Is there a version of Call Of The Wild out there that doesn’t completely screw up the ending, and thus the actual title, of the story?
SPOILERS FOR THE COLD EQUATIONS
I’ve seen two versions of this story. One was a 30 minute episode of The New Twilight Zone. It starred Terrence Knox, and was one of the most moving things I’ve ever seen on TV. For those who haven’t seen it SPOILERS GALORE: DON’T READ IF YOU PLAN TO SEE OR READ THE STORY: An emergency dispatch ship carrying a vital load of antidote has been sent to a remote colony. Such ships are designed to hold just enough fuel to complete the trip, so as to minimize mass and maximize velocity. A teenage girl has stowed away, trying to hop a free ride to see her brother. The pilot discovers the girl. He explains to her that her additional mass has used up additional fuel, and there isn’t enough left to land with her on board. He intends to throw her into the airlock and eject her, but she begs for a few more hours of life. He relents, they talk, and he grows to like her, to the point that they have the beginning of a friendship. They try to find enough things to throw out to equal her mass, but the ship is bare bones as it is, and there isn’t enough. The pilot explains that the medicine isn’t massive enough, and even if it was he wouldn’t trade thousands of lives for her one. They get close enough to the planet for her to say goodbye to her brother before being disposed of. The pilot offers to inject her so that she can die a painless death before he sends her body out the airlock, but she wants to be aware and alive to the end. He puts her, conscious and alive, in the airlock and blows her out, just as he intended to do earlier, but now instead of killing a dangerous criminal, he is executing a friend.
A second version was made for the SF channel a couple of years back. It was a two-hour movie that expands the story from the bare bones one above to include a conspiracy theory in which the pilot discovers that the medicine is a front for smuggled contraband of some sort(weapons, valuable minerals? I forget). The pilot is on trial for something, and the story told is a flashback. It starts pretty much the same, but they do manage to find enough things to dispose of, including the medicine container and contraband, to counteract the effect of the girl’s mass. After ejecting it, they find that there still isn’t enough fuel to land. It’s been hours since the initial calculations, and the additional fuel burnt during their decceleration during those hours makes it necessary to eject her anyway after throwing out the cargo. He ejects her and lands without his cargo. We flash back to the trial, where he’s convicted and sentenced. The story puts responsibility on the corporation rather than just staggeringly bad luck in the face of the laws of physics. It didn’t have nearly the emotional impact of the Twilight Zone version.
Yo: Is the version you describe the SF channel movie? The girl dies in that one, but otherwise it sounds the same. Is there a version where she lives? My god that’s horrible.
On a similar note, is there a movie made out of Odysseus where the women servants are killed at the end? I haven’t seen all adaptations of “The Odyssey” but this part is always cut out, and it bothers me. Not true to the tale.
I never saw the movie version of Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, but I’m told the retards concerned, not content with padding out the sex, nudity and trendy Native Americans, gave it a happy ending!
There are two audiences for any movie made from a book. Those who have read the book, and those who haven’t. The two groups are seeing different things on the screen. Any evaluation of a movie based on a book has to take into account that someone who hasn’t read the book on which it is based is encountering the story for the first time, and can judge it solely on its merits as a movie, and not as an adaptation of a book. Which is my roundabout way of saying that a movie can be a poor adaptation, but still a good movie. I tend to disqualify myself from judging movies based on books I’ve read.
For example, people who’ve not read John Irving’s books tend to have a much more favorable impression of The World According to Garp, The Hotel New Hampshire, Simon Birch and The Cider House Rules than those who aren’t fans of one of the 20th century’s greatest novelists.
I understand that among people who aren’t Stephen King fans, the Stanley Kubrick version of The Shining is generally thought of as a good horror movie, but I can’t see it. I liked the miniseries (where’s the damn DVD already) with Stephen Weber was much better. But I recognize that I cannot see it just as a movie.
Even seasoned pros aren’t immune. Roger Ebert, for whom To Kill a Mockingbird is a favorite book, wrote a collumn recently dissing the movie version, primarily based on a comparison with the book. It happens to be one of my favorite books, but I’d seen the movie first, so I was able to come to the book as a richer, more detailed version of a movie I loved rather than coming to the movie as a bare bones version of a book I loved.
My main point here is that it’s impossible to judge a movie fairly on its own terms if you’ve previously read the book upon which it is based, especially if the book was a classic and/or favorite.
I’d also like to add that “different from the book” isn’t really a valid criticism unless the change is one that hurts the movie as a movie. For example, in Bettie Letts novel Where the Heart Is, the heroine has bad events occur in relation to the number 7. For the movie, this number was changed to 5 for practical reasons related to the moviemaking process. As far as the story is concerned, having an unlucky number is vital, but what the number actually is is irrelevant. Yet fans of the book protested, not that it was a bad change, but that it was bad because it was changed. I’d also put changing the British journalist to American in Bonfire of the Vanities in that category. Picking on something so inconsequential to the story is inane, especially when there are so many things so drastically wrong with that it deserve our scorn (such as the miscast Tom Hanks, for example).
