*Everything is Illuminated * did such a great job, for the most part, of adapting the novel - but they made some pretty major changes to the storyline of one character that completely changes the ending from the book.
But the reason the book is a classic is that it goes meta about it being written. Since it would make little sense to film Sterne’s layout tricks, filming movie making tricks is about as faithful as you are going to get. The movie might have been a noble failure, but I think it was quite faithful to the book, and I adore the book.
I haven’t seen my two favorite novel mentioned.
First Blood: When David Morrel wrote the novel, it was to show the fierceness of fighting in both the Korean War and the Viet Nam War. In the movie, Rambo is a misunderstood youth returning from war. In the novel, Rambo uses all of his skills he learned in Airborne school, Special Forces training, and as an inmate in a prison camp to survive in the wilderness. In the movie, he just wants to escape. (Then, inexplicably, in both versions, he returns to burn the town down.)
From Here to Eternity: In the novel, the premise is that there are two types of Soldiers. Those that want to be “straight Soldiers” and those that are looking for their career enhancement. In the movie, that is left out and it becomes a love story.
SFC Schwartz
For no apparent reason, the TV adaptation of the Discworld book Going Postal turns every character into a raging asshole, including Mr. Pump and the Spirit of the Post.
There’s even more to it than that: Was a WWII Classic Too Gay?
Definitely - aside from The Bourne Name and amnesia the films bear little resemblance to the books - Unfortunately
I had to look at this post twice to be certain this wasn’t a zombie thread in which I had posted. I read The Hunger for exactly the same reason, and was surprised to find that while most of the movie is very faithful to the book the ending was totally different. No cite, but I think I read somewhere on the Internet that it was felt that audiences would want to see Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) punished in the end.
I also read the sequel to The Hunger, The Last Vampire, and apparently Whitley Streiber didn’t love his original ending either. The Last Vampire is inconsistent with the endings to both the novel and film versions of The Hunger. Actually there were a lot of discrepancies between the two books. They were written 20 years apart, and it seemed like Streiber didn’t bother to re-read The Hunger before writing the sequel.
Speaking of Whitley Steiber novels turned into movies, Wolfen, the movie was dramatically different in both it’s portrayal of the police and the “wolfen” they hunt and the Edward James Olmos character who’s so important in the movie is nowhere to be found. Overall, I thought the movie was slightly better and had a much better ending than the book, but I did like how they alternated POVs through the chapter. One chapter being from the POV of the humans while the next was from that of the Wolfen.
The ending of “We Can Remember it For you Wholesale” is much, much better than the movie.
John Carter bore very little resemblance to A Princess of Mars.
The only two films I can think of offhand that I liked as well as I did the books they were based on were The Sand Pebbles and The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!
Yes, a great novel and film.
Enemy at the Gates, while still taking place in Stalingrad, was actually much more based on the book War of the Rats. EatG had a few pages devoted to the sniper duels, but was more about the battle in general.
While I wouldn’t hold it against the movie makers(Clarke didn’t) in 2001 the novel, they were going to Saturn, not Mars.
Interestingly enough. In the sequels, Clarke decide to change it to Mars due to the success of the movie.
I thought it was Jupiter.
D’oh! Yup, you’re right. My bad.
For those who haven’t seen the movie or read the book(or at least the first one), in the book it was Saturn while in the movie it was Jupiter.
I’ve actually wondered why they made the change.
The movie Wanted, has virtually nothing in common with the graphic novel by Mark Millar it was based on.
To give an idea how different it was, the Fox character, played by Angelina Jolie in the movie was African-American in the graphic novel and that was one of the minor differences between the two.
Admittedly, a faithful adaptation of the graphic novel would have been extremely difficult to make and had it been done so would have probably flopped.
Kick-Ass, which was also based on a Mark Millar graphic novel and was more faithful with two really dramatic differences.
In the graphic novel, the Big Daddy character was not actually an ex-cop who’d turned vigilante after his family was murdered but in reality a comic book nerd who hated his life, took his daughter, ran away from his wife and pretended that he’d been an ex-cop out for revenge against the Mafioso who’d murdered his family whereas in the movie no, he really was an ex-cop out for revenge against the people who’d murdered his family, thought ironically enough the movie version is much nerdier than the graphic novel version. Also, Katie in the graphic novel has a much more realistic reaction to discovering that Dave was not actually gay but merely pretending to be gay to get closer to her.
I must have read an edition of the novel that came out after the film.
BTW, I didn’t understand the ending of the film until I read the novel. “He did know know what he would do with this new thing, but he would think of something.”
Been a long time but I remember it differently. He is always at the center of attention for the CIA, and he ends up being captured and returned to Castro, and presumably execution. Though there’s no extended gun fight with Ryan or Clark.
Speaking of graphic novels, I just watched Red which bears very, very little resemblance to the graphic novel. The GN was pretty much just the one guy trying to retire quietly, getting targetted by the CIA and then slaughtering his way across the intelligence services. A lot bloodier and much less funny than the movie (which I liked anyway, albeit mostly for Brian Cox and Helen Mirren).
One of my all time favorite books is “A Prayer for Owen Meany”. I was super-excited to hear it was being made into a movie, but was curious as to how they’d pull it all off.
They did so by removing about 90% of what made the book fantastic, including changing the ending drastically…
So much so that they changed the name of the movie (And main character) to “Simon Birch”…
It was just awful. 
The most recent Cheaper by the Dozen was just like the original book (which is non-fiction, by the way) in the following ways:
-The family has twelve kids
-The title is “Cheaper by the Dozen”
I don’t know why they kept the title if they didn’t keep any resemblence of the plot.