# Worst movie adaptation of a book (probable spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 8, 2013, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730 "2013-02-08T19:59:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Renifer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/71c47a/32.png) [@Renifer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renifer)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2013, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/61 "2013-02-09T17:18:03Z")
Killing Mr. Griffin. The book by Lois Duncan was excellent. The main character, Sue, is a slightly nerdy insecure girl who falls into a group of popular kids planning on kidnapping this hated teacher. The kidnapping goes awry when the teacher, Mr. Griffin, dies because he is unable to get his heart pills. The straight to video movie casts Amy Jo Johnson (Pink Power Ranger) and Mario Lopez. It turns Sue into a shallow twit who’s fondest wish is for a magic closet that contains every cool outfit she could ever wear. It removes any and all subtleties of the other characters’ motivations for the kidnapping. It includes a hokey scene where Sue dreams she is being buried alive with rock music playing in the background. ---
**Author:** ![Shawn1767](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shawn1767](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shawn1767)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2013, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/62 "2013-02-09T17:18:58Z")
“The Spy Who Loved Me,” and pretty much almost all James Bond stories turned into movies. Basically, they just used the same title. ---
**Author:** ![Dusty\_Rose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ba8739/32.png) [@Dusty\_Rose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dusty_Rose)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2013, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/63 "2013-02-09T17:24:12Z")
Interview with a Vampire. I don’t know how anyone could follow the movie without reading the book first. Maybe I just thought that because I had read the book, though. ---
**Author:** ![Hazle\_Weatherfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Hazle\_Weatherfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hazle_Weatherfield)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2013, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/64 "2013-02-09T18:20:04Z")
The movie version of “A Wrinkle in Time” literally made me cry with disappointment. Oh, and “The Memory Keeper’s Daughter.” I loved the book, but the made-for-tv movie was a steaming pile. ---
**Author:** ![Hermione](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/cdc98d/32.png) [@Hermione](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermione)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2013, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/65 "2013-02-09T18:35:04Z")
> [@Shawn1767](#): > > “The Spy Who Loved Me,” and pretty much almost all James Bond stories turned into movies. Basically, they just used the same title. I wouldn’t say ALL of them did. TSWLM was a very atypical Bond story for Ian Fleming–he tried out writing from the POV of a damsel in distress, with Bond showing up only three-quarters of the way through the book. I believe that Eon Productions had the rights to only the title and could do whatever they wished, which is probably just as well–it was pretty unfilmable as a Bond movie. (Rather like the original story Quantum of Solace, another atypical Bond story that lent a title and nothing else to a movie. The entire story was someone telling Bond the tale of someone else’s marriage. Bond’s only role was to sit there and listen!) But For Your Eyes Only was a pretty good mash-up of two Fleming stories, “For Your Eyes Only” and “Risico.” Octopussy was much the same–mashing together two short stories and using them as a jumping-off point for a larger one. And The Living Daylights was a very nice expansion of the Fleming short story of the same name. ---
**Author:** ![SirGalahad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/71c47a/32.png) [@SirGalahad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SirGalahad)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2013, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/66 "2013-02-09T18:52:53Z")
**Around the World in Eighty Days** (2004) with Jackie Chan as Passepartout. Ouch. (I read Tour du Monde en 80 Jours, Jules Verne when I was a kid.) ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2013, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/67 "2013-02-09T19:41:05Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > **The Puppet Masters** – there was some good stuff in this, but theu made some abysmal choices. For cryin’ out loud, just film it straight, without trying to change it to a present-day story. I think the nudity would be a problem for theatrical release. [If memory serves, once they discover that the aliends tend to attach along the spine, everybody in the secret section of the government strips down in the office building. Not sure how much out of the building nudity went on.] > [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > How the hell is the Federation in the book remotely like the Nazis? I was sort of wondering that myself. > [@Shawn1767](#): > > “The Spy Who Loved Me,” and pretty much almost all James Bond stories turned into movies. Basically, they just used the same title. I have bitched about that for years. As the story is written, it would actually make a fantastic little lust story with a bit