I just wanted to say that, recently reading Dracula for the first time, I was surprised by how much of the original book has made it into the generic accepted canon. All of the most garish elements are already there:
Not like Frankenstein, the rather slow book that owed some of it’s original notoriety to the radical political / philosophical content poured into it by it’s young female political / philosophical radical author.
The Jason Bourne films
Apart from copying the names of the books and the title character everything else seems to be totally new stories
The 1997 version took an absolute shit on the entire book and the characters. Having read the book by my favorite author and loved Edward Fox in the '73 version I had high expectations for a modern version. I walked out of the theater absolutely enraged! :mad:
Fully agree to the Terry Pratchett part. I really love Pratchett’s books and have read (and own) all of them. Those that were turned into film were as good and humorous as most of them for reading but apparently quite awkward for filming. The silly face mask of Death is one example, the Asian Tourist Twoflower being a plump white guy misses the whole Asian Tourist joke, and so on. Some but not all of those missteps could be accounted for by low Budgets.
On the other hand, a major part of the humour in Pratchett’s writing is impossible to turn into pictures. I had fits of laughing over sentences like 'Swires and Rincewind’s kneecap exchanged glances." from The Light Fantastic. How on Earth would you film that?
So in essence, I bought some of the Pratchett films but that was mainly a waste of money.
No,no – it’s far from the worst SF adaptation possible. Heck, the already-discussed Starship Troopers and I, Robot are already much worse* I could name quite a few others that are, I think, much worse than his.
A Sound of Thunder is really a case of another defect in SF moviemaking – taking a short story the telling of which wouldn’t ill out the time for a feature-length movie and padding it outrageously. Lots of examples of that – Mimic or The Space Frame (filmed as Invasion of the Saucer Men, *We Can Remember it for you Wholesale * (filmed as Total Recall), etc.
I wouldn’t even say that it “took a dump on” its source material – it was reasonably faithful to it as far as it could be within the limits of that padding. It’s not a great adaptation, but that’s light years away fro being contemptuous of its source.
*Yeah, I know they started out as independent works that got shoehorned into being “adaptations” when they bought the movie rights. It’s still “taking a dump on” the source material, in my opinion.
Practically all adaptations of the works of Jules Verne, Edgar Allen Poe, H.G. Wells, and H. P. Lovecraft are pretty appallingly bad, but in most case I think they’re at least trying to be faithful to the source material to some degree.
Some cases where they practically tossed the book away, though, include:
The Mysterious Island (1929) – Well, there’s an island and a submarine, at least. Verne this ain’t
From the Earth to the Moon – not only do they completely change almost everything, but they manage to muck up the science even worse.
Master of the World – actually based more on its prequel, Robur the Conqueror, but I guess they thought the sequel’s title was cooler. The film manages to make a lot of Verne’s book look silly
Die, Monster, Die – wastes Nick adams and Boris Karloff (!!) in a really bad adaptation of Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space.
The Raven – Seriously, there’s no way you could adapt Poe’s famous poem into anything but a theatrical short, but they’ve made three – three! – movies with this title. Two of the starred Boris Karloff, as if his presence alone would make a spooky Poe film. The second one, made by Roger Corman, also has Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, and a young Jack Nicholson. It’s a fun pseudo-horror comedy that’s a hoot, as long as you’re not expecting any Poe.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court – I’ve complained about this many times. There has been a slew of “adaptations” of this, none of which even approximate the real story and none of which have Twain’s wit. Two adaptations were vehicles for stars (Will Rogers and Bing Crosby), most straightforwardly tell you that they’re not doing the real story (“A Kid in King Arthur’s court”). Even the made-for-PBS version throws most of Twain out. I want to see the Destruction of Merlin’s Tower, and the Restoration of the Holy Fountain, and The Boss’ rescue by knights mounted on bicycles. Yes, I know that the Catholic Church doesn’t come out well in the book, and that the end gets grim. I think it can be handled well to avoid pitfalls, and even make the dark ending work.
I forgot about that movie, but I did see it. Yeah, it basically was a loose version of a popular book, but cut out the core. I want to say they did not:
have her friend die at the end. I mean, talk about an important point.
So perhaps Rick Riordan is partly to blame for not setting the same standards. Or perhaps film rights were not in his control.
I don’t know how J.K. Rowling, a first-time author, managed to maintain or get such a level of influence. When the first movie came out, only the first four books had come out. When film-rights were settled, only the first three had probably come out.
People may nitpick, but the Harry Potter movies did a really good job adapting the books. The books grew into thick volumes and the movies cut a lot of that out, but even those last ones did fairly well.
Well, owning the full author’s rights might have helped…
Interesting fact–this movie may have helped inspire Marvel’s Dr. Strange, at least the look of him. Although Stan Lee said that his main inspiration was the radio/movie character Chandu The Magician, Vincent Price’s character in The Raven is a benevolent sorcerer, and the movie came out only a couple months before the comic debuted. Dr. Strange, in some of his early appearances, looks a good deal like Vincent Price did in The Raven, and his middle name IS Vincent.
(Certainly, the character Price voiced in The 13 Ghosts Of Scooby-Doo was pretty much Dr. Strange with the serial numbers filed off.)
Three books in, it was clear that Harry Potter was a monster hit internationally. I think Percy Jackson sold when the first book was published and at that point the studios were looking for the next Harry Potter. There were several children’s fantasy book series that were being adapted for the movies, almost as if the studios were going through the children’s section of the bookstores.
Lord of the rings was an over-the-top grandiose adaptation of Tolkien’s books, but at least it followed the script and only exaggerated by a factor of 3 or so.
The Hobbit was… I mean the movies were… I mean…
Good grief, words fail me.
Shall we mention the several gigaton mountain of gold? Let’s not.
Shall we mention how the dragon changes in size from scene to scene?
Shall we… ugh. 'scuse me, gotta go puke.
The film based series of Jack Reacher, with Tom Cruise as the lead.
Tom Cruise - 5’7" 170 lbs.
Jack Reacher - 6’5" 250 lbs.
Yeah, not even close.
I expected dozens of posts about The Dark Tower, but it looks like I’m the first. Of course, the missteps could be seen from the beginning of production.
As a closet jack Reacher fan, I expected to hate Tom Cruise. (Sort of like “What? Tim Burton’s Batman is going to be Mr. Mom?!?”)
But Cruise nailed the “barely contained righteous anger” schtick down, and I couldn’t wait for the second film, which followed its book almost perfectly.
So, for me, add this to my whispered comment near the beginning of the first Harry Potter: “Whoa, this is… not sucking!”
Yep. And I am no fan of Tom. But his Reacher kinda works.
The animated adventure movie “The Guardians of Ga’hoole” was a sickly sweet taming down version of a couple of books that, in order to do justice, needed at minimum a PG-13 rating for the dark themes that should have been left in there. But no, Hollywood had to have its cute owls kiddie safe. :rolleyes:
They should have changed his character name to Jack Reach-around 
They went with a different actor for the new television series (or was it cancelled?)
Still in development, with no actors named, nor which studio would produce or where it would be distributed (network, streaming, etc.) I.e., still be shopped around.
The Godfather is another example of a movie that greatly improved upon the book it was based on.