finally finished the show, and the book fans were just like "lol now you have to wait 20 years for the next part!"
- 3 first seasons were better than the books, especially 3rd one. 4th book was bummer though so i don't even watched the show.

Battlestar Galactica (2003) -Originally a mini-seris to pay homage to the original idea through the lens of current events exploded into to what is my favorite show to ever be on television. Informing so much of what TV sci-fi could be after it.
- I’d say the reboot falls apart about 2/3 of the way through. The last cylon reveals felt very Lost/Lindelof where they’d painted themselves into a corner and hadn’t planned out the ending.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon

Even the author agrees Fight Club the movie is better than the book.
- Is Interesting that in the Chinese version of Fight Club, its end with a message saying that after the final scene the narrator was arrested and institutionalized and the movement disbanded, making it more faithful to the original ending of the book.
  
  Can't be giving anyone ideas now can we?

Jaws the movie is much better than the book. None of the characters in the book are remotely likeable.

Interview with a vampire. The book was good but the movie was better imo.
- Mandela effect?
  
  What?

Attack on Titan anime better than the manga. I love them both, but the musical cues, the animation, the voice acting all take the anime way over.
- I'm curious - on voice acting do you mean the English or Japanese version?
  
  English

Freebsd

Buffy

Invincible. The comics are great, but I think the show dramatically improves a couple characters

Both film versions of Solaris, though for vastly different reasons. Lem's original novel is super dry and hard sci fi, like most of Lem's work, which isn't my favorite kind of sci fi. Both films really delve into the fascinating psychological questions of the situation Kelvin finds himself in. The Tarkovsky version is the best, unsurprisingly, since Tarkovsky is the GOAT, but I also really enjoy the Soderbergh version with George Clooney. The latter is hollywoodized compared to the Soviet version, but still is a really interesting and gorgeous movie

Haven't read the comics, but everyone says that The Boys tv show is way better
- Seasons 1 and 2, I'd agree. Season 3 was just bad.
  
  That's a bit harsh. The first ¾ of season 3 are really good, even if they did drop the ball at the end.
- I should watch it then. I think the comics are brilliant.

I haven't read it, but I've heard the Forrest Gump movie is much better than the novel.
- Yeah but the 2nd book is batshit crazy and worth a read

They Live.
The Thing but not The Thing From Another World.
Most things based on the work of PKD.
A lot of Lovecraft adaptations have to be a bit loose (because his stories tend not to lend themselves to films and he wasn't a good person) and are all the better for it - Re-animator, From Beyond, The Color Out of Space, Dagon, etc. plus quite a few fan films.
Flash Gordon film.
The first two Blade films - they struggle to make great Blade comics.
The Legion TV series.

"The Manchurian Candidate" isn't a great book.
- Gotta disagree, the book is extremely entertaining, and has an element of satire that's missing from the movie. I agree that the movie is one of the best ever made tho, and I'm not sure which one I like better, because it's so well done.

Who framed Roger Rabbit and the Shining.

Deep Space 9 is light years better than TNG.
- TNG > TOS too. But yeah all three are great and not telling the same story or anything.
- Holy crap man. You think Trump supporters are crazy. I'm glad I'm not you right now.
  
  Can you screw your mother, man? This is no time for politics here...

I think the anime adaptation of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End was genuinely better than the manga. Which is saying something, because the manga was already pretty damn good.

The Ten Commandments

Manhunter (1986)
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, baby.

I think the TV series of Station Eleven is better than the book. Not that the book is bad at all, but the show is something else.
- I actually disagree on this one. The show made such bizarre choices and had unrealistic scenarios, it took me out of the story. I actually read the book because I was watching the series and was so confused by some of the story beats that I was convinced the book would explain the reasoning behind them.
  Ended up just being mad at the series for not following the book more closely. The changes to the Prophet are just wild - taking a pedophile and making him a protagonist is just a poor choice, from my perspective... Even if you write out the pedophilia why you gotta make him have an army of kids?
  
  Yea I found this jarring. The show starts with him having a legion suicide bomber kids and wants us to sympathize with him by the end of the season.

Yorkshire puddings.
- Now, now!

A Very Brady Sequel.

- The Empire Story Arc is great, the visual are awesome. Everything else is much worse, and the whole plot with hologram Seldon makes it a clown and loses its mysticism. Let's see if The Mule arc is good enough to compensate now awful the Salvor Hardin is.
- Love the series but they are hard to compare with each other because the series have almost nothing to do with the books.

The Bocchi the Rock anime vs the Manga. The Manga is by no menas bad, but it is a 4 panel gag affair which has very little of the dynamism and weird jokes of the anime. I really want them to make more of it.

Stalker. The movie, not necessarily the games.
Roadside picnic is a fantastic book that feels thrilling for a scifi story. There's everything you could hope for, from deep philosophical questions to fictional technology that's described in a way that fascinates but doesn't attempt to over-explain; there's political implications to the geopolitics of the time that the authors consider. And at the center, an anti-hero who just wants to get his wish fulfilled and get out of this place, who's willing to make a deal with the devil for it.
To take all that and reimagine it as a long trialogue in an eerily deserted nature reserve/post-apocalyptic wasteland that touches upon all sorts of deep philosophy—from the divine to whether we can truly know ourselves; the struggle between logic and creativity; the vast ineffability of the natural world, not so much as Man vs. Nature conflict but as a reminder of how large and apathetic the natural world is to humanity—while maintaining a strained atmosphere of invisible threats that we never see. I could draw parallels to Dante's Inferno and Sartre's No Exit. ::: spoiler Stalker ending spoiler Then for the protagonists to leave empty-handed after it all, too afraid to find out who they truly are deep down. ::: chef's kiss
It is one of the most aesthetically beautiful films I've ever seen, and does something I wish more filmmakers would do: focus on atmosphere rather than plot and action. It sounds boring, but it was a transformative work of art.
It's dark, it's broody, it's strangely serene. I love it so much.

There are some covers of songs I like much more than the originals, a lot are Bob Dylan but also:
Neverwhere was a TV show before it was a book, I like the book more.

Lord of the Rings. I’ve read the books before watching the movies (I saw them first like 3 years ago) and the books are just… walking… And they walked…. Walked…. They walked… so much walking…. still walking…. And then walking…

If covers are allowed... I will always love you by Whitney Houston was so good people outside the US forgot/didn't knew it was a cover.