of action, but not one of the craptastic over the top special effect Broccoli Bond movies. See, it _really IS_ about the girl more than Bond … but of course anything Bond is in he MUST be the lead character in it. :rolleyes: And I am amazed that someone hasn’t bought up the rights to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and turned it into a Bond movie, same author, must be about Bond, spies and blowing shit up, right? My entry in this thread is actually about a script adaption of a book that the author read and thoroughly stomped upon. Bujold and [The Warriors Apprentice](http://www.baenebooks.com/p-1290-warriors-apprentice.aspx). Currently free to read, but the plot is roughly kid of Famous Man is born with a physical handicap so tends to be a bit ambitious and gets into trouble in various ways. His planet has just spent roughly 80 years between being lost [the wormhole the settlers came through vanished 800 years previously, leaving them all alone to drop back into a Dark Age] and being found by explorers from a system on the other side of a wormhole that in the process of modernizing them gets the local stellar Bad Guys to invade for 20 years of occupation and war to get the bad guys to leave them alone. Now they have modernized and are headed out to commit trade and exploration. Said kid is packed off to visit his maternal grandmother on a planet called Beta [the second oldest Earth Colony still existant.] He gets into trouble playing knight in shining armor and buying a small cargo ship to keep the pilot out of trouble and needs a cargo to make the money to pay back the loan. Things get exciting. So, Poor Lois Bujold gets this scrip treatment to read. She calls it the Script From Hell. Words fail me, but this [list post](http://lists.herald.co.uk/pipermail/lois-bujold/2002-August/025263.html)covers it pretty well. She has resolutely refused to allow anybody to turn anything of hers into a movie since. And nobody who has heard the script reading disagrees. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2013, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/68 "2013-02-09T19:54:08Z")
> [@Shawn1767](#): > > “The Spy Who Loved Me,” and pretty much almost all James Bond stories turned into movies. Basically, they just used the same title. In this one case, they actually had an excuse. Fleming only sold the rights to the title, not the story. They actually _had_ to come up with a different plot. Thank Og, too. Even the story they came up with was better than a faithful adaptation of tSWLM would have been. As as been noted, not all the Bond films are so vastly different. Until Fleming died, they actually tried to be somewhat close to the books, and afterwards **the Spy Who Loved Me** and **For Your Eyes Only** actually managed to get pretty close to what Fleming wrote. As did the Daniel Craig **Casino Royale** , to some degree. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2013, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/69 "2013-02-09T21:18:46Z")
_When Worlds Collide_. And I would probably add the recent remake of _Yours, Mine and Ours_, but I refused to watch it and thus have no personal experience with how bad an adaptation it was. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2013, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/70 "2013-02-09T21:34:13Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > How the hell is the Federation in the book remotely like the Nazis? I think it was the snappy uniforms and full citizenship only earned by service in the military. But it was a shitty novel I haven’t read for 40 years, so I could be wrong. Entertaining movie, though I didn’t understand why the Mobile Infantry knowingly went into battle with machine guns against big bugs with nearly bulletproof exoskeletons. I suppose it was to make the movie longer and more dramatic, but making battles longer and more dramatic is contrary to sensible military doctrine. And I’d ask if you knew who else had thinking that was contrary to sensible military doctrine, but even he understood the need to go into battle quickly and blow the shit out of everything. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2013, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/71 "2013-02-09T21:52:21Z")
> [@RikWriter](#): > > No, you’ve just demonstrated an ignorance of Heinlein, Verhoeven AND what a Nazi is, all in one swell foop. So Heinlein wasn’t a confused militaristic libertarian who wrote some good books and some bad books but is overall considered brilliant by Randians and people whose views I otherwise respect? And Verhoeven hates Nazis and dislikes American Exceptionalism but likes to make movies with explosions and gratuitous nudity? And Nazis had no coherent political philosophy but loved spectacle, greed, and killing people they didn’t like? I’ve been wrong before. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2013, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/72 "2013-02-09T22:01:59Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Entertaining movie, though I didn’t understand why the Mobile Infantry knowingly went into battle with machine guns against big bugs with nearly bulletproof exoskeletons. This is part of where I think he’s a horrible person who got off on hating the audience. “Wanna know why people in the movie aren’t following plausible military strategy? Because this is a movie about giant bugs, and fuck your military strategy, that’s why!” That’s part of my take-away. I didn’t enjoy it, but I think he accomplished his aims in a way that Heinlein didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2013, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/73 "2013-02-09T22:25:48Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > So Heinlein wasn’t a confused militaristic libertarian who wrote some good books and some bad books but is overall considered brilliant by Randians and people whose views I otherwise respect? And Verhoeven hates Nazis and dislikes American Exceptionalism but likes to make movies with explosions and gratuitous nudity? And Nazis had no coherent political philosophy but loved spectacle, greed, and killing people they didn’t like? > > I’ve been wrong before. I’m a little loathe to dip my oar in this river, but Rik was responding to a poster who thought that Heinlein “admired” Nazis, which he clearly didn’t. For the record, I enjoyed both the book and the movie for very different reasons. Amongst other things, I think Verhoeven’s point was that Heinlein’s fantasy libertarian paradise of the book wouldn’t really work and in reality for such a society to function it would have to be fascist, as it was in the movie. Moreover, the movie takes one of the more trite expressions, the idea that war dehumanizes people and demonstrates it in a fairly creative way. Besides, I’ll always enjoy the moment in the movie when the entire theatre audience audibly gasped when Doogie Howser came out dressed up as a Nazi. That being said, I think Heinlein often got a lot of crap he didn’t deserve by people who didn’t realize he like experimenting. For example, it would be very easy for people to think\* Stranger in a Strange Land\* and _Starship Troopers_ were made by completely different writers. I also give him immense credit for having non-whites as protagonists at a time when that was unheard, including of course _Starship Troopers_, which is the one element of the movie that really pissed me. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2013, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/74 "2013-02-09T23:47:36Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > I was going to cite this, and add that the narrator (who was a gayer-than-gay Truman Capote prototype, and thus a harmless girlfriend for the female protagonist to get close to with zero sexual tension) has been changed into a male lead who marries the protagonist in the end. The key difference, along with the general whitewashing of Holly’s less than reputable character. ---
**Author:** ![gus28](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6de8d8/32.png) [@gus28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gus28)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2013, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/75 "2013-02-09T23:50:16Z")
Absolute Power by David Baldacci, the movie and book have the same title, that’s about it. Loved the book, the movie, not so much. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2013, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/76 "2013-02-10T00:41:10Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > In this one case, they actually had an excuse. Fleming only sold the rights to the title, not the story. They actually _had_ to come up with a different plot. Thank Og, too. Even the story they came up with was better than a faithful adaptation of tSWLM would have been. > As as been noted, not all the Bond films are so vastly different. Until Fleming died, they actually tried to be somewhat close to the books, and afterwards **the Spy Who Loved Me** and **For Your Eyes Only** actually managed to get pretty close to what Fleming wrote. As did the Daniel Craig **Casino Royale** , to some degree. OK, refresh my memory. With regards to The Spy Who Loved Me, we are talking the 1977 [film](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spy_Who_Loved_Me_%28film%29): British and Soviet ballistic-missile submarines mysteriously disappear. James Bond - MI6 agent 007 - is summoned to investigate. On the way, he escapes an ambush by Soviet agents in Austria, killing one during a downhill ski chase, and escaping via a Union Flag parachute. Bond learns that the plans for a highly advanced submarine tracking system are on the market in Egypt. There, he encounters Major Anya Amasova - KGB agent Triple X - his rival for the plans. Bond and Amasova team up, due to a truce supported by their respective superiors. They travel across Egypt together, tracking the microfilm plans, meeting Jaws – an unnaturally tall assassin with steel teeth – along the way. They later identify the person responsible for the thefts as shipping tycoon, scientist and anarchist Karl Stromberg. While travelling by train to Stromberg’s base in Sardinia, Bond saves Amasova from being attacked by Jaws, and their rivalry changes into affection. They visit Stromberg’s base and learn of his mysterious new supertanker, the _Liparus_. Jaws, and other henchmen, chase the couple’s car, but they escape, due to Bond’s superior driving skills and his Q Branch Lotus Esprit sports car/submarine. This unique car enables the two spies to perform a further underwater reconnaissance of Stromberg’s facilities. Bond later finds out that the Liparus has never visited any known port or harbour, and Amasova learns that Bond killed her lover in Austria; she promises Bond that she will kill him when their mission ends. Later, while aboard an American submarine, Bond and Amasova examine Stromberg’s underwater _Atlantis_ base and confirm that he is operating the tracking system. The _Liparus_ then captures the submarine, just as it captured the others. Stromberg sets his plan in motion: the launching of nuclear missiles from the submarines, to