Worst cinemagraphic destruction of a literary classic ?

[jobycom]

"The Sun Also Rises." The book ends with a forlorn, existentialist realization that there is no god, and no hope for the protagonist, but the movie changes the order of two lines, adds a third, and makes the ending a happy confirmation that god will take care of them.

What's your most annoying movie adaptation of a great book? Not just a bad movie, but a fundamental change of the book itself?

[SarahB]

1. The Ethan Hawke/ Gweneth Paltrow version of Great Expectations.

:scared:

[PragMantisT]

4. That was my choice n/t

[Pale Blue Dot]

2. "The Natural" is a classic example

The book does not have a happy ending.

[bif]

36. I agree. The book was totallly different

It wasn't a bad movie. It just wasn't based on the book, which I loved. I think I read it for the first time in 7th grade.

[No2W2004]

3. Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Why bother if they're gonna change most of the friggin story including tacking on a happy ending?

[jobycom]

5. Forgot about that one!

Maybe because the damned music was so bad it lost me ten minutes into the film. The opening song was a better summary of the book than the movie was.

[ScreamingMeemie]

7. ...and don't forget Pocahontas.

That was a slaughter. :hi:

[Radical Activist]

12. That was my choice, and

almost any Disney adaptation in the last 20 years. I love Hugo so Disney's Hunchback really pissed me off. Especially since they predictabley made the captain the hero.

[jobycom]

6. Oh yeah, Demi Moore's "Scarlet Letter"

The book rather loses its meaning with a happy ending.

[bloodyjack]

23. during production Moore said something to the effect of

"very few people have read the Scarlet Letter anyhow"

I GUESS SHE WAS NOT COUNTING ON AN AUDIENCE OF HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES

[tcfrogs]

8. Bonfire of the Vanities

Maybe not a literary classic - but a BAD movie!

[madaboutharry]

9. The Scarlet Letter with

Demi Moore. I really think that has to stand out as the biggest sacrilege of movie history.

[flamingyouth]

25. Also, there was a really bad 1934 version

Starring my favorite silent film actress Colleen Moore (this was a sound film). Her career was on the skids by this point, and this film shows it.

[GregW]

10. The 'Merkinized version of "Lord of the Flies"

:puke:

[jobycom]

17. By that, do you mean the Bush White House? nt

[BigMcLargehuge]

11. Starship Troopers

Paul Verhooven direction and Ed Niumier's script took a well plotted tale of a boys coming of age in the military and turned it into a tits and ass show with bugs. I hated it.

[PittPoliSci]

14. I liked the strong antiwar message behind it.

Given the T&A was very excessive, and the bugs absolutely ridiculous, I can't help but enjoy it.

[JohnLocke]

13. All of them.

[NightTrain]

15. "The Razor's Edge."

Like me, Bill Murray deeply admired W. Somerset Maugham's novel. But unlike me, Murray made the book into a vapid, horrendous film in 1984.

What made the movie so awful was that Bill Murray did not play Maugham's main character, Larry Darrell: he played Bill Murray, and it just didn't work. REALLY didn't work!!! :puke::hurts::wow:

[DieboldMustDie]

16. Catch-22

[NightTrain]

18. Good call! If you didn't read the book first, the film makes little sense.

[ironflange]

19. The Cat in the Hat

And let's not forget "The Grinch."

[DavidMS]

20. The Illiad (Butchered into "Troy")

The writers and directors took one of the earliest parts of the western litterary cannon and brutalized it.

I read the origional in high school and it was amazing. The movie was a bunch of actors in lether skirts pretending to be macho. It deviated way too much from the original epic poem. The most important part explaining it (Eris throwing the golden apple between Hera, Athenea and Aphrodite) would have been amazing on film.

The worst part was as we exited the theatere seeing the large number of young moslems leaving and realizing that unless Hollywood gets their act togheater and produces epics of the western clasics that are both accurate and fun enough that much of the Arab world will see them and contexualize the west we will have an even harder time winning the war with the Islamists. Amoungst the 19 Sept 11 Hijackers, there were no english majors.

[Briarius]

21. Every movie except

The Green Mile. It's the only movie I've ever seen that is almost exactly the book. I think they skipped maybe three lines that didn't have much of an impact. Every other movie adaptation I've seen has been disastrous. Jurassic Park is probably at the top of the list there.

[PurityOfEssence]

24. "On The Beach" is pretty much true to the book

and a good movie, too...

