Funny, I liked the movie better. Guy works hard at Harvard to become a lawyer. FBI says “while it’s not your fault, do this, but you’ll never get to be a lawyer again.” Mitch: “okay”
As I’ve said before, if a director adds nothing of himself to the adaptation, I’m not gonna be all that interested in seeing it. It has to be something that has resonance for the director; something he/she feels strongly about making his own piece of art. Otherwise, it’s just a soulless reproduction.
The favorite example, of course, is Starship Troopers. The book is a lot of fun; a great exemplar of its genre. The film is a masterpiece. Of course they’re different. The trouble is, many people refuse to see them as two different things, and insist that both experiences match exactly. This is ridiculous to me.
(As to the frequent vilification of Verhoeven on this account, it’s misplaced. The script was presented to him as a script, by the screenwriter of Robocop, Edward Neumeier. Verhoeven read the script and liked it on its own merits. Why anyone would suggest that he’s obligated to back-research and verify that the screenwriter “got it right” I will never understand. He filmed the screenplay that Neumeier wrote, because it resonated for him. He added his own sensibility–I don’t know which one decided it should be a satire, rather than a straightforward reproduction; I suspect it was Neumeier, since it’s so integral to the script–and the result is a masterpiece of satire.)
No one’s mentioned the hideous SciFi Channel Earthsea?
Eragon
The movie and book had characters with the same names and a dragon and that was about it.
Sphere. I loved this book, and found other adaptions of Michael Chricton books to be fairly well done and so was looking forward to this. Granted the general story was interesting, but the whole plot was leading up to one point: seeing what’s inside the Sphere. In the book, the main character finally goes inside and we see what it’s like. In the movie, the main character approaches the sphere and we cut away! The whole point of the the movie for me was seeing what cool ways the movie could bring to life that one scene in the book, which was after all the central mystery of the whole plot, and they cut it out.
I really liked I, Robot. I mean, sure, it’s not a brilliant film, but it’s a damn solid one. It also has some of the best CG I’ve seen – the robots WERE part of the world, which is more than the new Star Wars films can say.
Anyone try to watch Episode 1 recently? Jarjar stands out more than a black man driving a sugar-powered donut.*
*stole this joke from Titus
Of course no ones mentioned it, it doesn’t exist!
Neither do most of the movies based on Philip K. Dick novels.
Also there is no movie called Solaris!
CMC fnord!
Incredibly, thanks to Rifftrax, I not only watched The Phantom Menace a second time the other day, I enjoyed it. This is something that I previously never would have believed possible. (Since the **Phantom Menace ** riff cost 3 bucks, I still hold that Lucas owes me 7 bucks for that first experience.)
Mike: “Ten minutes in, and already Lucas’ pant leg is soaked with urine, having whizzed the entire movie down his leg…”
Maybe if the Rifftrax guys get around to Verhoeven Troopers, we’ll finally have a version that everyone can appreciate.
I mean the original Lovecraft story. But the 2005 film was the most faithful depiction of a Lovecraft story ever*, so the same comment applies.
- I’ve got a copy. Very well done – and I don’t judge the quaslity of a movie by how closely it follows its source.
But I disagre with Tengu about how closely something should adhere to a source. If it isn’t fairly close, what’s the point in saying it’s an adaptation at all?
I can see your point. Moore took other people’s creations and changed them to suit his own purposes. The people who loved the original works could justifiably complain about Moore’s appropriations.
But at least Moore was aware of what he was doing. He was familiar with the work he was changing and made his changes deliberately.
The guys who made the movie, on the other hand, were just clueless. They weren’t desecrating classic characters because they had no idea who the characters were.
Moore might decide “Wiggins wrote Rebecca as a naive innocent, I’m going to change her into a girl who only appears innocent but is actually sexually aware.” The movie guys would say, “Rebecca’s a teenager right? Let’s cast Ciara in that part - she can do a tie-in video and draw in the MTV crowd.”
Did you enjoy it? Pretty cool, huh?
An interesting example might be The Princess Bride. Movie based on a book, both written by William Goldman. The movie follows the book fairly well, but the mood and moral is completely different. How do people feel about this?
This is not the denial river thread. I’ll start that one next week.
I wouldn’t say either the film or novel have a moral; however, I’ll certainly agree that the tone of the two works is different: the irony of the original is pretty much lost. That is, I think, inevitable given the differences in form. The ironic comments in the novel come from Faux-Goldman, the narrator; Westley, Buttercup, Inigo, & Fezzik all take their situations pretty seriously. (Well, maybe not Fezzik.) This would be hard to capture in a movie, where you can’t stop the action for the narrator to discourse on the history of stew.
PB the movie strikes me as a good, not-raping-the-spirit-of-the-original adaptation.
Back to LXG. Of course no one would care about introducing Tom Sawyer or Dorian Gray or changing the plot…if the movie were any good.
Here’s the thing. The comic book was good. The movie was bad. The movie also has many changes from the book. If the changes made the movie better, no one would care. If the changes make the movie worse, then the question becomes, why did the director throw out good source material and substitute his own stupid ideas? Sure, throw out crappy source material and substitute your GOOD ideas. But don’t do the reverse, you fucking child.
Huh? The movie was *exactly * how I remembered the book.
I first saw The Count of Monte Cristo while on an airplane. When the movie ended, I was so outraged that I wanted to stand up and yell “Has anyone on this plane actually read the book?? That shit was FUCKED UP!!!” But then I figured I’d probably be tackled, choked, tied up with neck ties and arraigned on terrorist charges. So I was forced to seethe inwardly. I’m actually still pissed off about that.
So you read the book drunk, I take it. 
Actually I haven’t seen the movie. I don’t watch movies with the words “Oprah Winfrey Presents” in them. Doctor’s orders. I’m just being a jerk.
Nobody has. After Ghost she was NO.1 box office. She has followed up with terrible movie choices over and over again. She seems not too bright. GI Jane for crying out loud. Striptease ugh.Even her buying new boobies couldn’t save that.She has probably done 25 forgettable movies.
[/QUOTE]
It wasn’t that she changed the story much, per se, it’s just that she never, ever got near the heart of the characters or the tale Zora Neale Hurston set out to tell.
At least in terms of how I remember the book. I thought the original had a little bit, no, a lot more grit to it. Getting the feel of that would have added the essential element that, in my opinion, was missed.
And I guess what bothers me most was that I assumed Oprah would get it and use her power and influence to get that movie made.
Then again, I could be wrong, and it could have just been me and my outlook, either when I read the book (2 times before my late 20s) or when I saw the movie.