I’d say pretty much everything Crichton wrote was better as a movie in large part because he was writing books rather explicitly intended to be turned into movies.
In addition to being a misogynist he was also hilariously petty. He hated a critic name Michael Crowley so much that in his novel Next he had a character named Mick Crowley, who was a critic, who was a pedophile. Just to be a dick and get back at a critic he hated.
Last of the Mohicans
It was a shitty movie but it was SO MUCH BETTER than the book which was so unspeakably horrible no one should ever have to suffer through it, or really anything by Fenimore Cooper. Dude was one of the most godawful terrible writers ever to disgrace the English language. It’s like the Voogon poetry of mid-19th century action adventure novels.
Note that the opening line isn’t exactly casual or jovial. The protagonist’s name is not Ishmael, he’s referencing the Biblical character Ishmael who was the firstborn son of Abraham by his wife’s servant Hagar. Later Abram had a son, Isaac by his wife Sarah and Ishmael and his mother Hagar were cast out to make Isaac the only inheritor of Abraham.
After being cast out and wandering the wilderness waiting to die, God saved Ishmael and his mother and “made him a great nation” with 12 sons from an Egyptian wife.
So by opening with “Call me Ishmael” the narrator is giving us a lot of assumptions about himself, that he’s been cast aside by his family especially and that he hopes to become great and powerful despite that.
One of my favorite of Twain’s rants