Bad Book to Film Adaptations - or I expected nothing and I’m still let down

[Jessica Campbell]

Any other movies that were ruined or had their ending ruined because of test audiences?

I don't think that we would ever know if it was ruined because of the test audiences, but Suicide Squad had massive changes due to test audiences and we all know what a piece of shit that movie was. I wouldn't be surprised if the original version of the movie was even worse though considering the director doesn't have a good track record.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I go back and fourth on Pasolini's Salo: the 120 Days of Sodom. I think it's a great film but it's only a fraction of just how bad Sade's unfinished novel truly is. Sade's work is like an anti-bible. The Mariana Trench of literature. Sade's philosophy (which is, oddly, the most shocking part of his work rather than graphic depictions of violence and rape) isn't represented at all.

On that note: Jess Franco's adaptation of Justine is a decent attempt. Coming out at the wrong time of 1969. A ton of the more disturbing aspects are omitted and the philosophy is gone. It was a genius move to cast Klaus Kinski as Marquis De Sade but he literally does nothing the whole movie except pose.

Less Than Zero is legitimately the worst

The book is all about the culture of nihilism and decadence in LA. It ends on a snuff film and the lead losing his friend to prostitution

The movie decides the entire thing was a cheesy anti drug message (despite everyone in the book continuing to snort cocaine and pop xanx)

To this day that movie has destroyed the reputation of the book. It turned a scathing critique of hedonistic excess into drugs are bad m'kay

I don't think Less Than Zero is a masterpiece but it's an interesting book and a correct adaption by someone like Gaspar Noe would be fucking amazing. The movie has NOTHING to do with the book aside from the setting and character names. That's it.

 

[BScCollateral]

Some stuff just works better in a book.
There's a reactor meltdown in Hunt for Red October. It's described step by step and it's one of the most frightening things I've ever read. It's not in the movie. How could you even film it?
Same thing with The Martian. I do like the film, but the book is so much more engrossing.

 

[Manwithn0n0men]

What was the film from last year that had Oprah Winfrey in it? That was a fucking stinker because they couldn't be arsed to even adapt it correctly.

Wrinkle in time (which may be unadaptable)

 

[ApatheticViewer]

wasn’t happy with the adaptation of The Goblet of Fire.

Lmao

 

[{o}P II]

The Bible

 

[TheImportantFart]

Lmao
https://youtube.com/watch?v=IdoD2147Fik

One of the reasons Richard Harris will always be best Dumbledore to me.

 

[The 3rd Hooligan]

Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy:

Cramming stuff from couple books into one movie.

Blackwashing.

Bastardisation of the characters esp. Ford

Cameos from tv series were nice though.

As a fan of the books and tv series I might be too harsh though

 

[Kaiser Wilhelm's Ghost]

Lord Of The Flies.

The 1963 adaptation has more fidelity with the source material and it was written and directed by Peter Brooks, but suffered from production issues and was part of the British studio output in the 60's where budgets restrictions and also censorship also effected the quality. I'd be interested in seeing what could be done with Brook's script now, but there seems to be only minute interest in a revival or the god awful idea of a full female cast.

The 1990's version had more money behind it, but they changed the story around fundamentally and lost something in translation. It has better visuals though.

Neither of them actually manages to capture the symbolism behind the Lord Of The Flies though.

Ivanhoe.

It has yet to get an actual adaptation that does the book justice or doesn't gloss over parts of the story.
The most important in my opinion being the relationship between Rebecca and Bois-Guilbert or even Rebecca and Ivanhoe. The sequence of events where Ivanhoe and Bois-Guilbert square off in combat gets overlooked with Ivanhoe besting Guilbert, even though that doesn't happen in the story. Guilbert knowing he can't live without her dying at the stake, essentially loses the will to live without her and ironically saves her life as a result. Rebecca also tends to get sidelined into the damsel in distress role, without emphasis on the fact that she is a strong female literary character. She saves Ivanhoe from death, keeps it together throughout being kidnapped and put on trial by the Templars, keeps it together despite the fact that faces prejudice from both the disinherited Saxons and the Normans, and after all is said and done doesn't hold it against anyone.

