So, I took a ‘top 10 highest rated’ list and added a few of my own. They are listed in chronological order, not in any order of rating. I made the choices up to 5 because I figure, even if I did ‘3 choices’, it would be 99.9% ‘Stand By Me / The Shawshank Redemption / The Shining’, and I am curious to see how some of the other adaptations score after the big 3 are chosen.
And yeah, I added the 1997 ‘The Shining’ miniseries. I think Kubrick took too many damn liberties with the original story, and I may be one of the only people (besides King himself, maybe) who prefers the ‘Shining’ miniseries over the movie, despite the fact that the guy from ‘Wings’ played Jack Torrance. I don’t expect that choice to get many (if any) votes, but hey, my poll, my picks.
Others I liked include Needful Things, The Dead Zone (the film, but I also liked the TV series FWIW), Doctor Sleep and The Life of Chuck (which has stuck with me for a long time) in particular.
Yeah well, I had to draw the line somewhere, and I didn’t want to make the amount of choices overwhelming. I figured 15 was a lot already. That said, I knew ‘Write-in Candidate’ would do a lot of heavy lifting. Maybe after this thread has been going awhile I’ll collect and and post the write-in results.
That is the usual reaction when I tell a fan of the books that I loved the movie. People hate it because they are expecting the impossible. They want the movie to match their mind’s eye view of the books. But if you understand the movie to be separate from the books (i.e. another turn of the wheel) it puts a totally different perspective in front of you that focuses on the relationship between Roland and Jake. It adds to the books, and very few movies ever do that.
The man in black fled acroiss the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
Since you quoted only part of my post, I just want to make it clear:
In addition to not having seen the movie, the Dark Tower series are the only Stephen King books I haven’t read. The fantasy setting just never appealed to me, though I know it’s a beloved series to many King fans. So I’m really not one to judge anybody’s enjoyment of the movie.
Is the poll “the best movie that was adapted from a King novel” or “best adaptation of a King novel?” That is, is fidelity to the source material important?
I figured you did-- I wanted to make it clear for anyone else who might see your post without having seen my original post that I was joking.
I’ll leave that judgement up to you guys. I mean, if I went strictly by fidelity to the source material, I would have left ‘The Shining’ movie off the poll altogether.
I agree with this take. Because, for example, one change from the source material in The Shawshank Redemption was changing the race of the narrator, “Red” Redding from an Irish-American (with red hair) to a Black man, portrayed by Morgan Freeman. Having read the novella first many years before the movie came out, I was at first a bit surprised at the change, but of course it works. And now I can’t picture anyone but Morgan Freeman in the role.
Yes, What_Exit! Not a hugely great movie overall, but very faithful to the tone and general off-putting of the novel. The Dead Zone is shamefully overlooked.
