What's the worst change made in a movie adaptation of a book?
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I know we're not into Harry Potter now, but the past is the past and I can't forget how annoyed I was when the movie based on the third book, Prisoner of Azkaban, came out. I was a very disappointed teenager.
It was a whirlwind story to me at the time. I remember exactly where I was when I read it, as the moment that revealed the friendship between Harry's father James, Professor Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, and the alleged-murderer, Sirius Black, became seared into my brain. It was such a pivotal part of the overall story to me, that that twist alone made it my favorite in the series. So when the movie came out, I expected the use and development of The Marauder's Map to be a key highlight. It was a huge deal in the books, after all.
Yet in the movie, the map is just a neat thing Harry gets to use. Nobody mentions that Harry's own father helped create it. The movie never even tells who the Marauders are, even though the reveal of their backstory was the key emotional crux of the Shrieking Shack scene. To omit their story entirely felt like a gut-punch.
I didn't understand at the time why the director (Alfonso Cuaron) decided to straight-up change everything that made that story so compelling to me and my friends. To this day, I still don't understand.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Yet subsequent movies mentioned the nicknames Wormtail and Padfoot. A lot of things in the films must have been confusing to people who didn't read the books. Another weird thing I've noticed is that in the fourth movie, Barty Crouch Jr steals from Snape to make polyjuice potion and he blames Harry. But those who only watched the movies and didn't read the books wouldn't have known that Harry and his friends stole from Snape to make polyjuice potion before.
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Please don't fuck up project hail mary.. please don't fuck up project hail mary..
Shit was written to be a movie like all that guy’s books.
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At least I loved the series enough to start reading the novel, so that's a good thing.
well that is an upside
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Didn't even know it got adapted, must have been terrible if the studio didn't even bother to market it
i regret burdening you with this knowledge
class A amnestics should be freely available from your local [redacted] should you desire
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I Am Legend. Just the whole thing.
Oh, I quite liked the film but didn't know there was a book. What did they mess up?
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Can I flip the script? Black Hawk Down was the most faithful adaptation of a book I've ever seen. As to the book, the author wanted to tell the story of the Battle of Mogadishu, faithfully. He had unprecedented, at the time, access to Defense Department files, interviewed everyone involved, strived for perfect accuracy.
When those guys are on that street corner, that's what happened.
wrote last edited by [email protected]This is going to sound super nitpicky but even the first time I saw it, the modern body, ahistorical Aimpoints seen throughout the entire movie bothered me. It's only because they are so unavoidably prominent and because the rest of the movie's props are so well done that they stick out.
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The coolest part of the show is the genetic dynasty stuff that wasn't even in the series
My thoughts exactly before I gave up on it. It felt like all the good writers on the team had shuffled over to write the dynasty stuff, and the difference in quality when the show bounced between the dynasty and foundation stories was something of a whiplash.
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I think since the Jurassic World series started, all of the reboots have mostly been "remember this" from the first movie, and none could really be anything more than that. Every one has to include a scene that's a homage to the original. Honestly feels like the franchise needs to have a genre switch up to force it to be something original.
I mildly enjoyed that the message of Jurassic World was "This park (movie) is a soulless project that shouldn't exist and only props itself up on increasingly mindless spectacle."
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Ready Player One. So much about the movie adaptation of this book infuriates me, but the fact they replaced Wargames with the Shining is a crime against humanity!!!
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Dune.
Turning the Bene Gesserit power of Voice into some weird gun was fucking stupid.
Edit to add: first film adaptation from the 80s. The latest movies have been good.
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Oh, I quite liked the film but didn't know there was a book. What did they mess up?
wrote last edited by [email protected]In the book (short story?) the protagonist dies and the reason he is legend is that he was the last human and was like a boogeyman because of his hunting and killing them.
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Just finished reading the books. But i started book one and season 1 together and quickly saw they were completely different. But i watched the show first and it cemented how characters looked which is what i wanted before i read it.
After finishing all 14 and now on new spring im glad the show gave me direction to imagine a lot of them.
