OT- Best/Worst movies adapted from books.
Best- The Shawshank Redemption. Took an entertaining short story and made some subtle, but significant, changes to it. Then added in a first rate cast and powerful visual and audio elements. The result being one of the all time classics of cinema.
Worst- The Firm. The novel was a great story of deception and betrayal that was packed with intrigue and suspense right up to the very end. The film stayed more or less true to the book for the first hour, but then took the story in such a totally different direction that it defied description. Culminating in a climax so unbelievably comical you could almost hear the “womp, womp” as it played out. Not even a top flight cast could redeem this turd.
Best : To Kill a Mockingbird , Jaws
TKAM is the best American novel of all time
Full Metal Jacket, an absolute classic adapted from the solid short novel "The Short Timers."
When the Game Stands Tall was a pretty lame adaptation of the book of the same name.
Awesome, awesome, awesome movie.
I've not read The Short Timers yet. I wanted to, but it is out of print and $100 on Amazon for the paperback.
“All the Pretty Horses” (Cormac McCarthy) is a great book but a terrible movie (Billy Bob Thornton).
“No Country for Old Men” (McCarthy) is also a good read and adapted perfectly.
I loved the book and movie for Shutter Island.
I hate no one ever did a movie based on Iceberg Slim’s autobiography Pimp.
Not from a book, but Dark Phoenix was a massive, massive disappointment.
I can think of only two X-men films that where actually decent. If you want to include Logan and Deadpool 1 & 2 as X-men films that number goes up to five. Hell, Logan is easily the best of the Fox comic movies. But any of the rebooted X-men films were at best mediocre imo. The casting for some of the characters was pretty good I'll admit, but the films were... not.
I was so pumped for Days of Future Past as it was probably my favorite all-time comic story line, but was beyond disappointed in the film. And after the Apocalypse travesty I didn't even bother watching Dark Phoenix. Looking forward to the MCU hopefully doing X-men right.
Best: tie — Ordinary People, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
worst: The Scarlet Letter starring Demi Moore
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest was the first thing that came to mind. Great book and movie.
I didn't like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest actually. I realize I'm in the minority. I should watch again. I wanted to watch it because I had just read the book and that book is amazing, so I may have had unrealistic expectations.
... Ordinary People is one my favorite movies but I am ashamed to say I've never read the book.... I assume it's great also?
I like both the book and movie Black Hawk Down. The book was excellent, and the movie followed it pretty closely. Also, I thought Ready Player One was a really good movie. Maybe it was just the effects, though?
I was disappointed by the Ready player one adaptation of the book.
Best: Killer Angels. Brilliant use of Civil War re-enactors to get the small details correct in a way that all the money in the world can't buy. The leadership scenes are so good I used the movie for leadership training when I was on active duty.
Worst: Gods and Generals. Painfully stiff. An idolization of Stonewall Jackson--who was such a ferocious disciplinarian that some historians speculate his own troops intentionally fragged him at the end of the battle of Chancellorsville. Worst of all, it suggests that as early spring 1863 General Lee was in favor of offering to free slaves if they enlisted in the Confederate Army, and General Jackson was not necessarily against it. Given the horrified reaction throughout the Confederacy when the Union enlisted African Americans later that year, and the massacre of U.S. Colored troops when they tried to surrender at Fort Pillow on April 12, 1864, that's a particularly odious example of white-washing history.
I have a friend who was a re-enactor on "Gettysburg," and he got cast in a speaking role as a Union officer in the scene on Little Round Top. Only person I know with his own IMDB page.
Completely agree with the "painfully stiff" description of G&G. I would also add "long-winded." The characters didn't really speak - they recited poorly-written speeches. I sat in the theater waiting for it to get better, and was still waiting when the movie mercifully ended. (To be fair, if you want to see stiff, check out the deleted scenes from "Gettysburg." They gave speaking parts to some of the re-enactors, and it's cringe-worthy.)
