# Books Most Egregiously Slaughtered By Hollywood **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 25, 2006, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177 "2006-05-25T15:25:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Push\_You\_Down](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/push_you_down/32/9095_2.png) [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/101 "2006-05-25T23:16:59Z")
“Return to Oz” I think is a pretty good semi-adaptation of the second Oz book. Obviously the biggest change is including Dorothy rather than the new character Baum created. It also is surpisingly dark (Dorothy is about to get electo-shock therapy in an asylum before she escapes and winds up back in Oz). The Wheelers are actually scary. It deserves extra props for actually using some of the Baum illustrations for the character designs. I think it is as good as any of the well-regarded 80s fantasy pictures (Labryinthe and Legend to name a few) ---
**Author:** ![Push\_You\_Down](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/push_you_down/32/9095_2.png) [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/102 "2006-05-25T23:20:36Z")
[QUOTE=lissener] Susan Orlean, the author of _The Orchid Thief_, would disagree with you. [/QUOTE] 🙂 The point of Adaptation (and why it is misunderstood and brillant) is that you can’t make a good adaptation of some books. So eventually Charlie just stops trying and writes a generic hollywood picture. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/103 "2006-05-25T23:23:47Z")
[QUOTE=OneCentStamp] . . . My objection, and I think the objection of those sparring with you (they’re welcome to jump in and disagree with me), is when the plot, setting and characters are drastically altered to make a movie shorter or more palatable. . . . [/QUOTE] I’d agree, although the objections in this thread seem to be much more general; any change that makes seeing the movie an experience distinct from reading the book tends to come in for complaint. You’ll note I specifically mentioned \*artistic \*input. I would distinguish altering a source novel, in adapting it, for artistic reasons, from altering it for commercial reasons. Paul Verhoeven, for example, in altering _Starship Troopers_, made it a vicious satire about war and Fascism. In my estimation, he made a masterpiece of satire, with something important to say, out of a trifle. YM, obviously, MV. ---
**Author:** ![Cunctator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/43a26b/32.png) [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/104 "2006-05-25T23:26:16Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck] You couldn’t get a better blueprint for a monster movie than John Wyndham’s **The Day of the Triffids** , but the film version was awful. [/QUOTE] This was one of my first picks too. It was a terrible film adaptation, particularly because the film overlooked the novel’s explanation of the triffids’ origin and instead had them arriving on earth with the comets. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/105 "2006-05-25T23:27:08Z")
[QUOTE=Push You Down] “Return to Oz” I think is a pretty good semi-adaptation of the second Oz book. Obviously the biggest change is including Dorothy rather than the new character Baum created. It also is surpisingly dark (Dorothy is about to get electo-shock therapy in an asylum before she escapes and winds up back in Oz). The Wheelers are actually scary. It deserves extra props for actually using some of the Baum illustrations for the character designs. I think it is as good as any of the well-regarded 80s fantasy pictures (Labryinthe and Legend to name a few) [/QUOTE] I’d agree. It’s not a great film, but it’s a pretty darn good film. If people hadn’t expected it to be, almost literally, a \*return \*to the Oz of Judy Garland and company, it would have been reviewed much more favorably. The fact is that Garland’s \*Oz \*was far less faithful to the books, so it’s the \*expectations \*that were wrong, not _Return to Oz._ ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2006, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/106 "2006-05-25T23:30:41Z")
[QUOTE=Push You Down] 🙂 The point of Adaptation (and why it is misunderstood and brillant) is that you can’t make a good adaptation of some books. So eventually Charlie just stops trying and writes a generic hollywood picture. [/QUOTE] Orlean said that it was extremely faithful to the point of her book, which was more important than the details. Kauffman adapted it in very necessary ways. The book was about, to some extent, how it’s ultimately impossible to define and capture certain ideas in a book (oversimplifying here). Rather than make it a movie about how it’s ultimately impossible to define and capture certain ideas in a book, which would have been extremely difficult, he adapted the situation, appropriately, to make sense as a \*movie, \*rather than as a book. The book was about its author; appropriately, he made the movie about \*its \*author. ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/107 "2006-05-26T01:31:05Z")
IMHO… when the director/producer/whatever change the premise/outcome/moral bits that the author intended is when they screw the book over… Not when they cut someones favorite scene or possibly reorganize the flow… it;s how faithful they are to the authors intent and/or story. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/108 "2006-05-26T01:54:12Z")
[QUOTE=Scupper] 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. [/QUOTE] That’s actually true of a lot of movies like this, like “Starship Troopers” - getting the license to use the book’s material actually came after a lot of the movie had been planned out. ---
**Author:** ![Frostillicus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Frostillicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frostillicus)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/109 "2006-05-26T02:19:57Z")
I greatly enjoyed the novel \*\*Memoirs of an Invisible Man \*\* because it cleverly showed how difficult it actually is for an invisible person to remain unnoticed. They still fill up space, make noises, leave footprints, etc. The god-awful movie starring the god-awful Chevy Chase decided to make his character visible for most of the movie, which kind of missed the whole point of the book. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/110 "2006-05-26T02:38:44Z")
