Obviously, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Mainly movies for me because I haven't read them. Extended editions, obviously.
But also, I adore the mass effect trilogy. Yeah, the rpg elements get gradually watered down, and the third ones ending isn't the best, but it's still an absolutely amazing Trilogy that I replay yearly. And it all came out in 5 years! Nowadays, single games have 5 years of dev time, at least. In my eyes, it's as perfect as it can be....Once it's been modded a bit.
So, I read the books. And they are very good. There is a reason that the series is so influential.
And there are definitely some things that I do not like about the movies. The shield-surfing, for example.
But as movie adaptations go, it is pretty darn faithful to the original. Like, I've seen a lot of movie adaptations where you're going to miss a lot of material if you don't do the books, but they kept all the significant stuff in. They streamlined it a little, and no Tom Bombadill, but I seriously think that it does a solid job of capturing the original.
Like, if there's any book or series where I think that watching the movie would get you a pretty good approximation of the material and still be a really good movie, Lord of the Rings has to be near the top.
I almost brought up the shield surfing 🙂. I decided not to. There were some little warts like that, and “I am no man” and etc, but overall the movies are awesome + about as faithful as you can get without making it into a miniseries that spans decades of production or something.
After watching the movies, I can't read the books any more. Tolkien was many things, he's great at world building and mythology, but storytelling is not among his greatest qualities.
You've got be joking right? The most influential, most loved, most well regarded fantasy trilogy of all time is not a good story actually? I get that it wasn't your style for whatever reason but to call it bad storytelling is just asinine.
There's a podcast somewhere where a guy narrates uses amazing voice acting and music to deliver the story and it's an absolute banger of a trilogy. One of the most magical experiences I've had. It's like watching the movies but longer, better paced and way more emotional connection to the characters.
The movies don't say what the people are thinking and the actors did a phenomenal job to convey it, but the book explicitly saying it is better.