Stephen King, with a few exceptions, gets murdered (artistically, not financially, of course) every time he licenses a book to Hollywood. But he’s just one example; I would say that a majority of books turn out worse as movies. Here are a couple of the worst examples I can think of, and I’m going to skip obvious made-for-TV rubbish. I’m talking about major, or fairly major productions:
Dune
I’m talking about the 1980s version with Kyle MacLachlan, Sean Young, etc. Arguably the greatest SF epic ever written, and it got slaughtered. Not only was the acting and camera work seemingly calculated for maximum weirdness, they added things that weren’t even in the book! “Weirding modules?!?” What the fuck? That makes sense: when trying to trim a 500 page novel for the screen, let’s *add * things to the plot.
Instinct / Ishmael Ishmael isn’t the best-written novel I’ve ever read, but it was one of the most thought provoking. I really, really enjoyed it. When they made it into Instinct, with Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding Jr., they massacred the story so badly that I didn’t even realize it was based on Ishmael until about halfway into the movie. When I did realize, I felt vaguely sick to my stomach.
The made-for-TV movie of Brave New World mangled the book. They turned it into a love story where Lenina and Bernard end up on a tropical island raising a baby together.
it took three posts to get to Starship Troopers?
How about Bonfire o the Vanities? They wrote an entire book about that debacle.
Or The Firm. It looks like the studio lawyers got hold of that one.
Compare the novel frankenstein with the classic film version. Note any similarities? To judge by the knowledfgeable critics, Hollywood still hasn’t done this properly, but I’ll give Branaugh and the guy who made Victor Frankenstein high marks for trying.
Oh, yeah – practically any adaptaion of Edgar Allen Poe, Jules Verner, or H.P. Lovecraft. Even Disney’s 20,0000 Leagues Under the Sea takes considerable liberties.
And, just once, I’d like to see a version of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court that even approximates Twain. You can even cut out Twain’s comments on the power of the Catholic Church. Just give me a version that retains Twain’s story and wit. Even PBS bollixed this one up.
I haven’t read this book. However, the movie was so bad that it would qualify for this thread even if it were an adaptation of the instructions from a home enema kit.
Yeah, the “classic” Frankenstein was awful. I read the novel sometime in high school and was shocked at how misinformed I was about the storyline. The Branagh version was pretty good, though.
Oh, and another: the Ralph Bakshi-produced animated Lord of the Rings. I’ve been an avid LOTR reader sine that age of nine, and until about five years ago all I had to accompany my imagination was that steaming pile of shit. Fucking roto-scoped, mummy-wrapped, Sleestak looking orcs. Fucking Anthony “C3PO” Daniels doing a Legolas that makes Orlando Bloom seem masculine by comparison. Fucking Bilbo who looks like Buddy Hackett’s Mini-Me. I hate that movie.
Almost as bad a rebuild as Starship Troopers:
What’s The Worst That Could Happen? A Donald Westlake ‘Dortmunder’ book. These are seriously excellent novels. There is a genre called the Police Procedural, where the question is not, whodoneit, but how the police prove it. This is a crime procedural, where the question is not so much what they steal, but exactly how badly things go horribly wrong when it does. The lead character is… mmm… Nick Cage would do just fine. He’s a shopworn New Yorker, blue collar to the core, a two-time loser with a permanently depressed view on life. This book is the story of what happens when the rabbit gets pissed and bites back.
This movie is… not about that. It features Martin Lawrence as the Dortmunder character.
Wrrooooong. Just so wrong. On so many levels. Slick, high-class, jive-talking guy as Dortmunder?
The novel Forrest Gump is passing resemblance only to the movie. The book is laugh out loud funny, Forrest looks a lot less like Tom Hanks than he does Ethan Supplee’s Randy, a whole NASA subplot is totally omitted and most of the rest changed, etc… When Groom was offered a truckload of money to write a sequel after the movie was a blockbuster he reportedly considered turning it down because there’s no way to write a sequel to the book that’s also a sequel to the movie and that’s what people would expect, but then he realized truckloads of money don’t come along that often so he did and was less surprised than most when it flopped.
When I read that Drew Barrymore and Will Ferrell were going to star in Confederacy of Dunces I was non-verbal for a few days. It wasn’t a hoax but the project was cancelled. Hopefully that’s the last talk of makining it into a movie as I’d rather see in unfilmed than ruined.
Research indicates that the copies of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen sent to Stephen Norrington were accidentally swapped with a shipment of toilet paper. Oddly enough no one noticed, and shooting proceded on schedule.
This is one of the few recorded instances of both the audience and the production crew walking away with sore asses.
Aside from Starship Troopers, the worst was Johnny Mnemonic. I’d been waiting ten damn years for them to make that into a movie, and they completely screwed it up!
I don’t think I, Robot even counts as an adaptation, really. There’s no resemblance to anything in the book except about three names and the three Rules. And it sucks like only Akiva Goldsman-scripted films can suck. My understanding is that it was not originally supposed to be an adaptation at all. I hope that’s true.
Mists of Avalon on TNT. What a godawful miscarriage of a beautiful book. When I’m Queen of the World I’m going to make a law that mini-series made from books MUST be at least six hours long. Eight would be better.
I’ve been reading Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder PI series. Very good stuff. Like, apparently, a lot of people, I think Eight Million Ways to Die is the series’ high point so far. (I’m only up to A Long Line of Dead Men.)
I’d heard rumors that the movie was pretty bad, but it does have Jeff Bridges as Scudder, which seems like a reasonable choice. Sure, it transplanted the story from NYC to LA, but if that’s the only major misstep…
Then I saw the trailer. Sweet Jesus, does that look bad – and nothing at all like the book. (Though the comments on IMDB saying it got a bad rap make me curious.)
People, people - have we already forgotten the made-for-SciFi Channel miscarraige called Riverworld? My god, they had horses in the film, and replaced Sir Richard Burton with a modern astronaut! Worse than Starship Trooper, hands down.
