Has a Movie ever Fallen Disastrously Short of your Expectations?
Yes
There’s a book called The Devil’s Candy which is all about the making of that movie. It’s been ages since I read it, but the whole thing comes across as a clusterfuck of the highest order. And it has what may be the best continuity error in cinema history. The production started in New York City, to film exterior scenes, then took a couple weeks off to move everyone to Hollywood and shoot the interiors on studio soundstages. During the break, Melanie Griffith got breast implants.
I love that book and yes, the movie adaptation was TERRIBLE!! I actually read the “Devil’s Candy”, which the last poster mentioned, and it’s an interesting book - not just from the standpoint of all the mistakes on the filming of that movie, but just as a great informative look at all the hard work and dedication that goes into making a movie, soldiering on tirelessly even as the chain of command mismanages the operation. Every single person, from cameramen to costume designers to location scouts to all the advisors, consultants, and assistants - everyone is given their due credit for doing professional work despite the adverse circumstances.
Back to the actual movie, yes, it sucked. One of the biggest problems was the casting. Likable boyish Tom Hanks as an arrogant and neurotic Wall Street hustler? Bruce Willis playing a reporter who’s supposed to be British? Morgan Freeman as a judge who is supposed to be Jewish? Melanie Griffith was actually not too bad though. She provided a lot of comic relief and she was undeniably sexy.
If Bonfire was to be adapted, the ideal medium would be mini-series, not a standalone film. (This would actually apply to a lot of long novels.) I could totally see a Netflix or HBO series doing it justice, with someone like Jon Hamm in the lead role. (Note - someone LIKE Jon Hamm - he himself is I think too typecast as Don Draper to pull off another show about high-rolling businessmen in New York, and it would be forever dismissed as Mad Men in the 1980s. However, Matthew Weiner would be a good director for it.)
Too many to list.
Worst:
The Phantom Menace
Bakshi’s LOTR
Jackson’s LOTR
Recent:
Dunkirk - I honestly don’t know what people see in it. I found it boring.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets - great CGI, interesting ideas, very bad movie.
The Hunt for Red October - finally got round to watching it, found it highly implausible, watched about half.
Agree 100%
As an aside, I think it’s daft to criticize Starship Troopers because it doesn’t compare favourably with the book. It’s obvious Verhoeven made a satire in the style of Robocop rather than a scene by scene filming of the novel. Might as well criticize Kubrick’s The Shining for not being like the book at all.
Not a great movie, but I rewatch it just to enjoy Tim Roth’s work.
As a movie it’s fairly good. As a cinematic version of Starship Troopers, it’s a travesty with hardly anything in common with the novel except the names of the characters. I’ve read the comments by Verhoeven alluded to above that he didn’t like the novel and decided to go in a different direction. Fine; take Heinlein’s name off of it, put on your own, and call it Nazis Hunt Bugs, or something.
One I haven’t seen mentioned yet is The Postman. David Brin was GOH at TusCon a few years back and I remarked, “I loved The Postman; I hope they make a movie of it some day.” He made a wry face and said he was thrilled that Costner had been cast for the lead, thinking he’d be the Field of Dreams Costner. Instead it was the Waterworld Costner. Mainly, he said, he took the advice of a friend of his who’s had a couple novels turned into movies: Cash the check, kiss your child good-bye, and walk away.
Could not agree more. My then-wife and I went to see this with another couple. All of us were fans of the book. After sitting through that disaster, we cautiously broached the topic with the other couple. After a few moments, we all came to realize that we’d each been whispering to our spouses during the film, and the only thing that had kept us from walking out of the movie was that each of us were afraid the other couple might have been enjoying it.
In this thread, I made the following, heretical observation:
I didn’t even bother watching HHGttG because I was sure I would hate it. For Adams’ books–like Terry Pratchett’s–a large percentage of the appeal is in the exposition, not in the dialogue. Attempting to capture that in video is never going to work.
I agree entirely. I knew about the film’s prior history, but that doesn’t excuse what they did. Clearly somebody – probably the studio Powers-That-Be – insisted on using the title to drag people in under the expectation that they’d be seeing an adaptation of Heinlein, not a satire of it. In that light, I’m perfectly justified in judging the film on its resemblance to the source material – if you’re going to presume to corral my money and my attention by holding out the promise of Heinlein, I have every right to criticize you for reneging on that promise.
In the same light, the Will Smith film I, Robot started life as a completely different story set in a world where Asimov’s Laws of Robotics hold. It was apparently a studio decision to change the title to I, Robot and claim that it’s an adaptation of Asimov’s book. The author of the original screenplay had (still has?) a blog where he described the metamorphosis and defended the end product because it got people interested in and reading the book. But it’s a pretty weak rationalization, and I think he felt that way somewhat, too.
That end product, I, Robot, is a severe disappointment for the same reason that Starship Troopers was – it not only fraudulently claimed to be an adaptation, but its philosophy was almost 180 degrees away from the original. A movie based on a Asimov Robot Story where the robots revolt against humans and , with one exception, don’t obey the Laws of Robotics? It’s practically obscene.
