I didn't even realise so many of the films I've seen were based on books, mentioned above! Gosh. Just going to throw some stuff out there... Eragon: yeah. Terrible. The only things they kept the same as the books were the names. Ugh. Avatar: TLA (not Avatar: James Cameron) <-- sort of book-based, as it was originally a comic-book, then TV series, then movie... BUT OH MY GOODNESS NEVER EVER WATCH ANYTHING DIRECTED BY M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN... (SP?!?!) I was SO going to see After Earth until I saw who the director was. Can I just say that Hollywood does a damn-fine job of absolutely screwing over some movies? I mean, do they just auction off scripts, and whichever director throws their hand up fast enough, gets it? Also... anyone curious about City of Bones, or read the books? (Cassandra Clare)
This. So much this. That movie physically hurt me. A Series of Unfortunate Events was a really good movie. I wish they had made more. I felt like Eragon wasn't really that much better than the books. I didn't really like either and felt it didn't really try anything new. Secret Garden, Ella Enchanted, Tarzan. All great movies. Oh, and if we're talking about adaptations: The musical Wicked was an amazing adaptation of one of the worst books I've read in my entire life.
I disagree wholeheartedly with this. They tried to fit many books into one movie, and for me, it felt super rushed. Now, if they'd made it a trilogy of films, I think that would've worked a lot better.
I agree with you there - I much preferred the movie to the book. However, I do tend to feel that whether you read the book first or watch the movie first has a great impact. Typically, I'll have read the book first, and then comparing the movie to the images and ideas I've created rarely matches up well. If I see the movie first, sometimes that can make it better, because you don't know the entire backstory and subplots that may have been left out, and can judge it solely for the story it does tell, rather than what it doesn't. I thought the Harry Potter movies were pretty terrible, with the exception of the first one, because it followed the book fairly closely.
One of the worse books I have ever read is "Dream catcher" by Stephen King. I actually didn't care anymore 30 pages from the end and never bothered to finish the utter piece of trash that it was ... Fast forward a couple of year and I found myself watching the movie which I really enjoyed and made the book look even worse in comparison. I wish they would make some movies based on Iain Bainks Culture novels. Not a chance they would measure up to the books but you could really make some great movies from them.
THE ROAD - I could not get into the book at all. It was *too* sparse. The movie showed me the world that the book could not, and therefore, I enjoyed it far more. The acting really helped sell the emotions, as well. I know the book is beloved, but I feel the movie surpasses it in every way. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS - Very good book, but the movie is the champ. The characters are all far more developed in the film and a few extraneous details are left out to keep the focus on the important parts of the story. The movie wins by a longshot. Additionally, I thought HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG the film was an excellent adaptation, with some of the best acting I've ever seen, and stunning cinematography from the master DP, Roger Deakins. In terms of faithful adaptations, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is damn near identical from book to film. The only differences are small details like the dog chasing the hero through the river in the movie (not in the book), and a few other examples that I feel up the tension even more. Otherwise, they are literally the same. There are plenty of books I have not read, but have absolutely no faith that they could best their film counterparts. JAWS, THE SHINING, PSYCHO, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, VERTIGO, SCHINDLER'S LIST, etc. These are perfect films - stories that use the audio/visual medium to its fullest advantage.
It doesn't matter what he likes. What matters is that Stanley Kubrick made one of the greatest films of all time. Nobody, not even Mr. King himself, can take that away from Mr. Kubrick.
I'm not denying that. I'm just stating it. I find it funny that almost everyone likes the film, yet the creator of the story hates it. Quite ironic.
Haha, very true. Apparently, Ken Kesey detested the film adaptation of Cuckoo's Nest. Here's a bit of trivia... Author Ken Kesey was so bitter about the way the filmmakers were "butchering" his story that he vowed never to watch the completed film and even sued the movie's producers because it wasn't shown from Chief Bromden's perspective (as the novel is). Years later, he claimed to be lying in bed flipping through TV channels when he settled onto a late-night movie that looked sort of interesting, only to realize after a few minutes that it was this film. He then changed channels.
For me the Lord of the Rings will always be great. I read the books as a teen and loved them. I was thrilled to se how great the movies turned out and will always watch them when they are on. Thank you Peter Jackson for making them so awesome.
What does everyone think of The Hours, by Michael Cunningham? I thought the movie was very good, although I'm pretty certain the acting of three amazing leads carried the great burden of the movie.
I loved Bram Stoker's Dracula and Bladerunner, not necessarily better than the books, but masterpieces in their own right. I adore 'Dune' and David Lynch, and over the years, 'Dune' the movie became one of my favourites. The fact no other movie or series done since, came even close at doing a good job, I think it says something. I just love the visuals in the film, and have appreciated having it in my mind as well as the book.
