Film adaptations least like the book they're based on (spoilers aplenty)

Cafe Society
1

Recently, DeathLlama and I rented I Am Legend. Seemed your decent enough zombie flick, but searching out the threads about it here on the Dope surprised me in the huge criticism it got from those familiar with the book. Curious, I bought the book and just finished reading it.

Holy crap–if I were Richard Matheson, I would have someone’s head for claiming that movie was my book. In fact, I do believe it is the least like its original novel of ANY film adaptation I have ever seen.

Similarities:
Main character is named Robert Neville
Neville is the apparent sole survivor of a worldwide plague, immune to the contagion
Neville had a wife and daughter
Set in the near-ish future (20 years in the book, seems more like 10 in the film)
There is a dog that dies

Differences:
Book: Neville works in a plant
Movie: He is a top scientist, working to cure the virus

B: Vampires caused by vampiris bacteria
M: Zombie-things brought on by viral cure for cancer

B: Neville is a blond, blue-eyed European
M: Neville is Will Smith (this change I think is the most inoffensive–it doesn’t change the character of the book, and really, it doesn’t matter)

B: Neville’s wife became a vampire and he had to kill her (and buried her twice); daughter died of virus and her body was taken
M: Both killed in crash of evacuation helicopter

B: Set in Southern California (unclear of city, but mentions him going to Santa Monica)
M: Set in downtown New York

B: Neville is a whiskey-saturated alcoholic (understandable, considering)
M: Neville occasionally has a drink but is in Navy Seal-like ripped condition

B: Drives a beat-up station wagon that he babies
M: Drives whatever car he wants off the sale lot

B: Neville has a beloved pet dog, a puppy his daughter had him hold before the doomed helicopter takes off
M: Neville sees a stray dog and becomes excited by the hope that SOMEthing is alive; he spends weeks gaining its trust, setting out food, water, and milk…then it disappears for a few days

B: Dog dies as Neville chokes it to death after it become infected and zombie-rabid (zabid?)
M: He brings the dog in when it reappears, infected, and tries to nurse its wounds. It whines in misery and ultimately dies within a week

B: Vampire bacteria infects via bite or “dust storms”
M: In true zombie fashion, one must be bitten to be infected

B: Vampires are divided into two categories–the walking dead, and the living who take pills to keep the bacteria from killing them
M: A zombie is a zombie

B: Living vampires are creating a new society, learning to adapt to their disease
M: A zombie is a zombie

B: Neville finds a girl who turns out to be a spy for the living vampires; she becomes part of his undoing though she warns him of their plan in a note she leaves after escaping
M: Neville finds a woman and a boy (why does Hollywood always have to add a child?), neither of whom are infected, both of whom are on their way to find others citing belief in God and hope itself

Most egregious…

B: Neville is “Legend” because he is the monster, killing indiscriminately and ruthlessly…he is the horror that is feared
M: Neville is “Legend” because he finds a cure for the zombie virus

B: Neville commits suicide via pills provided by the spy, who admires his courage and acceptance of his fate–she offers him the pills in his holding cell before the society completes his death penalty sentence
M: Neville is ripped apart by zombies

Of course, there are more, but these are some of the most significant (and most unforgiving IMHO). Wow. Two stories with a similar theme, but the same story they are not.

What other book-based films are as, or more, ridiculously out of sync with the original text as this one?

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To my mind, I Am Legend isn’t even close to the worst case. Here are a few others:
Starship Troopers – to my mind, easily the biggest mismatch between the source and the final product. The movie not only changes the story and leaves out critical elements (the powers suits, especially), but it exchanges Heinlein’s careful and accurate science for absurd pseudo-science (if the Bugs are just throwing rocks at us, then we can live in peace – they won’t get to Earth for millions of years, at least) and, worst of all, changes the entire tone and philosophy of the story. You don’t have to be a nerdy fanboy to see that the changes are damned near absolute.

I, Robot – It didn’t start life as an adaptation of asimov’s book, and if it had stayed that way, it would’ve been better and more understandable. But just changing the names of the characters to those of Asimov’s does not make it an adaptation. And, again, the philosophical differences are huge (no matter what anyone says about the “Zeroth Low of Robotics”. read your Asimov again.)
Ice Station Zebra – besides science fictioon, spy thrillers are the other class of film Hollywood feels it can change with impunity. There’s an Arctic Station, and a submarine, and some double-asgent shenanigans, but there isn’t an awful lot of similarity otherwise.

the Osterman Weekend – I have yet to see how this can be considered an adaptation. I think theu took the name, and not much else.

The Spy Who Loved Me (and lots of other Bond Films) – Fleming apparently said that they could use the title but not the plot of this James Bond book. He needn’t have bothered. By the time they made this one, they had pretty much abandoned the books. The first few Bond films were somewhat close to the novels, sometimes with the plots altered to be a little more fantastic and to put in SPECTRE as the Bad Guys. So **Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, ** and Thunderball were pretty close. But Fleming’s death (even before they finished these) seemed to give them the will to change. You Only Live Twice had a script by Fleming’s friend Roald Dahl, but little in common with the book. they returned to Fleming pretty closely for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but subsequent Bond films got sillier and more juvenile and farther from the books, with only occasional touches of imagery borrowed from the books, until they made For Your Eyes Only, which took itself from the title story, along with “Risico” (in the same collection) and a touch from “Live and Let Die”. For the next film, Octopussy, they started out faithful, but then got weird. The got faithful again (somewhat) with The Living Daylights, but then didn’t even try to adapt Fleming until the recent Casino Royale. we’ll have to wait and see how Quantum of Solace does. It’s a pretty short story, and not much action in it, but if they manage to work the story in I’ll give them a mark.

