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I think the reason why the film never seems to be as good as the original form of the work is because we, as readers, have already made a movie out of the novel. Our mind generates images to fit the scenes in the chapters we are reading. The descriptions of characters and surroundings are the ink on the paintbrush that is our imagination. Each person sees a novel play out differently in his/her head, and when we deem it an amazing novel, we cannot forget that our own imagination played a role in how we perceived the overall experience. Now, our high esteem towards the storyline makes us a lot more critical of others' interpretations of the same story that we read and loved. And of course, nothing can match that which we originally came up with. Details and hues are not the same on the big screen as they were in our mind's eye.

I think in a way it is a similar to re-makes of movies that you love. For me, I had an experience as such with the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (which coincidentally is adapted from a book). I've never read the book, but I wonder if I had read it prior to watching the 1971 version of Willy Wonka if I would have had a different interaction with the movie. When the new version of the film came out in 2005, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I was very conflicted because I love Tim Burton films but I did not want to see my beloved Willy Wonka ruined for me. For this reason, I refused to watch the movie for some years, insistent on that there should not have been a re-make. I finally came to a middle ground, where I decided that I could watch the new version of the movie as a completely different movie and keep it separate in my mind from the original. What would ruin it for me was if I tried to make comparisons about what I liked in the original film and what the new version lacked. I watched it as a Tim Burton film inspired by Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but still separate from it. The keyword here to keep in mind is "inspired", where if we view adaptations of books to films as such, we cannot judge them as harshly as not living up to the book, but rather enjoy them for their theatrical qualities.