Best Book Adaptations

The Godfather to No Country for Old Men to The Power of the Dog. The films that earned their sources rather than diminishing them.

The film adaptation of a novel is one of cinema's oldest categories and one of its most-uneven. Most adaptations fail — the structural requirements of cinema (compressed time, externalised drama, visual rather than verbal substance) do not always translate the novel's specific gifts. The films on this list are the ones that, by general critical consensus, earned their sources rather than diminishing them.

Our picks across the form.

The picks

  • The Godfather (1972) — Mario Puzo's 1969 novel adapted by Puzo and Coppola. The adaptation is, by general consensus, better than the source.
  • No Country for Old Men (2007) — Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel adapted by the Coen brothers almost line-for-line.
  • The Power of the Dog (2021) — Thomas Savage's 1967 novel adapted by Jane Campion. The adaptation has revived interest in the long-out-of-print source.
  • Apocalypse Now (1979) — Loosely adapted from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899). The adaptation transposes the colonial-Congo source to Vietnam.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) — Tolkien's 1954-55 trilogy adapted by Jackson, Walsh, Boyens across three films.
  • The Remains of the Day (1993) — James Ivory adapting Kazuo Ishiguro's 1989 novel. Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.
  • Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) — Tomas Alfredson adapting John le Carré's 1974 novel. Gary Oldman.
  • A Clockwork Orange (1971) — Kubrick adapting Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel.
  • 12 Years a Slave (2013) — Steve McQueen adapting Solomon Northup's 1853 memoir.
  • Atonement (2007) — Joe Wright adapting Ian McEwan's 2001 novel. The Dunkirk long take.

Why adaptations fail

Most adaptations fail for one of two structural reasons. First: faithfulness without selection. The adaptation tries to include every scene from the source, producing a film that runs three-plus hours and feels like a tour through the novel rather than its own dramatic experience. Second: licence without faithfulness. The adaptation departs so radically from the source that the audience cannot recognise the connection; the source's specific gifts are lost.

The films above mostly navigate the middle path. They are selective with the source material (most novels include subplots and characters the film cuts) but preserve the source's specific texture (the language, the central character, the structural conflicts). The Coen brothers' No Country adaptation is, in some sense, the model: the dialogue is largely McCarthy's verbatim; the screenplay's structural changes are minimal; the film honours the source while becoming its own thing.