For me it’s definitely the Dark Tower, but the Golden Compas was also a huge letdown.
- Dune (the old one, not the new one)
- Dark Tower
- Eragon
- Ender’s Game
- The Witcher (a real shame, it could have been such a good IP for Netflix)
Most adaptations suck, these are just some from the top of my head.
I like at least the first season of Witcher, though it could’ve been more linear
The old Dune was just lol what the fuck
What about the middle Dune adaptation?
Oh God, I remember how disappointed I was when seeing the Eragon movie. After having read the trilogy I was having such high hopes, it could’ve been a LOTR alike trilogy, but instead we got this half baked… Stuff. At least the actors gave their best.
Kind of in the same line with the golden compass I guess?
I really enjoyed the Eragon books as a kid but they aren’t great themselves. It’s a mediocre book series adapted to a bad film.
Oh yeah for sure, they were great to child me, I haven’t read them in years.
I just thought of another example to the theme: I also really enjoyed the vampires assistant thirteenology or so, but the movie was horrendous!
What’s so bad about enders game. I don’t remember that being a bad adaptation, but it’s been a while.
It wasn’t a bad movie, I actually liked it a lot - but the book is significantly better and the movie left out a lot. If I had read the book before watching the movie I would probably have hated the movie tbh.
Also even picking that book to make into a movie was a mistake, enders game was only written to give backstory for speaker for the dead which is much better than the enders game book but never made it to becoming a movie itself
That’s the story of adaptations most of the time.
I read the book first and enjoyed the movie enough to buy it.
The book Ender’s Game has a psychological component that it’s nigh-impossible to nail in a visual medium with child actors. The story works in book form because books are the closest thing we have to telepathy, but it’s harder to do in a visual medium simply because visual storytelling is different from written storytelling.
You could probably do the movie with really good adult actors–but most of the cast are children. And really good child actors are rare to come by–you’re lucky to have one, much less multiple. And when the cast is made entirely up of children who are all supposed to be geniuses, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to get the casting and talent you need.
The Ender’s Game movie wasn’t terrible–it was surprisingly watchable compared to other adaptations of other books–but it didn’t come close to nailing the feel of the book.
Haven’t read it but I hear Eragon was absolutely shat on. Without reading it, the movie was pretty ehh for me, great acting but weird plot
The movie isn’t anywhere near the same as the book.
And it shouldn’t be thought of as the same story - it’s not an adaptation but an interpretation of the first book.
Though in doing that it ruins a few key points needed to link the sequels, which never received movie sequels because the movie was just that bad.
The only thing I can complement is some of the actor choices. Particularly the choice for Brom Murtagh, and galbatorix (though the mad king doesn’t appear in the books till the last book at the final showdown)
It was pretty fucking awful. But also the books really lost me around the 3rd/4th soooo xD
I’ve heard nothing but bad things about Amazon Prime’s “Wheel of Time” adaptation.
Imagine taking a beloved classic fantasy series and handing the material off to the CW for adaptation and you’ve got the gist of Amazon’s WoT series. It’s pretty, it’s vapid and there’s a whole pile of extra teenage soap opera drama thrown into season 1 for no real reason.
Same thing that happened with the Shannara TV show. MTV wanted a kid friendly fantasy romance competitor to GoT, so they butchered a series that’s basically none of those things. They also started with book 2 for whatever reason.
I imagine they couldn’t get the rights to The Lord of the Rings in order to adapt book 1 of Shannara.
What? No it’s totally different, our Gandalf is named Allanon and he’s a Druid, not a Wizard. Druids get a d8. And the Warlock Lord’s Skull Bearers are definitely not Nazgul, they fly with wings not horses.
I almost hear nothing good about the books themselves these days. Everyone liked them when I first got into them… 😥
Braid tugging and poorly written female characters aside, a very large number of the interpersonal problems in those books could be solved in anybody ever talked to each other. The nobody ever trusts anybody or talks about an issue gets kind of irritating. Even if he was going for realism it is pretty over the top.
Kind of like how a large number of Seinfeld episodes would be over in five minutes if they had cell phones.
I actually find one of the interesting parts of the books being the kind of way that misinformation can spread across the country.
Like a character does one thing and that action gets attributed to a whole bunch of different people by different characters.
But yea, I’m on book 9 now and definitely a bit frustrated with nobody just talking about things.
I really like the second season. And did like the book series. I think a TV show has to move faster, it’s an adaptation not a recreation. So it’s a different story but it works. Not the first season, that was not good but the next one I enjoyed so much.
Have you seen His Dark Materials on HBO? From what my wife tells me it’s a lot closer to the books than the movie.
Was going to say the same, the BBC/HBO Dark Materials series is really excellent, beautifully made.
I haven’t, but I will
That just reminded me I need to watch the 3rd season.
Honestly, it’d be easier to say which books have GOOD adaptations, since the norm is poor adaptations and it’s hard to choose which one is the worst since so many suck in different ways.
The Princess Bride is the best movie adaptation I can think of off the top of my head. I fact, I’d argue that it was better than the book.
1996 Matilda was faithful to Roald Dahl and brought the trunchbull to life in a way only movies can. Rest of cast was great but Trunchbull aces it, one of my favorite cinema villains of all time.
Not seeing Ready Player One listed here. There were some choices made in that movie that might seem fine to someone who hasn’t read the book, but the huge number of absolutely unnecessary discrepancies was just gross.