[jobycom]

39. So you'd rank Jurassic Park as a literary classic?

:-)

[Lestat]

22. Queen of the Damned.

It didn't even follow the damn book.

[amjsjc]

26. Animal Farm

I can remember seeing a Godawfully crappy animated version of it where the directors decided that they needed a happy ending, so they had the animals rise up against the pigs in the end...

[blindpig]

27. LOTR

maybe I'm picky but way too many liberties were taken with the plot. I understand the need to condense the story to make it fit an inferior art form but some of the gratuitous crap injected into the story really pissed me off. I now understand why the family was against this project. Beautifully filmed, so much promise but ultimately disappointing.

[jobycom]

35. And that was even more wierd, since

the damned movies were way too long, anyway. How many different cuts of charging armies does one need? And why oh why ADD extra scenes that don't advance the plot when you can't fit in all the ones that are already in the book and are required for the plot?

They did change the end, too, with Aragorn's love interest, and Liv Tyler (forgot the name for the moment) deciding to die for some silly mortal king who had lived a fraction of her eternity.

I thought they were weak films in themselves, without worrying about what they did with the books, but you're right, they weren't good to the books, either.

[terrya]

28. Jackie Chan's new version of "Around the World in 80 Days"

I haven't seen it, I don't need to see it. I read this delightful book when I was a kid, and I know for a fact that it didn't have an Asian kick boxing movie star as a character.

[NashVegas]

29. The Three Musketeers (1993)

For some reason, Hollywood was able to do Dumas well in the 1970s, but oh god what they've done to insult his fans in the last 15 years. Count of Monte Crisco was tolerable, but ... and don't get me started on Leo's whining in Man in the Iron Mask.

[Gildor Inglorion]

30. "The Jungle Book"

I haven't seen the wretched thing, but from the omnipresent pictures and sound clips it's the biggest travesty ever. That was my favorite book as a boy - a grim and serious business depicting the "fang and claw" facts of nature and the terrible consequences of mankind's interference. The Disney people turned it into a cute little cartoon with buffoonish singing, dancing animals.

[jobycom]

38. Disney has a bad record with being true to books

When he made Jungle Book, he told the writers not to read Kipling's stories, but just to write a story based on the characters and setting.

The singing was very good, though. One of Disney's top musicals.

The Little Mermaid, Cinderalla, Jungle Book, Mary Poppins, Peter Pan, Hunchback... and then there are the historical rewrites, like Mulan (still a great film), Pocahontas I and II...

They did improve The Lion King, though, if you've ever seen the original Japanese series.

[Parrcrow]

31. Independence Day / The War of the Worlds

The War of the Worlds was a cautionary tale about mankinds arrogance. Mankind is virtually wiped out in a matter of days with all efforts at resistance as utter failures. The invaders are then defeated by viruses.

Independence Day was made with arrogance. Mankind (specifically 'American know how') develop the computer virus to bring down the invaders.

Visually stunning but insulting movie.

We also got to see the President in a fighter jet, which at the time struck me as completely ridiculous. Now arrogant rightwing reality imitates arrogant rightwing movies.

[nuxvomica]

32. Fried Green Tomatoes

While the book's not exactly a classic, what the movies did to it was a crime. Two distinct and important characters were fused into one for the movie version, completely skewing the point of view.

[Coventina]

33. "Emma" the Gwenyth Paltrow version n/t

[Lydia Leftcoast]

34. This is about a children's book, but

all the film versions of Heidi have been atrocious.

There was the notorious TV movie during the 1960s that was started on time even though there was a football game going on, which prompted nationwide protests from football fans. Well, they needn't have bothered showing the movie.

What's the idea of a Heidi movie in which Fraulein Rottenmeier is sweet and beautiful and kind and in love with Herr Sesemann? That's the complete opposite of her character in the book.

[recidivist]

40. Do you really think the Shirley Temple Heidi is bad?

I'm just curious and will readily defer to your judgment in things literary. I've never read the book so I can't speak to liberties taken with the plot. Nor have I seen any Heidis other than the Shirley Temple version. But that one is justifiably a classic.

Granted, it shows its age, and it was produced as a starring vehicle for a very cute little girl. C'mon, Lydia -- ya gotta admit little Shirley Temple was a sweetheart, even if she did grow up to be a Republican.

