This is a known, calculated risk for authors. For example, Brian Aldiss claimed that the only reason he signed the contract for A.I. was because he thought it was going to be a Stanley Kubrick film.
I actually like the movie (or, at least I did when I was a kid), but I think it’s fair to say that the producers of Dragnet had no reverence for the source material. 
Affectionate Parody (TVTropes)
I never read the book, saw the movie and liked it. Now that I know these things I’ll find the book. It’s kind of disappointing, isn’t it?
With regards to Lord of the Rings, the only major flaw I see with the LOTR trilogy is that it leaves out the Scouring, which doesn’t complete the character arc of Merry and Pippin and thus leaves them as mere comic relief, but more importantly taking-a-dump-wise, lets the Shire stay untouched by global events. The Scouring and the invasion that led to it were key insights into Tolkien’s philosophy, showing how every community is affected by this global struggle and also highlighting the strength of the common man and their successful struggle against modernization.
The only flaws I have with the Hobbit, besides the cinematography which was too blurry, is the overly-long fight scenes. That does come close to taking a dump on the source material since I always imagined the fights to be more like an adventurer’s quest type fights rather than the epic battles of LotR. I actually liked the addition of the Council and Gandalf’s side quests: the crypt/shaft was completely amazing, and the council debate area looked pretty good too. On the other hand, Radagast and his [del]rascally[/del] Rosgobel Rabbits were pretty pointless and silly.
It’s easier to list the book that wasn’t dumped on : “The Maltese Falcon”, starring Bogart.
It’s interesting to me that Harry Potter was so well handled while Lightning Thief was totally bungled.
- Both initial movies were directed by Chris Columbus
- Both have kids that age up year-by-year to reach a goal in their final year
I’m surprised they didn’t put the effort into Percy Jackson that Warner Bros. put into Harry Potter. It wouldn’t have been as big, but could have been a decent hit.
I should also point out that I forgot to mention that the Lightning Thief movie includes swearing, while the book does not. Weird.
“How the Grinch Stole Christmas” - As much as I love the story/the Karloff TV version, there is just enough material there to cover 25 minutes (with some outstanding musical interludes thrown in). Stretching it to 90+ mins seems foolhardy at best. I tried, I really tried to slog through the Jim Carrey version and bailed after 10 minutes. Just the clips and commercials I’d seen convinced me I wouldn’t be able to tolerate JC as the green one. The recent animated version I haven’t seen, but, again, how much can you successfully pad out a Dr. Seuss fable?
If you mean the American version of the novel. I saw the first movie without having read the books and halfway through it I’m like “wait, the Sorceror’s Stone is actually the Philosopher’s Stone? Why didn’t they SAY that at the begining? The “Sorcerer’s Stone” means nothing to me!” So the American novel and movies take a dump on the original print version because they condescend to an American audience.
What bugged me about LOTR (as a massive Tolkien fan) is they did clearly get the source material and spent most of the film trying to stay true to the spirit of it. Then in the last act they were just like “screw it let’s have a skateboarding elf”, and it went downhill from there.
They almost did a really good job of making an unfilmable classic into a good film, but messed it all up at the end. I would have preferred a horrible cheesey Hollywood version.
Thanks very much
I think these movies (along with Baywatch, The Brady Bunch Movie, Charlie’s Angels, Starsky and Hutch, and 21 Jump Street) were more intended as parodies of the originals rather than remakes.
Some others:
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth (the 1973 movie not the 1997 one)
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (although many disagree and feel the movie sanitized the book’s political message)
The Martian by Andy Weir
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I am lost. I am aware the books call it Sorcerer Stone in America and Philosopher Stone in England…but so do the movies. They recorded each line both ways.
This was already in existence well before the movie.
No Country for Old Men, too, appears to be almost a page-by-page adaptation.
? - IMO, the Depp movie was a lot more faithful to the book than the Wilder one.
Yes, there is - sort of; paperback versions of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? printed after the film’s release are titled “Blade Runner.”
Movies that I can think of:
Hair
Can-Can - the entire “B plot,” and two main characters, were removed…and IIRC, revivals of the musical use the movie plot.
Also, a lot of movies based on older TV shows - Bilko and McHale’s Navy (the Tom Arnold one, not the 1964 one with the original) come to mind. It’s just too hard to fit everything that made the shows what they were into two hours.
Ahhh, you mean “Contact”. Sagan wrote it as an exploration of what a scientific, evidentiary search for God would take and what sorts of evidence a scientist would accept as proof of a creator, the movie was given a 180-degree twist from its message, saying instead that the search for truth lies with faith.
Northern Lights is another instance of a film the author was not happy with.
I wonder how much money the authors get in exchange for their work. I mean actually receive, not have dangled in front of them only to get screwed out of later.
That’s something I’ve always wondered about Mary Poppins. It’s relatively well known the troubles Disney had getting the rights from the author of the books, P. L. Travers, and the objections she had about the direction he took with the film. Her nanny wasn’t a flying, singing, dancing nanny. Disney should have just made up a story and he could have done his own thing. It wasn’t until years after I saw the film that I even knew there were books about Mary Poppins anyway. I imagine anyone at the time who knew the books would have been disappointed with the movie since they are so different. So if tying it to original source material is going to piss off pretty much everyone who knows the source material, why bother?
The one I meant is the Alan E. Nourse book, Blade Runner. I’ve been a Nourse fan since childhood and when I first heard about this movie I assumed it was this book turned into a movie.
It’s not. As with I, Robot, they just glued the title from one book onto a movie script that had nothing whatsoever to do with it.