Are the books always the Canon? At what point do the movies made from them supersede the source material?

They don’t. The film series can have its own canon, but, for instance, Sherlock Holmes is Sherlock Holmes, and Benedict Cumberbatch and Robert Downey Jr. have no bearing on the original series.

I’ll add in a caveat: if the original creative mind(s) of the book approve the film as canon, that is a different story.

Very true, and James Bond is a boring, bookish, sadistic thug. Daniel Craig is the closest thing to the source. Sean Connery, the most popular Bond, is nothing like the original.

Consider the Wizard of Oz. Fewer have read the books than seen the 1939 movie. Ask yourself what color Dorothy’s slippers were. In the movie they were Ruby Red. In the books, Emerald Green.

In the books, they were silver.

The original source material by the first creator is the canon. So, like, if there was a movie and they released a novelization of it later, the movie would be the canon.

When it comes to Star Wars, thinking about canon totally makes my head explode. Apparently the whole Extended Universe (novels, comics, tie-in tv shows and even the terrible Ewok movie) is being de-canonized. –Am I the only one who likes Mara Jade?? I love her!— Official word is that the new movies are going to be the “canon” now. Bah humbug!

@Seek Silver Slippers. You are correct.

What came first is always original, but there can be time when the adaption is so much more famous than the canon that people think the adaption is the canon. An obscure example is the movie Out of the Past. If you look carefully in the credit, you’ll see they state that the movie is based on a book called “Build my Gallow High”. But who still remember the book?

@filmfann
I think you are correct about James Bond
My dad when he died left behind all the Ian Fleming books and I read them all
The real Bond, appearance notwithstanding is more like Daniel Craig than Sean Connery. The double 0 ” license to kill” is a euphemism for assassin.
The book Bond skill set was based on his cold bloodedness.
He indulged his tastes for women, food and drink only when he was on Her Majesty’s expense account.

I still need to read those

^ You should
You can read one of them in a day. The books are way better than the movies.

Never. Unless explicitly approved as such by the original creator nothing supersedes the original source as canon. In the case of Middle-Earth no amount of movies, games or anything else will ever supplant Tolkien’s books as canon (especially something as kludgy and careless as Peter Jackson’s films).

In the case of Star Wars the films will always be canon (as much as I wish it weren’t so with the prequels). As far as Disney now jettisoning off all the old EU material – it had to be done, frankly. The EU was overfilled with material, often contradictory (and, to be honest, frequently of poor quality). Lucasfilm were basically approving anything with no regard to quality or continuity control. It would have made the task of continuing the film series all but impossible. And since they do not wish the go the goofy route of having multiple timelines, alternate “universes” or whatnot, casting off the old EU and starting fresh is the only logical move they could have made.

Personally speaking, as much as I hate losing something like Shadows of the Empire, this relaunch is part of what’s actually made me somewhat interested in Star Wars again. That said, Disney says that it will, via the new Lucasfilm Book Group, keep a tighter control over the EU canon than what Lucasfilm under George Lucas did, but they do not, apparently, rule out the possibility of incorporating some old EU stuff into the new official canon.