The story goes that the aforementioned Batman & Robin provoked what sounded “like a lost soul howling its agony from the pit of the damned” from Denny O’Neil.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The formula was can’t miss. Yet they missed. 19th century version of the Avengers. Sean Connery. Should have ruled. It didn’t.
The latest Fantastic Four
That movie was an insult. And I am one of the minority who feels the first two were good. I have very low standards. Just entertain me, or at least distract me with explosions.
As for me, I don’t hate the film because it’s a bad adaptation. I hate it because it is a bad film.
The only way the film “works” is if it is a propaganda film meant to be seen by the people in the film. Because as shown, the military in the film is too stupid to live.
Robocop was a awesome action film, and an awesome satire. You can enjoy it as either, or both and it still is good. ST is a bad actioner, and a bad satire.
I’ve never read Starship Troopers and so don’t care if it matches the book word-for-word or not at all. Either way, it’s just a terrible movie. I can maybe see watching it for “Look at how bad this movie is” but can’t imagine seriously sitting down to watch it on its own cinematic merits.
My own first experience with crushing film disappointment was Alien3. I had seen Aliens about a billion times prior and Alien a handful of times (but I was a kid for most of it so Aliens was cooler) and being so excited for Alien3. Instead I walked out feeling like a kicked dog. I haven’t really had a crushing disappointment since because Alien3 taught me to never get my hopes up too high for a movie.
See, I’m going to put only the 3rd one in that category. The 2nd one was disappointing, to be sure, but still had some great scenes, and left me with the feeling, “OK, that wasn’t where I thought they’d go, but I’m interested to see how they resolve things in the 3rd.” And then the 3rd was abysmal, and undid any of the remaining goodwill I had toward the 2nd.
Now Highlander 2 deserves much of its reputation, but my all time most disappointing film is a different Highlander: Highlander: The Source. You see, the Highlander TV series had done the impossible and redeemed the concept after H2, wisely ignoring the concurrent H3 which was a boring (and somewhat nonsensical) rehash of the first with MOAR MAGIC. But the series really hooked me, and did some great things. Highlander: Endgame then picked up from where the TV series left off, and while it wasn’t fantastic, at least served as a passing of the torch, setting us up for more movies based on the TV series continuity.
So I was super stoked for The Source, the sequel to Endgame. Hopefully, the first of many more to come… Then it got pulled from theatrical release and straight to DVD. Then it got pulled from straight to DVD and ended up on SciFi channel. But still, I held out hope, made a big bowl of popcorn, and sat down to watch… as this movie proceeded to take a giant dump on me for 2 hours straight. It’s garbage. Literally worse than Highlander 2. Because they should have known better by then. 
Ah, yes – this. Fantastic Four was my favorite comic when I was growing up. Jack Kirby’s artwork was cosmic, and the ideas and concepts were transcendent. The movies – I’ve seen all but the latest of the four*, and not one even comes close to achieving the feel of the comics at all.
It didn’t help that Pixar had already effectively done the FF with the Incredibles. perfectly matching the family dynamic, pretty nearly getting the powers, and perfectly capturing the essence of movement of the characters (Elasti-Girl is a study just by herself. Compare the way she moves with any incarnation of Mister Fantastic from the FF films. There ain’t no comparison!) But you’d think that they’d at least TRY.
As for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I do have to say that it was clearly rewritten and put together by people that knew and revered the basic idea behind the book. Their additions – Dorian Gray and Tom freakin’ Sawyer – actually fit the spirit of the book. And I could understand their jettisoning the Fun Manchu plot as it stands because it looks pretty racist. And I could understand Sean Connery – who was an executive producer - not wanting to make his character, a retired Allan Quatermain, a hopeless drug addict as he is in the original Moore. I can even understand their not wanting The Invisible Man to be quite as insane (and they were also restricted somewhat, I understand, by residual copyright restrictions).
BUT…
That said, they should’ve come up with a much better film than they did. Great effects and CGI, but a lot of that film was unforgivably dumb.
*Yes, four. I saw the “only made it to retain the copyright” version from Roger Corman. Even when you’re only going through the motions and have virtually no budget, you should still put more effort into it than they did.
My reaction to the Roger Corman FF was “It sucked — but it could have sucked a lot worse.”
The screenwriter had read at least a few of the comics (mostly from the John Byrne era, I think).
The guy playing Doctor Doom was a horrible actor, but he had the perfect voice for a madman in an iron mask. The armor was obviously cheap plastic, but they did a good job on the mask.
This is exactly why I go into every movie expecting it to be shit. If it’s good, I’m pleasantly surprised. If it’s bad, it’s just confirmation that I was right. 
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I loved the original Tron. It was the first movie to be played on our brand new top loading VCR. So when Tron Legacy was announced, I was so excited.
Well…at least the soundtrack was good.