Perhaps one of the best movies of any SF novel is Blade Runner. I grew up admiring most of Philip Dick’s novels, including “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, but at the risk of uttering heresy I’d say that the movie is better than the novel. It tightens the plot and adds visual brilliance and a film noir atmosphere. At the risk of uttering even further heresy I’d argue that the original version of the movie is better than the later Director’s Cut. The original has Harrison Ford’s voice-over, which I know he detested, but it adds to the film noir mood; he speaks like a figure from an Edward Hopper painting, sitting alone in a bar with a dangling cigarette and a crumpled raincoat. Also, maybe the ambiguity of the original’s ending is more haunting than the bleakness of the Director’s Cut.
Usually I prefer original novels to movies, for the usual reason – even with CGI, no movie can out-imagine a reader’s imagination. But very occasionally a movie will expand or illuminate a novel. Blade Runner is one, and I’d like to suggest a few others, listed below.
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Watching a film made from one of your favorite books can be a frightening experience. Terrible dialogue, missing characters, or an inexplicably changed ending can leave you feeling miserable and outraged. There are few such movies that I ever enjoyed, but Clueless was one of them. Instead of attempting to recreate Jane Austen’s Emma in all of its period glory, the writers of Clueless went for a modern way to present the story that, in already being so altered, did not offend with alterations. I enjoyed it, but certainly not more than the book.