The criteria of the OP?
Since I think that the movie was far better than the book, I don’t think it qualifies :).
Daniel
Minority Report doesn’t have a happy ending. It has a hidden, mind-bogglingly depressing ending.
The original film “The Thing from Another World” is vastly diofferent from its supposed source, but is a good flick nonetheless. Bad adaptation but good flick, like Bladerunner. I really liked the 1982 version, overall, but didn’t see the point in the ambiguous ending.
Lots of film adaptations of science fiction and fantasy from the 1950s is pretty awful as regards faithfulness. Here are a few examples:
The Day the Earth Stood still – i actually prefer the film to Hartry Bates’ story
The Twonky
this Island Earth – of Course!~ CalMeacham has to object. Even where they’re relatyivelt faithful – like in the whole Interociter part – they managed to screw it up. They had the Metalunans send Meacham the plans. All they did in the book (and the original short story) was send a catalog – he had to dope out the plans for himself. I mean, otherwise, how is it a test of his analyitical skills?
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms – really a case like I, robot from what I hear. They had an original screenplay started, but then Ray Bradbury’s story came out, and they piggybacked on it. It’s a good flick – it’s the original 1`950s monster-on-the-loose film that created the genre – but it ain’t “The Foghorn”
Invasion of the Saucer Men – based on a Paul fairman story “The Space Frame” that was actuallt pretty good, but which got lost in the stupid flick
When Worlds Collide – a lot of this was pretty good, but they fell into some real stupidities now and then.
More recently we’ve had:
Nightfall – twice!!! And bad both times!
Mimic – a good short story that really shouldn’t have been ballooned into a movie
I haven’t seen them, but I hear that A Sound of Thunder and Paycheck really don’t do credit to their literary roots.
I’m aware of the alternate interpretation of what appears to be a happy ending. Have you come across any evidence as to which one Spielberg considers definitive?
Paycheck probably was the most easily adaptable Philip K. Dick story and then John Woo got ahold of it and things went awry.
Dracula is still waiting for a director who can capture the slowly-building terror of the book.
I saw a Japanese cartoon version of The Little Mermaid that kept the original ending. You’d figure tragic self-sacrifice would go over better with Japanese audiences.
I have something of a soft spot for Disney’s version though, for the sheer delight I felt when I realized that they’d stolen their happy ending from The Call of Cthulhu.
I just think that Hugh Grant & I should stop seeing each other. Or rather, I should stop seeing him. This was more a premeditated-Hugh-Grant-bothers-me sort of dissapointment than an honest one----loved the book, got depressed he was cast, and was duly annoyed throughout the whole thing. In other words, a fairly neurotic hatred and one I don’t expect to be widely shared.
I’m willing to give Disney a pass on their adaptations. They don’t follow the originals, but they’re still pretty good.
The movie Logan’s Run is nothing at all like the book. Whether it is better or worse is debatable. Nolan imagined a future in which the whole world is under the same youth-driven government, not just one domed city; life ends at 21, not 30; and there is no “Caroussel” ritual to promise reincarnation. It ain’t plausible. How could you run a high-tech civilization with nobody over 21?
I tried to watch a newer Mysterious Island. I had Patrick Stewert in it so I figured it would be ok. Nope, within the first ten minutes or so they added two women, I guess I can fogive them that, but when they landed on the island there was a huge praying mantus that ate someone. Of course a few minutes after that they meet Captain Nemo, I turned it off after that.
I thought the first movie was pretty good, the second one was pretty bad, the third really bad, though it did have the Stoneman singing “Born to be Wild” which was pretty funny.
I’m here to argue against a few of the most common responses to this question.
starship trooper yes the movie and book are completely different. But I would argue that the film really can’t be said to be based on the book, just taking the title and vert fiew elements from the book to make a completely different story. As such the book isn’t slaughtered by Holliwood, as it remaind untouched by Holliwood.
The same can be said for I, Robot, and Blade Runner though in the latter case the title is changed too. The book is untouched because the book is unused by the film.
Dune on the other hand is clearly based on the book as a whole, rather than a film borrowing a few ideas and a title. Non the less I think the 1980’s addaption stayed true to much of the spirit of the book. The addition of the Wierding modules was justified in that it provides a simple and quick explanation of the EMpror’s fear of Duke Leito (sp?) witohut requiring the film to go deep into the politics that the book covered and that though interesting in the book would have slowed down an allready long film. I think Dune did very well at what would otherwise require a trilogy of films to really achieve.
