Most recently, “The Virgin Suicides”. I absolutely loved this book, and when I saw the movie, I wanted to go out and kill someone. “Angela’s Ashes” is another one. I liked both the book and movie, “The World According to Garp”. There’s a bunch more, but let’s hear from you!
Memoirs of an Invisible Man. The book by H.P. Saint is so good. The movie with Chevy Chase is so bad.
You’ve really opened the floodgates here. Most movies fall short of the book or story. A lot of them FAR short. There are few cases where the book is as good as or better. (But we’ve already had that thread).
A poster child for the Great Book/Bad Movie is “Bonfire of the Vanities”. There’s even an entire book explaining how the movie got so bad.
For science fiction fans this is practically a litany of movie titles – most adaptations are terrible.The worst two examples being “Nightfall” and “Starship Troopers”.
I know the list of losers is much longer than the list of winners, but heck! It’s still interesting. “The Shining” really held up in transition, but most of the other Stephen King books made lousy movies. Like, “Christine”, for instance. Hated that.
No contest: Starship Troopers.
It bore only vague resemblance the Heinlein novel of the same name. Normally, I don’t hold movies responsible for not following books closely. But in this case it distorted the basic meaning of the book to the point where they actually opposed each other. I would have walked out of the movie, except I felt I should see it in order to crticize it and defend Heinlein.
“Total Recall” did much the same to the Philip K. Dick story “We Can Remember it for You Wholesale”. Although in and of itself, Total Recall was fairly entertaining in a gruesome sort of way, I’m quite sure Dick is still spinning in his grave over it. PKD wrote about the inhumanity of war and violence, and I can think of nothing he would hate worse than Ar-nold blowing people away left and right in a story he wrote.
Incidentally, both of the above movies were directed by Paul Verhoven. For my money, he is one of the cheesiest directors of all time. Nothing but graphic violence, and please don’t tell me that that is the point and he is trying to demonstrate how stupid it is.
One final stab at Verhoven and Starship Troopers. It’s interesting that he chose to leave out the mobile armour the soldiers were supposed to have. He actually has experience in that sort of thing being that he directed “Robocop” for cryin’ out loud!
The Running Man
I thought the movie Stunk and I saw that long before reading the story By Stephen King (Bachman), I read the story on a whim because someone told me it was so much better…the were soooooo right. But in retrospect the production cost of actually following the book closer would have been astronomical
Another vote for Starship Troopers.
& Johnny Mnemonic made me want to remove my eyeballs with grapefruit spoons. It made me want to chew both my arms off and beat myself to death with them. ARGH. I just really don’t have words to describe what an awful, awful thing they did to William Gibson’s short story.
I read a lot of Sci-fi and most of the books are lousy movies. Blade Runner and Starship Troopers are the only two I can think of off the top of my head.
Slight hijack,
Orson Scott Card, the author of Ender’s Game is supposedly working on a screen play for his book. The kid that played Anakin in Star Wars Episode 1 had been unofficially chosen for the role. (I guess his parents and agent have yet to sign on the deal.)
I think it was the point, but I don’t think he was trying to demonstrate how stupid it is - he just liked the violence. 
Yeah, but that might not happen. By the time Orson Scott Card gets the screenplay finished, turned it, everyone has deal’s signed and they start production, then Jake Lloyd will probably be too old to play Ender. When Ender’s Game starts, Ender is only six years old. But Card does really want Lloyd to play Ender.
–Anake
Oh, easy. The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Maybe this post is a little ahead of its time, but I’m convinced that they won’t do the books justice.
Interview with a Vampire was a great book, sucky movie. There were so many scenes left out that were more important to the story than the ones they picked to show. I know Queen of the Damned will be just as bad when they finish filming it.
No it didn’t. When I saw what Stanley Kubrick had done to the best book King has ever written, I wanted my money back and I felt like suing someone.
Apparently King felt the same way, as he producted his own version for TV not too long ago.
Many Stephen King movie adaptations aren’t very highly regarded, with some exceptions (Misery, The Shining, Stand By Me). I think most of this lies with the fact that there’s no consistency; many of King’s stories are produced by bargain-basement production companies, while others are done by top-notch directors. Also, many were produced during the 1980’s slasher movie fad, which tended to emphasize anything that fit the slasher genre. The Shining tends to divide people, the Kubrick fans loving it and the King fans disliking it (or at least, considering it a very different animal than the King book). However, when you consider that several excellent movies have been based on King books, it makes up for the crappy movies.
Hands down, The Scarlett Letter is easily the worst book-to-movie. Hollywood took Hawthorne’s claasic novel of guilt and repentance, cast Demi MOORE (!), of the Keanu Reeves School of Wooden Acting, as Hester Prynne, and gave the story a happy ending, totally perverting the whole point of the book! And what the hell was up with the slave masturbating in the tub with the red bird fluttering around??
Dune.
Duh.
I thought the only weak part of The Shining was the maze vs. managary (sp!). The maze was still pretty good, though. I thought Kubrick captured the feeling of isolation perfectly. And generally speaking, cold movies scare the hell outa me! I felt they did a great job casting it, too.
I have to agree with Dune. Loved the book (although the series really deteriorated toward the end, the original was great), the movie was simply awful. One of the few movies in my life I just couldn’t finish.
I realize they had to cut out some detail to fit the book into a reasonable length for a film, but what they chose to cut made no sense at all - if you weren’t familiar with the book you would be totally lost because of the missing details, and if you were familiar with the book you would be really pissed because they cut out such good sections.
And why did they feel the need to make the changes they did? The abomination they made of the “Voice” made me want to hide under my seat and gnaw old gum off the floor rather than run the risk someone I knew might see me watching this piece of dreck! And who had the idea for the Baron being a cackling, sore-covered side-show freak? They turned him into a Batman villian, for crying out loud! And the heart plug!! Who thought that would be a good addition??
On top of it all the special effects were just terrible. I could have constructed a more realistic sandworm from an old sock.
Bleah. I still have a bad taste in my mouth about this one.
Definately Dune.
Its a long time since I read the book but how could the fighting discipline, the wierding way wasn’t it called, be interpreted by men sneezing into wrist mounted microphones in the film?
A&E’s recent version of The Great Gatsby blew goats. Bad, bad, bad.