What's the worst change made in a movie adaptation of a book?
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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.
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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!!!
Amen! !!
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The Navidson Record
As a fellow HoL fan, dig your response.
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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.
Aimpoints?
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She's Paul's everything (and trying to keep her alive for as long as possible is the main reason he does anything in Messiah, basically) and mostly a supporting character in the books, and there's nothing wrong with that... but Zendaya is a star and the West would've crucified Denis if he just let Chani be Chani. We both know it, that's the core of the disagreement in this comment section, lol. Heretics and Chapterhouse have fantastic female protagonists, but I doubt we'll get there, sadly.
Is this “the west” here in the room with us?
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Is this “the west” here in the room with us?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Unless Lemmings suddenly became majority Pakistani/Maori/Persian/Nigerian/Dagestani/Indonesian/Algerian/etc., ofc!
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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.
Well it got canceled due to poor viewership so they failed and made it even less likely a fair adaptation ever gets made. Everybody loses.
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I liked that movie. I also watched it while I was on a plane from Cleveland to Hawaii with nothing to do though so maybe it was like a stockholm syndrome thing.
Taken on its own merit, the movie is fine I suppose as a dumb summer action flick. I actually really like Penelepe Cruz in this. If you're a fan of the book it's based on, this movie disappointed you. The movie does a mediocre job of summarizing a representative sample of the book's plot and goings on. To be fair, the book has a complicated and multi-threaded plot which might survive intact as a miniseries but not in a single film.
Going back and watching it now...I've gotten out of movies. Hollywood has lost my attention at some point in the last ten years, and watching Sahara today reminds me of the time I used to like movies.
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I realized there was trouble when the producers were being interviewed and stated they had a hard time finding an entry point to the universe and I was like "Bitch, FIRST LINE - 'The man in black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed.'"
wrote last edited by [email protected]It's always a treat realizing that you like a piece of fiction much more than the director/producer making an adaptation of it. I'm glad I didn't bother with that film.
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I don't know if it'll be better but there is an Eragon series in development for Disney+
And then some. It was mostly an ugly film that didn't portray Alagaesia in any way that I had imagined. About the only thing I liked about it was the design of Saphira.
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It's always a treat realizing that you like a piece of fiction much more than the director/producer making an adaptation of it. I'm glad I didn't bother with that film.
They somehow thought Jake was the star?
Here's hoping the next adaptation is better.
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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.
Don't actually remember that scene, refresh my memory please?
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The movie version of A Clockwork Orange was based on the American version of the book, which left out the entire last chapter. In that chapter, at 18 years old Alex pretty suddenly grows out of his violent and criminal ways and wants to start a family. Some say this ending is more optimistic but I actually think it's darker, because it shows that any normal person you meet might've at some point been a wanton brute reveling in the chaos and pain they so arbitrarily inflicted. And that they can just move on and start living like a normal person.