And yeah - somebody with a Stonewall fetish tried really hard to make TJJ a big warm fuzzy. Didn't come close to working.
Agree on Both: Gettysburg was amazing and Gods and Generals was dreck. Then again, the source material for both differed WILDLY in Quality as well. I still remember The Killer Angels quite well, to this day if you asked me what happened in Gods and Generals(the book not the actual war) I couldn't even begin to tell you. Difference between a tight, focused story and the beginning of a sprawling epic I suppoose, but the sequel to Gods and Generals was bad, too.
Dune (1984)
I noticed you didn't say best or worst, and arguments can be made either way. Well played, sir. Well played.
A few I haven’t seen mentioned in the best category —
Shoeless Joe/Field of Dreams
The Body/Stand By Me
Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is a great movie adaptation of The Heart of Darkness, which is a great book.
I also happen to love both the book and movie The Princess Bride. Movie follows the book closely and both are laugh-out-loud funny.
Good call in Princess Bride. Really a great book. I was worried about reading it after loving the movie so much my whole life, but was very happy I did.
Both from same series:
Jurassic Park: Amazing book and equally great movie. Minor changes to story did not overwhelm what Crichton originally wrote.
Lost World: Book not quite as strong as the original but still great. However that nuanced approach to story changes went out the window.
Jurassic Park was great. I've read most of Chrichton's other books and his other adaptations were pretty bad. Congo, sphere, Andromeda strain (both movies), etc.
I thought Congo was alright though I don't remember much from the book or how similar they were. I remember being disappointed that the time travel movie, (I think Timeline?) wasn't nearly as good as the book. That was one of Paul Walker's earlier movies.
Yeah Timeline could have been a lot better. I think a Prey movie could be pretty great.
My vote for best is..
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad...
Coppola loosely adapted it for the Veitnam War to make the film Apocalypse Now.
Both were exceptional.
Best: Into the Wild
Worst: Pillars of the Earth
Plus 1 for Into the Wild based on soundtrack alone.
Into the Wild is an underrated flick. And yes, the soundtrack is awesome. Still listen to it sometimes and heard Eddie play some songs from it at a Pearl Jam concert I was at a few years ago
Vedder did a great job with "Hard Sun", it's an exceptional cover of the Indio original.
Worst - world war z
The only thing the movie and the book shared was the title.
For me, it would be hard to improve on the films based on “To Kill A Mockingbird”, “The Godfather”, “All the President’s Men”, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, “Jaws” and “The (Wonderful) Wizard of Oz”.
Three films based on Stephen King’s writings, the original version of “The Shining” (despite its deviations from the novel), “The Shawshank Redemption” (from the short story “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”) and “Stand By Me” (from the novella “The Body”) are among my favorites.
As much as I love “Field of Dreams” and I still shed some tears at “Hey Dad, wanna have a catch” (maybe because my dad died six months before I saw the film in the theater in 1989 and I still miss him), I’ve often wondered how different the film might’ve been if (a) J. D. Salinger had allowed the filmmakers to portray him in the film as his fictional story was described in the book, without having threatened to sue if they used his name, (b) they’d used an actor at least as good as Ray Liotta to play Shoeless Joe Jackson as a left-handed hitter and right-handed thrower, and (c) they’d included the characters of Ray’s long-lost, identical twin brother Richard, Richard’s girlfriend Gypsy and Eddie Scissons, the original owner of Ray's farm who was locally known as the oldest living Chicago Cub and was a key character in the book, so that it would’ve been closer to a true adaptation of the novel.
When I read “The DaVinci Code” in a day, I thought that it would make a great film. I’ve rarely been as disappointed in the film version as I was with this one.
Ready Player One was a great read. I was so excited for the movie. Unfortunately for me it fell flat.
Still waiting on the Three and Out movie to release to judge The screen adaptation on that one.
