This was the movie/novel I came here to mention. I loved the novella when I read it years ago, but the movie just added more of that “novelistic roundness” (to borrow some of King’s own phrasing as used in Misery) that was so wonderful. To me, this is one of the “perfect” movies; the acting, directing, story, everything was so spot on that I don’t think I will ever tire of it.
Also, The Princess Bride. Maybe I’m prejudiced because I saw (and fell in love with) the movie years before I read the book, but I don’t think the book held a candle to the movie.
Like: Hannibal. The movie had an incredibly superior, more satisfying ending. In the book, Lecter ised a combination of drugs and psychiatry to make Starling his mistress, and they fled to South America. They even bumped into Barney at the theater and it was like Old Home Week.
In the movie, after Lecter cut the top of Krendler’s skull off and fed him bits of his own brain and left him to wander, Starling slapped the cuffs on him, the other cuff on her. As she slipped into drug-induced unconsciousness, Lecter grabbed a meat cleaver. In the ultimate gesture of respect, he hacked off his own hand instead of hers.
Dislike: pretty much everything about League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Tom Sawyer, still a twenty-something 40-odd years after the events of his story? Mina Harker with amazing vampire powers that actually made her less interesting? Hyde and Invisible Man (not even Hawley Griffin!) as stand-up team players? Earlier versions of the League a hoax? Feh.
I preferred the movie ending of Hannibal also, but I always wondered
Why didn’t he just use the cleaver to cut through the handcuffs? To my knowledge cuffs aren’t really meant to withstand to several cleaver whacks and it seems that they’d be easier to cut through than flesh and bone.
Worse, sometimes they just [del]buy[/del] steal a cool title, hence, Blade Runner, (which has so [del]much[/del] little to do with Do Androids…) not to be confused with The Bladerunner, by Alan E. Nourse, or Blade Runner (a movie), a novella by William S. Burroughs based upon his film treatment of the Nourse novel!
The film of “A Boy and His Dog” immensely improved on the original in the scenes underground, answering an obvious flaw in the story.
If Albert is a horny young teen who is desperate for sex, why does he flee from a situation where he can sleep with all the girls he wants with everyone’s blessing?
However, I do agree that one change to the ending should not have been made.
Albert should not have partaken of Quilla June; in the story, only Blood did
I don’t want to turn this into Yet Another Tolkien Thread, but Isildur removed the finger, along with the Ring, when Sauron was defeated at the end of the Second Age.
I’m sure I’ve said this before, but Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Book: free-spirited Holly Golightly flees the USA and becomes a nomad, with one person seeing her in Africa having an affair with a native wood-carver.
Movie: love conquers all and true happiness is settling down with a husband. (Wait a minute! Wasn’t her downstairs neighbour supposed to be a gay writer?!?!)
Well, originally, the controls were designed so that couldn’t happen. The button was recessed in a slot and was activated by the fingernails. The pressure of lifting would be on the sides of the switch and would not activate it. Sort of like this in cross-section
iIi_iIi
The pressure would be placed on the center of the button.
I’m not surprised you missed this point; it was established in a drawing of the web shooters when they first appeared and even Marvel forgot they were made that way (they said it requires Spider Strength to push the button).
Even as a button, you could easily design with recessed within a ring so that the fingertip had to fit while any pressure would press the outer ring and not push the buttons.
Pardon me for beating a really dead horse in a hijack of a thread I started, but something else that just occurred-
We know from Silence of the Lambs that Hannibal can pick handcuffs. He picked a set while his hands were behind him when he was in Memphis using only a piece of a writing pen. Surely there was something in the kitchen within reach he could have used- Starling probably had a pen in her pocket even.
Speaking of that movie though, one thing I’d wished they’d kept from the novel:
Hannibal’s memory palace- it’s a surreal mental device anyway so realism isn’t that important, and I think with CGI it could have been a cool segment for a couple of minutes of screentime.
Hannibal’s flight to the USA. (Not important enough to be a spoiler)-
In the book Hannibal is on a long flight- coach- to America and seated near an obnoxious large loud family trying to eat his gourmet dinner. The little boy seated near him (a character obviously based on him appears in the film, but differently) begins pestering him for some of his food (which is not from a human but from an upscale Florentine deli).
I expected the trailer to begin with the exchange from the book.
Trailer version:
[obnoxious kid talking to an unseen plane passenger] “Give me a bite! Give me a bite!”
zoom in on Hannibal-
HL: “I would absolutely love to…”
I’m glad they deleted the bits about his aristocratic upbringing in Lithuania (or wherever the hell it was) though of course it was the focus of Hannibal Rising. I thought learning about his past was a bad idea at best (he’s so much scarier when you just know he’s a brilliant remorseless killer who used to be a psychiatrist) but adding one that sounds way more like an Anne Rice vampire (aristocracy/war/Paris/truly evil characters with absolutely no-nuance) made him cartoonish.
‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’
Speaking of Anne Rice:
Armand = Antonio Banderas- - - What the hell were they thinking? I like Antonio Banderas, but Armand is a character in several Rice novels before getting his own and in all of them he is an auburn haired beautiful androgynous youth. It’s actually vital to his being- his maker Marius made him a vampire to keep him a beautiful sylph forever and this is coexistent with the fact he’s the most remorseless of the major player vampires (other than Mama Lestat perhaps- whose name I can’t remember and don’t wish to look up).
The good:
Does One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest qualify for the OP? The novel is narrated by Chief, whereas the movie maintains focus on McMurphy. Both, of course, are classics.
The bad: Who Framed Roger Rabbit
I’m going to spoiler this, since it’s a wonderfully charming movie and you may want to keep your memory intact. Also, the book is a great read, so you may want to find out for yourself. Anyway…
Roger’s really dead – it’s his doppelganger/ghost in the story
Jessica is a whore – literally
Jessica didn’t really love Roger
The killer is
.
.
.
.
I’m warning you
.
.
.
.
No, really
.
.
.
.
Roger–Not only that, but he frames Valiant!
You’re kidding, right? I re-read the Bourne Identity after seeing the first movie. I’d almost forgotten most of the book, and I wish I could forget it from the second go around. The movies are so much better that it’s almost criminal to associate them with the books.
The Carlos story was unbelievable in the 80s, looking like a throwback to the overly-complicated thrillers of the 60s when people would have bought it. He thinks or subvocalizes stupid-sounding kiai in some unidentified “southeast Asian” language while fighting, that for all I know have as much meaning as a racist stereotype string of nonsense like “ching-chang-chong” does in Chinese. That alone made me gag, though I probably thought it was cool back when I read it at age 10 or 11. He picks Marie out at random and she turns out to be a Canadian spy. How convenient. The whole story was stupid, hackneyed, and frankly too drawn out even in the time it was set, and hasn’t aged well.
According to a synopsis of the plot, in Supremacy it gets even stupider with him being coerced into an assassination of a Chinese crime boss who is planning to stage a revolution during the Hong Kong changeover. There’s some nonsense about ritual killings and magic thrown in there too, apparently.
The best thing that happened to the Bourne series was being remade, rewritten, and updated for the movies. The plots are more human sized, have more believable motivations for the action, and will age far better than the books did.
Interesting points. In fact I did read the books when I was about 11, and lots of other Ludlum. After the Bond books, Ludlum was my introduction to spy thrillers, and I really loved them. Not as stylish as Bond, but much more intricate. I read the sequel to Matarese Circle a few years ago, and well, it sucked. Everything you said. I couldn’t believe how poor the writing was and how shallow and stereotypical the characters were.
But for me, the BT will always be about Bourne vs Carlos, spy vs spy. And any film, no matter how well written, that doesn’t include that plot will fail the books.
This is heresy in certain quarters of the internet, but most of the changes made to V For Vendetta made it tauter and more coherent, while still remaining true to the spirit of Alan Moore’s original comic script:
Evey leaving V after his “abduction” and torture made her a stronger character than his throwing her out and then abducting and brainwashing her.
The ending, where everyone beomes V, makes more sense than Evey donning his mantle and recruiting her own apprentice.
Thankfully, the tedious Party machinations and the pointless gangster sub-plot were cut from the third act. Ditto the Leader wanking off to his surveillance computer.
Solving the mystery of Larkhill Camp was done by genuine detective work and not by just going there and dropping acid.
I was sadly disappointed, however, that the Vicious Cabaret didn’t make it into the movie.
On the subject of Moore adaptations, in The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I was grievously disappointed, although not altogether surprised, that Edward Hyde buttfucking the Invisible Man to death while humming a polka tune was not depicted. That would have been the most awesome movie scene ever.
That’s what left me exasperated about the movies - the part where PJ ought to stick get increasingly trivial as the movies go on.
Fellowship of the Ring: Nothing much to complain; Mines of Moria was well done and so was the confrontation with the Balrog, and Gandalf’s death. They changed Aragorn and Gandalf slightly, but i was fine.
The Two Tower: They totally blotched the March of the Ents. They should have followed the book; Pippin and Merry were awakened by the Ents marching off the war; Helm’s Deep is butchered (not because of the Elves), but because of Theoden’s motivation - he wanted to meet the Uruks on the open field, but Gandalf advised otherwise. The extended parts where PJ stick to the book (like drinking from the Ent’s spring) are totally unneeded…
The Return of the Kings: The Oathbreakers’ part was totally butchered. Yeah right, an army of ghosts won the battle of Pelennor Fields. I rather PJ stick to a group of rangers marching to the Stone of Erech, where is much more suspense than a pile of tumbling skulls and the shades only help to win the ships and the slaved Gondorian soldiers and citizens, not the battle of Pelennor Fields.
And where was the part where Aragorn and Eomer met on the field of battle? Damn, that was one of the coolest part of the entire battle (I also hate it how they downplay Aragorn and Eomer’s friendship. They struck up quite a rapport after Helm’s Deep - but considering that Eomer was around for the movie’s Helm Deep).
And did all the Elves from the Two Tower die or something?
They showed the mustering of the Rohan well enough, but Gondor they did not. Stick to the book for the important parts!