I actually laughed after reading these two sentences, one after the other. You're saying that the opinion of Stephen King, one of the most popular writers to ever live, doesn't matter. Meanwhile, your opinion, that of an Internet random calling himself "Sheriff Woody", matters so damn much that it becomes fact! ("One of the greatest films of all time") You will deny it, but that's the subtext. The world revolves around your opinions to the point where they become factual. In reality, "Mr. King's" opinion does matter and influence creative decision-making, while your opinion (and mine too, for that matter) doesn't change anything in the slightest. Also, I thought The Shining was a decent, but horribly overrated film.
You might want to read at least Clorkwork because Burgess doesn't just tell a story, he was also a linguist and did wonders with the English language. Kubrick, on the other hand, was a master of cinematic expression, so there's great value to both works, both are amazing in their own media. To me at least, it's different when comparing the movie adaptation of The Shining to the novel; King is a good story-teller, but he's no genius, so in this regard at least, I definitely liked the Shining better than the novel -- maybe because I saw the film first? For some reason I was allowed to watch that, but the copy of the novel (a translation, "Hohto" in Finnish) stayed firmly in my dad's bookcase. For today's audience the movie might be a little "meh". We tend to like our horror gory or Asian, plus we are more or less saturated by the pop culture references ("Here's Johnny!") that the scenes can come off blasé even to a first-time viewer. Well, we don't always tag the things we write here with "in my opinion", but they can and often are just that, opinions.
Well, it doesn't. Plain and simple. The guy who directed Maximum Overdrive is no position to critique the directing achievements of Stanley Kubrick. Theoretically, if Justin Beiber hates The Beatles, does that automatically discount all the quality work The Beatles created without any input from the insanely popular Mr. Beiber? Of course not. I'm not saying King's thoughts on what he wishes the film was are not worth hearing, but his opinion of the film does not take away any of the work Mr. Kubrick did to make the film as masterful as it is. When adapting a book to film, changes have to be made. The writer will probably not appreciate these changes, and it's okay for him to feel that way. He wrote a great book. Mr. Kubrick made a great film. That's all that matters.
Yes, how dare he not worship at the altar of Kubrick!? Kubrick was obviously a great director, but he had weaknesses. In fact, I consider him half of the greatest director ever. Anything to do with music and visual presentation, he was one of the very best. Maybe the best ever. In terms of story, characters, and the actual meat of the work? He was a zero. He never wrote an original script in his life, and many of his adaptations completely missed the point of the original. He is the ultimate, best example of style over substance. That's not necessarily bad ("A Clockwork Orange" is one of my favorite films ever), but it's a definite limitation. For instance, his version of "Lolita", while perhaps an entertaining musical on its own, was a fucking insult to the novel. A great example of "worse adaptations" for this topic, even if it's a decent film in its own right. This is a silly comparison, (Stephen King is Justin Bieber?! I wasn't aware that Bieber wrote any songs for The Beatles...) and it's in a response to an argument no one made. You were the one who claimed King's views are irrelevant. Claiming that his views are relevant, as I have, is different than saying his criticism "discounts" anything. You missed my point, though. King's thoughts are relevant because he is an extraordinarily famous writer who penned the source material. It doesn't mean they should impact anyone's own opinion in any way (they shouldn't), but yeah, King's thoughts actually do matter, unlike yours or mine. They're far from irrelevant, especially considering we are presently discussing them. And I disagree mightily with this, without even having read the novel.
I disagree with this. I mean, I agree that Kubrick was a great cinematographer and used music masterfully, but to call him a "zero" when it comes to story and characters and "meat of the work" (do you mean theme?) is, in my view, very wrong. So what if he never wrote an original script? You don't have to do that to be a great director. He was interested in recreating other material, and he excelled at it. As for missing the point of the original, well, it seems to me that you think a novel has only one point and has to mean the same thing to everyone who reads it, and that is untrue. Just look at how critics squabble over the meanings of all the great novels, plays, and poems. Kubrick used material from other sources as a launching pad for what he wanted to say; for points he wanted to make. Kubrick had his own persistent themes - dehumanization being probably the main one - and loved his ambiguous endings. He didn't particularly care what the original author's intent was - Kubrick was not simply transcribing the original work into the medium of film. "Adaptation" might be a weak word for what he was up to. He was borrowing characters, settings, and certain events from the original material to create his own new work. Kubrick's "The Shining" is no more intended to be a faithful adaptation of King's The Shining than Webber and Rice's "Jesus Christ Superstar" is intended to be a faithful retelling of the New Testament.