Read Battlefield Earth back in HS (long before I was aware of Scientology and the author's role in it) but found it to be a decent book (not amazing, but not bad). Heard the movie was atrocious and purposely avoided watching it.
The first 4 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books were pretty good, but the movie was not very impressive.
Strangely enough I didn't get into the Game of Thrones till the last season. Since I've read all the books I'm convinced HBO just wanted the title an not Martin's writing. I thought the books were horrible, like a children's book with bad language. I couldn't even read the first book entirely. Not to mention the books only cover the story about halfway. And Martin still hasn't finished the series with books 6&7.
Whoever came up with killing Daneurys is an absolute idiot. Although in a land littered with magic will she come back to life?Where is Drogon taking her?
Which brings me to the question why would HBO want to end it? It was the most popular TV series in the world. Surprisingly enough, they kept all but a couple actors from the beginning of the first episode. The really cool thing was seeing the young teen and child actors grow up over 8-10 years.That really added to the overall continuity of the series. That would never happen in Hollywood as their greed would get the better of them.
This was the first times the series/movie was better than the books.
I have been a avid reader off and on in my life. Its good tk excercise your brain. Right before the quarantine I started reading the history of America, before the english or Columbus arrived. First book was about the indian tribes of California. Spainish,English,Mexican and the french all were exploring california late 1400's on. The funny thing all the captain logs had very similiar observations about the Cali tribes. These explorers have been exposed to indian tribes all over the world. Their takeaway, they were smaller,lazy laying around all day naked, little or no agriculture,much more ignorant than the other tribes they observed during that time period.
I also reread a lot of the required classics from school.Tom Sawyer,Prince&The Pauper,Poe's short stories The Masque of the Red Death,would be appropriate right about now, right lol?
Felt I was reading too much fiction so that's why I started reading the classics and got interested in american history prior to the english colonists.Randomly reading a biography of George Washington Carver got me interested in american history from the beginning.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books books were outstanding but movie was basically unwatchable. They did a much better job with the BBC TV series.
The Dirk Gently books were also brilliant but the TV series was annoying
Best — The Tin Drum.
Worst — The Hunt for RedOctober
:-) ha! I have The Hunt for Red October as one of the best adaptations. They squeezed that book into a movie that still told the same story.
My only regret is having read the book before seeing the movie and knowing Ramius would kill the political commissar which would have been shocking seeing Connery's character do without foreknowledge.
I watched the hunt for red October and really enjoyed it. Several years later I read the book and thought it was an excellent book. Then I watched the movie again shortly thereafter. Man I thought the movie was terrible the second time around.
Still love the movie, just have to understand that the movie had to cut a lot out. Still for the Tom Clancy genre they did a great job.
If you want a REALLY bad book-to-Movie adaptation in the military genre, check out Flight of the Intruder. Or better yet, don't.
First Clancy novel I read.His narration of the sub battles was like you were standing right next to the captain. That being one of his first in a long line. Amazing writer.Clancy>Patterson.
Shawshank will always be my favorite movie. Absolute perfection.
Best: The Shining. Kubrick got it right. As much as I respect King as an author, I thought the movie was better than the book.
Worst: Dune. Requires no explanation.
Side note: the only other film adaptation that I thought was better than the book was The Lost World. I'm a huge Crichton fan, but I thought The Lost World the novel lacked much of a plot and was really just a chance for him to dump a bunch of philosophy that he couldn't fit into the first book.
I thought the SciFi channel mini-series for Dune was decent and I actually liked the Children of Dune series better. The 1984 movie was awful.
That said I really want to see what happens with Dune 2020 as the photos from the movie look great.
By far for me, the worse movie from a book was Battle Field Earth. The book by R.L. Hubbard was excellent. The movie with Travolta was horrible.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a great book. The movie was absolutely horrible.
All of Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare adaptations are excellent.
Absolutely yes.
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;..."
and
"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;..."
He delivers those lines oh so wonderfully.