So, we're in a world where Hollywood is running out of ideas and is starting to adapt popular books into movie or tv adaptations. Many of these adaptations like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones etc. were met with positive responses and huge fanbases. However, there are naturally bad adaptations of books. Hell, some people even hate on adaptions with overall positive responses because they didn't follow the books. This brings up the question of whether the books are always better. To be fair adaptations can't get every single aspect of a book onto the screen whether that be time or budget constraints, and even running out of material to adapt. Writers have to weave their way through by cutting off the fat in order to keep the adaptations at appropriate lengths and sometimes cutting out entire plot lines. In the other case where the writer run out of material to adapt they have to either create filler a fluff to buy time or come up with their own endings.

The behavior of hating on an adaptation I first observed was that of my friend. My friend disliked the Harry Potter movies because they didn't follow the books. I would later experience this myself when I started watching the later seasons of Game of Thrones after I finished reading the books. Since George RR Martin hasn't finished the books the show runners now have to create an original ending for the show. I noticed that I disliked the show as characters started acting in ways different from their book counterparts, entire storylines are dropped, and main characters not dying when they make a fatal mistake. All these elements in the books were fading away and becoming more like a generic fantasy show. As such my enjoyment of the show dropped. 

However, one solution I came up with to lessen the pain was trying to treat the show as its own thing. The adaptation should be able to stand on its own and not have to piggyback off the books. Characters actions should instead be judged on whether it's consistent with their character arc in the adaptation. Granted this is difficult to do as in the end they are based off the books and in the case of Game of Thrones their changes are more noticeable. In the end the dilemma of judging an adaptation based on knowledge from the books is unlikely to go away, but it's also unlikely that people will get to see their favorite characters come to life on the screen and also unlikely that long running franchises would do a reboot to follow the books better. After all, reboots would also face a similar dilemma.