What's the worst movie made from the great book? Tell me for a chance at SBI.
So last week I ran a contest to identify the best movies made from really bad books. We had a lot of insight and fun commenting on the options.
Now, I'm turning the question around. What book did you absolutely LOVE, but the movie based on it was horrible?
In general I'd say the movie is never as good as the book, but that doesn't mean the movie is bad. But sometimes they are just unwatchable or incite throbbing temples or high blood pressure. Maybe the movie made you get up and walk out of the theater.
Let me know your opinion in the comments. I'll pick my favorite answer and give them 2 SBI shares. Or if I can't decide I'll go to the ever faithful Wheeldecide.com.
Contest is open until the post hits payout!
Need help editing and formatting your blogs? Check out my editing services.
Join the Freewrite fun today! Visit @Freewritehouse
Support the Steem community by participating in the Pay it Forward Contest!
Proud to be part of the
Please the Bananafish god by entering the Finish the Story Contest
All images are mine or licensed from Adobe except where noted. Freewritehouse, Pay it Forward and the Bananafish Tribe used with permission from their owners.
Wheel decide FTW! :D
This is an interesting topic. There are so many bad adaptations that it is hard to nail a single one down. The thing that particularly bothers me is when the film betrays the source material. I can forgive the heavy editing that is necessary when one must sum up ten or twenty hours of book in a a ninety minute film. However, when the message that made the book valuable is removed, I may become upset. A lot of people really loved The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit movies but the things that gave depth to those stories were kind of abandoned in favor of action and special effects.
Shakespeare adaptations tend to be pretty awful (there are some good ones though). Again, I think the same problem is at play. There are a lot of important things that ignored by film makers because they aren't particularly exciting.
As to the movies that legitimately made mad, I think Troy was super annoying. They took this great bit of mythology and removed the bulk of the mythology. To make it worse, they ignored everything that makes the Iliad interesting (the human story and deep characters) and gave us a paint by numbers action movie.
If we can extend this discussion to television, I would point to Game of Thrones and both an excellent and poor adaptation of a series of novels. There is a lot to like and they did a few things right but, particularly in the later seasons, they changed some extremely important things to make the show play better for a mass audience. That is fine from a business standpoint but it damages the property artistically and it often steps on its anti-war, anti-authority, and income inequality messages.
This is probably getting too long so I will stop rambling at you. Great great question though.
So sorry for the late reply. You've got some great points!
It is hard to watch when Hollywood takes a story and then bumps up the action just to keep people interested. Sometimes that still ends up being a good movie but nothing like the books.
I haven't read the GOT books yet (I have them though) but I have seen the complaints about the divergences that the show has made. I love the shows but I understand how they might not be good for die hard fans of the books.
I saw Troy so long ago I don't even remember it. I do remember the actual myths though so that probably says something!
Thanks for your thoughts and your entry.
No problem and thanks.
Haha Yeah the length of the series can make starting daunting. Book one and season one are very close. It starts to drift little by little after that. I still love the show (that is where I started too) but I find myself yelling at the TV sometimes lol.
Troy was one of those movies that was almost good but it is hard to cut down a poem of that length to two hours and I think they did it in the wrong way.
It is too bad I missed out on the other topic you mentioned about bad books and good movies because that is the harder one to answer, I think.
Congratulations @ntowl! You have completed the following achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor.
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!
Sacrilege, because for many it is beloved, but the Neverending Story has the greatest disparity between book and movie, but this is partly because the book IS SO GOOD. Seriously, it is the greatest book ever. In fact, I can sometimes believe that I am still in it.
I just can't even. It evokes imagination and whimsy, but with all the seriousness of truth and the vivid imagery that comes with sheer invention while while while.
The Neverending Story is worth reading 99 times. And the hundredth time you read it will be the best yet. You can AH
I never even knew that movie was based on a book! I loved watching that and I was sad my kids didn't get into it. I'll pick up the book sometime and read it at least once, maybe 99 more if it's as good as you say.
Thanks for the comment and entry.
Start reading it tonight and you won't go to sleep for days because it will consume you.
Druids, which is a book by Morgan Llywelyn. The movie had Christopher Lambert in it (Connor Macleod from Highlander). It was SO BAD. I turned it off after a half an hour. I had no idea what was going on, and I knew the source material!! It made no damn sense! The story is an adaptation of the true story of Vercingetorix (though I don't know if the main druid character is a real historical person or not).
I think I've watched that and didn't know it was from a book. I usually like what Lambert does, though I won't call him the most emotive of actors...
Thanks for the comment and entry.
Many of Stephen King's books that were turned into movies were horrible. Not all of them. Some that can not stand up to that of the books, in no particular order are, Needful Things, The Langoliers, and Hearts in Atlantis. The latter being that they only did a portion of the book and not the entire book. The movie seemed incomplete and rushed.
I've learned I can't read or watch horror though in the past I've made it through a couple of the movies. I can't read him, though I wish I could because I know he's a master and I'd love to learn more about writing from his books.
Thanks for the comment and entry.
Do comic books count? If they do, my vote for a horrible movie made from a book that I absolutely love goes to Keanu Reeves' Constantine from 2005, which was an adaptation of the DC Comics Hellblazer.
I was disappointed because the story made such a heavy departure from the source material. It lost the edgy, dangerous, horror vibe of the comics and became a tame and kinda goofy Hollywood movie. And as much as I love Keanu Reeves (I love him as John Wick), he was also miscast as the lead here. He seemed too clean-cut and GQ-looking to be John Constantine. Plus, he didn't have the rough, devil may care attitude of a terminally ill exorcist who has been damned to hell, which is what made the original comic book character so interesting.
I feel like with this movie, the people behind it were either too afraid to deviate from the formula or too scared to offend so they made safe choices. But the thing is, if that's what they were gonna do anyways, then they shouldn't have chosen a comic book like Hellblazer to adapt, in the first place.
Interesting. I’ve seen the movie but never saw the comic (which i’ll Happily consider a book). It did feel formulaic to me not even knowing the source material.
Thanks for the comment and entry!
After successfully blocking it from my memory for years, I’m suddenly reminded of the atrocity that was the Cat in the Hat movie. Whoever thought it was a good idea to put Mike Meyers in nightmare-inducing cat makeup for kids to see must have been having a laugh, before being baffled as the Hollywood execs took them seriously. Never mind the fact that the writing was just sooo lazy and the overall direction was just weird, even for an already whimsical story.
Dr. Seuss’ classic children’s book (of the same name)was endearingly written and illustrated. It also taught kids a valuable lesson: it’s good to have fun, but sometimes rules are important, too. The movie tosses that aside for bland stereotypes, cringe-inducing innuendos, and theme park advertisements.
Literally. There’s a scene where Meyers, basically playing himself in a cat costume, talks about the exciting new Cat in the Hat ride at Universal Studios. Yeesh.
Anyways, even without the book to compare it to, it’s just a terrible movie that shouldn’t have been made. Thankfully it seems to have (mostly) faded into obscurity, and we still have the book we knew and loved as kids to look back on.
It does live on in memes, though:
I agree that the whole idea of the movie was a terrible idea. I can imagine the nightmares the kids had after that. The book was so charming in Seuss' way.
So glad to have you on Steemit. Finally!!! You're officially entered. 😄