Cases Where the Movie Version Has Taken Over

Cafe Society
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Too many cases here. A story or character starts out as a story or novel. It gets turned into a movie and becomes iconic, and that has become the standard even when it contradicts the original. Even (especially?) when the creator doesn’t like it.

Examples:

1.) Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days – I have several editions with a balloon on the cover, because that, more than anything, symbolizes this story. But there is NO balloon in Verne’s novel. He turned it into a long-running play, too, and there’s no balloon in the play, either. The balloon because permanently attached to the story when Mike Todd made it part of his Todd-AO Widescreen film version, and used it in the advertising. He said he knew he’d be criticized for it, but the ended up giving him the Verne Medal (for the film itself, I’m sure, not the balloon). Todd did it because he wanted to enliven the beginning of the film, which lacks a punch. And, no doubt, to give his widescreen cameras aerial vistas to shoot. Verne did write several sties and novels involving balloons, so it wasn’t thatr huge a stretch. Most film versions since have included a balloon, including Jacke Chan’s and David Tennant’s.

2.) The Overlook Hotel from Stephen King’s The Shining – Stephen King wasn’t really happy with the film Stanley Kubrick made from his novel, not surprisingly – it was radically changed from his story. But it was only his second film adaptation, and Kubrick was a highly renowned director. Years later they made a more faithful version that King himself has a cameo in, but no one remembers that version. They remember Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel. So when they made a film adaptation of Doctor Sleep, King’s sequel top The Shining, the director apologized to King, but said that he had to use the Kubrick version. They used the Kubrick version in the film Ready Player One, as well, but that’s not too surprising. They also used the carpet scheme from it as the carpeting in Sid’s house in the first Toy Story movie.

3.) I think I’ve mentioned this before, but the 1950s movies of three stories change the alien -spacecraft from its original appearance to the then-new popularity of Flying Saucers. The Thing from Another World** (based on John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There?**), The Day the Earth Stood Still (based on Harry Bates’ Farewell to the Master) and This Island Earth (based on Raymond F. Jones’ This Island Earth – they didn’t change the title that time) all had flying saucers as the alien ships. In Day the Earth Stood Still and This Island Earth the alien ships had been mostly featureless ovoids. In The Thing it was described as looking like a submarine. But flying saucers were the new thing, and just too cool not to use.

4.) Fu Manchu is described in Sax Rohmer’s original books as clean-shaven. But, through ten film actors and a TV series, he’s always been depicted with the long thin moustache that has come to be called a “Fu Manchu Moustache”

Lots of other examples, but I’ll give someone else a turn…

Remember, these aren’t simply cases where the book and its adaptation differ, but where the film version is completely different from the oroginal literary source and has become canonical and iconic.

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Not quite the same thing, but when Alistair MacLean wrote Force 10 from Navarone – a sequel to The Guns of Navarone – he wrote it as a sequel to the film version, not as a sequel to the original novel.

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Anything Disney.

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Similarly the movie and book 2010: Odyssey Two

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Look at the movies about the old west, where a lot of the individuals were real people, but the movie version is quite different from the real person:

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Similarly with Craig Thomas’ Firefox Down and David Morrell’s novelization Rambo: First Blood Part II (Rambo is killed at the end of the original novel by Morrell)

The 2002 Steven Soderburgh film Solaris is essentially a remake of Tarkovski’s 1972 film Solaris, not an adaptation of Stanislas Lem’s original novel.

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Along the lines of Fu Manchu in the OP: in Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, the Grinch had white fur. But the Chuck Jones animated adaptation gave him green fur, and he’s been green in every version since then.

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Three long-running things with monsters – Fred Peirce’s makeup for Boris Karloff in the original 1931 Frankenstein (actually probably based on sketches by anonymous studio artists*) has definitely become iconic. That flat-topped head with bolts in the neck has so completely taken over that I don’t think Universal Studios even tries to sue anyone for copying it, but it’s been used countless times in Looney Tunes cartoons, the character of Milton the Monster, and countless other instances. Every now and then someone tries to depict the monster as he’s described in Mary Shelley’s original novel, but this image has really taken over. If someone does a one-panel gag cartoon involving the Frankenstein monster, this is what he looks like,

The other two are behaviors, or features. Vampires don’t dissolve under exposure to sunlight (or, sometimes more specifically recently, ultraviolet light). There’s no evidence for this in traditional vampire lore – the closest it comes is describing vampires as Creatures of the Night. Nor does Bram Stoker’s Dracula do so. He’s seen walking about London in broad daylight, protected only by a slouch hat. I’ve written about the development of this trope elsewhere, but it’s definitely a cinematic creation, owing its existence to Nosferatu, Son of Dracula, Return of the Vampire, and Horror of Dracula

Similarly, the idea of Zombies eating people began in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (even though they’re not explicitly called “zombies” in that film), and that they specifically want to eat Brains comes from Dan O’Bannon’s film Return of the Living Dead. Now it’s inextricably linked to therm.

