Neither movie adaptation, Manhunter or Red Dragon did justice to the book. I also feel the same way about King's The Shining and Koontz's Watchers. Gone with the Wind was as good as the book
I'm a huge fan of the LotR books, but the films were, in my opinion, much better and I'm a massive fan of them. I wouldn't be as into LotR or as inspired as I am now without the films. I'm grateful for that, in a way. And though I've yet to see it (something which I endeavour to fix soon!) I've heard that Life of Pi was very good indeed. In terms of bad, Eragon really sticks out for me. I really liked the books but the film was woefully sub-par. I kinda fancy myself as a director, maybe I'll try and do a better job one day... A lot of people have been hating on the Golden Compass. I actually quite liked that film, but that may be because I was fairly young and massive polar bears fighting was cool. I've never been a big fan of His Dark Materials anyway though. Crap ending, imo.
Godfather, definitely, just amazing. As being faithful to the book, I think Jurassic Park was a good adaptation too.
For me, the first and most egregious problem with Dune was the casting of Paul Atreides. It bugged me that, on page 1 of the book, Paul is described as being fifteen years old and small for his age. That's how I imagined him. Then they cast six-foot, strapping 25-year-old Kyle MacLachlan to play him! Arrgh. The stunt casting of Sting didn't help. I hated that movie from the first frame. I haven't read Dune since I was in high school. I wonder if it stands up.
The Harry Potter movies were a disappointment for me. So much from the books was left out. Slightly off topic here but most Anime aren't as good as the Manga they're based from though there are some exceptions, Death Note being one of them.
Yeah that version with Keira Knightley was pretty bad. All the actors and actresses were like walls, boring. Seconded. I actually liked it quite a bit. Not as much as the novel, but I thought the movie was pretty good. Pity they didn't make more of them while Twilight is milked to the last drop with freaking two films for the last novel (or did I imagine it? Can't be arsed to google). Speaking of it, I thought the Twilight movie (first) was worse than the novel. Thought it wouldn't be possible. American Psycho was well adapted while Rules of Attraction was dead-awful, way worse than the novel, and I wouldn't have endured it if it hadn't been for Shannyn Sossamon and her Oliver Twist-cap. I love LOTR movies almost as much as the novels. Or maybe as much, just a little differently. I liked Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson and The Wuthering Heights with Juliette Binoche and Ralph Voldemort Fiennes. Sometimes the right actors can really bring the novel alive in a new and wonderful way.
Didn't David Lynch publicly apologize for Dune? I know among David Lynch fans (of whom I number) it's spoken of with scorn and disgust.
We spent a semester studying Anna Karenina in college. As part of our study, we watched all the film adaptations out at that time and critiqued them. They were all poorly done, a unanimous opinion reached by both classmates and professor (a Tolstoy scholar). I have not seen the recent adaptation, not likely to. This is a book that I love and have re-read and a film adaptation no longer holds any value for me--I'll just re-read AK again.
Did he? I didn't mind so much Paul's re-imagining into an older, more virile version of himself. That never really bothers me in a film. (Antonio Banderas as pale, tiny prepubescent Armand... what?!) What killed that film for me was the meat-grinder the story and plot was put through. All that emphasis on the 'weirding modules' that were mentioned practically only in passing in the book. But, this was during the era when a film of and hour and 45 min was considered too long.
Quite right. Lynch isn't really a 'movie' kind of guy, he just happens to make movies as his art works. That's always the impression I get whenever I watch one of his interviews.
I watched the movie version of Twilight before I read the books. I thought it was rather good, if a little overwrought. It was certainly new, and the setting came across really well. I was deeply shocked by how awful the source material was.
One movie I prefer a great deal over the graphic novel is Watchmen. Snyder was truly faithful to the book, yet changed things so he made it his own, and certainly not in a bad way. Whilst it is a "love it or hate it" type of film, it's personally one of my favourite films ever.
