# Book to movie-Worst adaptation **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 1, 2018, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710 "2018-01-01T21:23:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/21 "2018-01-01T23:37:20Z")
The 1984 version of _She_, starring Sandahl Bergman, allegedly based on H. Rider Haggard’s novel. > [@](#): > > from [She (1984) - IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090009/) > In a backward post-apocalyptic world, She aids two brothers’ quest to rescue their kidnapped sister. Along the way, they battle orgiastic werewolves, a psychic communist, a tutu-wearing giant, a mad scientist, and gladiators before standing against the odds to defeat the evil Norks. _Winds of Change_, based on Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_. Japanese anime, based on Greek mythology, with a disco soundtrack. (Actually, if you can stomach the music, the movie itself is not that bad.) ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2018, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/22 "2018-01-01T23:47:11Z")
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Changed enough of what was in the book to completely remove its absurdist charm. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/23 "2018-01-02T00:33:02Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > Any movie with Mathilda May walking around naked can’t be all bad… I was going to say this. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/24 "2018-01-02T00:40:00Z")
A Wizard From Earthsea. Oh, and the two Riverworld ones-the 2nd sucked even worse than the first, and I didn’t think that was even possible. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/25 "2018-01-02T01:31:42Z")
Ellen Raskin’s Newbery Award-winning book _The Westing Game_ was made into a movie so bad it wasn’t released. It eventually turned up on cable a few years later, and the reaction was so bad, that the movie was renamed _Get a Clue_ so people who had read the book wouldn’t seek it out. Even as a standalone movie, not compared to the wonderful book it is very loosely based on, it is still a stinker. The book is extremely complex, and really needs a mini-series, not a two-hour movie, but it was sliced and diced in an attempt to get it down to two hours, which totally collapsed the delicate structure of a very intricately plotted mystery. Among other things, one of the many red herring solutions became that actual solution, and the actual solution from the book was abandoned. It’s just so much awfulness packed into two hours. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/26 "2018-01-02T01:38:53Z")
The 1988 version of Asimov’s [Nightfall](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095738/?ref_=nv_sr_6) was pretty horrible… ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/27 "2018-01-02T01:40:15Z")
_I, Robot_ which appears to have borne no relationship to Isaac Asimov’s book about robots. There was a truly awful film adaptation made of “Nightfall” way back when, too. ETA: simulpost! ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/28 "2018-01-02T01:42:47Z")
_Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang_. Other than the fact that the car flies and floats\* and the character’s names, it has nothing in common with the movie. No fairy-tale kingdom, no romance between Potts and Truly (they’re already married in the book), no child-catcher, etc. Or vice-versa, no trip to France where they have to foil a 1930s style gangster who’s planning a bank robbery. It also has a hovercraft mode that that the movie misses. That said, the movie wasn’t actually…bad…mostly, it just isn’t an adaptation of the book. \*But in the movie, isn’t an actual person who can talk back via some kind of display ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/29 "2018-01-02T01:44:15Z")
_Exit to Eden_, book by Anne Rice. Erotic fiction about an S&M island. The entire plot of the movie (Dan Aykroyd and Rosie O’Donnell as cops who go undercover on that island to capture Iman, who is a wanted criminal) doesn’t exist in the book. And, of course, on a fetish island that features Dana Delaney doing full nudity and leather outfits, we don’t see Iman wearing anything too revealing. We DO see Aykroyd in a gimp outfit, and Rosie wearing tight leather. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/30 "2018-01-02T01:44:31Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > _I, Robot_ which appears to have borne no relationship to Isaac Asimov’s book about robots. Dontcha hate it when you read to the bottom of a thread and the very last post has your answer? 😛 (Edit: Well, it WAS the last post but some people got in while I was typing) It seemingly had no relation to the book because, well, it had no relation to the book. It was a case of “Hey, our rights to this property are going to expire if we don’t use them? Well, shoehorn a couple concepts into this unrelated sci-fi flick already in production and call it _I, Robot_. That took care of that!” ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/31 "2018-01-02T01:50:49Z")
