Forrest Gump was much nastier, less dumb in the book.
Not totally different, but the iconic image is off – the literary Dr. Fu Manchu had no moustache. I think every single filmed version, though, gives him those little spaghetti strings.
Dracula is pretty different in the movies than in the book. Nosferatu is an interesting film, but it’s not Stoker’s vision. Nor is Dracula a romantic figure (as David J. Skal points out, at length, in several of his books), Frank Langella, Gary Oldman, and others to the contrary notwithstanding.
The character of Paulie from novel The Pope of Greenwich Village would have beat the holy shit out of the same character from the movie.
In the book, Paulie is a little guy but genuinely tough and doesn’t take crap from any of the other characters. In the movie, Eric Roberts plays him as a wussified doofus. Sheesh, they altered so many other plot points it’s hard to believe that the guy who wrote the book, Vincent Patrick, also did the movie’s screenplay.
The hero of Lawrence Block’s **Burglar In The Closet **is an intelligent, suave man. In the movie the part was played by a woman (Whoopi Goldberg at her most outrageous).
Physically & behaviorally, the closest movie Dracula to the novel is Christopher Lee, not in the Hammer Dracula series, but in the Spanish-made “Count Dracula” directed by Jess Franco. That’s about the only thing the movie has going for it.
In the book, Carrie is a fat ugly teenager. In the movie, she is played by thin, gorgeous Sissy Spacek.
In the novella, Red is a middle-aged, red-haired Irishman. In the movie, he’s Morgan Freeman!
There was a bad TV adaption in 1980 of Ray Bradbury’s “Martian Chrocnicles” where the character of a fat, unattractive Genevieve Selsor got played by Bernadette Peters who was neither.
In the movie “Valley of the Dolls” Anne (Barbara Parkins) does not marry Lyon, they do not have a daughter and rather use “dolls” to stay in drug stupor life, she returns home to New England to be with her grandmother and wholesome small town living.
Same with Roger Rabbit. And that was the least of the changes that both movies made.
In translating Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley to the screen, the screenwriters changed protagonist Hell Tanner, a Hell’s Angel, to Lieutenant Jack Tanner, an Air Force officer. (I have not actually seen the movie, nor do I plan to. Ever.)
The character that James Garner played in the adaption of James Michener “Space” was changed from a Republican to a Democrat at Garner’s request. He has been a lifelong supporter of the Democratic party and said his wife would leave him if he played a Republican (the two met at an Adlai Stevenson for President rally and were married 14 days later).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_garner
I recently saw the original play A Shot in the Dark, and Clouseau bore very little resemblance to the Peter Sellers character – he was quite competent (and less funny and interesting).
Hawkeye Pierce in the book, and especially in the real sequels, was a Republican from Maine, not the sensitive new age guy in the TV series. The movie was a lot truer to the original book.
Heywood Floyd in Clarke’s 2001 book was a good scientist and a lot different from the bureaucratic nonentity in Kubrick’s movie. The 2010 movie was a lot closer to the real character.
In “Murdoch Mysteries” the one hour TV series, Detective Murdoch is a wonderful proto-geek in 1895 Toronto. My wife has read some of the books the show is based on, and there he seems a standard issue Victorian detective. I have the first of the TV movies which predated the series in my Netflix queue, so I’ll see if that is truer to the books. The TV series, btw, is far superior.
True he was definitely a criminal, but he did have a lot of “Robin Hood” tendencies. He mostly robbed/killed people who were themselves particularly nasty criminals.
Jason Bourne in the part of the one book I managed to read was this legendary feared-across-asia larger-than-life legend, in the movies, he was just an athletic James Bond.
I was REALLY confused reading the book, expecting the movie character.
I disagree. I stumbled onto this film shortly after it had begun on TV a long time ago, so I hadn’t seen the opening credits and didn’t know what I was watching. I was utterly fascinated. Not only did Lee look right (with the moustache and all), but it castle looked perfect, and they were playing it totally by the book. The first third or half of the film is excellent.
Then, of course, comes the rest of the film, which more than demolishes the advantages of the beginning. Especially the scene where everyone is scared to death of what are obviously stuffed animals.
See Without a Clue in which Watson (Ben Kingsley) employs an unemployed alcoholic actor (Michael Caine) as Sherlock Holmes to solve the crimes in public and act as front man. Very funny.
I would guess that one of the lines was something like : “He sounded like he believed it. I was glad. I almost believed it myself.”
The original “Fletch” movie at least kept the same basic mystery plot as Gregory McDonald’s first book. “Fletch 2” bore no resemblance to ANY of the books.
Irwin Fletcher was also supposed to be an ex-Marine who’d served in Viet Nam. Can anyone picture Chevy doing that?
Deckard is (more or less happily) married in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
True… though Sissy was still very plausible as a shy, slightly weird, ostracized misfit.
And Morgan Freeman gave one of his best performances as Red.
Sometimes great performances are given by actors who don’t quite match what the author intended. To use an example Ive used before, Brian Dennehy and Lee J.Cobb were brilliant as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman even though they’re both big guys, not the little shrimp Arthur Miller intended Willy to be.