Anyhow, there is plenty of darkness in the story. Unless the book has a grim ending, I'd guess the movie is a fair adaptation (as would be likely in a 1930's flick, from the good old days when the moviemakers would assume the audience had read the original). Heidi's aunt first abandons her and then kidnaps and sells her; the grandfather is pretty scary, at least initially; and Fraulein Rottenmeier is a witch who is manipulating Clara and tries to sell Heidi to gypsies. I don't see much of a tarted-up Hollywood version in that. If the book is any darker, it's probably too scary for me even now.:)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

42. Well, in the book

Heidi's aunt never tries to sell her, and neither does Fraulein Rottenmeier.

Heidi's aunt leaves her with grandpa because she's taken a new job as a maid, and they won't let her bring Heidi. A couple of years later, after Heidi and Grandpa have bonded (he's scary only for a couple of days), the aunt comes back and says that people she knows in Frankfurt are looking for a companion for their daughter, who's in a wheelchair, and besides, it's time Heidi got some schooling.

Fraulein Rottenmeier is mean and snobbish, Clara thinks Heidi is a lot of fun, and Herr Sesemann is nice but disengaged from the household. Heidi is miserable, and stops eating and starts sleepwalking. The doctor says she has to go back home because she's dying of a broken heart.

She goes back to Switzerland but this time, she attends school in the village and teaches Peter the goatherd to read and becomes a favorite of his family by reading to his blind grandmother.

Clara comes to visit, and Fraulein Rottenmeier, who doesn't want to stay with "peasants" retreats to the village. Clara gets lots of good food and fresh air. Peter isjealous of Clara and decides that if her wheelchair is gone, she'll have to leave, so he rolls the wheelchair down the mountain. Instead, Clara learns to walk, just in time for her father's visit.

I read the book several times as a kid--it was one of my favorites, so no, I didn't like the Shirley Temple version either.

[AngryAmish]

37. The Getaway

The best part of the book was the last few pages. There is a major swerve that is left out of both movies. The happy ending of both movies is not the way the book ends - and the central moral of the book is missed without the ending.


(There were two versions. First was Sam Peckinpah (sp?) with Ally McGraw and Steve McQueen and the second was about ten years ago with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger).

[geniph]

41. All but one version of Stevenson's Treasure Island

Treasure Island is one of the greatest young adult adventure stories ever committed to paper, and the movies have done an abysmal job bringing it to life - and there have been at least six versions I know of, counting Disney's bizarro-world Treasure Planet animated version (???!!!). They almost invariably cast Jim Hawkins as a little kid, which ruins the story; Jim Hawkins has to be an adolescent - the story, among other things, is a boy's coming of age.

The only version to get it right was Fraser Heston's TV movie of it. Yes, Charlton's son did the only faithful adaptation of the story, and it's a humdinger. Mr. Gun Nut himself is perfectly cast as Long John Silver, Christian Bale is a flawless Jim Hawkins, and the rest of the parts are so well cast that I can't read the book anymore without seeing those actors. They used real ships on real bodies of water (the state of Washington's tall ship Lady Washington is prominently featured) - the sailing isn't faked - and they hardly stray from Stevenson's story by so much as a comma. If you ever have a chance to see that version, don't pass it up. I watched it once with the book in my lap, just to see if they had changed anything, and I couldn't detect any changes.

It's the ultimate hubris for a film director or screenwriter to decide to alter a true literary classic. A work that has stood the test of time probably doesn't need your fiddling with it to improve it (yes, this means YOU, Peter Jackson - I mean, bless you for bringing Tolkien to life, but hisses for every change). What makes a screenwriter or director think they can improve on the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson?

[jobycom]

43. Well

It is hard to fit a book into a two (even a four) hour movie, so any movie has to adapt the book. The best movies do one of two things-- either they cut out all but one strand of the book, like the various versions of Les Miserables do, or like Jaws did, or else they rewrite scenes that capture the spirit of several book scenes, to shorten the script to movie length. If done well, this is good.

I even have some respect for directors who make a different film from the book altogether, who capture the essence of the book even though the film is different. The Godfather did this well. The Name of the Rose does this, too, even though they save a character they kill in the book. It still doesn't violate the spirit of the book, as "The Sun Also Rises" did. Or the Scarlet Letter.

Treasure Island is just impossible to put perfectly on film. There is no way to capture Long John Silver's conniving, or to reconcile his intense evil with his charm. My kids love Treasure Planet (I kind of like it, too), but on one of our long drives I got an audio book of Treasure Island. My eleven year old (ten then) doesn't read well enough to read it, and I didn't think she'd follow it. She was enthralled. She caught almost every nuance of the writing (which is incredibly sharp and funny), though she got lost in the ship terminology.

I'll have to look for your Heston version. Thanks for the reference.