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Also Prizzi’s Honor.

The Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea A few illustrators try to be faithful to the novel. Most try to do the Disney version, changing just enough to avoid a lawsuit.

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Good point.

The Frankenstein Monster, even in the Universal movies, is now depicted as having green skin. But at first he was only supposed to be very pale. Even in color advertising posters, he had normal flesh tones.

Some posters show him underlit with green. But heck, others had him underlit with red!

The mobvies were black and white, so you couldn’t really tell color.

They DID use bluish makeup on Karloff so he’d photograph as pale, and maybe that helped propel the color shift. But by The Bride of Frankenstein he was showing up as green in the posters

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As I understand it, blue makeup was a tradition from stage plays.

In black-and-white film, green makeup was often used because it photographed as pale Caucasian. Whether that meant “alabaster-skinned beauty” or “sickly corpse-like pallor” depended on context and details. That’s why witches, vampires, and Frankenstein’s monster were green. Backstage photos were published in publicity articles, and the trope took hold.

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In Johnston McCulley’s original story, The Curse of Capistrano, Zorro wears a heavy purple cloak, a mask that covers his entire face, and a sombrero. McCulley never states what kind of sombrero, but I got the impression that he was thinking of a wide-brimmed mariachi-style hat.

Hollywood (specifically Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.) gave the character the lightweight black cape that billows dramatically, the mask that only covers half of the actor’s face, and the sombrero cordobés.

The Lone Ranger was originally a radio program. That he wore a mask was important to the plot, but the rest of his appearance was left to the listener’s imagination. On the earliest novels, the cover art depicts him in standard cowboy gear: brown leather chaps and vest, a rather sloppy-looking ten-gallon hat, and sometimes a brightly-colored plaid shirt.

Hollywood gave him a more streamlined look, with neither chaps nor a vest, and an immaculately-blocked white Stetson hat. The movies were black-and-white, but the lobby posters depicted him in a variety of colors. Comic books and book covers in the 1940s often depicted him in a red shirt, and blue or black trousers. It was not until the TV show that light blue became the official color.

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In Bride of Frankenstein the script originally called for the Monster to be blind due to the circumstances of his supposed death in the first film. Accordingly, Karloff stuck out his arms to help guide his character in his blindness. Before the film was released the producer and director decided the Monster shouldn’t be blind, and cut all the relevant dialogue. Which leaves the Monster characteristically lumbering about blindly ever since.

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When it comes to The Wizard of Oz, nobody ever thinks of the book, any more.

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Frankenstein’s monster also spoke fluently and eloquently in Shelley’s novel. It wasn’t until the movies that he spoke in his familiar grunting pidgin.

And don’t bother looking in the novel for Igor (or Ygor, or Fritz).

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The movie version of Jurassic Park, while an excellent film, bears only a passing resemblance to Chrichton’s novel. Of course, due to the overwhelming success of the film the book is barely remembered unless one is a Chrichton fan.

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In the original Lone Ranger radio programs, made in Chicago, Tonto was a Potawatomi. That name was familiar to audiences in the Great Lakes region, but tends to mystify people in the rest of the country. Since the Ranger’s backstory is in Texas, the movies and TV shows have tended to make him a Comanche, or sometimes an Apache. The radio show portrayed him as middle-aged, possibly elderly, while Hollywood made him much younger. Also, traditional Potawatomi clothing is considerably more colorful than the generic Great Plains-style buckskins he wears in the films.

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I came in to mention that: specifically, “Dorothy looked, and gave a little cry of fright. There, indeed, just under the corner of the great beam the house rested on, two feet were sticking out, shod in silver shoes with pointed toes.” They’re called “silver shoes” everything in the novel: slippers are nowhere mentioned, though Glinda the Good does have a ruby throne.

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Paul Gallico wrote Beyond the Poseidon Adventure as a sequel to the movie — it’s a lousy book. The producers of the movie pitched it and wrote their own version; it’s even lousier.

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Sherlock Holmes never uttered the expression “Elementary my dear Watson” in any of the original stories or novels, Iirc, it was first used in a stage version, and then in Hollywood scripts.

He is also never described in the books as wearing a deerstalker hat, but an early illustrator drew him that way, and it has stuck.