[QUOTE=Frostillicus] I greatly enjoyed the novel \*\*Memoirs of an Invisible Man \*\* because it cleverly showed how difficult it actually is for an invisible person to remain unnoticed. They still fill up space, make noises, leave footprints, etc. The god-awful movie starring the god-awful Chevy Chase decided to make his character visible for most of the movie, which kind of missed the whole point of the book. [/QUOTE] I haven’t read the book, but I rather like the movie. I don’t really think it would have been feasible to have a movie in which you can’t see the protagonist at all. Movies being a visible medium, the audience is going to need to be able to see the character to relate to them. If you can’t see them at all, it’s going to be almost impossible for the audience to establish any sort of a connection with them. If he’s standing in a room and overhears a conversation important to the plot, how do you convey his reaction to the audience? Voice over can only get you so far. Plus, if the audience can’t see the character, how are they supposed to know what the character is doing to avoid detection. If you have a scene where a character is supposed to contort himself or move acrobatically to avoid touching someone or knocking something over, how do you convey this to the audience if they can’t see the character? Especially if the plot calls for him to be successful? Letting the audience see the invisible character while the other characters remain oblivious is the only way to visually convey that first point in your list: that he still has physical presence. Rather than “mess up the point” of the book, this seems like the only possible way to make it in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/111 "2006-05-26T02:45:56Z")
My picks - “Battlefield Earth,” War of the Worlds," (Tom Cruise/Spielberg version) and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” L. Ron Hubbard might be all kinds of freak, but “Battlefield Earth” is a fun post-apocalyptic novel. It’s a…really, really bad movie. We’ve gone around on “War of the Worlds” before - I think the movie was terrible; the addition of the gratiutous children and the 2 minute wrapped-up happy ending was a large let-down. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” - I wanted to like the movie so badly, but it just wasn’t good. The original, rinky-dink tv series was better than the big, blockbuster movie - how sad is that? THGTTG’s strength was its subtle, absurd, very British humour - no real surprise that Hollywood tromped all over it with their big, stomping, churn-out-predictable-movies-for-the-masses feet. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/112 "2006-05-26T02:47:32Z")
Okay, now imagine that I can spell “gratuitous”… ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/113 "2006-05-26T03:10:51Z")
[QUOTE=Interrobang!?] 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](http://videodetective.com/home.asp?PublishedID=3419). Sweet Jesus, does that look bad – and nothing at all like the book. (Though the [comments](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090568/usercomments) on IMDB saying it got a bad rap make me curious.) [/QUOTE] Hollywood really hasn’t done well by Mr. Block. My favorite of Block’s series is the Bernie Rhodenbarr set, all titled _The Burglar Who…_. So who did Hollywood cast as the witty, male used-bookstore owner and burglar? [Whoopi Goldberg!](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0092710/) Now I’m not one of those who hates Whoopi in everything she’s done. I just think that, after _The Color Purple_, Hollywood didn’t have a clue how to use her. But _Burglar_ is an absolutely _horrible_ film. I could only bear to watch a few minutes before turning it off. If you like Lawrence Block or Whoopi Goldberg, don’t see this movie! ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/114 "2006-05-26T03:38:34Z")
[QUOTE=lissener] In my estimation, he made a masterpiece of satire, with something important to say, out of a trifle. [/QUOTE] More accurately he made less than a trifle out of a masterpiece. ---
**Author:** ![sciurophobic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cab0a1/32.png) [@sciurophobic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sciurophobic)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/115 "2006-05-26T03:48:38Z")
[QUOTE=Push You Down] “Return to Oz” I think is a pretty good semi-adaptation of the second Oz book. Obviously the biggest change is including Dorothy rather than the new character Baum created. It also is surpisingly dark (Dorothy is about to get electo-shock therapy in an asylum before she escapes and winds up back in Oz). The Wheelers are actually scary. It deserves extra props for actually using some of the Baum illustrations for the character designs. I think it is as good as any of the well-regarded 80s fantasy pictures (Labryinthe and Legend to name a few) [/QUOTE] Except for Jack Pumpkinhead and the Gump, “Return to Oz” is based more on the third book, “Ozma of Oz” than the second, “Land of Oz” ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/116 "2006-05-26T03:49:13Z")
[QUOTE=lissener] In my estimation, he made a masterpiece of satire, with something important to say, out of a trifle. YM, obviously, MV. [/QUOTE] Obviously many disagree with the first part as it’s been done to death here. Just so you know many of us don’t believe it is a trifle. I’m sure we are wrong and you are right. Somehow it got on the West Point Commandant’s recommended reading list. Because it’s just a trifle of course. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/117 "2006-05-26T03:57:23Z")
[QUOTE=Loach] Obviously many disagree with the first part as it’s been done to death here. Just so you know many of us don’t believe it is a trifle. I’m sure we are wrong and you are right. Somehow it got on the West Point Commandant’s recommended reading list. Because it’s just a trifle of course. [/QUOTE] OK that’s two of you who don’t seem to know what “YMMV” means. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/118 "2006-05-26T04:05:20Z")
[QUOTE=lissener] OK that’s two of you who don’t seem to know what “YMMV” means. [/QUOTE] No, I know what it means. It means you know there are people who disagree with you. All we are doing is chiming in as some of the many whose mileage does vary. ---
**Author:** ![melondeca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@melondeca](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/melondeca)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/119 "2006-05-26T04:33:06Z")
[QUOTE=Lissa] 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. [/QUOTE] Wow…what a horrible nightmare. I am so glad that no one actually made a movie like that. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177/120 "2006-05-26T05:38:04Z")
[QUOTE=RikWriter] No, I know what it means. It means you know there are people who disagree with you. All we are doing is chiming in as some of the many whose mileage does vary. [/QUOTE] It means that different people will have different opinions of different works; the concept of “accurate” is a non-sequitur in this context. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-most-egregiously-slaughtered-by-hollywood/358177.md?page=7)