# Great Movies that Betrayed Their Source Material **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 18, 2018, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821 "2018-08-18T05:08:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/61 "2018-08-21T00:22:17Z")
> [@Mr.Bill](#): > > Nah, they made some big changes. > > For example, The Ents going to war against Saruman. In the books, at this point Merry and Pippin were pretty much just baggage, with no sense of what needed to be done. They both matured and took responsibility later, but while with the Ents, they were just along for the ride. In the movie, however, it was Merry (I think???) who maneuvered the Ents into going to war against their inclination to stay neutral. That was totally beyond what he was capable of at that point in time. Actually it was a needed change. There is a sad and poignant scene in the book where Quickbeam sees some of his dead tree friends. Rather than have the Hobbits be entirely passive observers , the extraneous Quickbeam is deleted and Treebeard gets the same lines. Just like the switch from Glorfindel to Arwen made better sense. ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/62 "2018-08-21T00:35:58Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > … “James Bond 007” is just a code name, assigned to their best assassin/spy. or their 7th best? I always kind of thought along those lines. 00-0 through 00-6 are smart enough to not get caught 2 or three times and identified 5 more on every damn mission, and simply accomplish their assignments with boring, non-dramatic precision. But they would make a horrible story, so we hear about 007. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/63 "2018-08-21T00:48:59Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > _The Shining_ was definitely not “better for it” though. **The book is the best thing Stephen King has ever written to date.** A decent movie was made that was loosely based on it but didn’t tell the same story, didn’t develop the characters as written, and lost a lot of what made the book so great. Kubrick’s movie had some great moments but was a substantially flawed piece of work (to watch Jack Torrance / Nicholson gradually go insane is a lot like watching Jim Carrey gradually become annoying; Shelley Duval as Wenday was busy doing a Fay Wray reprise instead of being a strong if damaged character; Scatman Crothers as Dick Hallorann spent frantic minutes getting back to the hotel only to get killed off on arrival, not an improvement in the plot flow; the final denoument of the Jack character forgetting the furnace boiler and the hotel subsequently blowing up is replaced with people running in aimless circles and a fade to a photograph. And Danny, instead of being the hero, is scarcely even the primary vantage point. Shoulda stuck with the source material. And done better casting. I bolded one line for emphasis, but your entire statement is correct. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/64 "2018-08-21T00:53:18Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Of course they could go with the Casino Royale idea that “James Bond 007” is just a code name, assigned to their best assassin/spy. or their 7th best? I was always fond of 014. He was twice as good as 007. Even if he looked like Gilligan. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/65 "2018-08-21T00:56:31Z")
How about The Natural? Was the final at bat 180 degrees opposite that of the movie? The most recent film versions of I Am Legend and I, Robot are an insult to the source material, the audiences, movie making, and humanity in general. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/66 "2018-08-21T01:16:49Z")
One of my favorite book as a kid was _Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH_. Dan Bluth made an animated film called _The Secret of NIMH_ which added supernatural elements that weren’t in the book. It’s still a good film though. But I think the winner for the movie that greatest betrayed its source material is the 2003 film _The Cat in the Hat_. It is crude and vulgar unlike the Dr. Seuss’s book. I’d say of all the films mentioned so far nothing is worse than this film. ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/67 "2018-08-21T01:25:19Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > _The Firm_ movie took a pivotal legal technical plot point and turned it into something completely lame. Which point was that? > [@Colibri](#): > > He also has blue-gray eyes. > > Checking, in _You Only Live Twice_ it’s mentioned that his father was Scottish, from Glencoe, and his mother was French Swiss. So yes, he explicitly was white. People of mixed race can have light eyes, and Scottish, French, and Swiss are all nationality, not racial classifications. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/68 "2018-08-21T07:14:03Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > How about The Natural? Was the final at bat 180 degrees opposite that of the movie? It was but then again, the tone of the book and characterization of Ray Hobbes were also markedly different than the movie. The book is a lot darker and Roy Hobbes often comes across as a self-destructive jerk rather than the flawed but likeable hero played by Robert Redford. The book is like a baseball version of **The Hustler** (even though Bernard Malamud’s novel, “The Natural” actually came out seven years before Walter Tevis wrote “The Hustler”). ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/69 "2018-08-21T08:20:03Z")
