The recent shlock-horror movie Dagon has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Lovecraft’s story of the same name. It does, however, fairly faithfully follow the plot of Lovecraft’s Shadow Over Insmouth.
(Aside from moving the story from a rural backwater in coastal Massachussets to coastal Spain. Which, given the pretty densely settled state of present-day Massachussets, was probably not a bad idea.)
(And aside from the “rape by eldrich beings” part, which, to be fair, is at least hinted at in the story.)
(And aside from the female nudity. The story has no female characters at all.)
But other than that, it’s pretty faithfull to the story!
This is old enough that I won’t spoiler it. Plus, I’m still ticked after twenty years … At the end of the novel First Blood, John Rambo is shot and killed by the chief of police. And if that had happened in the movie version, we might all have been spared the pain of Rambo: First Blood Part II, not to mention the ineptly-titled Rambo III. And quite possibly any number of other Stallone vehicles.
One of the few films that actually improved on the books ending. Well IMO, but I seem to recall the author Graham Greene thought so too.
Disney’s Little Mermaid was already mentioned but I will mention it again as it so bloody awful. They ruined the whole point of the story. Unforgiveable.
Oh, the film version of The Princess Bride drops the uncertain “Will they escape or not? Is there really such a thing as Happily Ever After?” ending of the novel. Instead the story-within-a-story ends with a big kiss between the hero and heroine just after they flee the castle.
Frankenstein diverges from the book in several ways. I forget how the movie ends, but the director follwed up with Bride of Frankenstein so obviously, both Victor and the monster are still alive at film’s end.
One thing that makes a true adaptation of the book hard is that so much time elapses. Every time Victor makes a decision, he braces himself by taking a coach tour of Europe before he knuckles down and does it. And while he writes passionate letters to Elizabeth, he actually spends very little time with her. They’ll reunite, and suddenly he’s off for another coach tour. In fact, the book is conspicuously devoid of female characters (Elizabeth is just a plot device, and Safie is barely even that), which must be embarrassing to all those grad students who write papers about how it’s some kind of feminist masterpiece (While Mary Shelley’s mother was a trailblazing feminist, Mary herself was basically the Courtney Love of her era). The author couldn’t relate to Elizabeth; she related to Victor. And Victor’s relationship to Elizabeth was just plain odd. In the first edition, Frankenstein’s father basically buys her from her poor Italian family and adopts her as a companion for Victor; in the third edition, I think they’re cousins.
The book ends with the monster taunting Victor into following it–on foot– across Siberia and to the polar ice cap. Victor dies and the monster promises Captain Walton that it will destroy itself next. This really doesn’t lend itself to film, although maybe later adaptations tried to use it.
Captain Walton, the narrator of the framing device, is trying to sail to the North Pole. Makes me wonder if that was thought to be possible back then.
Bud White dies, in a much different episode involving the stopping of a prison train carrying a key criminal/witness. Dudley Smith does not die, nor is he brought to justice. The conspiracy and corruption eventually is revealed to reach into Exley’s father’s business – and Exley’s moral choice becomes whether to expose his own father, which he does, thereby redeeming himself.
The novel is much more convoluted, but also more powerful, in my opinion. Exley is certainly less likeable as a character in the book.
Readers interested in this book should probably start with Ellroy’s The Big Nowhere, which is a prequel; I believe Ellroy has written three books set in this “universe”. I started with LA, myself, and certainly enjoyed both books, even though:
The main character in The Big Nowhere dies in the first chapter of the second book.
Well, that’s partially because they end it right after Valjean leaves the sewers after the riots.
The book goes on for a year or so afterwards.
I really hate that adaptation. Particulary with Javert acting so out of character(Yeah, Cosette was annoying, but Javert’s a cop, not a pyschopath. He also muchy more subtle when angry in the book).
It’s downbeat compared to the film, but Charlie Allnut and what’s-her-name survive, IIRC, and the GErman ship Louisa is still sunk – it’s just not done by using the improvised torpedo. As Forester downbeat endings go, it’s not so downbeat.
Virtually all of Forester’s novels are pretyty downbeat, except for the Hornblower novels. If you realy want downbeat, read The Gun, set in Spain during the Napoleonic wars. Virtually everyone who comes in contact with that piece of ordnance suffers a dreadful fate. They turned it into a movie, of course, and gave it a happy spin. **The Pride and the Passion starred Casry Grant(!, Frank Sinatra(!) and Sophia Loren (!!): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050858/
I’ve mentioned Frankenstein above. The James Whale version, while very good in its own right, is such a significant departure from the book that it’s almost a separate work. (One of the more bizarre things is the way The Bride of Frankenstein begins with a get-together by the Shelleys, Lord Byron, and (presumably) Polidori at a great manor, meant to recall that momentous party that gave birth to the novel “Frankenstein” (but which it can’t be, because they speak of the novel as published), all set in the early 19th century, then begin to recount a story pretty clearly set in the 20th century.)
But recent versions have been a lot closer to the novel – the TNT version of about 10 years ago (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106959/ ), the Kenneth Branaugh Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with Robert de Niro’s interesting portrayal of the MOnster ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109836/ ) (which I liked, although it seems not to have been wel-received), and, my favorite, the little-known and underappreciated Terror of Frankenstein, which is probably the most faithful of them all ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076881/ )
“Great” novels y the early masters don’t fare well on-screen. Julkes Verne, Edgar Allen Poe, H.G. Wells, H.P. Lovecraft and others haven’t been translated well to the screen. As an example, consider “The Food of the Gods”, which hasn;t been treated at all faithfully, despite two (or arguably three) filmed versions. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074540/ , http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097371/ , http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059878/ ).
