Worst movie adaptation of a book (probable spoilers)

[Ibn_Warraq]

I don’t know if it’s already been mentioned but the movie adaption of Bonfire of the Vanities was absolutely awful and what’s worse is it really should have been relatively easy to make into a really terrific movie but just about every choice the writers made from the casting to the alterations from the book was just wrong, especially the choice of Bruce Willis for the reporter.

[jack_tardiff]

Disagree about Grapes of Wrath – I think it’s AN adaptation.

Now for BAD adaptation, I’m calling back to another thread about dated movies and nominate Hitchcock’s Sabotage, adapted from The Secret Agent.

I don’t remember who wrote the screenplay or what the studio protocol was for synopses and so forth, but the bare facts of the story are altered and distorted in so shameful a way that I can’t help but blame somebody.

Now, interesting thing is that both Ford and Hitchcock are primarily visual artists IMHO – Ford is known for responding to requests for shortening the length of a flick by tearing pages of the shooting script out haphazardly, and, while Hitchcock wasn’t a Ford in terms of how flamboyant he was (AFAIK), I believe the core is common: “Does it play?” “If yes, then good shot! Move on.” Very intuitive.

So while Sabotage is an effective thriller on screen, it is NOT an adaptation by any means of the great novel on which it is based.

OTOH, To Have and To Have Not IIRC was better by miles than the novel. I think I read it at the high school – I might be wrong, but I certainly don’t recall anything as juicy as the picture in whatever book I was pretending to read.

ETA to add, I might be the only person here to have read The Dirty Dozen novel. This would be a much better idea for me to find a thread on movies that so far outshine the novels it would take a mere tenth of a lightyear to reach the conclusion. Ditto Shane

[Zebra]

@JohnT

Contact.

When the entire philosophical message is changed, no matter how much of the story they got “correct”, it’s a bad adaptation.

Then you should include Minority Report.

Also Blade Runner. (OK movie, not true to book)

Field of Dreams is not true to the book, but is better than the book. (Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa)

Does Rent count as an adaptation of La Boheme?

[well_he_s_back]

jack tardiff - I’m surprised you mention Shane. I love that book and think the movie Shane is very good too. But finding out why you didn’t like the book would indeed be better suited to a different thread.

[jack_tardiff]

@well_he_s_back

jack tardiff - I’m surprised you mention Shane. I love that book and think the movie Shane is very good too. But finding out why you didn’t like the book would indeed be better suited to a different thread.

Well, in the interests of compactness for the SDMB: I think the novel is better than the movie, now that I think about it, but I think it is a not very good movie.

But even though I think the movie sucks (harsh term, I know), doesn’t mean I don’t value the novel higher. I was probably mistaken or thinking of something else. I could dig a whole thread about Shane or for that matter Alan Ladd – good call, and nice to meet you.

[well_he_s_back]

Just remembered - the movie version of “The Natural” completely changes the meaning and outcome of the book. The movie is sitll an ok baseball fantasy, but not a good adaptation of the book.

thanks for the explanation, Jack Tardiff, sorry I misunderstood you. appreciated even if we disagree.

[jack_tardiff]

@Zebra

Does Rent count as an adaptation of La Boheme?

No.

[Jackmannii]

As someone who enjoyed Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder detective novel series, I found the movie adaptation of “Eight Million Ways To Die” to be a putrid excrescence. Besides the plot being nonsensical and having little to do with that of the novel, the movie’s high points were Rosanna Arquette throwing up on Jeff Bridges plus a record number (for the time, at least) of profanities screamed in a short sequence (“Fuck!” “Fuck you!” “No, FUCK YOU!!!” “Put down the fucking drugs!” “Fuck!!!” etc.) Apparently reviewers of the period (1986) agreed with me, as the following blurbs never appeared in ads for the movie:

“An oddly-paced work that is sometimes a thriller and sometimes a love story, succeeding at neither.”

“How did Eight Million Ways to Die commit suicide? Let us count the ways.”

“Too bad that the gifted director Hal Ashby (Last Detail, Shampoo) ended his career with such a sleazy thriller that even the reliable and appealing Jeff Bridges can’t salvage.”

The script was co-written by Oliver Stone, who supposedly has been working on a movie adaptation of “The Deep Blue Goodbye” (a John MacDonald novel featuring Travis McGee) starring Leonardo DiCaprio, the thought of which gives me nausea.

