Cousin Bette (1998). In the book, the title character spends the entire novel scheming, conniving, and generally plotting against her cousin, Adeline Hulot. The movie kills Adeline in the opening scene. The movie conflates several characters into one (Jenny Cadine), and I know this is common to movie adaptations, but it weakens the characterization of the man who falls for her, who needs to be established as a man who repeats his mistakes (with several women). Also, I could not buy Bob Hoskins as French, even if he was portraying a tacky social climber.
See, I think ST is a far better work of art as a movie than as a book. The book is pretty terrible, IMO, whereas the movie is kind of brilliant; it’s just that Verhoeven is a horrible person who spends millions of dollars to call the viewer an idiot in an extremely eloquent fashion. The movie only works as some sort of combination of satire and insult comedy, but it works really well in that respect, whereas the book is Ayn Rand with space marines.
In the same manner, while I loathe what Wes Anderson did to Fantastic Mr. Fox–I think he took a brilliant trickster-tale for children and turned it into yet another privileged, self-pitying lament about being a bourgeois middle-aged-man–he did so with panache and eloquence. It’s not a bad work of art, even though it’s a loathsome work of art.
The Grinch, however, well, some shit is unforgivable.
The Jungle Book. Cut out 99% of the wolves angle of the story, and completely made up the 1% that was left in.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame of 1956, the one with Anthony Queen as Quasimodo, has the closest end as envisioned by Victor Hugo.
The book Bat 21 was a very cool true story of an aviator who was shot down in Vietnam. The way they got him out was brilliant, and took up a major portion of the book.
The main character was an avid golfer, and the guys at the Pentagon called in anyone who had played golf with him on various courses. Then, they would tell him over the radio something like, “OK, Colonel … this hole is like the hole at Pensacola where you got a hole-in-one, except it is twice as long and doglegs the other direction.” By mapping his movements to golf courses with which he was familiar, they were able to guide him to safety.
In the movie, they got the aviator-shot-down-over-Vietnam part right. The rest of the movie wasn’t even close.
(bolding mine)
Quinn, not Queen.
The book Mr. Popper’s Penguins was a remarkably creative book about a family man and house painter in the thirties who ended up with the gift of a penguin from an explorer he’d written to. When this penguin began to droop from loneliness, a zoo with an equally droopy female penguin donated her to the Popper residence, and, well, you can imagine what transpires. When the number of penguins has increased to twelve and their living expenses increase, the Popper family hits on the idea of training them as a vaudeville act.
The Jim Carrey movie version…well, there was a guy named Mr. Popper and some penguins. (Admittedly, I didn’t see it…after reading the plot synopsis I had no desire to.)
Honestly…I have no problems when a film adaptation of a novel/story/play makes changes as long as they’re conscientious and have sound reasoning behind them. I don’t mind Disney’s changes to, say, Pinocchio or Mary Poppins, because the original books, as good as they were, were very episodic and wouldn’t have made for unified movie versions without some changes. But WHY would the makers of Mr. Popper’s Penguins just eighty-six a perfectly nice plot (with lots of opportunities for visual humor and charm in the vaudeville act) to just make up something of their own that seems no different from any other raucous comedy? (And, God help me, THREW IN FLATULENCE JOKES.)
And while Verhoeven doesn’t like Nazis, Heinlein seemed to admire them. Bad book into an entertaining, over the top movie.
Considering Starship Troopers was all about duty and so forth, I don’t see how its “Randian”.
How the hell is the Federation in the book remotely like the Nazis? The Nazis were a totalitarian state using mass mobilization of the population and waging more or less endless wars of conquest while the Federation is a liberal state with a limited franchise which maintains a strictly volunteer military and wages very limited war (all these points are emphasized throughout the novel).
I loved Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers, it was a brilliant film.
It was a terrible adaptation of the book however, it had the opposite politics and the director didn’t read the book 'til well into production.
And yet you’re wrong, on so many levels.
No, you’ve just demonstrated an ignorance of Heinlein, Verhoeven AND what a Nazi is, all in one swell foop.
They changed a dumb but moderately entertaining book into a dumb but moderately entertaining movie.
I also vote for The Cat in the Hat
Contact.
When the entire philosophical message is changed, no matter how much of the story they got “correct”, it’s a bad adaptation.
Simon Birch - which was based on John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, but was unlike it in every way.
Next time, would you mind actually making a point? Your “NO U” posts aren’t interesting.
No, when someone makes an assertion with no evidence presented to back it up, I am free to simply say “no, you’re wrong” until such time as they do present evidence which requires refutation.
I think that with ST, Verhoeven was basically going for a repeat of his vastly superior Robocop. Except that while the latter film also had a compelling plot, terrific actors and genuine emotion in addition to biting satire, ST *only *had satire, and less effective satire at that.
You’re free to say whatever you want, dude.
I enjoyed both the book and the movie, but I haven’t made up my mind yet about the movie’s intention. Verhoeven was either disagreeing with the book in a childish way, or agreeing with it in a brilliant, subtle way. Or maybe a little of both.