I consider Disneyfication and Spielbergerisation of books into happy-slush films to be a much worse sin, and more fitting as answers to the OP. As they often use up the whole book and destroy the meat of what the book had to say without any respect for the source material at all.
Add the fact that Herbert was apparently consulted during the development and/or filming of the Lynch film, and reportedly was pleased with it. Although, alas, I now no longer have a cite for that due to computer crashes.
I, personally, do not mislike Lynch’s Dune because of the adaptation. It annoys me because it is a bad movie. Possibly one of the much longer director cut versions would fix the problem with the storyline being disjointed and incoherent, but I can’t really be arsed to watch it.
It was a shame to see what they did to John Varley’s Millennium when they made it into a movie. Whoever cast Cheryl Ladd in this mess should be dipped in molten treacle and thrown into an anthill. Likewise, the botchery of George R.R. Martin’s Nightflyers was a great pity. Both of these projects could have led to excellent films if someone who actually liked and respected science fiction had been in charge.
here’s another obscure science fiction film – Martian Go Home – Fredric Brown’s original novel was a thoroughly off-the-wall bit of fantasy that required zero special effects, but did require the writing and acting to pull it off. Having Robin Williams, for instance, doing something like his Genie rom Aladdin as one of the Martiasns would have been perfect. Not essential – but it gives you an idea of what you needed. Brown’s book used the “hip alien commenting on human society” long before Alf. Or Mork from Ork, for that matter. But the script is dead, and the movie virtually ignores the book./ Hard to believe these guys went on to make Independence Day and Godzilla.
Just wanted to add my scorn to that being heaped on I, Robot. The thing that makes it so bad is that it got Asimov’s philosophy toward robots exactly backwards. The robot without the laws is just dandy, while all 3-laws robots are bad guys. Isaac would have hated it.
I was totally amazed when I saw a paperback of I, Robot on sale. It wasn’t a novelization of the movie. It had Will Smith’s picture on the cover, but the original Asimov stories inside. Someone unfamiliar with Asimov might have gone into total cognitive-dissonance catatonia from reading that book after seeing the movie.
And the sad thing is the movie would have been just great without the Asimov connection. The plot didn’t even need Asimov’s laws, let alone his character names. It was an excellent sci-fi action flick on it’s own merits.
I’m assuming this is sarcasm.
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. The biggest departure was to give the triffids a “kryptonite” that would destroy them ridiculously easily In the book, it took hard work, and, though the tide was turning, there was no neat ending.
David Lynch’s Dune is a failure, but it’s an honest one: they tried to stick to the book, but there was just too much material for a single film to cover.
Total Recall was a complete trashing of “We Can Remember it for your Wholesale,” a really big dumb movie that takes the concept and uses it as an excuse for breaking glass (About halfway through, I realized that every pane of glass shown in the film had been broken. I wondered if any glass would survive – and none did.)
Do you mean the Peter Jackson RotK or the 70s animated one by the same people who did The Hobbit?
(in either case, I disagree) 
Even though the Peter Jackson Return of the King was the worst of his trilogy, it was still a fine movie and passable adaptation of the book.
And the cartoon one was OK as a kid’s movie, which it was obviously intended to be. Maybe I just can’t bring myself to hate it because of the nostalgia value. Where there’s a whip, there’s a way, my friend.
Nice catch, Chuck.
they finally did a good adaptation of day of the Triffids circa 1987 for British TV. I don’t think it’s available on DVD, but it ought to be – it’s very good.
I’ve said before that Total Recall exhausts its nominal source in the first 15-20 minutes. Most of the rest of the movie feels like a ripoff of Robert Sheckley’s novel “The Status Civilization”, right down to mind-reading mutants with weird physical defects that can root out your hidden past from behind mind-wiping. Only there’s not as much broken glass in Sheckley. The ending is ripped off from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars series. Atmosphere Plant, indeed!
Yeah, I agree about Dune. Lynch’s Dune just isn’t a good movie, but at least you can see he read the book, and was trying to present the novel, with his own twisted Lynchian spin of course.
Everyone said Dune was unfilmable. Lynch made an honest effort, but he proved them right. Dune has a lot of cinematic elements, but there’s also huge chunks of the novel that consist of a character sitting alone in a room thinking about things, or conversations where the spoken dialog is only 10% of what’s really going on, and every line of dialog has a paragraph where the listening character analyzes what the previous sentence really meant. And Lynch’s solution of having thoughts in voice-overs just doesn’t work.
So Dune turns out to be a bad movie, but I don’t think it desecrates the book. Not like, say, The Scarlett Letter that turns Hester Prynne into a spunky protofeminist heroine, and the plot into a love story with a happy ending.