Ruining good fiction: Books made into Movies

I love fiction. It allows us to live in worlds that have nothing to do with our own; escape for a little while. I like it in just about any form. Even so, I like to read a lot and I like to go to the movies now and then.

What I don't like is when they take a good book and then make alterations to the story when they make a movie.

Most books are too much to squeeze into a single 2 hour movie. However, some have been done well. A good example in recent times is Ender's Game. The movie is fairly true to the book. There was stuff they left out due to time constraints, but they didn't change the central theme of the story. I enjoyed watching it even though I'd read the book.

Some are absolutely destroyed. The current run of the Hobbit is one such example. I mean, the story is HUGE. Far too much to even squeeze into three movies. Why on God's green Earth then do they feel they have to ADD to the story?

We just watched the most recent edition, The Hobbit; The Desolation of Smaug. What a pile! They took a perfectly good book, probably one of the most popular in history, and added a bunch to the story. What is the reasoning for that? The story wasn't big enough for them? They did the same with the Lord of the Rings, but it was better than this.

By itself the movie isn't bad. The effects are good and the acting is OK. Why not just pick another title if you're going to completely abandon the story line?

Don't you just hate that?

Actually, in The Lord if the Rings movies, seems to me they left a lot out. E.g., Tom Bambodil. What I can't figure is why Peter Jackson took the Lord of the Rings trilogy, three good sized tomes, and made three movies, and then takes The Hobbit, a comparatively slim volume, and makes another three movies... (Hmm. Ya don't suppose it's fer the money, do ya?!)

Rastoff said:

Most books are too much to squeeze into a single 2 hour movie. However, some have been done well.

Click to expand...

Some have been done BETTER than the books.

I've read several of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels and EVERY one of them is dreadful. The film "Goldfinger" is as good as they're awful.

"Cross of Iron" is a pretty decent movie. It's based on a novel by German author Willi Heinrich. I TRIED to read his other novel "Crack of Doom". It is one of the worst novels I've ever read that didn't have a naked woman on the cover. I don't know if it's the translation from German to English or if Heinrich is just a disastrously bad writer. It was every bit as bad as the German "Perry Rodan" science fiction novel that my freshman high school English class used as an example of bad writing.

Onomea said:

What I can't figure is why Peter Jackson took the Lord of the Rings trilogy, three good sized tomes, and made three movies, and then takes The Hobbit, a comparatively slim volume, and makes another three movies... (Hmm. Ya don't suppose it's fer the money, do ya?!)

Click to expand...

Oh, perish the freaking unworthy thought!

I see them entirely different. Movies are movies, books are books. If the movie is good, yet entirely different from the books it's based off of, it doesn't bother me at all. Lord of the rings, for example, are great movies. I tried to read the books but they're beyond me. I liked the Harry potter books, and the movies, even though they are different.

I don't care to force a director to stick to the way it's done in the books as accurate as possible when making movies.

the original point and click interface, by Smith and Wesson

Oh yeah, it's about the money, but that doesn't explain why he ruined the story.

And, yes, some books have been made better in the movie, but it's rare.

cmort666 said:

Some have been done BETTER than the books.

Click to expand...

I think of Phil Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", a pretty darn good sci-fi book, that became the legendary Blade Runner in Ridley Scott's hands.

Lawrence of Arabia is another example. I remember Lawrence's memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom as being pretty heavy going, although I may have been a bit young for it. Of course, the movie was spectacular and memorable.

Winter's Bone, No Country for Old Men, and Legends of the Fall spring immediately to mind as movies that at least did justice to the book. And how about Ellroy's L.A. Confidential ?

Ever read Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny?
Ever seen the Film? Don't!

cmort666 said:

Some have been done BETTER than the books.

I've read several of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels and EVERY one of them is dreadful. The film "Goldfinger" is as good as they're awful.

"Cross of Iron" is a pretty decent movie. It's based on a novel by German author Willi Heinrich. I TRIED to read his other novel "Crack of Doom". It is one of the worst novels I've ever read that didn't have a naked woman on the cover. I don't know if it's the translation from German to English or if Heinrich is just a disastrously bad writer. It was every bit as bad as the German "Perry Rodan" science fiction novel that my freshman high school English class used as an example of bad writing.

Click to expand...

Everyone's different. I loved the original Bond novels and can't stand the later movies and the present books. I also liked Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise novels and the related comic strip. The movies based on it were dreadful, as was a T V show that tried to move Modesty and Willie to Caifornia from the UK!

When O'Donnell retired in 1996, he killed off his characters in a volume called, "The Cobra Trap". He forbade anyone else to use his creations. I suspect that this was in part because he'd seen what a mess was made of Fleming's material.

David Lindsey's superb thriller, "Mercy!" was made into only a fair movie that used Canadian locales in lieu of Houston and completely changed the heroine to one I can't stand. (The actress.) The whole thing was made too sterile and PC.

Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm books also suffered on film, with the ridiculous Dean Martin playing Helm as a camp comic series.

