Rejoice, Snobs: The Book IS Better Than The Movie
The literary originals have higher ratings than the film adaptations 74 percent of the time. This recent piece claims books are usually better than their films versions.
This article reminded me of a claim that Stephen King films are better than his books. So I extracted the ratings from IMDB and Goodreads. I doubled the Goodreads ratings to make them out of 10.
I included miniseries. Carrie was made twice but I only included the original. The Langoliers, Maximum Overdrive, Lawnmower man and Secret garden seem not to have independent English language printed book versions.
The Shining is one of two films with a higher rating than the book. King famously hates the film
"Are you mystified by the cult that's grown around Kubrick's Shining?
I don't get it. But there are a lot of things that I don't get. But obviously people absolutely love it, and they don't understand why I don't. The book is hot, and the movie is cold; the book ends in fire, and the movie in ice."
To make this a fair test films and book would have to be graded on a curve. By what the average rating of each is. There is a good discussion on how to normalise the original comparison here. But I think this graph is enough to show Stephen King books are better than his films.
Less than 8% of King adaptations are rated higher compared to 26% usually for book adaptations. To get King to have the average quality of adaptations, sixish Stephen King Films being rated better than is books. This would require Dolores Claiborne, The Green Mile, Stand By Me, Misery and maybe Carrie to be much worse books or these already highly rated films to be much better. I am going to call this Myth Busted*, Stephen King adaptations are less successful than the average adaptation.
Title | Publication date | Pages | imdb | goodreads | good doubled |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Carrie | April 5, 1974 | 199 | 7.4 | 3.89 | 7.78 |
'Salem's Lot | October 17, 1975 | 439 | 6.8 | 3.97 | 7.94 |
The Shining | January 28, 1977 | 447 | 8.4 | 4.12 | 8.24 |
The Stand | Sep-78 | 823 | 7.3 | 4.32 | 8.64 |
The Dead Zone | Aug-79 | 428 | 7.3 | 3.88 | 7.76 |
Firestarter | September 29, 1980 | 426 | 6 | 3.8 | 7.6 |
Cujo | September 8, 1981 | 319 | 6 | 3.61 | 7.22 |
The Running Man | May-82 | 219 | 6.6 | 3.74 | 7.48 |
Christine | April 29, 1983 | 526 | 6.6 | 3.69 | 7.38 |
Pet Sematary | November 14, 1983 | 374 | 6.6 | 3.86 | 7.72 |
Thinner | November 19, 1984 | 309 | 5.7 | 3.6 | 7.2 |
It | September 15, 1986 | 1138 | 6.9 | 4.12 | 8.24 |
Misery | June 8, 1987 | 310 | 7.8 | 4.06 | 8.12 |
The Tommyknockers | November 10, 1987 | 558 | 5.4 | 3.42 | 6.84 |
The Dark Half | October 20, 1989 | 431 | 5.9 | 3.71 | 7.42 |
Needful Things | Oct-91 | 690 | 6.2 | 3.84 | 7.68 |
Dolores Claiborne | Nov-92 | 305 | 7.4 | 3.76 | 7.52 |
The Green Mile | March–August 1996 | 400 | 8.5 | 4.39 | 8.78 |
Bag of Bones | September 22, 1998 | 529 | 5.8 | 3.84 | 7.68 |
Dreamcatcher | March 20, 2001 | 620 | 5.5 | 3.53 | 7.06 |
Under the Dome | November 10, 2009 | 1074 | 6.8 | 3.89 | 7.78 |
Shawshank Redemption | 1982 | 181 | 9.3 | 4.51 | 9.02 |
Stand by me | 1982 | 80 | 8.1 | 4.25 | 8.5 |
The Mist | 1983 | 230 | 7.2 | 3.88 | 7.76 |
Apt Pupil | 1983 | 179 | 6.7 | 3.8 | 7.7 |
Hearts in Atlantis | 2000 | 640 | 6.9 | 3.77 | 7.54 |
mydata = read.csv("King.csv")
library(ggplot2)
p1 <- ggplot(mydata, aes(x = good.doubled, y = imdb))
p1 <- p1 + geom_abline(intercept=0, slope=1)
p1 <- p1 + geom_point(shape=1)
p1 <- p1 + ylim(5, 10)
p1 <- p1 + xlim(5, 10)
p1 <- p1 + ylab("IMDB Ratings")
p1 <- p1 + xlab("GoodReads Ratings *2")
p1 <- p1 + ggtitle("Stephen King: Books vs. Movies")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 7.3, y = 5.3, label = "The Tommyknockers", size=3, colour="blue3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 7.95, y = 7.37, label = "Carrie", size=3, colour="blue3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 8, y = 6.5, label = "Pet Sematary", size=3, colour="blue3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 7.9, y = 8.54, label = "The Shining", size=3, colour="red3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 8.75, y = 9.4, label = "Shawshank Redemption", size=3, colour="red3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 9.18, y = 8.4, label = "The Green Mile", size=3, colour="blue3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 8.72, y = 8, label = "Stand By Me", size=3, colour="blue3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 8.92, y = 7.3, label = "The Stand", size=3, colour="blue3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 8.3, y = 6.85 , label = "It", size=3, colour="blue3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 8.32, y = 7.7, label = "Misery", size=3, colour="blue3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 8.18, y = 6.7, label = "Under the Dome", size=3, colour="blue3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 9.28, y = 5.0, label = "Books Higher Rated", size=5, colour="blue3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 5.7, y = 9.90, label = "Films Higher Rated", size=5, colour="red3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 6.9, y = 6, label = "Cujo", size=3, colour="blue3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("segment", x = 7.05, xend = 7.2, y = 6.0, yend = 6.0, colour = "blue3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 6.45, y = 5.52, label = "Dreamcatcher", size=3, colour="blue3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("segment", x = 6.8, xend = 7.05, y = 5.5, yend = 5.5, colour = "blue3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 6.80, y = 7.4, label = "Dolores Claiborne", size=3, colour="blue3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("segment", x = 7.28, xend = 7.5, y = 7.4, yend = 7.4, colour = "blue3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 7.92, y = 5.72, label = "The Dark Half", size=3, colour="blue3")
p1
ggsave("plot.png")
*This needs proper statistical significance testing so not really busted.
Fun analysis! However, I couldn't believe that The Stand had an imdb rating of 7.3 until I went and verified it. Would have received a 0 from me.
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