The movie “based” (inspired would be a better word really) on Earthsea and I, Robot (fun movie, but not Asimov’s book) have been mentioned. I nominate the latest so-called “Hobbit” trio of movies. Just plain awful, and sorta not really the original story. My niece grew up watching that terrible cartoon that claims to be Wizard from or of or whatever Earthsea. The first time I let her read my copy of the actual books, she was blown away and threw out the movie. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/32 "2018-01-02T01:53:49Z")
Speaking of cartoons and kids, my son was truly amazed at how powerful and awe inspiring the animals in Kipling’s _The Jungle Book_ were versus the bumbling, singing idiots in the Disney animated version. ---
**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/33 "2018-01-02T02:01:46Z")
Starship Troopers, the Puppet Masters, pretty much anything written by Robert Heinlein. I dread the day somebody tries to make a movie of _Stranger in a Strange Land_. RAH’s writing style is such that something is lost as soon as you transfer it to another medium. Having said that, Puppet Masters was probably the best candidate to try, and it didn’t work. Same problem with Frank Herbert’s Dune. Very complex, dense book and it’s hard to transfer that to screen. The mini-series they did on the Sci-Fi channel some years ago was a pretty fair attempt and I enjoyed it, but that story is best experienced by reading the book. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/34 "2018-01-02T02:14:40Z")
I liked the “Puppet Masters”, but as long as we’re on an SF kick here I’ll throw in “Damnation Alley”. (OK, points for the buggy, but that’s it.) ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/35 "2018-01-02T02:16:58Z")
When the movie adaptation of “The Firm” came out, all the critics said, “If you haven’t read the book, you will love the movie, and if you have read it, you won’t like it.” I had read the John Grisham thriller; the friend with whom I saw the movie had not. She loved it and thought it was one of the best movies she’d ever seen, whereas I said, “That’s not in the book!” so many times, a man sitting in front of us turned around and told me to shut up. :o ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/36 "2018-01-02T02:26:32Z")
[Moderating] > [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#): > > Two words: Frank Darabont. Also, “The Mist.” > > If you haven’t seen, “1922,” yet, I highly recommend it. **burpo the wonder mutt** , I realize that your intent was not malicious here, but we ask that posters not add material to within quote boxes. If you want to reply to two separate points within a quote, you can put all of your replies at the end, or close the quote and then re-open it. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/37 "2018-01-02T02:46:50Z")
**Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief** is terrible while the book is actually really good. **The Giver** is also a horrible film version of a really good book. ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/38 "2018-01-02T03:18:22Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > Ellen Raskin’s Newbery Award-winning book _The Westing Game_ was made into a movie so bad it wasn’t released. It eventually turned up on cable a few years later, and the reaction was so bad, that the movie was renamed _Get a Clue_ so people who had read the book wouldn’t seek it out. Even as a standalone movie, not compared to the wonderful book it is very loosely based on, it is still a stinker. > > The book is extremely complex, and really needs a mini-series, not a two-hour movie, but it was sliced and diced in an attempt to get it down to two hours, which totally collapsed the delicate structure of a very intricately plotted mystery. Among other things, one of the many red herring solutions became that actual solution, and the actual solution from the book was abandoned. > > It’s just so much awfulness packed into two hours. You’ve convinced me to try the book. > [@John\_DiFool](#): > > A Wizard From Earthsea. That one broke my heart. ---
**Author:** ![That\_Don\_Guy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/that_don_guy/32/538_2.png) [@That\_Don\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/That_Don_Guy)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/39 "2018-01-02T03:41:03Z")
I may end up going to Doper Hell for saying this, but…_Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory_ (yes, the first one, with Gene Wilder). Actually, the two worst offenders I can think of are _Pitch Perfect_ and _Big Year_, but both of those movies are fictionalized accounts of nonfiction books. Well, those and Starship Troopers. I would consider _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_, but I thought that was based more on the radio series than the book. (I won’t throw in the TV series, since that’s the only one where Trillian is blonde.) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710/40 "2018-01-02T03:45:02Z")
