Movie adaptations of books are unavoidable, and have been since the dawn of cinema, really. There is an advantage to taking a story that already existed and worked in one format, shifting it into another medium, but there are certainly ways that process can go wrong, as movies like The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Dark Tower, and The Golden Compass all go to show.
To focus on some good stuff, though, here are a bunch of great books that were made into (also great) movies. Specifically, the ones below are all exciting and thrill-heavy movies, with some of them being based on books classifiable as thrillers, while others made the source material arguably more exciting by taking the action off the page and putting it on the screen, inevitably getting (more or less) the same stories told in shorter amounts of time.
8
‘And Then There Were None’ (1945)
Based on ‘And Then There Were None’ (1939)
Image via20th Century Fox
Agatha Christie wrote a ton of books, including Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, but And Then There Were None might well be her masterpiece. It’s about ten people on an island who start to die one by one, and then all of them have to figure out who’s behind the murders, or if multiple people are behind the murders, and then tension inevitably ensues. And it gets more intense and confounding the longer it goes on.
It was adapted a little more faithfully on television in 2015, but the 1945 movie adaptation came first, and was very good for its time. It does back out of going to some of the truly dark places the original novel went to, but if you can get past that, And Then There Were None (1945) does, for the most part, scratch the same unnerving itch as And Then There Were None (1939).
7
‘L.A. Confidential’ (1997)
Based on ‘L.A. Confidential’ (1990)
Image viaWarner Bros.
L.A. Confidential is a very complex book, which kind of works with it belonging to the noir genre, and then the movie adaptation of the same name still retained some of that complexity, but there was definitely quite a bit by way of streamlining done. On both fronts, you’ve got a story about corruption, murder, and celebrity, and the trio of main characters exists in both the book and movie versions.
It’s more just that the investigations done don’t spiral out of control in quite the same way, nor get as messy and dense as far as conspiracies go. The book version of L.A. Confidential is the right level of overwhelming and intricate for the medium it belongs to, and then the movie gets that level just about right for something that runs for just over – and has to be digestible within – two hours.
6
‘No Country for Old Men’ (2007)
Based on ‘No Country for Old Men’ (2005)
Image via Miramax Films
It only took a couple of years for Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men to get a movie adaptation, and though McCarthy is a big name in the literary world, it’s the movie that’s probably a little more iconic overall. It’s a case of a good book becoming a great movie, which makes it something of a shame that the Coen Brothers have only done one Cormac McCarthy adaptation to date (Blood Simple does feel like it almost could be one, hitting in a similar way to No Country for Old Men).
This film’s about a handful of characters who are all pulled together because of a large sum of cash that’s been left at the site of a drug deal that turned violent. A few different people want the cash, and then a sheriff is trying to piece together exactly what happened, going on to investigate the further violence that’s continued to happen due to the conflict around obtaining the money. It’s undeniably thrilling stuff, and up there among the most anxiety-inducing films of the century so far.
5
‘Trainspotting’ (1996)
Based on ‘Trainspotting’ (1993)
Image viaPolyGram Filmed Entertainment
Trainspotting is another instance, like L.A. Confidential, where something dense and oftentimes dizzying was made a little less intense and overwhelming for the movie adaptation, though there is still a good deal of chaos to be found in Trainspotting (1996). It might be more accurate to say that Trainspotting (1993) is more experimental, with a certain dreamlike feel to almost the whole book, rather than in the movie, where there are more just impactful scenes here and there that feel surreal or nightmarish.
The movie eases you into things a little more, and proves a bit more digestible without being as extreme. That being said, it’s still a lot, and it’s sort of thrilling and exciting in an unconventional sense, since Trainspotting (1996) is well-paced and like something of a roller-coaster ride throughout, albeit not while being a genuine thriller or anything (more of a psychological drama with some dark comedy and occasional horror thrown in for good measure).
4
‘Misery’ (1990)
Based on ‘Misery’ (1987)
Image viaColumbia Pictures
Looking at all the movie adaptations of Stephen King stories, some of the very best ones aren’t based on works of his that are particularly thrilling or horrifying. Stand by Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile all have their intense moments, sure, but are more dramas than anything horror-related (The Green Mile does have some fantastical/supernatural elements, though they’re quite subdued).
Misery has an all-time great villain, a confined setting/premise adding to all the tension, and a continually escalating sense of dread.
Misery, though, is the one psychological horror/thriller story Stephen King wrote that ended up translating rather perfectly to the big screen, with Rob Reiner knocking it out of the park, as a director of Stephen King movies, for the second time, after helming the previously mentioned Stand by Me (based on the novella “The Body”). Misery has an all-time great villain, a confined setting/premise adding to all the tension, and a continually escalating sense of dread. It’s a great read, and then it’s also a great movie, with the changes made to the latter making sense and not feeling as though they betrayed the source material.
3
‘War and Peace’ (1965–1967)
Based on ‘War and Peace’ (1869)
Image viaMosfilm
The four-part movie adaptation of War and Peace from the 1960s is ultimately a little more exciting than the original novel by Leo Tolstoy. That’s not intended as a slight against the original, which is well and truly one of the most impressive books of all time, with clear aspirations to do more than just excite and entertain. The book’s sweeping and moving at times for sure, but with its massive page count, it also has room to do other things.
War and Peace, the movie, on the other hand, does have to streamline a book that goes for about 1400+ pages, or 60+ hours, if you’re listening to an audiobook. “Streamlining” here involves getting the entire story into a seven-hour runtime, which is still more than sufficiently lengthy and epic in scope, with the overwhelming spectacle here being the main reason why it can be considered one of the most exciting and enthralling epics ever filmed.
2
‘The Lord of the Rings’ (2001–2003)
Based on ‘The Lord of the Rings’ (1954–1955)
Whether you’re approaching The Lord of the Rings, as in the massive book (or trilogy of books… define it how you want), or The Lord of the Rings, as in the massive film adaptation (itself kind of a trilogy and also kind of one massive movie), it’s hard to know where to start, or what to say. It’s a big old story about a battle for Middle-earth, with two Hobbits trying to destroy a legendary ring while their allies keep the enemy from targeting them on their journey.
So much happens on the page, and a great deal of it was successfully carried over – and translated – to the screen. Not everything, and some don’t feel as though Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings entirely captures the scope of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, but an epic book did become an epic film. It’s easy to get swept up in either version, albeit not for 100% of the same reasons all the time, and throughout.
1
‘Goodfellas’ (1990)
Based on ‘Wiseguy’ (1985)
Image viaWarner Bros. Pictures
You’re spoiled for choice if you want great gangster media, since The Sopranos has your back if you’re after a TV show about the mob (and various other things), while on the movie side of things, you do have The Godfather, which is based on a book. But so is Goodfellas, and maybe The Godfather is the better book and movie, but Goodfellas is the more exciting gangster movie, so that’s why it’s here.
It’s a relentlessly paced film, covering so much time across a runtime of nearly 2.5 hours that feels more like one and a half. Goodfellas is based on an amazing non-fiction book that doesn’t get nearly as much love as the movie, but it should, because Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi is fantastically written. There were some liberties taken with the movie, in terms of pacing and condensing some characters (name changes, too), but reading Wiseguy after Goodfellas feels a bit like watching/reading an extended cut of Goodfellas, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.