Jack Higgins has had better luck with his books becoming movies than most. So has Wilbur Smith.

On the whole, the movies are so different from the books that there may be only a loose connection. The only time I recall a movie or TV show being better than the book that inspired it was the 1999-2002 series, "The Lost World", which was indeed better than the parent book by Doyle.

Michener's, "The Bridges at Toko-ri" was well done, though, with Wm. Holden as the USN aviator in Korea. The splendid Grace Kelly played his wife. You can get parts or all on YouTube.

I haven't read Isaak Dinesen's, "Out of Africa", but the movie richly deserved its seven (?) Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Again, hit YouTube if you haven't seen it. Redford and Streep and Klaus Maria Brandauer did some of ther best work in it. And you'll like the authentic rifles.

Robert B. Parker was a consultant to the, "Spenser For Hire" series and evidently had some creative control, as the characters and plots were much like his books.

The most egregious desecration of a book as a movie (that I know of) has to be Starship Troopers. I'm willing to change my opinion given sufficient evidence, but wow, that was a bad, bad movie made out of a good, good book.

Rastoff said:

Oh yeah, it's about the money, but that doesn't explain why he ruined the story.

Click to expand...

Actually it may. The book tells a lot of story very economically. To pad it into three feature-length flicks would take tons of extraneous material, not to mention poor judgment.

The movies usually don't compare well to the book. "Lonesome Dove" being a notable exception. Excellent book, and an excellent movie- due in a large part to great casting and to the script following the book with great accuracy.
I've read all of the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child and really enjoyed them, although like in some series the hero seemed to become almost superhuman (for example Joe Pike in the Elvis Cole novels, and Hawk in the Spenser novels). I recently saw the 2012 movie Reacher and was surprised to find that I enjoyed it- in spite of Tom Cruise being IMHO totally miscast as Jack Reacher.

BaldEagle1313 said:

The most egregious desecration of a book as a movie (that I know of) has to be Starship Troopers. I'm willing to change my opinion given sufficient evidence, but wow, that was a bad, bad movie made out of a good, good book.

Click to expand...

It has almost nothing to do with the book, and its twin purposes appear to be to push a particular political agenda and to justify some particularly gruesome special effects.

I read the book in grammar school. It's so much better than the movie (and the two direct to DVD sequels) that there's simply no reason to watch the movie except masochism.

Clint Eastwood's early 80's film "Foxfire" (or Firefox, it's been a long time ...sorry) was cast with Eastwood in his normal 'spaghetti western' tough guy self. If wasn't until I read the book that 2 or 3 scenes from the movie even made sense. I guess that sometimes, they pick a big name star to draw an audience, and the actor can't be a person of a different character. Eastwood finally learned he couldn't be some things and didn't try to be a Japanese solider in "Letters from Iwo Jima", or am I going to be shocked again? Ivan

I have always been a reader but I never had any interest in The Hobbit growing up. When I was in the 9th grade I had to read it for an English Lit class. I didn’t think it would hold my interest, I thought it would be boring but I also knew I had to be able to discuss it in class. So I opened it up and didn’t put it down for 50 pages. It became my second favorite book of all time.

LOTR wasn’t bad, I was familiar enough with the books to fill in the blanks and I enjoyed it; The Hobbit on the other hand, all I had to do was watch the trailer to know they butchered the book. Didn’t even waste my time with the DVD.

IMO the worst job of book butchery of all time was the first Dune movie but to be fair they would have had to make that movie 4 hours long and stopped every so often to explain what was going on because so much of the book happened in the character’s heads.

I thought the Disney adaptation of Narnia was better than the book although they completely ruined Johnny Tremain .

I thought Blade Runner was better than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

The alternative is making movies from bad books.

mtgianni said:

The alternative is making movies from bad books.

Click to expand...

How about books that start out as movies? Has there ever been one of those that was decent?

I read "Dune" during a weekend retreat during Catholic prep seminary (highschool). I LOVED the book. The movie with Kyle McLaughlin, not so much, although I thought the non-Fremen costuming was excellent.

I read "The Stand" just about in a night while on the guard force mission at Camp Humphreys, Korea. The mini-series was pretty decent and generally kept to the spirit of the book.

cmort666 said:

I read "Dune" during a weekend retreat during Catholic prep seminary (highschool). I LOVED the book. The movie with Kyle McLaughlin, not so much, although I thought the non-Fremen costuming was excellent.

I read "The Stand" just about in a night while on the guard force mission at Camp Humphreys, Korea. The mini-series was pretty decent and generally kept to the spirit of the book.

Click to expand...

I'm impressed you actually got through Dune. I couldn't even stick it out at the movie's...I'll admit some great scenes but I couldn't stay focused on all the plots and sub plots..Sting did make a good bad guy and that guy that had all the sores over him and was puffed up like a toad with acne was a good bad guy if you like ugly, real ugly...

george minze said:

and that guy that had all the sores over him and was puffed up like a toad with acne was a good bad guy if you like ugly, real ugly...

Click to expand...

I thought that was an acting tour de force for Ted Kennedy...