“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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Okay, now imagine that I can spell “gratuitous”…
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?
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!
More accurately he made less than a trifle out of a masterpiece.
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”
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.
OK that’s two of you who don’t seem to know what “YMMV” means.
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.
Wow…what a horrible nightmare. I am so glad that no one actually made a movie like that.
It means that different people will have different opinions of different works; the concept of “accurate” is a non-sequitur in this context.