Movies/TV Shows Better than the Source Material

Every time a film adaptation of a popular book comes out, I hear the same conversation over and over again:
Person A: Um, yeah, they left out this part, and then they changed another part.
Person B: Well, you know that they can't fit everything in the book into the movie or else it would be way too long.
I have heard this conversation way too many times, and I realized the central flaw: A film is BASED on a book; a book is not a teleplay; a book is from whence inspiration is drawn. So to prove my point, I selected some movies that improved on whatever their source material was.

Fight Club
I disdain Chuck Palahniuk's books. Did you ever notice that every press release of his refers to him as "The Author of Fight Club, which was turned into a movie directed by David Fincher, starring Brad Pitt?" Do you know why? Because Fight Club the book is just terrible. Almost everything the Chuck writes is this awful, gory, disturbing nihilist schlock. This is the sort of book that high schoolers, undergraduates, stoners, and people that dislike reading real literature read to make themselves feel like they're deep intellectuals when they are really just annoying people that smoke too many cigarettes and act like jerks. You find them on every college campus.
     The book is written in a narrow first person style that seems to give away the "twist" ending (Dissociative Identity Disorder is a way overused plot device,) the writing consists of one sentence paragraphs, and it simply does not capture any of the social commentary or impact of the film. Also, the film changed the ending. It was better.

Jaws
Slow read, didn't capture the manliness or taunt horror of the movie. The shark's death in the book was lame, compared to the explosion from the film. Just watch the movie.

Garfield
Not Garfield the movie, (to which Bill Muary openly regretted in Zombieland,) but Garfield the animated cartoon. Making Garfield animated made Garfield more animated: he ran around, went on adventures, met different reoccurring, and made an overall very funny and well put-together show. The comic strip, however, has no excuse for still existing. Nobody actually reads it, the art is static, jokes repetitive, and characters are almost non-characters. In fact, removing Garfield from the comics makes the strip much funnier: 
http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/
The voice of Garfield, Lorenzo Music, completely owned the character, allowing him to be sarcastic without being cruel, dry without chaping my lips, and just plain funny. Every time I walk by a Chipotle or a Qdoba, I think of the episode when Garfield inherits the Klopman's Diamond and first thinks, "I wonder how many burritos I could trade this for." I, too, wonder sometimes the answer to your quandary.
[According to wikipedia, the Hope Diamond, which the Klopman Diamond is based on, is valued at about 200 Million dollars. At about 6 dollars a burrito at Chipotle, Garfield could buy about 33,333,333 burritos.]

Jurassic Park
Michael Critchton novels really know how to slog on the unnecessary exposition. It makes all the books sound scientific, but not really. He makes countless errors in all of his techno-thrillers, but nobody is out to question him because his readers are trying to get a good read, not a 450-page op-ed piece about the dangers of cloning. The chapters of exposition really are not necessary to even make a point. The original techno-thriller, Frankenstein doesn't even explain how Dr. Frankenstein brings the monster to life. We the readers didn't need to know how it happened, because we probably wouldn't understand anyway. Imagine if the film Inception included a 10 minute monologue explaining how synchronize their sleep cycles to stay on REM sleep, as well as all have the same dream. That would just drag the story down.
     The film not only streamlined so much of the exposition, but makes the characters characters. John Hammond ("Welcome to Jurassic Park!") in the book is a cold-hearted money grubber that dies a nasty death. John Hammond in the movie is a Walt-Disney-ish dreamer that wonderfully conflicts with the cynicism of Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum.) Ian Malcolm in the book is bald, annoying, and sounds like every other know-it-all Michael Crichton character. Ian Malcolm in the movie is eccentric, funny, and is first described as having "an excess of personality." Dr. Grant and Ellie are given a playful dynamic in the movie. Samuel L. Jackson is in the movie. Neumann is the movie. The movie was good. The book was good, but the movie told the story with more fun and less whine.

A History of Violence
Based on a comic book, the Viggo Mortensen film was a powerful meditation about the deep-seated origins of violent behavior and cyclical nature of violence itself. Two problems with the comic: first, it's drawn in a sketchy-pencil style that doesn't look that good. Second, the comic fails to carry the sort of kinetic energy and raw emotion of the film's depiction of violence.
     The film is difficult to watch because, well, it's realistically violent. Viggo does horrible things to people, but no matter what, he cannot escape his "history of violence." The film not only changes the storyline to make the ending and general trajectory more realistic, but also adds two absolutely fantastic sex scenes (from a dramatic point of view.) You can't escape your past, but you can escape the mediocre comic.

The Swiss Family Robinson
The movie was better for one simple reason: it took a largely episodic and non-plot driven story and added pirates. It did not matter that pirates do not fit into the time period. Pirates made the movie so much better.

Casino Royale
This goes not only for Casino Royale, but also for most of the original James Bond books. Casino Royale is a sort of dime store paperback novel that is among tens of thousands. It reeks of the era: Soviets, spies, sexism, cigarettes. The film did a superb job of modernizing a glorified stock character, throwing in great action sequences, swell acting, and changing the casino game in question from Baccarat to Texas Hold 'Em. Seriously, have you ever played Baccarat? And if you have, how many times have you played Texas Hold 'Em. Yeah, that's right, Texas Hold 'Em is better. And is the movie.

Just remember, don't be a fanboy/girl, evaluate the film on its own merits. But just please don't have the conversation detained in the opening paragraph. Please.