The reason most films fail to live up to expectations is because a movie is basically a short story, not a novel. By definition, a short story “can be read in one sitting,” just like a movie. You just cannot shoehorn an entire novel into a normal-length movie. The best movie adaptations are made from shorter works, like “Of Mice And Men” or Poe’s stories.
For a really good adaptation of a novel, you either need a trilogy of really long movies (LoTR), or to only focus on a subset of the novel (Godfather), or to stretch it into a mini-series.
The recent adaptation of Ender’s Game was halfway decent. Which I suppose is a success, since the best it could have possibly been under the circumstances was halfway decent. Certainly it could have been much, much worse.
I agree, and this is why movie adaptations usually seem so superficial if you’ve read the book. There are certainly exceptions. You can’t fault the movie version of Silence of the Lambs which is terrifically well done. I thought House of Sand and Fog, based on the Andre Dubus novel, was also very well done, thanks to great performances by Jennifer Connelly and Ben Kingsley.
I thought the 1995 miniseries of Pride and Prejudice did a pretty good job of adapting the novel. I still enjoy other, less complete adaptations as well, though.
If miniseries are being mentioned then Shōgun certainly gets a nod from me, of course it helped that James Clavell was a screen writer and knew how his work should be whittled down.
I’m not buying that last part. I think if calculated the ratio of WORDS IN THE BOOKS : MINUTES RUN TIME OF THE MOVIES you would not be particularly out of whack with your typical novel adapted to the screen.
I have not read the book, but what a terrific little film that was! I’ve seen it maybe 3 times.
I enjoyed A Beautiful Mind so much that I got the book and read it. I liked the book, but it was so, so dry. The film was much better. Similarly, I read Out of Africa after seeing the film and it was so different from the film that it’s hard to compare the two. All I know is that the film is on my best films list.
True, and Paul Bettany needed to be 8 inches shorter, with a threadbare wig. I’m willing to live with those transgressions if it got those two excellent actors in the movie. IIRC, someone on this board once suggested Gerard Depardieu for Jack Aubrey. A Frenchman. Playing Jack Aubrey.
The 1984 adaptation of 1984. Absolutely perfect adaptation, with John Hurt perfectly cast as Winston Smith and a great, understated last performance by Richard Burton. Great job of designing a view of 1984 technology as imagined in 1948.
The Dead Zone - probably my favorite of all King adaptations, excellent performances by Chris Walken, Herbert Lom, and Martin Sheen. Did a superior job (as did L.A. Confidential) of collapsing multiple subplots from complex novels. Both King and Ellroy liked the adaptations.
As a miniseries adaptation, I enjoyed Man in the High Castle, which adapts and expands Dick’s novel admirably. I think he would have liked it. Also "A Series of Unfortunate Events."
Speaking of PKD, I love both “Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep” and Blade Runner, but it’s not a very close adaptation, of course. But I think A Scanner Darkly is the best and closest adaptation of any PKD novel.
The adaptation of Stephen King’s novella “The Langoliers” perfectly captured the native plot, the characters, and the overall feel of the writing. His works have been so badly bungled so often so this was quite refreshing. If you’ve never seen it, acquire a copy from the library or something and watch it.
I’ll agree with that. Most Philip K. Dick adaptations stray too far from his work, and audience reaction seems to be to make too much of Dick’s “is it live or is it Memorex” vibe about the slipperiness of reality, which wasn’t intended by Dick or (at least originally) by the filmmakers. There’s not a hint in Dick’s books that Deckard is a replicant, or that the second half of Minority Report takes place in Tom Cruise’ character’s mind. There wasn’t any hint in the movies, either*
It’s been noted that the “Flash-forward” sequence in the original The Terminator owes more than a little to Philip K. Dick’s short story Second Variety – Dick asked “Why would you build a robot that looked exactly like a human, if it didn’t improve its functionality?” and one of the compelling answers he came up with was “to infiltrate among people”. The story was explicitly the basis of the 1995 movie screamers, which also wasn’t bad.
But I like the movie Payroll, based on the Philip K. Dick short story of the same name. Even though they padded it outrageously, it’s pretty faithful to the story. And it doesn’t get involved in any “nature of reality” stuff.
(Damn your unicorn dream “evidence” – if the audience had failed to puick up on an interpretation that important Ridley Scott would have spoken up about it in 1982, not waited for decades before suggesting it.)
I did read it after the fact but I thought “The Prestige” movie was as good or better than the book by Christopher Priest. And, though not a movie, I think The Last Kingdom series is a very faithful and good adaptation of one of my favorite book series by Bernard Cornwell. King Alfred especially was perfectly cast and acted.
I agree. I adored the Narnia books even though I didn’t discover them until high school. I wrote several English class papers on them and on C.S. Lewis (there wasn’t the wealth of information on him available in 1966 that there is today). I was very hesitant to see The LW&W because I was afraid of how it would be done. But virtually everything in the movie was EXACTLY the way I had always pictured it in my head.
I also feel like the 1965 movie Ship of Fools was a good translation of the Katherine Anne Porter novel (which I understand took her 20+ years to write). The movie captured the melancholy mood and impending-doom tone of the book very well. I highly recommend this movie if you can find it. Great cast of actors and great cast of characters.
I agree that the mini-series Shogundid a great job or representing this fabulous book. I remember a bunch of us at work were watching the show and we were learning basic Japanese along with Richard Chamberlain and worked it into our conversations.
