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.
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.
I bolded one line for emphasis, but your entire statement is correct.
I was always fond of 014. He was twice as good as 007. Even if he looked like Gilligan.
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.
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.
Which point was that?
People of mixed race can have light eyes, and Scottish, French, and Swiss are all nationality, not racial classifications.
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”).
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.
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.
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.
Got the same question earlier:
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.
Not at all. You’ve got Michael York right there!
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.
Mariner, wasn’t he? Rowing the boat from which his “wife” dove for pearls?
And yet I confess I enjoyed them.
“The Poseidon Adventure” novel and film have a ship capsizing and some of the same characters, but everything else is totally different.
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.
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.
Totally disagree. I read “One Flew Over the Cockoo’s Nest” and thought Jack was born for the role!
S/he asked about Red October, I was asking about The Firm.
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.