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The clear winner: Woody Allen’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex (but Were Afraid to Ask). The book was a fairly serious (if wildly inaccurate) nonfiction book about sexuality. All that remained after Allen reworked it was the title and seven lines from the book that Allen used as a jumping off point for comedy skits.

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If “short story” counts as “book”, I nominate The Lawnmower Man, based on Stephen King’s short story of the same name.

Book: The guy who mows the lawn is some bizarre Pagan dude whose lawn mower moves by itself while he follows behind, sans clothing, eating the grass.

Movie: The guy who mows the lawn is altered by a crazy scientist into some kind of weird virtual reality computer-based superbeing. I’m not even sure why they felt that lawn mowing was necessary at all.

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Lawnmower Man. I win.

ETA: Darn you, Max Torque! Darn you to heck!

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I agree with Starship Troopers - the name and the concept of fighting against giant bugs in the military are about the only links between the films.

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Uh, Adaptation, based on The Orchard Thief?

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You should really try to get your hands on the alternate version.
It is in my mind much closer to the book and all in all a much, much better movie.
I hated the cinematic release but actually like the alternate version quite a bit.
Unfortunately it is only available on Blu-Ray (both versions are on it), but you can view the alternate ending on the DVD.

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Hear, hear.

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I don’t disagree with you, but I do think you make some errors:

He was sure drunk off his ass after the dog died!

No, it spread via air.

The creatures are definitely forming a society.

But yeah, it was not the book, but The Lawnmower Man definitely wins.

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Karloff’s FRANKENSTEIN

Victor is named Henry, Henry is named Victor.

Monster turns bad because of criminal brain.

Monster only kills two people- one (Fritz) who deserved it for tormenting the Monster, and one (Little Maria) by accident.

Monster remains mute, bestial.

Monster not on revenge-spree against “Henry”.

Monster “dies” in burning windmill.

Everything takes place in same Germanic burg.

“Henry”, “Victor”, Elizabeth, Dad all survive.
Great movie but not like the book! Bride did make Monster soulful & talking, but not the eloquent chatterbox in the book.

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If not the winner, surely right up there must be the dreadful adaptation of The Scarlet Letter (starring Demi Moore) which:

Makes Chillingsworth a murderer although he isn’t a murderer in the book, and then kills him off (he doesn’t die in the book);

Fails to kill off Dimmesdale, who does die in the book, and whose death is important;

Makes Hester Prynne a proto-feminist who tears off her scarlet letter at the end of the movie, striking a blow for women everywhere (not in the book);

Adds a pointless subplot of Native American interaction (no NAs in the book);

Gives the story a happy ending (see above re: Dimmesdale not dying and Prynne ripping off the scarlet letter, after which they literally walk off into the sunset together).

By giving the story a happy ending, the movie basically eviscerates the whole plot and point of Hawthorne’s book. It’s as close to the complete opposite of the book as you can get and still use the same character names and setting. It’s like The Anti-Scarlet Letter.

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Thanks for the clarifications–it’s been a few months since I saw the movie, whereas I finished the book two days ago. And oh yeeeeeeeeeeeeah, that’s right…the virus became airborne for humans, but still required contact for dogs. I remember him drinking after the dog died, but not to the same constant degree I read in the book. As far as the society–I don’t think it was clear in the movie. I agree with the blogger linked in Ranchoth’s post–they left clues of a society as it was part of the original ending, but they ended up going nowhere as the ending was rewritten. The intelligence and organization of the zompires was alluded, and then thrown aside it seemed to me.

I’m stunned how there are movies even less in compliance with original scripts. I wonder how many authors are grievously offended by the end product, and how many are just happy to have sold the screenrights.

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A few more examples:
This Island Earth – A particularly annoying one to me (note my UserName) – they basically discarded everything after building the Interociter and replacing it with idiocy cobbled together from looking at pulp magazine covers, apparently. They don’t even explain the meaning of the title! (which the rejected portion of the book makes clear). And they even mess up the part dealing with building the Interociter.

From the Earth to the Moon – of all the Verne adaptations, this is easily the worst. Most Verne adaptations are pretty bad and off the mark, although I’m willing to cut examples like the Disney 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and A Journey to the Center of the Earth (the James Mason one, not the current version) some slack.

Total Recall – exhausts its nominal source near the beginning, then basically pads it out with what looks like Robert Sheckley’s “The Status Civilization”.

Actually, I started a thread a while back about how they frequently take a short SF story, use up the material, then spend the rest of the film on padding. Besides this example, there’s Invasion of the Saucermen (“The Space Frame”), Mimic, The Twonky, and a host of others.

The Time Machine, The Food of the Gods (at least twice!), and a host of other H.G. Wells stories.

Most versions of Edgar Allen Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue
Damned near every adaptation of the works of H.P. Lovecraft (except The Call of Cthulhu)

The Puppet Masters by Heinlein, although it wasn’t quite as bad as it could have been.
Speaking of The Twonky, the movies don’t seem to be vert happy with Henry Kuttner/Catherine L. Moore, but I found good things in both ** Timescape** (based on “Vintage Season”) and The Last Mimzy (based on “All Mimsy were the Borogoves”). Hollywood doesn’t seem to like ambiguos or possibly dark endings.