Movie adaptations that so vexed you that you swore vengeance on the studio

Cafe Society
21

[QUOTE=Anaamika]
I think you did, dear. But that would entail me remembering more than a week ago and that’s not going to happen right now.

Although you really don’t take disagreement well, do you! Flaming flying monkeys to anyone who disagrees? :wink:

Oh…and the wheel is rigged. snicker
[/QUOTE]

:: stumbles away from flaming, shit-splattered wreck of my car, kicking aside monkey corpses as I move ::

Anyone BUT you, darling. Though now I must unleash vengeance on someone else AGAIN since you have clearly been screwing with my villain accouterments.

:: eyes wheel, decides to choose victim by seeing who posts next ::

22

The 1996 version of Jane Eyre. Absolutely horrible. Jane is already a tough chick without trying to add more to her. There was a great BBC version from 1983 (with Timothy Dalton) though.

Flowers in the Attic. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit how much I liked this book, but I was thirteen when I first read it and impressionable. This was an odd choice to make a film of anyways…I mean there’s the incest bit…and the killing of little children.

A couple more:
The Sound and the Fury–with Yul Brynner as Jason???

Kubrick’s Lolita. Most people don’t agree with me on this one, but come on, Lolita looks like she’s about thirty in here. I’m not saying I think they should have gotten a little girl to play the part, I actually just think some novels shouldn’t be made into films.

23

[QUOTE=lovelybean]

Flowers in the Attic. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit how much I liked this book, but I was thirteen when I first read it and impressionable. This was an odd choice to make a film of anyways…I mean there’s the incest bit…and the killing of little children.

[/quote]

I agree with you, though they left the incest portion completely out, didn’t they?

Um! There is a long, clear shot of Frank Langella’s bouncing nutsack in there and all you can think to complain about is Lolita’s AGE?! Come ON!

Oh, and watch out for the monkeys.

24

I agree with most of these, but I gotta cut Disney some slack for the Little Mermaid and Hunchback. Hans Christian Anderson had an unholy love for sad endings – his TLM was an original story, not some ancient and beloved traditional Marchen. He’s the one responsible for bringing that unnecessary sad ending outtta nowhere, and having the Mermaid turned into seafoam and dancing with the angels. The ending of the Disney film was needlessly bombastic (someone has pointed out that it’s practically the same as in "The Call of Cthulhu!), but to me still preferable to the original. (I prefer the Disney ending even more to The Steadfast Tin Soldier in Fantasia 2000 – in the original Anderson snatches a sad ending from the very jaws of a happy ending, to no point that I can see.)

As for Hunchback – NO film version I’m aware of it faithful to Hugo’s book. What’s lauded as the best screen adaptation – Charles Laughton’s – also leaves Quasimodo alive at the end. Why should Disnet take all the flak?
I hate the “adaptations” of Starship Troopers and I, Robot with the heat of a thousand suns, but at least in the case of I, Robot I see what happened – the guy was trying to write an original screemplay set in Asimov’s universe, and they morphed it into something else with a halfhearted attempt to pass it off as Asimov’s book, managing to completely subvert the original tone, message, and philosophy in the process. I hated The Puppet Masters, too – it could’ve been great. Having read the screenwriters’ accpount of its genesis and development, I realize that it could’ve ended up worse. But it still ended up pretty bad.

I think Lynch’s Dune deserves a lot of credit – it could’ve been better, too, but it did try to be a work fairly faithful to its source (at least a helluva lot better than Jodorowski’s version would’ve been) yet not slavish to it. He even used John Schoenherr’s original paintings as a guide. The film has great visuals and moments of brilliance, but I think they bit off more than they could chew with a novel that long.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen I could understand – Connery was the exec producer – no way he’s going to make his Allan Quartermain an ineffectual drug addict. And they weren’t going to open themselves p to charges of racism with that war of Fu Manchu’s Chinese mafia. Or put in Moore’s omnipresent rape fantasies. It coulda been a lot closer to the book, and still been effective, but at least I understand where it’s coming from. And the introduction of Dorian Gray and Tom Sawyer (!) were at least done in the spirit of the original.

This is why I don’t think there should be an adaptation of Watchmen – it’d be too long, too involved, and they’d dumb it down.

Practically all adatations of Poe, Verne, Wells, and Lovecraft are pretty awful. There are rare exceptions.

And I pit every adaptation of Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee. Every version screws with it abominably – even the one on PBS. Maybe someday they’ll come up with a version that’s not a vehicle for a “Star” (Will Rogers, Bing Crosby) and retains Twain’s irony and wit.

25

[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer]
2. League of Extraordinary Gentleman. I really don’t understand this one. If you’re doing an adaptation of a little-known work of literature or comics with a fairly cultish following, why would you go out of the way to make your film unpalatable to the very fans of this work?
[/QUOTE]

I simply can’t understand this one.

I actually haven’t seen LXG yet, so I can’t say if it stands on its own, but…

They didn’t actually do anything to the comics that Moore hadn’t already done to the novels, and comic strips, and so forth, that he appropriated.