Absolutely right! I saw that travesty, and I forgot to list it.
Number Six: The version of Cold Equations I recall seeing had them ejecting the illicit cargo, thus saving the girl. But possibly I was so disgusted with the conspiracy twist I turned it off before the writers came up with a different reason to kill her. Perhaps I mentally filled in the happy ending after switching it off. It was the ending implied by the plot twist. We may be talking about the same version, my memories of bad movies are spotty. Anybody else remember this one?
They also did a version of Cold Equations on the radio program X-Minus One. It sounds like the story was pretty much the same as the one mentioned by Six. Only difference was the planet they were headed to wasn’t the woman’s brother, but her estranged husband.
Very good episode of a great show. You can find an mp3 of it out there somewhere.
pat
PS:
It is my understanding (this might be wrong.) that The Shining miniseries cannot come out on DVD. Something about mixed up rights between that and the Kubrick version of the movie.
I thought Kubrick’s The Shining was an excellent horror film. But, I never read the original novel, so I wasn’t making comparisons.
I’m not sure where one could find The Cold Equations, but we read it this year in my sophomore (high school) English class. It’s in our sophomore lit book, and takes up maybe 15 lit book pages. Pretty good story, too. I wasn’t aware that a movie version was made.
Now, from what I’ve read and seen, the movie by the name of The Lawnmower Man has almost absolutely nothing to do with the Stephen King short story it’s allegedly based off of. The short story is about a Greek cult that does lawn service, and the movie about a crazy corporation with virtual reality—WTF?
Doing a little research, I was a bit off base.
Before the miniseries could be released to DVD two years had to have passed or it had to have a second televised run. Since, both of these thngs have happened apparently the video company is just dragging their feet.
I got the info from here.
http://www.stephenkingnews.com/movies/theshining1997.html
Sorry about that.
pat
priccar, thanks for the info.
Well, it’s not the worst translation from book to movie ever, and the book itself is exactly “The Cold Equasions”, but I thought that the movie version of “Congo” should at least be mentioned. I mean, the novel wasn’t THAT dry, it’s not like you COULDN’T have made a faithful screenplay adaption without making it five hours long or something…
Sorry. I’m just bitter. :mad:
Ranchoth
The 1980 version of The Shining.
The 1965 and 1975 versions of Agathe Christie’s And Then There Were None
How about one that’s still playing: “From Hell”.
Ok, taking Six’s words to heart I will say it’s a somewhat entertaining movie if you haven’t read the book.
(Although there’s a lot of Hollywoodizing that would annoy me in any movie. Like how even if the female lead is a thruppence-a-ride, totally desitute street whore she HAS to be gorgeous, flawlessly made up, and, of course, never seen actually turning tricks.)
And I’ll grant you couldn’t get a quarter of the whole book into a movie, but I still say trying to turn it into a mystery instead of telling you who Jack is from the beginning and focusing the character and why he did it is a lousy, boring choice and avoids most of what was cool about the book.
Though the book is completely unfilmable, the movie of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury with Yul Brynner still manages to be one of the ugliest adaptations imaginable.
Nightfall
One of (arguably, THE) greatest SF stories ever written.
Asimov himself in I. Asimov:
I have actually seen this movie. I found it in a video store here in Okinawa; I was so excited and could not believe there had been a movie adaptation that I was unaware of – goddamn it sucked. It sucked long and hard.
At least with Starship Troopers and The Shining, you could tell what story it was. I do not exaggerate when I tell you if you did not see the box and the opening credits, there is no way you would guess this movie was Nightfall.
While the film was entertaining,(perhaps because Burroughs himself was consulted in the making thereof) it wasn’t enough like the book to actually be recognizeable as the film of the book.
Granted, it might be a bit difficult to reproduce some of the, er. scenes.
I had hoped for a cameo appearance by Donald Fagin and Walter Becker. 
b.
Forrest Gump was nearly unrecognizable. I saw the movie first, loved it. Then i read the book and said “um…what?” Not that the book wasn’t good in it’s own right, but the only things similar between the book and the movie were the character’s names.
I’ll second this one. I think it must be a translating-to-the-screen problem, as the story and characters were not really changed much, but the movie was painfully bad while I found the book quite entertaining.
Although I haven’t seen the new Planet of the Apes, if it’s as bad as I hear it must be one of history’s truly bad book adaptations.
Conversely, I’ve never read A Prayer for Owen Meany, but I’m sure it’s far far better than that awful Simon Birch.
I’m tempted to vote for the “modernized” version of Great Expectations, but I must admit I’ve only seen about fifteen minutes of it. If the rest of it is even a tenth as awful, though, I think we have a winner.
I’m not disputing this, just wondering what was wrong with it. I’m quite an Agatha Christie fan, but I don’t think I’ve seen these two versions. What was changed, besides the location? Or was it just bad acting?