It's also probably already been mentioned, but I thought the Hobbit and following film adaptations were absolute shit. The story was serviceable enough, but the over the top action sequences really ruined those films for me, especially the kung fu dwarf in the bit where they are getting attacked and bobbing down the river.

I'm also waiting to see what abortion Hollywood and Kenneth Branagh push out for Artemis Fowl.

 

[CrystalRoserade]

It's been mentioned before, but man, the Percy Jackson movies are awful. I don't want Columbus or Freudenthal anywhere near Kane Chronicles. God knows what they'd do to those books. At least Freudenthal made Annabeth blonde in Sea of Monsters, like she should be. What was with Columbus' decision to have Annabeth be brunette in Lightning Thief?

Also, while not a book, The Last Airbender. They did everyone dirty.

 

[TheImportantFart]

Stormbreaker. Christ on a cracker that movie was cringe. I only remembered it because there’s been a trailer for a new Alex Rider TV series coming anon which I didn’t even know about until I randomly Googled the books:

I’m hoping this will be good when it drops. At least it looks closer to what an Alex Rider adaptation should be.

Fun fact about the movie: I got to meet Anthony Horowitz in person and I asked him what it was like adapting his own book for the screen. He told me that he wanted the film to be a lot grittier than it ended up being, but unfortunately the American distributor was Harvey Weinstein and he told them to dumb the film down for younger children or he wouldn’t give it a wide release in the US. They did as he said, and apparently he still screwed them over and didn’t give the film a proper wide release. Don’t know if that’s true, or Horowitz is just making excuses, but given what we know about Weinstein, especially now, I’m inclined to believe him.

Horowitz got his revenge by including a character called R.V. Weinberg in Snakehead who’s described as a “third-rate television producer” and is last seen rolling round in a muddy puddle. Savage.

 

[Mr. Skeltal]

Starship Troopers is a great movie, but as a novel adaptation it fails on so many levels.
We get to see the pseudoarachnids but the skinnies are left out of the film.
Many of the calmer moments in the book, like ship life after Rico is promoted to 3rd Lieutenant from cadet on assignment from the Academy, are understandably cut from a satirical adaptation (iirc the director behind Starship Troopers wanted to make the movie some stand against the fascist regime in the book. The campy, endearing film was what we got.). Another issue with the film is the distinct lack of power armor and orbital drop pods for soldiers, something that was elevated to an almost religious status by the Mobile Infantry. Instead we got generic future soldiers in flying ACPs.

 

[armoreddinnerjacket]

Agreed. His Dark Materials in general comes off as Pullman trying to write an atheist version of The Chronicles of Narnia without any of CS Lewis's talent or charm. The third one, the Amber Spyglass or whatever, comes off as especially euphoric and bitter by portraying God as a senile old man who the heroes then kill.

Old post, but that's literally what Pullman's series was. He vehemently hated the Narnia series and considered it unfit for children because of it's allegorical themes.

 

[LazarusOwenhart]

Lake Town is turned from a normal village full of realistic people into a cartoon that's literally on the lake

I have zero issues with the rest of your post and agree wholeheartedly but I am going to point out that Lake Town was ALWAYS on the lake, built on piles across a bridge and the people of the town are nice and normal until Smaug destroys the town and instead of deciding to go tell the Dwarfs "Oh BTW killed the dragon for you, towns fucked can we get some help?" they're just gonna go take a load of gold under arms.

 

[Judge Holden]

Stormbreaker. Christ on a cracker that movie was cringe. I only remembered it because there’s been a trailer for a new Alex Rider TV series coming anon which I didn’t even know about until I randomly Googled the books:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=KA2P1hw56Kg
I’m hoping this will be good when it drops. At least it looks closer to what an Alex Rider adaptation should be.

Fun fact about the movie: I got to meet Anthony Horowitz in person and I asked him what it was like adapting his own book for the screen. He told me that he wanted the film to be a lot grittier than it ended up being, but unfortunately the American distributor was Harvey Weinstein and he told them to dumb the film down for younger children or he wouldn’t give it a wide release in the US. They did as he said, and apparently he still screwed them over and didn’t give the film a proper wide release. Don’t know if that’s true, or Horowitz is just making excuses, but given what we know about Weinstein, especially now, I’m inclined to believe him.