Quite right. In fact, there is a theory (and I agree with it) that Kubrick intentionally reversed everything about King's novel and did his own thing. It's like the negative of the King novel. I'm honestly more than happy he did that, I mean, the novel The Shining, is just a good version of the one novel he's been writing over and over again since Salem's Lost.
I never argued otherwise, considering I called Kubrick both a "great director" and a "zero" in the substance department. In general terms, this all sounds very nice. However, with regards to the specific work, Lolita, I can only conclude that you haven't read the book and/or seen Kubrick's film. Kubrick fucking butchered it. All this rhetoric about "same thing to everyone" obscures the fact that Kubrick's version had no point whatsoever and had a laughable interpretation of Humbert Humbert, Lolita, and their relationship. Kubrick was just trying to make a fun musical with great visuals and memorable music (in which he succeeded!), and he couldn't care less about "themes" and "story". Except he didn't make any points, and rarely "said" anything in his works. The few times that he did, ("Eyes Wide Shut", his only genuinely bad film) the results were shallow and childish. In "Eyes Wide Shut", the moral is literally "sex is bad/evil". Even in one of my favorite films ever, "A Clockwork Orange", perhaps the only flaw is that as exciting as it was, there was ultimately no point. Burgess's original ending, while perhaps flawed, actually rendered a point to the whole story. That's a decent comparison, except no one claims "Jesus Christ Superstar" is something super-brilliant and deep the way many people do about Kubrick's films. Also, "Jesus Christ Superstar" is far better than most Kubrick films I have seen, if only because it doesn't feature glacially slow pacing. (Another Kubrick trademark)
Lolita the movie wasn't that bad. The novel is great, but I also liked the movie *shrug*, so at least in my opinion Kubrick didn't butcher anything. Unfortunately, an ex-friend of mine pilfered the DVD from me, so I guess she liked it too.
Kubrick borrowed stories from books and used them as a foundation for his own vision. His goal was not to duplicate everything from the novel verbatim and present a faithful film version of the writer's vision. He simply showed us his own vision. As an artist, that is not only acceptable, but expected. It's no different from a painter looking at a building or a park or a person and portraying them in an artistic fashion. In neither instance is the artist concerned with duplicating the original. At no point during the making of The Shining was Kubrick thinking "Stephen King is going to be so happy with this!". That's not the point of adapting a book for film. PS: Kubrick wrote the original screenplay for his film Killer's Kiss (not an adaptation), a very nifty little film-noir that was at one point available for instant streaming on Netflix (may still be). It also comes as a bonus on the Criterion blu-ray of The Killing.
Artists can "say" things without making any actual points. (I shouldn't have used the term "points" regarding Kubrick in my post above - my bad; thanks for calling my attention to it.) You remind me of my roommate. I mentioned Kubrick's ambiguity above (in a part of my post you, significantly, didn't quote!) and my roommate HATES it. I love it. He and I go roundy-roundy about Kubrick maybe once a year because of it. Put very simply, Kubrick is asking questions to which he provides no answers. He's saying, "Think about this." He's saying, "Not as easy as it seemed, right?" The audience asks, "What do you MEAN?", and he just gives an enigmatic smile, and the audience gets frustrated and leaves, and a couple of days later it hits them. What hits them? Maybe something different hits each audience member. But something hits each one, unless that person is a brick. This is valid art. Kubrick is a valid artist. To say he doesn't make any points is kind of missing the point.
I never said the movie was bad. In fact, it's quite a decent little picture, when one forgets about the novel it was adapted from. But comparing it to the book, it's a butchery of any themes and ideas contained therein. I mostly agree, but this is very different than what you originally wrote, and what I objected to. I'm someone who loves ambiguity in films. The only problem is that Kubrick's work rarely contain any. In your argument above, you claim he asks questions. But he doesn't; Kubrick doesn't even present any questions, let alone provides the answers. In general, his works suffer from a severe emptiness when it comes to story, characters, and themes. Incredibly, this occurs even when the work he was adapting was very rich in all those categories. Kubrick's movies are remarkable for their visuals, music, humor, top-notch acting, and every other stylistic quality. It's why he is genuinely an all-time great director. But in terms of substance, he was a zero. It's funny you mention arguing about Kubrick; overall, I like/appreciate the guy's work (I did call him "great" after all, which I rarely do for any artist), even if I feel he is horrifically overrated. There are many other famous directors who I genuinely dislike, and can't understand the praise for their work at all. (David O. Russell, for instance) And yet, I have had more arguments about Kubrick (I also frequent a movie forum) than every other director put together. He easily has the most zealous fans, some to the point of being "Kubrickites".