destroy Moscow and New York City. This would trigger a global nuclear war, which Stromberg would survive in _Atlantis_, and subsequently a new civilisation would be established. He leaves for _Atlantis_ with Amasova. Bond frees the captured British, Russian and American submariners and they battle the _Liparus_’s crew. Bond reprograms the British and Soviet submarines to destroy each other, saving Moscow and New York. The victorious submariners escape the sinking _Liparus_ on the American submarine. Bond insists on rescuing Amasova before the submarine has to follow its orders and destroy _Atlantis_. Bond confronts and kills Stromberg but again encounters Jaws, whom he drops into a shark tank. Bond and Amasova flee in an escape pod as _Atlantis_ is sunk. In the pod Amasova reminds Bond that she has vowed to kill him and picks up Bond’s gun, but admits to having forgiven him and the two make love. The Royal Navy recovers the pod, and the two spies are seen in intimate embrace through its large window, much to the consternation of Bond and Amasova’s superiors. Meanwhile, Jaws escapes from the shark tank (after fatally biting the shark) and swims off into the sunset. Right? I am talking about the [story](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spy_Who_Loved_Me_%28novel%29) - which to recap what I remember from reading it as I really don’t feel like doing a cut and paste as long as the first one - Feckless unemployed woman takes a job babysitting an upstate NY motel for a few weeks until the men that the owner hired to clear it out and close it for the winter can get there. She gets bored and flips on the vacancy sign. The crooks that the criminal owner hired to come up and burn the place down, killing her and making the fire look as if it was burned down by accident from the woman smoking in bed or whatever. It is a dark and stormy night, Bond gets a flat tire and heads up to the hotel for the night. She puts him in the cabin that adjoins hers. The crooks decide to kill both of them, Bod of course quashes that little plan, the crooks end up dead and Bond fades off into the sunset. Oddly enough, I don’t seem to remember submarines, a Lotus Esprit, or Sardinians [or a can of sardines either]. So, exactly how is this movie closer to the Bond story of the same name than say Dr No, which at least in both book and movie had a Dr No, Crab Cay, the Caribbean as a location? ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2013, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/77 "2013-02-10T01:05:43Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > I’m an admirer of Vidal’s, and yes, he was appalled–but when I saw the Jerry Lewis movie in the 1950s as a small child, I loved it. > I was a pretty dopey child. Be that as it may, those of us who were 50’s kids had a different perspective on JL; at one time he had been _very_ funny. In the late 50’s that time was still a fairly recent memory. > [@Czarcasm](#): > > The first book about the character “Aloysius Xingú Leng Pendergast” was _Relic_, by Preston and Child, and the movie made from the book had the same title and plotline _but totally deleted the main character from the book!_ Speaking of whom…I really enjoyed the earlier Pendergrast novels, but as the series progressed they got farther and farther “out there” (and sillier). _Two Graves_ was the last straw for me. Preston and Child have jumped the shark with Agent Al. > [@JohnT](#): > > **Contact**.When the entire philosophical message is changed, no matter how much of the story they got “correct”, it’s a bad adaptation. Amen! ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2013, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/78 "2013-02-10T03:27:34Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > I’m a little loathe to dip my oar in this river, but Rik was responding to a poster who thought that Heinlein “admired” Nazis, which he clearly didn’t. That would’ve been me, but that hijack’s done. ---
**Author:** ![well\_he\_s\_back](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3ab097/32.png) [@well\_he\_s\_back](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/well_he_s_back)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2013, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/79 "2013-02-10T03:43:16Z")
Sir Galahad mentioned the horrid Jackie Chan version of “Around the World in 80 Days”. That reminds me of another horrible adaptation I was unlucky enough to see - “King’s Solomon’s Mines” starring Richard Chamberlin. Oh how awful. Both of these were cheap & cheesy. And that’s the best I can say. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2013, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730/80 "2013-02-10T03:49:30Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > In this one case, they actually had an excuse. Fleming only sold the rights to the title, not the story. They actually _had_ to come up with a different plot. Thank Og, too. Even the story they came up with was better than a faithful adaptation of tSWLM would have been. > As as been noted, not all the Bond films are so vastly different. Until Fleming died, they actually tried to be somewhat close to the books, and afterwards **the Spy Who Loved Me** and **For Your Eyes Only** actually managed to get pretty close to what Fleming wrote. As did the Daniel Craig **Casino Royale** , to some degree. Agreed. _Dr. No, Goldfinger_, _From Russia With Love_, and _Diamonds are Forever_, were all relatively faithful. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-movie-adaptation-of-a-book-probable-spoilers/649730.md?page=5)