Even worse, the theatrical cut of Return of the King cut out the Saruman death scene that they did film, which meant if you only went to theaters or watched those cuts, Saruman…survives? Or dies offscreen when Sauron dies?
I do get cutting the Scouring from the movie, to be honest. I like that part in the book, but even reading it makes me sometimes go “Oh, right, we aren’t done yet” and in a movie, I think it would be poorly received after the double-climax of Sam-Frodo-Gollum and Aragorn…and his coronation.
Tolkien kind of breaks the rules by continuing the story like that. I remember reading the Hobbit around 1990(I was 12) and being surprised that Smaug isn’t the final confrontation.
I didn’t really see Saruman’s death as that important, other than as part of The Scouring of the Shire. What we saw in the theatrical version of the movie was sufficient; he was soundly defeated, and unlikely to be a problem for the rest of the story.
In the extended version, we get to see his death, pretty much as it played out in the books, except that it was in his tower, and not in The Shire.
To me, it was an important part of the whole story, and I really hated to not see it in the movies.
After Saruman was defeated, he fled to The Shire, and set up shop there. Perhaps there were already other evils from the outside world taking root before he got there, with the innocent naïve Hobbits lacking the means to even recognize the evil, at first, for what it is, and once they did recognize it, having no clue at all what to do about it. They certainly didn’t know how to resist “Sharky” when he showed up and started taking over.
To save The Shire, it took the four Hobbits who had gone out into the world, had encountered, fought, and defeated greater evils than the other Hobbits ever had the capacity, even in their darkest nightmares, to imagine—it took them coming home, finding what had taken root there, and having the experience gained over the course of their adventures to have the means, the strength, and the courage to do what it took to defeat the evil that had come to infest The Shire. Again, a far greater evil than the normal Hobbits could ever imagine, but nothing compared to what the four had already encountered and defeated.
To me, that became an important point of how their adventures had changed the four Hobbits.
I can imagine the story being a bit different, where the four never left The Shire, and other characters, of other races carried out the important tasks, especially the destruction of the Ring, with no Hobbits participating. The outside evils might still have found their way into The Shire, but in this instance, there would be no salvation; the four would have remained as innocent and naïve as their neighbors, and The Shire would have permanently fallen to the evil that came into it.
I thought they did such a good job with The Bourne Identity, I was disappointed that they didn’t stick with the premise from the book: That “Bourne” wasn’t an assassin at all. That he was an operative posing as an assassin to draw out the real target, a notorious assassin. With the amnesia, he gets really confused over his contrived resume of having killed so many, but he really isn’t a hired killer at all. I thought if they would have done the story from the book, it would have been a great movie. There was a TV mini-series with Richard Chamberlain that actually followed the book.
The Scouring is essential, and Jackson is an arse for discarding it. At that point the films had made so much $ he could have made a theatrical cut without it and a Special Cut with it and probably made even more money.
Back to the original premise, my understanding is that the source for Dr Strangelove is straight drama, and its the decision to go comic that makes the film great.
There’s a movie from 1995 called Rough Magic, which is not a great movie, but really hit me in the right spot, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I tracked down the book it was based on (Miss Shumway Waves a Wand), which is something I tend to do, and it was a weird weird book. I liked the movie much more.
I feel like King kinda signed off on that one. I remember a paperback reissue of the novel with Schwarzenegger on the cover, but I don’t think Night Shift got reissued with Lawnmower Man on the cover like it was when Children of the Corn came out. Running Man at least stuck to the concept of a game show killing its contestants, so the kernel of the story was in there.
If it’s okay to jump off films, the video game Metro 2033, a horror story about Moscow survivors of a nuclear war living in the subway shelters, is based closely on the novel of the same name. Enough so that it’s probably a detriment to the game’s pacing in places. The second game wasn’t anything much like Metro 2034 but it was called Metro: Last Light so no expectations.
The third game, Metro 2035, does share the novel’s name but wisely ignores most of the book which substitutes post-apocolypse horror for tedious politics. The novel also handwaves the disappearance of the mutant creatures and paranormal activity from the first two books. The game skips most of the plot, takes it from near the end of the novel (where the protagonist leaves the Metro) and carries on from there but bringing back all the creepy stuff and adding a cast of characters. It’s much more fun to play than the book was to read.
One big difference was that the toon characters in the book didn’t make movies; they made comic strips. So you had characters in the book like Beetle Bailey, Blondie, and Hagar the Horrible instead of Betty Boop, Bugs Bunny, and Mickey Mouse. The toon characters produced speech balloons when they talked (a leftover speech balloon was evidence at a crime scene) and they were photographed to make comic strips.
Putting aside the fact that having the toons be movie actors worked better in the movie adaptation, having the toons be comic strip models wasn’t as good an idea even within the book.
It a bit more complicated than that. When someone noticed the similarity they actually suggested adapting Starship Troopers directly, but they mistakenly thought someone else had the rights so abandoned that idea and continued with their own idea for while before realizing the rights were actually available and changing it to more closely match the book.
Then after that Verhoeven decidedly to turn the movie into an a parody of the fascist-y themes in the book. Which definitely made for a better film IMO, even if he did turn it into an episode of Beverly Hills 90210 with giant space bugs.
I haven’t read the books myself, but just from the description, you seem (to me) to be drastically underestimating how much time (both production time and movie runtime), money, and effort it would’ve taken to do this sequence justice (as opposed, to say, some kind of montage scene). I could easily see it as a fourth movie.
In the books, it’s all in a single chapter of RotK (entitled, of course, “The Scouring of the Shire”). To do it justice in film likely wouldn’t require a full movie, but I don’t think you could do it well in under 15 or 20 minutes (and maybe longer).
The changes Hitchcock made in The Lady Vanishes considerably improved on the novel it was based on. The McGuffin becomes a matter of national security, rather than just a private embarrassment.
So I guess that’s the question: the point of that chapter is important, but is it important enough for another forty five minutes of movie (to use a median estimate)? I’m not sure it is.
My favorite movie ever (has been since I was 14), is The Warriors. So I read the book that it was based on, Sol Yurick’s “The Warriors.” There are some plot parallels and some shared character names and overall theme, but the book is nowhere near the comic book story that the movie ended up. It’s much more focused on the poverty, violence, abuse and general shittiness of being a black teenager in New York City. The gang members aren’t presented as big bopping muscle heads who are just looking to crack skulls and pick up a little wool on the way back, but as scared kids banding together to fight authority and prove their manhood, and dealing with the grief that comes with it.
Much more allegorical of the Anabasis story than the movie.
I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone talk about picking up a little “wool” in this context in a very, very long time. I just wanted you to know that you get some bonus points for that.
I can tell you this. Doctor Sleep is much better than its book and the way it merges the original book and the original movie and serves as a sequel to both is terrific. I liked Doctor Sleep, the movie, more than Kubrick’s Shining.
Huh, that’s interesting. And it makes sense. We’re much more comfortable with anti-hero protagonists these days.
Have you read The Bourne Identity recently? I must have read it when it first came out in paperback, so 40 years ago. I wonder if I should have another go or just leave it alone.