I think we can squash any sort of _WAS BOND BLACK IN THE NOVELS?!_ discussion with the simple fact the novel **Live and Let Die** features Bond squaring off against a black crime kingpin and Bond clearly speaks about “negroes” as he calls them as a separate race of people which he wouldn’t do if he was black himself. > [@](#): > > ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a great Negro criminal before,’ said Bond. ‘Chinamen, of course, the men behind the opium trade. Ther’ve been some big-tome Japs, mostly in pearls and drugs. Plenty of Negroes mixed up in diamonds and gold in Africa, but always in a small way. They don’t seeem to take to big business. Pretty law-abding chaps on the whole, I should have thought.’ ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/70 "2018-08-21T11:48:41Z")
A few other films – not great ones – that were so different from the source that they might not be thought related. \*\*Ice Station Zebra The Osterman Weekend Force 10 from Navarone Day of the Triffids\*\* (except for the circa 1987 BBC version) **Invasion of the Saucermen** and **Invasion of the the Eye Creatures** (believe it or not, actually based on a decent short story – “The Space Frame” by Manly Wade Wellman) \*\*This Island Earth The Brain Eaters\*\* (ripoff of Heinlein’s _The Puppet Masters_ even worse than the adaptation of that name) **Arena** not a movie, but the Star Trek episode “adapted” from Fredric Brown’s short story Both the movie version of **Pygmalion** and the stage play and movie **My Fair Lady** , both of which changed the ending of Shaw’s play the same way. Damned near anything by Edgar Allen Poe, including \*\*The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Raven, Pit and the Pendulum, \*\* etc. Also just about anything by Jules Verne. Really. Most Verne adaptations are the pits. The decent films _still_ made significant changes to the works (The silent _20,000 Leagues Under the SEa_, the Disney version of it, the Mike Todd version of _Around the World in 80 Days_. I’m told that the Russian version of _The Children of Captain Grant/In search of the Castaways_ is pretty good. The Disney version isn’t.) Most adaptations of H.G. Wells. I except \*\* The Man Who Could Work Miracles\*\*, which is really well done. And the original _Invisible man_ wasn’t bad. But I’m not fond of George Pal’s versions of \* war of the Worlds\* or _The Time Machine_, or of any other versions of them. And the less said about most of the others _Food of the Gods, Empire of the Ants_, the better. Hallmark productions did an interesting TV three-part adaptation of several less-known Wells stories that was OK, but took significant liberties. Most adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft, until recently. The last two decades have seen some pretty good versions of his stuff, but some awful stuiff, too. ---
**Author:** ![mcgato](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac8455/32.png) [@mcgato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mcgato)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/71 "2018-08-21T12:34:01Z")
I liked the first three Jason Bourne movies (never saw the fourth one). The three movies share titles with three books by Robert Ludlum. All three movies, though, are loosely based on characters that were introduced in “The Bourne Identity.” A major plot within the book (Carlos the Jackal) is not included in the movie. The second two movies have almost nothing to do with the books of the same name, except that there is a character named Jason Bourne. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/72 "2018-08-21T12:35:01Z")
> [@j666](#): > > Which point was that? Got the same question earlier: > [@CookingWithGas](#): > > Ages ago for me too. I think it had to do with how the deception of appearing to destroy the October sub was handled. I’ll have to go back and check. ---
**Author:** ![gonzoron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a6a055/32.png) [@gonzoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzoron)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/73 "2018-08-21T13:25:34Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > I think we can squash any sort of _WAS BOND BLACK IN THE NOVELS?!_ discussion with the simple fact the novel **Live and Let Die** features Bond squaring off against a black crime kingpin and Bond clearly speaks about “negroes” as he calls them as a separate race of people which he wouldn’t do if he was black himself. Thank you, and fair enough. I’ll go ahead and say that conclusively answers my question. Though, I’d still say it’s not at all an inherent and important piece of his character, particularly considering that we had to dig rather deep to find that reference, and also that it’s from the second book, not the first. I’m sure that given the time it was written, the author didn’t give a second thought to the “obvious” fact that Bond was white, but it seems to me that his whiteness is far less impactful to the story and his character than his Britishness, Male-ness, and Hetero-ness. If the films were period pieces, it could be different, but if we accept the updated tech and world political situation, why not accept the updated demographics and social mobility of Britain and the rest of the modern world? Based on the quote you cited, it would certainly be a change from the source material to cast him as black, but not a betrayal. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/74 "2018-08-21T14:32:10Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > **Logan’s Run** … > Being faithful to the book would have required a dozen Basil Exposition characters, and would have slowed the film to a crawl… Not at all. You’ve got Michael York _right there!_ > [@MrAtoz](#): > > And yet no actor ever cast as Bond has looked anything like Hoagy Carmichael. Is that also a betrayal of the source material? Ian Fleming was actually not too pleased at having Sean Connery cast in the lead role, but came to appreciate him, and then even added Bond’s Scottish roots to a later book. > [@Colibri](#): > > And in _You Only Live Twice_ he disguised himself as a Japanese coal miner… Mariner, wasn’t he? Rowing the boat from which his “wife” dove for pearls? > [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > …The most recent film versions of I Am Legend and I, Robot are an insult to the source material, the audiences, movie making, and humanity in general. And yet I confess I enjoyed them. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/75 "2018-08-21T14:44:01Z")
“The Poseidon Adventure” novel and film have a ship capsizing and some of the same characters, but everything else is totally different. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/76 "2018-08-21T19:36:09Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Both the movie version of **Pygmalion** and the stage play and movie **My Fair Lady** , both of which changed the ending of Shaw’s play the same way. > Also just about anything by Jules Verne. Really. Most Verne adaptations are the pits. The decent films _still_ made significant changes to the works (The silent _20,000 Leagues Under the SEa_, the Disney version of it, the Mike Todd version of _Around the World in 80 Days_. > Most adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft, until recently. The last two decades have seen some pretty good versions of his stuff, but some awful stuiff, too. Shaw left it open, it’s not hard to see the ending as the movies did. The Disney version of 20KUtS is actually better than the original. The 1959: Journey to the Center of the Earth is a classic, and altho it changed the hero to British- that worked very well with James Mason. Yes, and Cast a Deadly Spell is the best HPL film- and it’s not based on any of the books at all. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/77 "2018-08-21T20:01:51Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Mariner, wasn’t he? Rowing the boat from which his “wife” dove for pearls? The question was about the books. In the book he was initially disguised as a coal miner, becoming a fisherman after he got amnesia after killing Blofeld. In the movie he is disguised as a Japanese fisherman working with his diver wife. ---
**Author:** ![Valentine\_Smith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/76d3ee/32.png) [@Valentine\_Smith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valentine_Smith)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/78 "2018-08-21T21:34:44Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > Kind of funny, that. Randle Patrick McMurphy was burly, red-haired, with a very Irish way about him. Nicholson was dreadfully miscast for that role, but he managed to pull it off rather well. Totally disagree. I read “One Flew Over the Cockoo’s Nest” and thought Jack was born for the role! ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2018, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/79 "2018-08-22T00:25:42Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > Got the same question earlier: S/he asked about Red October, I was asking about The Firm. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2018, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821/80 "2018-08-22T01:39:36Z")
My own nominees… •As a sixth grader I picked up and read “Bed-knob and Broom-stick”. Many years later, when Disney released a film based on it, I went and saw, and it was far more entertaining and less tedious than the book. • _A Year in Provence_ by Peter Mayle was not as much fun as the video series starring John Thaw. • Having dissed Stanley Kubrick above… _Delores Claiborne_ was a good story told in an annoying way (nonstop dialog by the eponymous character who has elderly diarrhea of the mouth in the police station and is less charming than Stephen King thinks). The movie with Kathy Bates and Judy Parfitt was a masterpiece. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-movies-that-betrayed-their-source-material/819821.md?page=5)