Horowitz got his revenge by including a character called R.V. Weinberg in Snakehead who’s described as a “third-rate television producer” and is last seen rolling round in a muddy puddle. Savage.

Ah I remember the alex rider series. Brettygud for a preteen's first spy series, though now I look back the whole lore of the setting is actually hilariously bleak and miserable on a lovecraftian level now I think of it.

Seriously Alex is forced to remain an eternal virgin 14 year old even as the world around him rapidly advances from the late 90s to the late 2010s, with him playing on a new N64 console in the first book and getting an iphone halfway through the series and is probably getting a PS5 in the upcoming book, all while he remains completely static and ageless, and he has to spend literally every waking moment getting the physical, mental, and emotional shit kicked out of him by a world that is steadily revealed to be inhabited almost entirely by sadistic bond villains with literally dozens of apocalyptic evil schemes overlapping and set to come to fruition every freakin month, and literally the only thing capable of stopping millions/billions of people dying horribly, including everyone he loves, is him suffering through agonizing shit that would make Jason Bourne wince, and without the comfort of getting some ass afterwards in his five minutes of cooling off before he is blackmailed into another assignment.

Eventually, after nearly twenty years of this nightmarish existence and losing the last family he had left...who was literally just his old babysitter at this point.... and being literally enslaved to protect none other than Hillary Clinton...yes really.... from assassins sent to frame the UK for murdering her in revenge for her speechfiying about how evil Britain is...again yes really... he finally got a break with the seeming final novel and was able to finally turn 15 and leave the country with his girlfriend...only for the author to decide "nah I want to buy a new house" and resurrect the series, having his girlfriend, whose life he saved repeatedly, randomly dump him and kick him out of her house and his babysitter resurrected by black plot magic despite literally exploding in the previous book, and him being forced back into a perpetual nightmare of "MI6's pet bitch" where he is forced on pain of global genocide to do the job of the entire international intelligence community once again.

I mean hell, you could easily turn this concept into a black comedy parody of the bond genre without changing much. Just the idea of some random asshole being forced to do bond shit every week knowing that if he makes a mistake its gonna cause some absurdly contrived yet horribly nasty apocalypse while the worlds intelligence agencies just munch popcorn and watch him suffer while doing fuck all to help.

 

[LolRaccoon]

I don't think the movie's out yet, but "The Color Out of Space..."

Why did they have to adapt THIS story out of Lovecraft's bibliography?
Why did they have to get Nicholas Cage to star in it?
Why did they have to get Tommy fucking Chong to be the crazy old guy?

I heard the movie itself is okay, but these choices just sound stupid.

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

I don't think the movie's out yet, but "The Color Out of Space..."

Why did they have to adapt THIS story out of Lovecraft's bibliography?
Why did they have to get Nicholas Cage to star in it?
Why did they have to get Tommy fucking Chong to be the crazy old guy?

I heard the movie itself is okay, but these choices just sound stupid.

1. It's a more obscure and fun story that manages to avoid some of the more awkward subtext present in many of his other stories.
2. Nick Cage is very good at playing characters driven to their final nerve.
3. Eh, because? This looks like a loose adaptation anyways.
Ultimately, if it's good and in the spirit of the original, I can take a few unusual casting choices.

 

[milfcoded]

Artemis Fowl

While the movie isn't out yet, just by the trailer alone, I know it will ruin one of my favorite childhood book series.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Starship Troopers is a great movie, but as a novel adaptation it fails on so many levels.
We get to see the pseudoarachnids but the skinnies are left out of the film.
Many of the calmer moments in the book, like ship life after Rico is promoted to 3rd Lieutenant from cadet on assignment from the Academy, are understandably cut from a satirical adaptation (iirc the director behind Starship Troopers wanted to make the movie some stand against the fascist regime in the book. The campy, endearing film was what we got.). Another issue with the film is the distinct lack of power armor and orbital drop pods for soldiers, something that was elevated to an almost religious status by the Mobile Infantry. Instead we got generic future soldiers in flying ACPs.

Verhoven tried reading the book but was bored by it and gave up.

 

[Dolphin Lundgren]

Animal Farm. The version with Patrick Stewart as Old Major. I wasn't a fan and I preferred the cartoon. A lot of people seem to like the version with celebrities but I couldn't get into it.