The movie totally went against the novel and sucked hardcore because of it.
It was and will always be impossible to turn RPO into a movie, first there are the copyright issues and second the challenges are really boring to watch.
That doesn’t excuse swapping Wade’s deliberate-servitude-to-hack-the-system with Art3mis’s damsel-in-distress-happening-to-save-the-day-by-chance sequence, nor Wade’s decision at the end to shut off the Oasis two days of the week (what about people who rely on the Oasis for their livelihood or for self-worth, like severely disabled people? Hello), nor him saying his friends are his “clan,” something they are vehemently against in the book.
Wwz. Still salty. It would have been spectacular if done along the same line as Supervolcano - the after fact interviews intercut with events as they happened was practically made to order for it - instead we get another shitty paint by numbers grab.
The best rendition of wwz is the full-cast audiobook
I’d say Foundation, but the show has been so far away from the books since literally episode 1 that the name might as well be a coincidence.
They very much lampshade that with the whole outliers thing. Events spin off in wildly different directions.
If you want a direct translation of the books, no dice, but damn the shit they’ve pulled out of whole cloth with the Cleons is amazeballs.
The Cleons is literally the only reason I continue to watch the show.
Did some good stuff with Riose as well.
Not looking forward to them fucking up The Mule tho :/
It feels more like an addition than an adaptation (it isn’t, but it’s the only perspective in which the show can be good). I’m a big fan of the books, and I’m also enjoying the show so far.
Pretty much every movie based on a Crichton novel except the first Jurassic Park and the original 1971 adaptation of The Andromeda Strain. Every other one has been awful (including The Lost World which is so far from the book it shouldn’t even get to be called “based on”).
Edit: After sleeping on it, I don’t know if the movie adaptations are objectively awful or if I was just unimpressed because I read the novel first for all of them.
Except that the first Jurassic Park movie is only one small part of the book and they never let Hammond get eaten like he was supposed to.
Endless disappointment on that front, but I still love the movies.
Oh, I didn’t mean it was perfect, just acceptable. lol
I’m still holding out for a streaming mini-series that is a 1:1 adaptation of the book. I just can’t let that dream go.
I agree it is acceptable, I don’t often miss an opportunity for a marathon- it just isn’t really true to the book, it’s more like bits of the book are scattered throughout the movies.
And I’m really upset that Hammond didn’t get eaten cause that would have been awesome.
I’ve never watched Disclosure nor finished the book, but it seems like one of the few they should have been able to get right.
I enjoyed Sphere, but I haven’t read the book and watched the movie close enough to compare them.
I enjoyed Sphere…
The novel was great. The movie…eh, not so much (IMO, anyway). Not even the combined powers of Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L Jackson, and Queen Latifah could really make it work for me. There’s just too much subtlety in the book that didn’t make it to the screen.
World War Z is barely at all like the book, and does a lot of really fucking stupid shit instead of having some of the really fucking cool shit from the book.
Like instead of a blind martial arts master surviving the zombies, we get to see one of the main characters slip on a ramp and break his neck. 😬
I still hate how Max Brooks said “Now, it’s a little unlike my book, but still good in it’s own right!” Because it wasn’t.
Way worse than break his neck, he outright accidentally shoots himself in the head.
And then it was insane that the zombies can magically tell if someone is specifically terminally ill and then will actively avoid them.
I still hate how Max Brooks said “Now, it’s a little unlike my book, but still good in it’s own right!” Because it wasn’t.
Yeah. It really bugs me when people are like “it’s still a good zombie movie.”
It is a bad movie. Regardless of genre.
Tbh the book does a lot of dumb shit too
Like instead of a blind martial arts master surviving the zombies
Imo like this. This is some cringy anime shit, it felt so out of place
Mandatory The Witcher mention. They simply started to make shit up because they didn’t like nor repect the books.
Damn shame, a faithful adaptation would’ve been amazing. Hope we get one some day
Dark Tower - But I don’t think it can be done. I think the reason a lot of Stephen King’s adaptations fail as movies is because his books spend a lot time describing his character’s inner monologue.
Ender’s Game - I was so excited for this movie. But if you are a fan of the books then you saw a lot of discrepancies between the movie and the book. So it ended up being a decent general sci-fi movie.
That’s the reason most books can’t be adapted exactly as written. Unless the writing is so horribly stilted (X went to Y, X said Z to α, X had β happen to him because of α…) that you wouldn’t want to read it in the first place, you’ll need a large amount of narration and/or characters speaking their thoughts out loud, which doesn’t work most of the time and gets worse if they’re doing it solely for the purpose of the viewer getting into their headspace.
That first Dune movie decades ago. Yikes.
Sting was great though
I’m a huge David Lynch fan, but yeah, that movie is insane. Has some good moments, but not many!
This movie slaps if you watch it high. Like really high.
True of a lot of Lynch’s work. He definitely produces material aimed for a mind in an altered state
Hitch hiker’s Guide (movie version)… what a lost opportunity.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Especially the second movie, Sea of Monsters.
Thank goodness the TV show is coming in December. Rick Riordan, the author, has personally been overseeing the production. I have high confidence the tv series will be much closer to the books. Hopefully this will do well enough that future seasons will be funded and we’ll get seasons that adapt the rest of the books.
