I wouldn’t label it a “worst movie adaptation” or even a bad one, but having read the book first I was disappointed by East Of Eden.
Starter for 10, a not-that-great book which was made into a worse film by taking out most of the unsavoury aspects of the characters and turning it into a standard romcom which just happens to include University Challenge.
The most recent The Three Musketeers included loads of details from the book, but was still a mess.
Wait what? They made a movie out of that book? x.x
Anyway, I was coming in to mention The Dark Is Rising, but I see that one got an early tip-of-the-hat. I really don’t understand why they even TRY making movies that way. (Where by “that way” I mean “with no respect for the original source, author, or story.” I mean, if you’re going to make a movie out of something that people have heard of, presumably people have heard of it because it had some MERIT, and completely disregarding that doesn’t sound like a good way to make a good movie.)
I didn’t really dislike the first Narnia film - okay, lemme rephrase that. I actually rather enjoyed TLTWATW. Prince Caspian was a marked step down, and Dawn Treader was a total mess. To whoever said that that might’ve been because they tried too hard to stay close to the book’s storyline, I would argue that if they’d changed it much more, there would have been next to nothing left. The problem is that Dawn Treader is essentially unfilmable. It’s a series of little vignettes where they sail for a while, come to an island, do something interesting, and sail on. There really isn’t any overall “plot” - sure, they’re nominally looking for the “Lost Lords” but really they’re just on a Voyage of Discovery™. There’s no villain. There’s no final showdown. The Dark Island is scary as heck, but it’s probably the least important island in the book. It’s a wonderful book, but it makes a terrible movie, and their attempts to impose a “plot” on it only make it less good for those of us who’ve read the book, without making it any better for people who hadn’t.
This, exactly. If the book or short story was good, and people liked it, why change it unnecessarily? Some changes might be needed because of the difference in medium, but many of the examples given here have changes just because someone felt like piddling in the story to change the flavor. The flavor of the story is already a winner, don’t make it taste like piss!
Another script-that-was-never-made submission is the Sam Hamm screenplay of Watchmen.
The Zach Snyder movie from 2009 was, by and large, faithful to the original GN (the main change being the mechanics of the ending, which was done to save exposition and is, IMO, tidier and better than the original).
The Hamm script, in contrast, starts with a random SWAT team member screaming, “Christ almighty, it’s the goddamned Watchmen!” and just gets better/worse from there. It culminates with the following exchange:
[spoiler]DREIBERG: “And what if you’re wrong?”
VEIDT: “Then I’ve been a very bad boy and you’ll have to spank me. Christ! I’m doing what I have to do to save the godforsaken human race!” [/spoiler]
Part of me really wishes it had been made like this. Part of me is evidently a masochist.