One of the more extreme examples: Rupert Bear was included in the second volume as one of Dr Moreau’s creations (and all the rest of his creations are comic strip and children’s book characters, but Rupert is the only one I remember offhand), and it was stated he regularly had sex with one of the local women to work off those urges - because nobody wants a horny bear with blue balls around.

Or Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms and Pollyanna as some of Griffin’s rape victims.

If it’s not a good movie, that’s one thing - but I have no idea how that would reflect on the book, what with the ‘not a direct, or even particularly faithful adaptation’ part - but most of the complaints I’ve seen about it were simple change-phobia…

I don’t get that at the best of times, but in THIS particular case? I’m especially perplexed.

26

[QUOTE=Anaamika]
I agree with you, though they left the incest portion completely out, didn’t they?
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, they did. Along with most of the rest of the book.

Oh, and thanks for reminding me about the nutsack. Now, if you’ll excuse me…I need to go scrub my brain.

27

[QUOTE=Um! There is a long, clear shot of Frank Langella’s bouncing nutsack in there and all you can think to complain about is Lolita’s AGE?! Come ON![/QUOTE]

He’s actually in a later version, though. The Kubrick one was made in 1962. I think Franky was in the 90s one.

28

[QUOTE=Mikemike2]
I often wonder why producer’s buy the rights to a book like I, Robot , and then throw away the whole story in favor of their own. Same query with Starship Troopers.

I have seen the movie and and read the book for Contact. I thought the movie was a good adaptation of the book, but the book was better. How were they the opposites of each other? It has been a while since I saw or read either.
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The conclusion, the meaning, the entire purpose of the story.

Contact (the book) was about a womans search for evidence of Gods existence and her refusal to take anything so important on faith. By the end of the novel, she found the proof she needed to accept the existence of God.

Contact (the movie) was about a womans search for evidence of Gods existence. By the end of the movie, she gave up the search and decided to accept Gods existence on faith.

The movie took the message of the book (Always question! Look for evidence! Take nothing on faith!) and completely inverted it (Stop questioning! Provide no evidence! All you need is belief!!)

29

[QUOTE=Tengu]
I simply can’t understand this one.

I actually haven’t seen LXG yet, so I can’t say if it stands on its own, but…
[/QUOTE]

Let me try to explain. I think it boils down to 2 things.

First, it’s not a good movie at all. There are too many “Why, that makes no sense even in the fantasy context of this story” moments. (See: the Nautilus manuvering through the canals of Venice.)

More important, though, is this. If a movie is based on a book, particularly one with only niche appeal, it’s likely that the first audience members will be those niche fans, who tend to be a bit, ah, rabid. It seems to me pointless to make radical change to the plot–making the movie more “Hollywood” – when all that will serve to do is to estrange the persons whom you are depending on to provide favorable buzz to your storyline.

Here’s a hypothetical example. Imagine the Buffy movie had never been made, and the TV show was all we knew of Whedon’s work; and imagine further than someone like, oh, Michael Bay got hold of the movie rights. If he looked it at and decided to make Xander and Angel the primary actors in the fight against the Master, reduced Buffy to a sideline character who mostly gave cryptic, Deanna-Troyeque warnings and had a big bust, and eliminated Cordelia, Giles, and Jenny Calendar entirely, do you think Buffy fans would be vexed into not watching?

30

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
Why would you BOTHER making such a movie, that’s what I don’t understand. If you don’t like the sin and redemption angle of the book, if you don’t like the old fashioned morality, why would you bother using that book as the basis for your movie? Why would you think another adaptation of “The Scarlet Letter” is worth making if you obviously think “The Scarlet Letter”, as written, is such crap?
[/QUOTE]
According to Demi Moore at the time of the films release, more people will see her movie than read the original book so a few liberties won’t be noticed. I’ve never been able to stomach her since.

31

[QUOTE=RikWriter]
The movie was better.
[/QUOTE]

I agree.

I can’t imagine that any adaptation would ever vex me. Easy enough to ignore it if I don’t like it.

32

[QUOTE=Yookeroo]
I agree.

I can’t imagine that any adaptation would ever vex me. Easy enough to ignore it if I don’t like it.
[/QUOTE]

I think the vexation might come for those of us who wait a long time to see a favorite book translated into film, and thanks to Ralph Bakshi fucking it up, have to wait another two decades before anyone else can convince a studio to give it a try.

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when it rained in Dune :eek:

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[QUOTE=ouryL]
when it rained in Dune :eek:
[/QUOTE]

And how can this be? For he IS the Kwisatz Haderach!

…and his name is a killing word. :rolleyes:

35

[QUOTE=JohnT]
Contact (the movie) was about a womans search for evidence of Gods existence. By the end of the movie, she gave up the search and decided to accept Gods existence on faith.

[/QUOTE]

When did that happen? She didn’t accept God’s existance on faith. She didn’t accept God’s existance at all.

