You can’t faithfully do justice to the book in a 2 hour movie.
The best book adaptations are in the form of a multi-part miniseries. Lonesome Dove is a perfect example.
It is the classic example.
Although, there are some excellent stand-alone movies based upon books. Jurassic Park, for instance.
Yeah, I think you are probably right. Heck, when the first Dune movie came out decades ago I thought to myself, there is no way you can cram that into a couple of hours and have it still make sense.
I’m not perfect, but I sure got that one right.
I read my first James Bond book from the 50’s a couple of years ago. It was ridiculously simplistic and at a 7th grade reading level. But it was a perfect story for a film. Just like many popular songs are a few chords and seven or eight lines of text, half of them repeated. But look at the words of old Genesis songs. I love ‘em, but they are way too wordy to ever be truly popular for the masses.
It’s why Ringworld can’t be a movie, though maybe it could inspire a simple movie script. But even then, you can end up with what happens in the auto industry: The concept car is amazing, but when you remove an inch here, a couple inches there to make it something mass producable, it completely changes the look to be downright repulsive. As exhibit A I offer the pointiac Aztec. Beautifu concept car, ugly final product.
I think the same thing happens often when putting a beloved book to film. It’s best that it is constructed in your mind, rather than the screen.