Community Comments - Sometimes the Movie's Better

Monk-eating sharks and alien squids (oh, my)

As you can (maybe) tell from the above image of the shark from Jaws eating a monk from The Name of the Rose, John wrote about movies this week—particularly, movies that are better than the books that they’re based on.

Sometimes the Movie's Better

If you haven’t already, go read it. It was a lot of fun, and as a bonus, there are three more fantastic AI-generated monk-eating shark images at the end of it.

In the post, John nominated three movies that are better than their book counterpart: Jaws, Dune Parts 1 & 2 (2020-2024), and honorable mention They Live.

You guys mentioned some others.

For example,

camden noir

mentioned Fight Club:

And

Daniel Mazzola

brought up Jurassic Park:

Camden, you’re probably right about Fight Club. I read the book when I was about seventeen, and I remember liking it, but not loving it.

Daniel—well, I guess it’s a close call, but my vote is for the book.

Anyway, the responses were pretty tame until this one from

The Bone Writer

.
Please, read this whole conversation. It’s hilarious (and, frankly, shocking).

The conversation continues, but there’s already so much to unpack that it warrants a pause.

Bone Writer, I’m sorry. I adore your writing, and there are about fourteen zingers in here that made me crack up laughing. However, aside from the fact that we both think Tolkien is boring (I got through about half of The Hobbit before abandoning it in fury), and despite the fact that I disagree with you about basically everything (I hated reading Dune, I wouldn’t wish a 4-hour extended cut of the David Lynch version on my worst enemy, and honestly, I’ve never been a huge fan of the Lord of the Rings movies, either), I understand that it’s all subjective. A lot of people love Dune and The Lord of the Rings movies are classics; they’re just not my thing.

Plus, we’ll be able to find some common ground once the Tolkien Trolls start coming after both of us.

The rest of the conversation, on the other hand…

I just don’t understand! It’s so egregious that I feel like you might be trolling! The Watchmen ending isn’t just camp—it’s a brilliant commentary on the destructiveness of utopian dreaming, and why sometimes the best thing you can do for the world is leave it alone.

I wrote a piece about it here—one of three essays on Watchmen. This was our second Thinking Man Book Club pick (back when the book club was obscenely boring) but the essays are pretty good. “Who Wants to Save the World?” is the one about the absolutely brilliant ending to the graphic novel, but I’ll link the other two, anyway.

Who Wants to Save the World?

All Infinities Are Small

Tied Up In Knots

As you can see, I stand by the ending of Alan Moore’s masterpiece.

It reminds me of the famous Oppenheimer quote:

“It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so."

Incidentally,

The Starfire Codes

mentioned it this week in reference to George Orwell.

Michael Newberry

and I also briefly touched on this topic in a discussion about the dangers of misguided altruism (among other things—give this one a read).

And sure, I guess technically the ending to the Watchmen movie retained this same theme. But it has none of Alan Moore’s nuance. None of his genius! And it’s a superhero comic satirizing superhero comics—a little camp is encouraged.

I digress.

The Bone Writer

, thank you for the laughs and the magnificent food for thought. This was all in good fun. You’re one of my favorite writers on here, and I really hope I did not scare you away from ever commenting on one of our articles again.

As always, thank you for reading. We appreciate all of you, and there’s nothing more rewarding than hearing what you have to say.

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