The First Men in the Moon, desite being the usual F/X tour-de-force by Harryhausen, still changes the ending (the point of this thread), stealing from Wells’ own “War of the Worlds” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058100/ )
Even The Time Machine, the first version of which is more faithful than the recent remake (of which the less said, the better), “dumbs down” the premise, runs everything through a filter that makes it all seem like a TV show, and destroys anything interesting. The entire point of this was to show the logical end of sociological trends. The Morlocks ate the Eloi in the book – the only reason the Eloi had that carefree existence was because they were the “cattle” of the Morlocks.
The Crucifer of Blood based on the Sherlock Holmes story The Sign Of Four. IIRC fairly faithful to the book except for the end.
In the book : The treasure is lost, Watson ends up engaged to the heroine.
In the film : The treasure is kept, the heroine turns out to be villainous, ( I think she tries to kill Watson), the government gets to keep the treasure, Holmes comments that the treasure brings destruction on all that touch it, and it might end the Empire.
Not just the ending, the entire movie was a bizarre distortion of a really good Tom Wolfe book. Start with the worst casting decisions in history, and twist the story elements just enough to make no sense at all. The movie was so off from the book that I can’t even remember if the ending came close. I seem to recall it sort of did, but cut off way before the story was over.
Oddly enough, I was able to seperate the movie from the book and watch it just on its own merits a few years later, and even sort of enjoyed it, once I relaxed and stopped worrying about the literary work thay were shredding.
Tennessee Williams’ "The Glass Menagerie. The play ends with the narrator running off to join the Merchant Marine, essentially leaving his crazy mother and wretchedly shy sister in the lurch. We don’t learn what becomes of them, but it sure doesn’t look promising.
The 1950 movie version doesn’t change the ending dialog, but closes with the scene of the sister meeting a new man, presumably setting the stage for a better life. TW was reportedly incensed by this tacked on ending.
In Hal Ashby’s film of The Last Detail, Mule and Buddusky deliver Meadows to the Portsmouth Naval Prison, argue with the CO, and head back to Norfolk to await their next assignment. The ending is deliberately downbeat in the typical style of early-70s American film; Meadows is taken from the other two so suddenly they don’t even have time to say good bye.
The book’s ending is considerably different:
Meadows, Buddusky and Mule have a tearful parting in the CO’s office. Buddusky and Mule go back to New York and, sickened by what they’ve had to do, go AWOL, living in a grubby motel and spending their days getting drunk. After disposing of their Navy-issue sidearms in a mailbox, they’re tracked down and arrested by the Shore Patrol. Buddusky slugs one of them, is beaten in return and dies of his injuries. The book ends with a first-person diatribe from Mule, who’s himself been sentenced to seven years in the brig.
Compared to the book, the movie’s ending is subtler and more believable; I think even if I hadn’t seen the film first, I’d prefer its ending to the “original.”
While Lord of the Rings had many changes, the beginning and the end were, pretty much, intact in the movie.
A lot of the changes simply tighten up the pacing and save us from 15 total hours in the movie theatre rather than ‘just’ 10:
Fellowship removed Tom Bombadil (thank Og, there was simply no way to have him without major embarrassment).
Songs removed to spare our ears (okay, so some of the songs aren’t that bad…)
Love story added in between Arwen and Aragorn – hmmm, never been sure what to think, because cutting this would have left more time for other story development…
The Elves at Helm’s Deep – that was likely the biggest stretch in the movies
No scouring of the Shire – there wasn’t time! Return of the King had already run longer than most movies ever made by that point…
That’s what I can think of off the top of my head. It’s too bad that they had to change so much, but really, I think the spirit of LOTR is translated as best as possible to the screen. Plus, the beginning, middle, and end of the three movies taken as a whole deviate only a little from the source. Not much to complain about, really…
In fairness to My Fair Lady, the change was introduced by George Bernard Shaw himself in his screenplay for the 1938 movie of Pygmalion, for which he received an Academy Award.
Speaking of plays, one of the main themes of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town was the acceptance of death. Yet that point seems to be lost in the 1940 movie, when Emily does not die in childbirth.
unboxed spoiler below for that one guy that hasn’t seen LOTR:
Though I can understand this being added - for those who haven’t read the books, Arwen and Aragorn getting married at the end (well, end of the movie) of ROTK would have seemed like it was coming out of the blue.
You missed our above posts on this. I’m not convinced that Shaw did it – as I note above, he loathed the idea of the “romantic” ending, and his published notes for turning Pygmalion into a film don’t include this.
More to the point, in the published book version of the play My Fair Lady, they acknowledge that they changed the ending, and ask Shaw to forgive them. If Shaw had changed the ending for the 1938 film, this would’ve been the time to bring it up, biut they act as if they changed it all on their own. They don’t even mention the 1938 film.
Not so fast, there. Although the canonical version of the myth doesn’t have this (the only way Pegasus figures in the early version is that he springs from the bloody neck of Medusa, along with his brother Chrysaor, after Perseus decapitates her), there are clear indications that the myth was starting to change this way. Ovid, for one, mentions Perseus riding on Pegasus in one of his love poems (although not in the Metamorphoses, his longest retelling of the myth). And there are depictions of Perseus mounted on horseback decapitating Medusa. In the 17th century there were several operas of the myth, and in one of the showiest, Perseus does ride on Pegasus to attack Medua. I’m sure they did it for the same reason Harryhausen did – it looks impressive. A lot more dignified than having Perseus flap his way in on those silly winged slippers. That’s how myths evolve – when they’re translated to a new medium – such as the opera stage or the movie screen, where what had “worked” in earlier versions and different media (oral storytelling, vase painting) didn’t satisfy any longer, the story was changed.