I watched the Dresden files tv show before reading the books, and the Karen Murphy from the site is the one I hear in my head.
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Stephen King - Dreamcatcher
In the book the character Duddits had the shining, yes that motherfucking shining.
In the movie they made him an undercover alien. Man what a let down.
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In the book (short story?) the protagonist dies and the reason he is legend is that he was the last human and was like a boogeyman because of his hunting and killing them.
Going over the wikipedia article as a refresher and I totally forgot about how he (author Richard Matheson) had some cool biological explanations for the vampirism.
From Wikipedia:
Neville additionally discovers that exposing vampires to direct sunlight or inflicting wide oxygen-exposing wounds causes the bacteria to switch from being anaerobic symbionts to aerobic parasites, rapidly consuming their hosts when exposed to air and thus giving them the appearance of instantly liquefying. However, he discovers the bacteria also produce resilient "body glue" that instantaneously seals blunt or narrow wounds, explaining how the vampires are bulletproof. Lastly, he deduces now that there are in fact two differently reacting types of vampires: conscious ones who are living with a worsening infection and undead ones who have died but been partly reanimated by the bacteria.
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The Hobbit
From the shitty shoehorned romance to wholesale elimination of plot points in the original story. Yeah, there was definitely some drama in the whole production of the film, but nonetheless it was crap.
We demand our Tom Bombadil!
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I feel like Annihilation ended up feeling more like a film version of Colour Out of Space than the COoS film did.
wrote last edited by [email protected]And the synopsis of the book for Annihilation makes it sound like reading it is like looking at said monster that drives you crazy just by looking at it.
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The Navidson Record
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Nah, there are some solid adaptations. Green Mile comes to mind. The two Pet Semtary's aren't off the mark. The Shawshank Redemption was brilliant. Plenty more. But we will not speak of The Lawnmower Man.
The Mist's film adaptation has a better ending than the original story. King himself thought so.
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The book Annihilation centered on a "tower" that was a mysterious, fleshy, downward spiraling tunnel with creepy writing on the walls. The imagery was so unsettling.
For some reason it is entirely absent from the movie. Like... that was half of the point of the book - a "tower" that climbed down into the earth instead of towards the sky. Why would you cut that?
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TV adaptation of Wheel of Time was just fucking awful. Like every stupid character change and story change was done literally as stupidly as possible and seemingly with a view to ruin the actual story as it was written.
I genuinely think the showrunners hadn't read the series to the end by most of the changes they made and canned it when they caught up and realised how much they had fucked the story that was still to come.
::: spoiler Book and TV spoilers
Tower in exile run by Siuan mentoring Egwene who is aes sedai by virtue only of being elected Amyrlin? Nope, Siuan is dead and Egwene was made Aes Sedai so I guess that arc is dead.Moiraine thought to be dead and later rescued from the tower of Ghenjei by Matt and Thom? Nope, she never got "killed", and never went through the doorway.
Min, Elayne and Aviendha all accepting the situation and bonding with each other as sister wives and sharing the bond with Rand through their own connection? Nope. Min is shacking up with Matt (maybe? Either way doesn't gaf about Rand) and Elayne and Aviendha are shacking up with each other instead.
Having Rand kill Turak with the power instead of entertaining his challenge was a little funny but completely outside of both Rand and LTT's code of honour and especially LTT's massive ego.
The first one that me swear out loud was killing Uno and making him Gaidal Cain. Like.. I guess Uno won't be leading armies in the last battle then, and Birgitte won't be wondering where Gaidal was woven into the world as a young child..
Oh god I forgot they gave Perrin a wife and had him kill her for literally no reason...
:::So many stupid changes made for no conceivable reason. Not little things to make a character easier to write for TV or more relatable, but sweeping giant story changes that make great chunks of the original canon impossible.
I genuinely implore anyone who even got the slightest amount of joy out of the show to read the books. Learn the original and really very good story, and experience Jordan's writing, rather than Judkins' made-up-as-they-went-along shit erroneously accepted as passable work.
I read the books and liked the TV version. They were just different things. I am not sure I'd even enjoy a very faithful TV adaptation.
