I thought the last version of Frakinstein was pretty good. I also thought that The Neverending Story was pretty good as well, they did make some changes but they fit really well I thought.
But I HATED Dracula, ugh that was just SO bad.
What, you think Kubrick should have included giant moving topiary animals? You’d’a had the entire audience rolling on the floor, screaming with laughter. I can just picture Jack Nicholson doing the double-takes.
It’s been a long time since I read the novel; did King include the quick shot Kubrick did of the guy in the bunny rabbit suit giving the guy in the tux a blow job? If not, he should have.
Why do so many people get so hung up about movie versions of their favourite book? No matter how precisely they are defined in the book, we all have our own interpretations of the characters and scenes we read about, we all have our own, slightly different feelings about the book.
Does anyone really expect the film makers to produce your version of the story? Of course not, the whole point is they are making their own version of the story, OR, they are creating their own vision based (however loosely) on the story, OR, they are creating something totally different, but inspired by their interpretation of the story.
Generally, I guess this also comes with the caveat that they will want to make money out of it, and so may make more changes to make it acceptable (as a movie, not as a book) to as wide an audience as possible.
I would think that very few of us have been personally retained as consultants to directors to ensure that their vision exactly matches our own.
Lighten up. Enjoy the film, or do not, but there is as much point comparing a film and a book with the same name as there is in comparing the merits of, say, a painting and a piece of music ‘inspired’ by it.
RussellM
Because it’s like taking ‘Gone With The Wind,’ opening up in the first chapter, then turning it into a movie about NASCAR. When you rape a book, you devastate the creativity and effort of the writer, who places his blood, sweat and tears into it.
Starship Troopers I read when it was first published, and read it several times more. The book was great but butchered up in the movie – what happened to the ‘time shuttle’ at the end? However, the spectacular editing and special effects made up for it considerably plus they did keep the basic story line.
RussellM makes a very good point which you seem to have skipped over, Skribbler: if you and your best friend sit down together and read the same book, it will be a different experience for each of you. The only way a movie can ever be made of a book exactly the way you picture it is if you make the movie yoursel. The only way. Otherwise, you just have to look at them as two different things.
I don’t understand people who go to a movie wanting an exact duplication of the experience of reading a book. It’s not gonna happen; it can’t. If you reallyk, really love the book, skip the movie. Or, as I said, make it yourself.
Re Starship Troopers, an excellent example. Verhoeven’s movie makes savage fun of the themes that Heinlein was venerating. He was pointing out the hollowness at the book’s center, and by extension the hollow center of the principles the book celebrated: mindless patriotism, bordering on nationalism (in the political sense), and even quasi-fascism. The movie was a vicious satire, the book was a worshipful celebration.
Uh, Skribbler, there was no time-shuttle in Starship Troopers. I think you are thinking of The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.
Sure the movie of Starship troopers was a vicious satire of the themes in the book, but if I was Heinlein’s ghost I would be mighty upset if they took ideas that I may have cherished and trashed them. Certainly a movie will be different from a book, since they are different media, but if a movie is so radically different from the book how can it be legitimately said to be based on the book?
It depends on what you mean by based on. Do you mean based on, inspired by, suggested by - or do you mean a copy of?
RussellM
Anyone who thinks Starship Troopers is a satire doesn’t know the meaning of the word. Verhoeven certainly doesn’t.
Nothing in the movie was satirical except for the costume design. The script and direction played it as an utterly straight adventure story. The “satire” explaination seems cooked up to explain why it sucked dead rats in its own terms.
Was anyone else confused that the movie “The Horse Whisperer” left off the entire tragic end of the book?
You are right! It was the Forever War!! I forgot!
However, I disagree that ‘Starship Troopers’ was a satire and I disagree that if two people read the same book, they get different ‘story lines’. Images, yes, but the story line has to be consistent, and a butchered up movie does not follow the main story line.
‘The Haunting of Hill House’ did just that. It kept the basics, barely, but then butchered up the story line. The intriguing thing about the story was that it was a mystery combined with a ghost story. Plus, in the movie they way over did the statuary in the house just to include bizarre special effects and the sculptures were far too poor to go with the place.
A writer spends a lot of time giving descriptions of key places and points in his/her work, so movie makers have blue prints with which to work and, of course, additions and modifications can easily be added, without screwing things up.
‘Casper,’ based on the comic strip, was a fun movie, but they went absolutely nuts with the design of the house, which, in my opinion, took away from the movie. It took the story line and special effects to save it. Besides, if I recall correctly, Casper and the Ghostly Trio, in the comics, lived in an old wooden, rather large two story house, not an LSD users dream of a mansion.
To say you disagree that Starship Troopers was a satire is just silly, because it was a satire.
And to suggest that it was “played too straight” is something I don’t understand. Are you suggesting that a satire must be played in clown suits? Dr. Strangelove, to mention the first brilliant satire that pops into my head, was played totally straight: that’s why it worked. Think of Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” a piece that is arguably the definition of satire for many people: totally deadpan, played as straight as straight can be. Joe Orton said something like “For a farce to work, the actors have to play it very seriously.” This makes perfect sense to me.
