Looking at the marquees, it seems like almost all of the movies now playing are adaptations of books.
This seems odd since “it is a truth universally acknowledged” that the movie is never as good as the book.
Everybody has a horror story or two of a book or story they love that then becomes something hideous on screen—King fans can fill books with critiques of bad adaptations. For me, the worst adaptation ever will remain the animated version of The Lord of the Rings, released in 1978. Just thinking about it makes me cringe.
(On a related note, the DVD of The Hobbit; The Desolation of Smaug was released this week. If you were concerned that the movie was too brief or didn’t add enough material in, it includes a director’s cut.)
Now there are exceptions to the rule about bad movies.
The Grapes of Wrath is an amazing movie in every way, and quite true to the book; nevertheless, the epic novel is better. Similarly (and more recently) The Book Thief was a quite good adaptation, and the acting was masterful; again, though, the book is even better.
So why is the change of medium such a muddle?
Why is the book almost always better than the film?
A lot of it is, of course, the abysmally poor writing–or lack thereof–in the film industry today, but I think the difference goes even deeper.
Some of it has to do with the power of words to tell stories.
We think in storytelling. This is not poetic hyperbole; we think in stories, 
and organize information within a narrative framework. Stories go back as far as humans do; they are an integral part of being human. Stories are the most basic way of learning complex, not immediately present information. Our own experiences are integrated into stories so we can make sense of them and remember them.
The world is a story we tell ourselves.
So it is not surprising that it seems natural for a storyteller to create worlds for us: beautiful worlds, complex and real, terrifying and moving worlds, worlds more real than the pale things pinging upon our senses.
Now, I do love films, and I do think we can make stories with pictures. We have since we lived in caves. However storytelling is the action and art of words—not sensation that has to be edited into experience, or experience that has to be interpreted into ideas and words, but rather sensation and experience already put into the form our mind would live with.
…and live within.
I love a quick, intense 2 hour encounter with the wonder of cinematic story,
but I can live years inside the world of a book, even on a single, rainy afternoon.
The worst for me was when I got all excited when one of my favorite westerns The Last Ride by Thomas Eidson, was going to be turned into a movie. It should have been wonderful, it starred Tommy Lee Jones, Eric Sweig, Val Kilmer, Kate Blanchet, and directed by Ron Howard. I was all excited and went to the theater all excited. I came out of the theater horribly disappointed. Jimmy liked it because he hadn’t read the book. I guess as a straight up western it was pretty good if you hadn’t read the book. The bad part was that the book was easily 10 times better than the book. They added things they didn’t need, they took out things they did need, they switched people around changing the characters for no reason. They left out the best part about the dog and horse and they turned the brave little girl who was the main character into a simpering cry baby that needed help all the time, giving her parts from the book to Kate Blanchets character which wasn’t that big in the book. I don’t think I have ever been as disappointed in a book turned movie in my life. Usually I think a book is better because most of us that read have a better more vivid imagination than anything they can put on screen but it’s really bad when it doesn’t even come close. For the Missing, everything was there, great story, great actors, great director and they still managed to mess it up till I never want to see it again. I could however, and probably will, read the book several more times.