Great adaptations that got it all wrong.

[craigdbfan]

The point of the book was androids cannot be human and that our future is a desolate inhuman/artificial one. In Ridley Scott's film the androids are more human than the actual humans who are depicted as fascist villains who hunt them down. The end raises the point of what is humanity and what is a soul as Roy had more of one than Decker did at that point. Decker falls in love with an android which goes against the very concept Dick came up with....but I prefer Blade Runner.

Also, Dick only saw work footage of the big special effects and city shots. He never saw the completed narrative. He was blown away by the visual realization of his story, this is true.

Not to mention the entire Mercer subplot.

 

[Speedball]

Wizard of Oz

The Bourne Supremacy and Ultimatum - The plot of the books is completely different than films.

 

[TruerToTheCore]

Conan The Barbarian (Arnold version)
The Running Man

 

[GunRanger]

It's a metaphor for the Vietnam War.

So was the movie. Rambo goes to meet his friend, but he's dead from cancer caused by Agent Orange. Then the cops treat him like **** because of who he is, and because he was a veteran of Vietnam. It's why Rambo breaks down at the end too. Him attacking the city, was his way of bringing the Vietnam war home. He used guerrilla tactics versus the cops who happen to wear military fatigues in the dense forests and carry M4s. What sort of cops do that? Then he blows up the town.

 

[cherokeesam]

Just to take the opposite approach to things: there's one movie that I found that was an *extremely* faithful adaptation. I found that The Silence of the Lambs followed the novel practically word for word. If you get the novel and the DVD, try reading along with the film sometime --- you're practically reading the script.

I remember being pleasantly surprised by that, and to this day, I still wonder that more filmmakers don't show that same kind of faith in novelists. It worked great for Demme.

 

[the amazing fro]

Being an ultra faithful adaption can work against you in some cases. Watchmen was a pretty close adaption often taking panels right from the comics. But it didn't work because it felt too much like an add on to the book and not a separate entity in its own right.

 

[KenK]

John Carpenter's Vampires - I LOVE this movie, but it's so removed from the novel, John Carpenter have every right to put his name on it like it was his! Outside of James Woods' character and a crew of vampire hunters funded by the Vatican, the two really are nothing alike.

 

[moviedoors]

So was the movie. Rambo goes to meet his friend, but he's dead from cancer caused by Agent Orange. Then the cops treat him like **** because of who he is, and because he was a veteran of Vietnam. It's why Rambo breaks down at the end too. Him attacking the city, was his way of bringing the Vietnam war home. He used guerrilla tactics versus the cops who happen to wear military fatigues in the dense forests and carry M4s. What sort of cops do that? Then he blows up the town.

It's a clean, PC, Hollywood version of a Vietnam message, with none of the difficult moral complications of the novel. One has clearly drawn lines of honorable good guys and unreasonable bad guys, right and wrong. The other treats the proceedings as ugly, bloody, physically and emotionally harrowing for all involved, and there is no good guy and there is no bad guy, just a lot of nothing getting solved violently. When you're part of a massacre, there is no honor. Which way of telling the story has more real-world resonance? Not the one with the hero and the mustache twirling villain.

I don't want to get into specific spoilers, but the ending sees these ideas out much more honestly in the novel too. Let's just say the fate of these two men wasn't so Tinseltown and it was exactly how it should have ended. The ending of the novel might not have worked in the movie. The movie played with a stacked deck and such bleak nihilism wouldn't have fit with its simpler characters.

 

[Steyin]

Watchmen, to a point.

 

[Bug-Eyed Earl]

If we're going by more than changes to the story and focusing on changes to themes, the Shining certainly counts.

The Shining is about a deeply flawed man trying his damnedest to get his life together and to be a good father, but the external demons in the Overlook compound his internal ones.

The Kubrick version is about a guy who is already bit of an unstable *****e getting just a tiny prod in that direction. That and how it seems like Kubrick shot it so that it made it seem ambiguous as to whether the ghosts had anything at all to do with his downward spiral. The characters weren't all that likable, going against the whole point of the story, as well.