[jack_tardiff]

@Jackmannii

the movie’s high points were Rosanna Arquette throwing up on Jeff Bridges plus a record number (for the time, at least) of profanities screamed in a short sequence (“Fuck!” “Fuck you!” “No, FUCK YOU!!!” “Put down the fucking drugs!” “Fuck!!!” etc.)

A fellow could have a pretty good weekend in [Bay Harbor] with all that stuff.

Well, consider you another brick in the wall – I’m going to look that flick up.

[FriarTed]

@AuntiePam

Something Wicked This Way Comes captured none of the flavor and atmosphere of the book.

Yet was also scripted & overseen, tho not controlled, by Bradbury.

[FriarTed]

@CalMeacham

This is par for the course. If you look at the various stage and screen adaptations of Stoker’s overpopulated and overwrought drama, you see all sorts of compromises being made to reduce the number of characters and to brinf some narrative sense to their connections. We’ve had several versions with Harker being combined with Renfield, for instance.

The Lucy-Mina name switch originated with the 1920s Deane-Balderstone play on which Lugosi’s film & Langella’s are based. In fact, the play only mentions “Mina” (really Lucy) in dialogue. Fortunately, the Lugosi film includes the real Lucy & restores the rightful names.
As an actual adaptation from the book, Chris Lee’s & Peter Cushing’s 1958 HORROR OF DRACULA (or merely DRACULA in the UK) isn’t any great prize either.

And to dilute the OP category- a great movie which is a horrible adaptation of the book…
Karloff’s FRANKENSTEIN- I mean, HENRY Frankenstein & VICTOR Clerval??? Fortunately, there is (literally) much more of Mary Shelley in the fantastic sequel BRIDE OF F…

[CalMeacham]

@aruvqan

OK, refresh my memory. With regards to The Spy Who Loved Me, we are talking the 1977 film:
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 - 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?

It’s not. I think I miswrote “The Spy Who Loved Me” insead of the real title I meant. If you lookm up earlier in the very same entry that you f**ing cite, I wrote:

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.

[quote]

[Cayuga]

@Steophan

I see your point, and it is one of the weaker Ford/Fonda collaborations, but it’s still a decent film on it’s own terms, and it has some truly fantastic acting in it. It hasn’t aged particularly well, but I doubt you could film that book in it’s entirety today, especially not the final scene with Rose Of Sharon breastfeeding the starving man with the milk meant for her dead baby.

@Julius_Henry

See if you can find the American Playhouse DVD of the stage play by Frank Galati that starred Gary Sinise and Lois Smith. In spite of the limits that a live stage performance has, it is far more true to the novel than Nunnally Johnson’s screenplay.

I saw the Steppenwolf (AP) version on TV, and loved it. And yes, it did include that final scene. I conceded that it was unfilmable then, but it wouldn’t be now.

[CalMeacham]

Sorry you had to waste all that outrage for nothing.

READ, next ytime.

[mbh]

My nominees would be the Matt Helm movies starring Dean Martin. I enjoy them as light comedy, but they bear no resemblance to Donald Hamilton’s novels.

[Achren]

@aruvqan

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. <snip>

So, Poor Lois Bujold gets this scrip treatment to read. She calls it the Script From Hell. Words fail me, but this list postcovers 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.

I..I think my brain just tried to kill me. Yikes. Yiiiiiikes.

[kath94]

I was completely enthralled with The Clan of the Cavebear. The movie sucked. but, then, I think someone was far too ambitious in trying to make a movie where nobody actually spoke.

[panache45]

@Fiddle_Peghead

Being that I saw the movie version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s before reading the novella, I can’t say that this fits the requirements of the OP. However, if I had read the story first, and then saw the movie, it very well might have. At best, I think I would have been pretty disappointed in the film. While the role of

Doc Golightly

and the brief scenes with that character come somewhat close to catching the wistful yearning and melancholy of the novella, the rest of the movie is a light-hearted romantic comedy, enjoyable enough on its own terms, but having nothing really to do with Capote’s great story.

When I first saw it, I couldn’t help thinking that Marilyn Monroe should have played the lead. Years later, I learned that she was Capote’s first choice as well.

And then there’s that abominable scene with Mickey Rooney.

[AHunter3]

from childhood, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. And no one ever went back and did it right.

The Shining — whether you like or don’t like the Stanley Kubrick “adaptation”, it’s severely not true to the book in spirit or synoptical trajectory.

[Zebra]

Oh, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange was based on a version of the novella that left out the last chapter. So his film leaves out the final turn of the story which also removes the meaning of the story.