36

[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer]
More important, though, is this. If a movie is based on a book, particularly one with only niche appeal, it’s likely that the first audience members will be those niche fans, who tend to be a bit, ah, rabid. It seems to me pointless to make radical change to the plot–making the movie more “Hollywood” – when all that will serve to do is to estrange the persons whom you are depending on to provide favorable buzz to your storyline.
[/QUOTE]

OK, seriously, again, I’ve read League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

I’ve also read a not-insignificant portion of the source material.

There is nothing LXG could have done to LoEG that would compare to Moore making Rupert Bear into a sex-crazed thug, or having Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms and Pollyanna students at an S&M school where they were raped, and impregnated, by Hawley Griffin.

To turn the Buffy analogy around, by that logic, aside from being actually GOOD the Buffy TV series is as much of a crime as LXG - a bigger crime, in fact, as almost everything from the movie was thrown out. But if you’re making a TV series based on a fairly obscure movie don’t you want to make it to appeal to the few fans it has, so that they can spread the word? The people who know the movie and didn’t like it wouldn’t watch. They people who don’t know the movie might or might not watch. It’s the fans who you want, right?

No, it’s not. You want a wider audience than the niche. You want the people who never heard of it, you want the people who actually disliked it. If you get the fans, all the better, but you want an audience beyond them.

37

[QUOTE=JohnT]

Contact (the movie) was about a womans search for evidence of Gods existence. By the end of the movie, she gave up the search and decided to accept Gods existence on faith.

[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the reply. I agree with you about the book, but don’t see your point with the movie. The scientist character is in the akward position at the end of the movie of not having objective proof of her trip (the government is investigating possible fraud) and having to ask people to take her word for it (ie take her version on faith). She acknowledges this is an akward position, but there is no mention of her then accepting God’s existance. The objective proof of her trip (although kinda weak) is then found. The mass crowd buys her story on faith, but I don’t think this changed the scientist’s (I keep wanting to call her Claire :dubious: ) view of always looking for evidence.

Carl Sagan was a consultant to the movie version until his death.

38

The Grinch. I have not forgiven Ron Howard for this.

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[QUOTE=Mikemike2]

Carl Sagan was a consultant to the movie version until his death.
[/QUOTE]

Sure, whaddaya think killed him ? :rolleyes:

[QUOTE=Tengu]

[Quote=Skald the Rhymer]

More important, though, is this. If a movie is based on a book, particularly one with only niche appeal, it’s likely that the first audience members will be those niche fans, who tend to be a bit, ah, rabid…
[/quote]

OK, seriously, again, I’ve read League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

…
No, it’s not. You want a wider audience than the niche. You want the people who never heard of it, you want the people who actually disliked it. If you get the fans, all the better, but you want an audience beyond them.
[/QUOTE]

Okay, I’ll respond once more to this and then drop the rope, so you’ll be able to have the last word if you want.

I don’t think your comments about the classic literary characters being, ah, re-interpreted for LExG is to the point, Moore’s graphic novel was not purporting be an adaptation to a different medium of the stories of Quartermain, Pollyanna,et al. It’s taking the bare bones of characters and putting them in different mileaus and under a different title. I have no problem with such a tale, even if I like the original characters and story.

Earlier in the thread I mocked Disney’s Little Mermaid. What I didn’t mention is one of my favorite short stories from a collection called The Armless Maiden. I can’t recall the title, but it’s about the youngest of the original mermaid’s six sisters, whose view of what her older sister went through is decidedly cynical (and very amusing). This is the sort of thing Moore did in his grahic novel, and it isn’t the sort of adaptation or re-interpretation that I’m mocking.

The common theme in the complaints in this thread, I think, is the feeling of mis-representation, of being misled. If I go to see a movie based on a book I love, then I want to see that book on the screen–the same plot (as far as as practical) but more importantly the same tone and meaning. If you want to make a parody of a story, fine, but admit it’s a parody and give it a different title.

And now I shall return to work. Tengu, feel free to have the last word if you wish it, though. :slight_smile:

I mean last word on LExG, of course. I may yet come back to rail against the Grinch, though I’m not prepared right now to admit to having paid money to watch it.

40

[QUOTE=Tengu]
OK, seriously, again, I’ve read League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

I’ve also read a not-insignificant portion of the source material.

There is nothing LXG could have done to LoEG that would compare to Moore making Rupert Bear into a sex-crazed thug, or having Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms and Pollyanna students at an S&M school where they were raped, and impregnated, by Hawley Griffin.
[/QUOTE]

What it comes down to, I think, is that the movie wanted to achieve the same effect as the comic. Moore, obviously, was not trying to achieve the same effect by including Pollyanna, Rupert Bear, etc. in his comic: he was going for a radically different effect than his source material, which makes his pilfering interesting. Making Rupert Bear into a science abomination with priapism is such a total repurposement of the character that it’s as hilarious as it is disturbing.

The movie version of the comic, on the other hand, was trying to serve exactly the same end as the comic: taking established literary characters from the 19th century and putting a modern, “edgy” spin on them. If you’re aiming for exactly the same effect as the comic, wouldn’t it make sense to actually follow the comic?