 

[Asr]

War of the Worlds (1953 or 2005 - for anyone who actually likes the 2005 movie anyway)

The '53 version is a sci-fi classic but vastly differed from the book. A faithful adaptation of the book would be seriously awesome.

 

[Lighthouse]

History of Violence.

 

[CashforStash]

Jaws.

There I said it.

 

[The Navigator]

From what I hear, the book Die Hard is based on has the hero as a much more Schwarzeneggerian type of protagonist...which was pretty much 180 from the direction the movie took.

 

[Lighthouse]

Jaws.

There I said it.

Jaws the movie is vastly superior to the book.

 

[Dave McFly]

John Carpenter's Christine, I have read the Stephen King book 2 times and while I LOVE the movie (being a car guy), the book is a lot different than in the movie here are a few examples off the top of my head:

Arnie buys the car in the very beginning of the book the whole school scenes and the fight with Buddy is almost a 1/3rd of the way in

Arnie buys the car from the original owner Roland D Lebay not his brother like in the movie

Christine does not really drive herself but more like driven by the spirit of the deceased Lebay.

the deaths are a bit different in the book, Christine chases after Buddy and a few of his buddies that are in the car with him they crash and flip over and only Buddy survives but Christine runs his ass down. Darnell's death in the book is far cooler, Christine crashes into his house at night and slams into the stairs as he is trying to escape.

Christine has to be moving for her to 'regenerate' cause of the backwards moving odometer, so the first thing that gets damaged in a chase is the last thing that gets fixed. and on top of that the descriptions of her 'regenerations' are cool like one scene she 'regrows' a missing hood a new one 'knits' itself out of raw metal and the red paint soaks into it like a bandage over a bloody wound.

And the final showdown is not with a bulldozer but a pink septic truck named 'Petunia'

still I LOVED the movie and would SO get it on blu ray to replace my 8 year old copy of the special edition DVD.

 

[geeknerddork]

Akira. The anime condensed 6 thick volumes into 120 minutes, and thus cut out lots of important/cool stuff, but it's still an animation classic that's typically cited as one of the best anime films ever.

 

[moviedoors]

Jaws the movie is vastly superior to the book.

Yeah, it's not even close.

 

[craigdbfan]

Akira. The anime condensed 6 thick volumes into 120 minutes, and thus cut out lots of important/cool stuff, but it's still an animation classic that's typically cited as one of the best anime films ever.

I agree.

The manga is vastly superior. That doesn't make me love the anime movie any less because it's still incredible in its own right but the manga which is also written by Otomo you'll find yourself far more invested in the characters and everything thats at stake.

The anime had to really be relatively brief on these points so the relationship mainly sticked with that of Kaneda and Tetsuo.

Great movie still but its hardly that faithful to the manga due simply to the limited time they had to cram a story that Otomo wasn't even done with at the time in manga form.

 

[kedrell]

Total Recall

 

[craigdbfan]

Starship Troopers.

 

[geeknerddork]

I agree.

The manga is vastly superior. That doesn't make me love the anime movie any less because it's still incredible in its own right but the manga which is also written by Otomo you'll find yourself far more invested in the characters and everything thats at stake.

The anime had to really be relatively brief on these points so the relationship mainly sticked with that of Kaneda and Tetsuo.

Great movie still but its hardly that faithful to the manga due simply to the limited time they had to cram a story that Otomo wasn't even done with at the time in manga form.

Yeah, I saw the anime first, and it's one of my favorite films ever, but it kinda confused me the first time around even though I thought it was awesome. Then I read the manga years later and it made more sense.

I've always thought it could've been better as a trilogy of movies. They could've gotten everything in. They're doing an Americanized live-action remake, and I'm dreading that, all the news about it sounds horrible so far, haha. They want to make the characters adults, and white guys, and in New York. Ugh.

 

[dark_b]

sorry but i have to do this. this is SHH

The Dark Knight

 

[craigdbfan]

sorry but i have to do this. this is SHH

Batman & Robin

fixed

 

[mongoose-mania]

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World had plenty of things that were different or left out from the books, but that's what happens when you try to squeeze six books into nearly two hours. Still, I love that movie.