Very rarely does a movie turn out better than the imagination. In my case, I thought the Lord of the Rings exceeded my imagination... Dunno about series. Maybe GoT if I ever get around to watching it... I stopped reading the books just before the Red Wedding, to the consternation of other readers who I spoke to... Damn spoilers... never gonna pick up the series again it seems.
You'd have to be really be f***ed in the head for your imagination to be better.. or rather worse than that movie
Eh? For GoT? Or for LotR? Eh, reading the books for LotR, I couldn't really imagine Orks and the Dreadlords very well. Maybe a bit of some old school Grim Reaper for the dreadlords, but the Orks was closer to Shrek Ogres in my head... I liked their interpretation of Orks in LotR. Also, the ever present shadowed look for the Dreadlords was nice. And the Elves were always so damned clean... I think my LotR imagination was more cartoonish than the movies... But then, I was waaaay younger...