Movies from Books

[Timotheus]

This is a bit of a lark right now, but what the hey. Why has hollywood always been so dead set on making books into movies? They ruin half the fun of reading the books and imagining scenery and people. Don't get me wrong, every once in a while there's one where they hit the nail on the head (I'm certainly not going to badmouth Muppet Christmas Carol). But when one of my favorite books is taken and butchered into a movie it really irks me (War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, for one thing). If they ever tried to turn Edmund Spenser's Fairie Queene into a movie, I would just about certainly have a coniption, but that probably won't happen.
This is mostly a personal beef, but does anyone else get angered by this?

 

[melissa@muppet]

SOMETIMES THEY TAKE AWESOME BOOKS AND YOU GET AWESOME MOVIES.
THEN YOU GET THE AWFUL ONES.

THE OUTSIDERS THAT WAS A GREAT BOOK AND A GREAT MOVIE.
LORD OF THE RINGS GREAT BOOK- GREAT MOVIE.
HARRY POTTER GREAT BOOKS - GREAT MOVIES

 

[Sgt Floyd]

Yes, It really annoys me. I mean, yea, there are some books that were turned into great movies, but usually they butcher half the stuff from the book out of the movie. They completely messed up A series of unfortunate events. It wen 1st book, second, third and then the ending went back to the first book and half the stuff from the books wered in the movie. Alot of important stuff too.

Sometimes there are great books to movies, sometimes there are complete duds

 

[Manda:-D]

From what it looks like, the general impression is that, yes, while there are some great movies made out of books, the movies still, unfortunately, tend to pale in comparison to the fantastic-ness of the books they are based upon. I totally agree on this. Also, there's certainly plenty of movies that completely butcher a good book. Many times, movie makers will take only the most basic elements of a books storyline, (e.g: Aliens ATTACK!!!), and, while they create something completely enjoyable, it has none of the feel or content of the book itself, and shouldn't have the author's name anywhere near it. Usually these movies are made out of books that are classics, so imbued in our psyches that we can't seperate the actual book from the sort of mythos that surrounds it. For instance, the Frankenstein's monster of the movies MUST be incapable of speech, even though anyone who's read Mary Shelley's novel knows the monster was actually able to speak French, and, even, I believe, German. (There was that Frankenstein film w/Robert Deniro where he could speak, but that one had other difficulties, anyway.) The fact is, it's nearly impossible to acheive a faithful adaption from book or story to film. Even the most faithful adaptations tend to have huge changes. (For instance, John Huston's "The Dead", from James Joyce's short story. Some critics claim his changes alter what was James Joyce's intended theme.) Most of the time, these stories are a result of necessity: there are just certain things that work in books that can't work in movies.

 

[D'Snowth]

THE OUTSIDERS THAT WAS A GREAT BOOK AND A GREAT MOVIE]

I totally agree/

 

[Timotheus]

Yeah, the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe movie wasn't bad. (They did a pretty good job on Aslan. But even in that movie a things were changed. But, then again, I'm a purist. (And I've only read that book out of the series so far.)

 

[peachesncream]

i like to read the book and then see the movies.i'm guess i'm opposite the kid with a book report.

 

[Timotheus]

(just when you think thread has died, someone makes a post on it)
I'm definitely like that; I wished I had gotten to reread the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe before seeing the movie. Last time I read it was the fourth grade.
Hollywood in general often strikes me as being rather uncreative as it seems they would rather rehash someone else's story rather than write their own.

 

[Skeeter Muppet]

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

For example, in the early 1980s Rankin/Bass released an animated version of Peter S. Beagle's novel The Last Unicorn. Unlike RB's animated versions of The Hobbit and Return of the King (especially the latter), TLU was very faithful to the original book. Of course, it did help that Mr. Beagle wrote the screenplay for the movie. But both the movie and the book have culled quite a fan following over the years, and just last year Mr. Beagle published a novella-length sequel to TLU which he promises is a bridge between TLU and a third sequel.

And then there's the movie Secret of NIMH, which was based off of Robert C O'Brien's book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. In this case a lot was changed between the transition from book to movie, the most obvious the element of fantasy/magic with the introduction of the Stone. And a majority of the NIMH fandom seems to prefer the movie over the book, myself included.

-Kim