Academy Award Winning Films that Weren't as Good as the Book

Common belief is that most movies that are adapted from books are not as good as the original material. The conclusion then is that most adaptations of books aren't of a high quality and certainly aren't Oscar material. Over the years though, there have been some movies that were good enough to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards even though they are adaptations of books and the books were actually better.

"Gone With the Wind"
"Gone with the Wind" was a novel by Margaret Mitchell and was published in 1936 and it received the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. "Gone With the Wind" is considered one of the greatest movies of all-time but it can be a little stuffy for some viewers. The book is much easier to get into for those that might not be big romance drama fans.

"Dances With Wolves"
"Dances with Wolves" received the Oscar for Best Picture but it is one of the many selections that many people still question to this day. The book is a superior form of entertainment, especially if you don't picture the main character as Kevin Costner (unless you picture the main character as Kevin Costner in a baseball cap.)

"Silence of the Lambs"
"Silence of the Lambs" is one of the few films to ever win all of the five major Academy Awards but the novel by Thomas Harris is even better. Due to the writing of Harris the horror in the novel is even more suspenseful and gripping than the film.

"Forrest Gump"
It's no surprise to me that "Forrest Gump" is better in novel form. To me "Forrest Gump" always felt like a novel that just wasn't a good fit and was too long for a film. If you can believe it, the film also left out even more adventures that are covered in Winston Groom's book.

"The English Patient"
The film adaptation of "The English Patient" won the Academy Award in 1996 but the novel by Michael Ondaatje won a few prizes of its own. When "The English Patient" was released in 1992 it won the Canadian Governor General's Award and the Booker Prize for fiction.

"A Beautiful Mind"
One of the reasons that "A Beautiful Mind" is better in literature form and not cinema is because it is written as a biography instead of a novel. The biography of John Nash was written by Sylvia Nasar in 1998. "A Beautiful Mind" won the National Book Critics Cirlce Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize for biography.

"The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King"
We all know that "Return of the King" was given the Academy Award for the trilogy and not the film itself. Personally I did not think the third movie was worthy. Fellowship of the Ring was the best in the series and the second and third film were pretty boring. In J.R.R. Tolkien's novels the opposite is true. Through the series of books the stakes are raised over and over again until you finally get to "Return of King", which may be the best novel ever written in its genre.