Oh, come on, if we’re going to include Disney we might as well just list them all. “Disneyfied” is a common-use synonym for “bastardized.”
(Alice in Wonderland infuriates me the most.)
If you can find an old VHS copy of the animated version, you might get the most amazing marketing WTF in history. I believe the blurb actually said “Fun for the whole family.”
Re: Disney’s Hunchback (which has a sequel as well), my favorite message was Esmerelda’s reaction to Quasi at the end and the lesson she had learned. Basically it was
Beloved was a compelling novel (far from my favorite but it definitely kept you watching), but the Oprah vehicle movie was absolutely unwatchable.
The Firm is not what most would consider great literature, but it was a really good escapist adventure thriller. The characters were well developed, the plot was feasible, and the ending (their escape through the endless mom & pop motels on the Florida Gulf Coast) was tense and brilliant. I couldn’t believe the ending of the movie, in which he tells her about the affair he doesn’t in the book and they indict the Mafia on a MAIL FRAUD! charges rather than stealing millions from them and hauling ass to the Caribbean like in the book
Starship Troopers has been mentioned already, but the current adaptation of Heinlein’s Glory Road is even more removed from the book. It’s like the filmmakers never even heard of the novel…
Yeah, Oscar was a football star, not a basketball star.
I vote for Total Recall.
This is especially galling, because Phillip K. Dick wrote a lot about the inhumanity of war and violence. Having Arnie up there blowing everyone away was about the worst way to bastardize what he wrote.
While true, I would argue that unless “the inhumanity of war and violence” was the message of that particular work (which I don’t THINK it was, but it’s been a while since I read “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”), this point is irrelevant for the purposes of discussing Total Recall.
More jarringly, Dick’s protagonist is something less than an every-man – dull, unimaginative, physically underwhelming – REKAL is appealing to him because exciting real-life experiences are simply never going to happen to him. Who to cast, who to cast? Ooh! MR. UNIVERSE!
The Running Man went in exactly the same direction. Here’s a guy with no options – a sickly, exhausted no-hoper. The kind of person to whom the slim chance offered by the ultimate in exploitive television would appeal. Who to cast, who to cast? Ooh! MR. UNIVERSE!
According to what I’ve read, it wasn’t even intended to be an adaptation of the Asimov’s book. The producers were making their own movie when someone pointed out that their story had enough similarities to Asimov’s to raise the possibility of plagiarism. They decided to cover their assets by buying the rights to his book and renaming their movie.
It’s not the worst offender by far, but Disney’s Hercules certainly made the Greek Gods a lot more family-friendly than they were in the original stories.
I so panicked when I heard they were going to make a movie of Glory Road, (How could Disney do it justice with all that nudity and how could they do the great copulation?) I immediately looked up the details and was quite pleasantly surprised.
“The Hotel New Hampshire.” It’s been a good 15 years since I’ve seen it, but it was just slashed to ribbons, IIRC. One of my friends told me that if I hadn’t told her about the book, she would have never been able to follow what was going on. Of course, when you take a character that’s supposed to be fairly unattractive and cast Nastassia Kinski in the role, you know they just don’t understand the source material.
Hmmm…reading this thread, it seems that John Irving books really get bastardized once Hollywood gets a hold of them.
Ah, Hercules. That movie was my first realisation that perhaps movies don’t always take the actual stories into account. Man, that show irritated me.
Adaptation* was a hilariously bastardized version of Susan Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief.
Both Lynch and the Sci-Fi channel took major liberties with Dune’s plot and events. In particular, Sci-Fi channel’s production of Children of Dune basically made up a new story. In their defense, I’m beginning to doubt that a live action version of Dune is possible, especially with the third book. On the other hand, an innovative anime just might do the books justice.
Hmm. The 1999 version (with Pete Poslethwaite as Jones) wasn’t that bad. I assume your main objection would be to the happy ending?
No votes yet for Bonfire of the Vanities? Although that is arguably just a bad film, rather than just a poor adaptation of the book.
Creator by Jeremy Leven. The movie only vaguely resembled the book.
However, having just finished the book I can say that this is a *good *thing.
HuH? I just watched the miniseries again and found it a faithful–if highly condensed–adaption of both Dune Messiah and Children of Dune.
Since when is turning a dreary and didactic book into an exciting action film with touches of dark satire a considered bastardization?
YMMV.
Since you’re laughably wrong on both counts?
The first episode (Dune Messiah) was OK, but the last two? Vital characters and subplots were eliminated from the storyline altogether. Both Gurney Halleck and the Lady Jessica were significantly cleaned up for the TV version (Admittedly, in the book, they were pretty far out to the point of being unbelievable.). I give the Sci-Fi channel props for separating out the hallucinogenic sludge and philoso-babble to make a decent show, but faithful? Forget it.