Personally, that's a fine choice for a poor adaptation! The movie's altered ending was nonsensical and idiotic, and in general, trying to adopt "The Watchmen" was a fool's errand from an artistic standpoint. (And from an economic standpoint, it also turned out to be a mistake) See, "The Watchmen" was a great comic because of all the little details. How expansive and well-thought out every aspect of the world was. How thorough the costumed hero history as laid out in "Under the Hood" was. "Tale of the Black Freighter". How the artist asks his Indian lover to hold him when he realizes they are about to die. Nothing in "The Watchmen" was sensational by itself, but when added together, it made for a vivid, lurid world filled with violence and intrigue. Unfortunately, to accurately represent all of that in a film, it would take 6+ hours, and even then, it might not get the effect across. In a 2-3 hour film, one has to skimp on all the details mentioned above, and thus, everything that made the comic good to begin with. It becomes just an average adventure tale, which is what the main premise of "The Watchmen", when stripped of everything else around it. Oh, but they made the ending way dumber.
I think what ruined it for me were the acting and the jumpy plot. Everything was so awkward. Maybe I expected too much because I thought the film had to be better than the novel.
He could never make it the way he wanted as he didn't have final cut. He disowned the extended cut and it's credited to Alan Smithee. I can only really speak for films made from books I've actually read, which are few and far between. On the Road was a bad adaptation, as was Everything is Illuminated. I really liked The Beach, as it improved on the book, and thought The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was an excellent adaptation, working in the book's prose quite well. But My fav would have to be Breakfast at Tiffany's.
The Beach is an odd one for me. I think both the book and the film are excellent, but also that they're really different stories. The film is more of an adventure story, with a clear moral choice at the end. The book struck me as a slightly surreal horror story. I think it's good that the film didn't try to emulate the book exactly, but instead told a story that was more suited to the medium of film.
Have you seen the TV movie adaptation with Helen McCrory as Anna, the lovely Kevin McKidd as Count Vronsky, Douglas Henschaw, Mark Strong, etc? This is a fantastic, very adult and dignified version of the story, and one I've watched often. The acting is superb. The only wee flaw is that some of the actor's regional accents can be distracting at first, and there are no huge panoramas of Russian landscape, but the story is superbly told. The man who plays Alexi Karenina is particularly memorable. This is a role often overplayed in films, but here it is understated and powerful. I HIGHLY recommend this version! To be honest, I nearly always prefer TV adaptations of classic books to the movie versions. They usually have more time to develop the stories, and are much more richly told.
No [MENTION=53222]jannert[/MENTION], I've never even heard of this adaptation. If I get the chance I'll be sure to check it out. Thanks!
In my opinion, the movie is never better than the book, but I loved all of the Harry Potter movies except for the sixth one. They just rang true to the novels and conveyed the original humor, not to mention how accurately they portrayed the magical setting of Hogwarts.
I've always despised the 1998 adaptation of Brave New World---such a wonderful book completely ruined.
Worst: Eragon for sure. Good: LOTR, No country for old men, there will be blood are a few i can name for some reason I am sucking right now
[MENTION=45548]Selbbin[/MENTION] Dude, tell me about it. The entire mythology of Trachimbrod was missing from the film. It made so many things seem trivial, random and without proper context. Don't get me wrong, there were some things I liked about the film. Laryssa Lauret was hauntingly beautiful as Lista, and I think they got her symbolism across to an extent, but other than that...
I like Lord of the Rings, but Peter Jackson screwed up The Hobbit. He just add subplots that isn't in the original book.
I was deeply disappointed by The Hobbit. It was one of my favourite books as a child, and I was thrilled that the same person who made the Lord Of The Rings films was going to adapt it for the screen. I remember being amazed by the detail and authenticity in LOTR, and the fact that you could never really detect when CGI was being used. The Hobbit turned out to be nothing but CGI, and shallow and slow too. Sad times.
Probably the best film adaptation I've seen was To Kill a Mockingbird, and not because I went to high school with John Megna, who played Dill. Some of the scenes in the film were so much like what I had pictured when I read them in the book, it was scary. Another production that deserves to be mentioned was the made-for-TV film of James Michener's Texas. Even though it only covered a segment of the novel, it handled that segment in a way that was very true to the book. Hands down, the worst had to be Catch-22, which was awful if you'd read the book and indecipherable if you hadn't.
