It’s been forever since I watched both the original Japanese version and the Hollywood movie but I distinctly remember leaving the theater after seeing Ghost in the Shell INCREDIBLY angry that they completely rewrote the plot and seemingly went against the message of the original film.
Most of the obvious projects have been named and discussed but one that I found most disturbing was The High Crusade. Although a little juvenile, the original book was enjoyable enough for me to get excited about seeing it on film.
Yeah, as soon as I heard about Rick Overton’s involvement, I wrote it off.
I loved the book, but I had never even heard there was a film.:eek:
I’m fairly certain it was a direct to DVD release and quietly forgotten by everyone involved. It does have a certain charm in a “it’s so bad, it’s good” way but if you do hunt it down, please go in with the lowest of expectations.
When the movie version of “The Firm” came out, all the reviewers were saying, “If you read the book, you won’t like the movie, and if you haven’t, you’ll love it.” I had read it, and saw it with a friend who hadn’t. She thought it was one of the best movies she’d ever seen, whereas I said “That’s not in the book!” so many times, a man in front of me turned around and told me to shut up.
This. Also The Chamber, another movie inspired by a Grisham novel.
The book was riveting, making you feel all kinds of emotions from page to page. The movie was a cheap substitute. Capturing Rollie Wedge at the end changed the dynamic of the story and made it fall apart.
Doom the video game is about a Marine stationed on Mars who is the lone survivor of an unfortunate experiment where the military base he was on accidentally opens a portal to hell and now all of Hell’s demons are running around murdering everyone and transforming the rest into vile hellspawn. The second game ends with you literally killing Satan.
Doom the movie for some reason goes the route of the novels (yes there were novels) where the demons are actually just ancient aliens and most of the people infected just become normal zombie type creatures.
It may sound minor but making the Doom bad guys aliens just made it a generic Sci-Fi movie.
And those first three books had sold a bazillion copies. That gave Rowling some clout. As for how she managed to have a fair amount of influence, the simple answer is because she chose to. Some authors like Lee Child seem to be happy simply to collect that $300,000 or whatever for selling the rights and he doesn’t give a shit that Tom Cruise bought the rights and is playing Reacher, and frankly if the he isn’t going apeshit than everyone else should probably slow their roll.
Getting back to Rowling, the more important/bigger factor was that she had a REALLY good agent/team who got in good with the studio and Rowling also wasn’t acting like a cooze about stuff being cut.
Ah-hah!! So you were the asshat dressed like Rorschach who kept holding the trade paperback up and muttering/yelling, “That’s not how it is in the comic,” during the showing of Watchmen I saw. I promise you, you have NO idea how many people wanted to beat you into the ER. It was literally EVERYONE else in the theater, including me.
[Moderating]
Welcome to the SDMB, 600 Unread Emails. You’re coming across as unduly harsh, there, for this forum. You probably want to dial that back some.
My impression, when I first saw The Firm (having read the book) was “it looks as if the studio lawyers got hold of the screenplay.”
I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard about the horror that is the 1995 adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter:
As long as we’re on Grisham, I didn’t expect, “Christmas With The Kranks,” to be any good (it wasn’t), but I didn’t expect it to mostly jettison the flavor of, “Skipping Christmas,” which is an excellent little tale (I blame the screenwriter). I read it every holiday season.
Grisham was all for a “Skipping Christmas” movie, but when he saw what Hollywood did to it, he wanted not only his name taken off it, but the title changed as well.
^ And rightfully so. Thanks, digs. Merry Xmas.
Actually, I think that Starship Troopers is the best example of a movie that deliberately “took a dump” on its source material. Unlike I, Robot which just used an unrelated script, Verhoeven didn’t just add names and details from the book, but made explicit references to Nazism and fascism. He hated the book, and so made the society hateful - the opposite of Heinlein’s intent.
Something like this makes no sense to me in terms of marketing. The whole reason to use a title from a popular source is to attract fans of that source. The changes Verhoeven made guaranteed that Heinlein fans would not just dislike the film but would loathe it.
The film can be enjoyed mainly by those who are either unfamiliar with the book, or who like Verhoeven disliked it. So what’s the sense of using the title? The movie I think would be much better liked if no connection had been made to the Heinlein work.
Sorry, skipped that holiday. ;~)
After reading this thread, I really want to take a beloved book, steal the title and film whatever I want.
So be sure to come see my "Wind in the Willows", without many… well, actually with so few animals that I really must say “Sorry, no animals…didn’t the marketing mention that? Oh, sorry. Well, the trailer should have done… oh, that’s right, it was just a voiceover”.
Well, anyhow, I’m afraid it’s just Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Amy Sedaris and Dick Van Dyke starring in a Python-esque caper movie. And no, not “suitable for all audiences” like the posters said. The language is as filthy as it is punny.
Just dropping in to add 1984 by George Orwell (the 1984 movie version) to this list.
chortle