The satire is in the situation. To say “script and direction played it as an utterly straight adventure story” is to miss such blatant clues as, for example, the recruiting officer who is so gung ho about the military and is thrilled to learn that Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) is going into the infantry. His eyes glow with pride as he says, “The Infantry made me the man I am today,” as he’s sitting legless in a wheelchair and writing with a prosthetic hand.
I just can’t imagine how you could watch that movie and miss the satire.
I’m sort of the opinion that books aren’t any more entitled to be free of revision than plays, where Broadway plays and even Shakespeare did a little revising himself, or movie scripts, which go through many revisions.
Books, too, often get expanded or condensed, and in the case of children’s tales, such as Nancy Drew, completely rewritten to modern tastes.
A movie is, after all another form entirely, with a different audience. It’s also an effort that requires hundreds of people to make it. They all have touches to add.
A movie is not a solo audition, but a choral ensemble(stretching for the movie in question).
I think movies ought to be true to the book in certain ways–
They shouldn’t change a character’s whole personality (See the 1940s version of Pride and Prejudice where every character was made to be loveable, including Darcy’s aunt)
Why change the ending to make it happy? Shirley Temple’s version of “The Little Princess” ended with her father’s return and so did the latest version I think. If you are a little girl who read and reread and reread this book, it was disappointing to have this stupid ending.
Maeve Binchley’s novel (I cannot remember the whole title–something about a circle) concerned an unattractive girl who fell madly in love with this pretty boy–in the book she landed him and then realized how shallow he was and ultimately rejected him. Hollywood changed it so that the ugly girl blossomed and got the pretty boy and they lived happily ever after. This story has been told a trillion, zillion, gazillion times. The original ending was much more satisfying and less trite.
You can add The Shining. The Green Mile, Children of the Corn, Pet Semetary, The Stand, The Running Man, The Langoliers, The Tommyknockers, Cujo…well, actually most of the movies aren’t very good
That would be Peter Falk and Fred Savage (The Wonder Twerp). Not having read the book, it’s still not much of a surprise the adaptation of TPB worked since Goldman wrote both and, unlike other authors, is also an experienced screenwriter.
Lissener, you used an excellent example (although the whole “Would You Like to Know More?” bits should be a big giveaway, too). What’s funny is that when I lived in England for a year, nobody understood how it could not be read as a satire, particularly one of the American military mindset. But each time you’d read of a foreign journalist interviewing Casper Van Diem or Denise Richards, their response would be, “Um…it wasn’t a satire. Where’d you get that?” I haven’t read the book, but the tone of the movie seems to me unmistakable (and most of the truly great American cinematic satires weren’t made by people born in this country anyway)
A Devil’s Advocate argument here.
I agree that, sometimes, terrible movies have been made from great books. To some extent, that can’t be helped. The GREATEST books are those that penetrate the psyches of their characters, and which use language to create indelible pictures in our minds.
Film is a visual medium. It CAN’T delve into people’s minds the same way. At best, a good actor can give the audience some CLUES about what’s going on in a character’s head, but it’s not the same thing.
What’s more, for every movie that’s gone wrong by veering far from the original source material, there’s one that screws up by staying TOO faithful to the book. On the whole, I liked “The Green Mile,” but it was WAY too long precisely because Darabont was TOO reverential toward the book. A little less devotion to the book, and Darabont could have made a tighter, better movie that was 30 minutes shorter.
Not only that, a good director and a good cast can give depth to characters when the book DIDN’T! Mario Puzo was NOT a great writer and “The Godfather” was not a great novel. Francis Ford Coppola, Marlon Brando and Al Pacino MADE “The Godfather” a magnificent movie precisely by ignoring or revamping major portions of the novel.
I was very fond of the book “The Little Princess” as a child, not least of all because my father also died when I was a little girl and I knew of precious few other children’s books that dealt with this issue. When I saw the Shirley Temple film version I felt completely betrayed.
That would be “Circle of Friends”. This may be the case of end-changing that bothers me the most. I can at least understand the desire to give a story a happy ending, but the novel “Circle of Friends” had a happy ending! It just wasn’t the typical Hollywood happy ending.
The movie Fight Club improved on the book…
I completely agree about “Circle of Friends.” Bennie finally learns that the guy she has been pining for is kind of a cad and though she likes him, it’s not the basis for a long-term relationship. What a great lesson for adolescents, especially young girls!
I read the “Horse Whisperer” and threw the book across the room when whatshisname was killed at the end. I thought, “Are we supposed to think that this guy is heroic for getting himself killed…with a HORSE…right in front of the little girl with whom he had worked so long to help her recover from another death involving a horse?” Yes, it cleared the way for a family reunion, but I thought the author took the easy way out in disentangling the characters.
I’ve heard that in the movie, the woman just drives away, which I thought was a much more realistic, and emotionally satisfying, ending.
I’ve read that Robert Redford bought rights to the book before the author was done writing it. That may explain that horrible ending.