For some reason science fiction and spy novel seem to fare badly in the adaptation department. Besides examples given above: **Ice Station Zebra** by Alastair MacLean – huge difference between the book and the movie, although the movie was still pretty good **The Osterman Weekend** by Robert Ludlum. No similarity at all. **Who Goes There?** by John W. Campbell – the original 1951 **The Thing** pretty much changed everything, although it was a good enough story in its own right. Carpenter’s 1982 film was surprisingly faithful. **The Space Frame** by Manly Wade Wellman got turned into _Invasion of the SAucermen_\*, which actually included the basic story inside it, but buried it in grade Z schlock. When they remade it as _Invasion of the (the) Eye Creatures_ they lost even the smidgen of the original story. Similarly, **Mimic** by Donald A Wollheim was pretty much buried in made-up-stuff for the movie. The original story, to be honest, didn’t have enough for a full-length film, but it would’ve made a decent TV show, or segment in an anthology film. It’s a nicely creepy little Twilight Zon-ish story. **we Can Remember it for you Wholesale** by Philip K. Dick also suffered from too little material for a movie. They exhausted most of it in the first half hour of **Total Recall** , then stole the rest from Robert Sheckley’s _The Status Civilization_, right down to the mind-reading mutants who revealed that the hero was basically his own enemy. And the hero, Quayle (whose name got changed to “Quade” because we had a Veep then with the name “Quayle”) was more of a Woody Allen type than a Schwartzeneggar. When the remade **Total Recall** they stripped away even more of its origin, and added incredibly stupid stuff. **The Mind Parasites** is actually an unapproved version of Heinlein’s **The Puppet Masters**. If you thought the Disney version was bad, this one is awful. With Leonard Nimoy, believe it or not. Murray Leinster’s _The Wailing Asteroid_ wasn’t exactly a great novel, but ity didn’t deserve to be turned into **The Terrornauts** There’s a special department in movie hell for adaptations of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Allen Poe. These are almost uniformly bad and virtually unrelated to the original story or inspiration. Disney’s _20,000 Leagues_ was pretty decent, although it took surprising liberties with the story. Disney and Verne should’ve been a perfect match, but then they went and screwed up _In Search of the Castaways_, and never did another. _Around the World i9n Eighty Days_ was pretty decent, too. I list the names of the movies here Verne: _The Mysterious Island_ (1929) – they seemed to want to make 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but couldn’t quite bring themselves to dot it, and rewrote it all badly. Then they slapped the name of another Verne novel on it. _Valley of Dragons_ – was supposed to be “Off on a Comet” Hah! _The Light at the End of the World_ – Yul Brynner, Kirk Douglas, and Samantha Eggar. It’s still bad _Five Weeks in a Balloon_ – when you’re adapting Verne, don’t try to turn it into a musical comedy _The Mysterious Island_ (1960) I love Harryhausen, but Verne this ain’t. And, like 2010, it would’ve benefited from losing the narration. _From the Earth to the Moon_ – this one has NOTHING to do with the book. And screws up its science, as well. Wells. Adaptations of Wells seem to pretty much miss the point he’s trying to make. \*The Man who could Work Miracles was probably the best, and \*The Invisible Man \* wasn’t bad: _The Time Machine_ – George Pal got some of the visuals down pretty well, but he seems to have ignored the central point that in Wells’ extrapolated future the Morlocks were really the common man/working class that had been oppressed for centuries, and finally ended up Eating the Rich (as the saying used to go) – the Eloi, who were the useless and unskilled descendants of the Upper class. _The Island of Lost Souls/Doctor Moreau_ – the first movie version managed to get the creepy down better than the other versions, but they all lacked the subtlety of Wells’ invoking Jonathan Swift’s “Land of the Houynhnms” ending in which he poked satirical fun at civilization. _Village of the Giants_ – supposedly based on Wells’ _Food of the Gods_, but it’s just awful. Even Giant Boobs can’t save it. _Food of the Gods_ – even when they used the right title, it didn’t help. _Empire of the Ants_ – nothing to do with Wells, although it’s worth seeing this low-rent “Them!” to see Joan Collins controlled by ants. Edgar Allen Poe: All of the Corman adaptations are pretty darned awful, although there are memorable scenes in his _Masque of the Red Death_. There have been numerous Black Cats and Ravens, but you really can’t expect anything from a movie based on a short poem. _The Oblong Box_ has nothing to do with Poe’s story, although the presence of Vincent Price and Christopher Lee gives it a touch of class. H. Rider Haggard – The late version of **She** has been mentioned, but the others aren’t much better, except for the Merian C. Cooper 1934 version. **King Solomon’sd Mines** has been filmed numerous times, none of them faithfully. The 1984 version with Richard Chamberlin, Sharon Stone, Herbert Lom, and John Rhys-Davies was particularly awful, especially considering the star power. Most adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft have been pretty abysmal too, until the past few years. The Lovecraft Society’s version of \*\*The Call of Cthulhu[/B[ and **The Whisperrer in Darkness** , and the new German version of **The Colour out of Space** aren’t bad, but everything else I’ve seen has changed his stories so radically as to be completely unrelated. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-to-movie-worst-adaptation/805710.md?page=3)