Best/Worst Conversions between different Media Forms

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[Firstly I don't think this should be in Booktalk since it is not only about Books]

I wasn't sure if the word i was looking for in the title was Media or Medium. I then checked what Medium meant and found, as i had thought, "a mode of artistic expression or communication". If it should have been Media then can someone please tell me so i can correct it. [EDIT] Changed the title to one making, a little, more sense

Ok this is what i mean by the, perhaps, slightly confusing title,

When:
A book is converted to a movie,
A book is converted to a TV series,
A TV series is converted to a Movie,

Etc incorporating any medium/media. An old film that is remade also counts here (the forthcoming Italian Job for example; which will likely be a really poor film that will still outsell the original - silly hype).

List your favourite/least favourites; as well as those which were done well/badly (regardless of whether you liked them or not, though that will most likely bias your viewpoint).

Here's my list (that I can think of right now) :

The good

Starship Troopers Book to Film; Extremely well done and a great film. The story is quite greatly changed from the book (his dad joins up in the book; and there is far less characterisation of anyone but Rico - no school friends popping up etc) but in a way that works.

LotR: Fellowship Book to Film; Well done, though it has parts that get boring too quickly on repetitive watchings (the beginning mostly). The changes to the story to incorporate Arwen are a shame, the story worked without her being there. Frodo's portrayal as a weak, feeble, whiney halfling is a wierd quirk from his portrayal in the book. Merry and Pippin seem very similiar and are occasionaly hard to tell apart. The other characters are however portrated very well (particularly Sam). A good film on the whole and a pretty good conversion. Without prior knowledge of the book it is a truly excellent film (I know this because people who haven't read the book didn't pick wholes in it).

LotR: Two Towers Book to Film; Amazing! A brilliant conversion. The book i found to be pretty dull and almost tiresome to read, way too much description. However when converted to the screen it's got the few lines saying "they fought" in 45 minutes of orc hacking and slashing glory! Gollum is nearly identical to how I imagined him (I thought of him as a little more green). The acting is much better. All the changes in the film improved, in my opinion, upon the book which, as i already mentioned, is swamped by description and little action (at least till the end). The only faults are Osgilliath (sp?) and the slaughtering of Faramir (like the first film it is great as a film, and good as a conversion).

The Bad

The Thirty Nine Steps Book to Film(s); Well both of them changed the story for, in my opinion, the worse. Neither of them actually used the ending of the book, an ending which fits perfectl! Certainly better than hanging off the hands of big ben

The Lord of the Rings, original cartoon version Book to really really BAD Film; Well i'm not sure how to sum it all up, well not without using mild profanity. Oh i have the word! *drumroll* POO. Really realy POO. If you have seen it, or even a very small part of it, you will know what i mean. If you haven't seen it ... DON'T, that's free advice.

Ok, i hope someone else takes this up (otherwise i've just wasted 20 mins or so putting my idea, which I had this morning in the shower, into words).

[ May 29, 2003, 23:27: Message edited by: Lazy Bonzo ]

 

(I think Media is simply the plural term for Mediums, except for perhaps when you are discussing people who speak with ghosts, but that's beyond the point)

I've seen plenty of nice conversions from 2E D&D material to 3E material. Thumbs up to the people who actually know how to do that, instead of plopping down the numbers that seem right.

Oh, wait, those kinds of conversions.

I for one believe that the conversion of the film Lord of the Rings was better than the book, but then again, a philistine like me can't appreciate the profoundness of Tolkein.

 

Comics to movies is an example of a bad conversion. I'm especially talking about the Marvel comics. X-men was a great movie, but it wasn't X-men. The whole story line was different (and not to mention bad casting). Why didn't they make, for example, Rogue's story a bit more, like it was in the comics. But on the other hand, if you stick too closely to the original story line, you'd also have to do a lot of explaning to the people who'd never heard of X-men before.

Second example: Spider-man. In the comics, Spider-man had a long relation with Gwen Stacy, and Mary Jane didn't appear in the first years when Peter Parker was Spider-man. I actually like Spider-man less than X-men, but I know enough of it, to know the movie wasn't entirly like the comics. And they could at least have a radioactive spider bite Peter Parker, in stead of a genetically engineerd spider.

 

Good points Silverblade.

My picks would be:

Good ...
The Princess Bride (Book to Film)
Gettysburg (took the book Killer Angels to film)
Betrayal At Krondor (Book to RPG Game)

Bad ...
Baldur's Gate (Game to Book ... heck, almost any game to book is terrible)
The Little Mermaid (Hans Christian Anderson fairytale to Disney Movie)

 

I had said no games, but since this is a gaming board and it should fit I'll cut that restriction.

@Mat, I'm pretty sure i've read or at least heard the Little Mermaid by Hans Anderson, and i've seen the Disney Movie (when i was younger) BUT I didn't know they were actually meant to be linked. The name of the mermaid (Ariel IIRC) is perhaps the only thing i can remember even similiar between the two...

 

Starship Troopers is a quite good film. Too bad it has nothing at all to do with the book. I wonder why they even bothered to keep the title and character names. Good SF movie, horrible conversion.

 

It's tough - nearly impossible - to convert a book to a movie and do it justice. Too much has to be left out for time constraints, and it's rare that die-hard fans of a book will be satisfied anyway because they've already formed their own opinion of the way the story/characters should be shaped. If you look at "Interview with the Vampire" by Anne Rice, for example, they cut out so much that it really butchered the story quite a bit. Still a good movie, but if they'd stayed 100% true to the book, the movie would have been like 9 hours long. As is the case with most movies based on books.

Speaking of which, "Queen of the Damned" was such a piece of sh*t it actually made me mad at Anne Rice. I actually am less interested in her books now because she had anything to do with that festering TRL-smeared nut-log turd of a movie. Just aweful. I was really looking forward to it, and as you may have noticed, was more than a little let down.

About the only good one I can think of is "Fight Club." The LotR movies have been pretty good too, though the extended DVD's are cooler and give you more story.

Then there's "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within." Artistically it's amazing, storywise it's better than average. But it the ONLY thing it had in common with the games was a character named "Cid." That's it. They milked the name recognition, and nothing else. So in a way, I think it's by far the worst conversion ever.

 

Pornographic comics...that just does nothing for me.

On a related note...this will be the only time you see a sentence written by me with the phrase 'pornographic' and 'that does nothing for me'.

 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was B-rate dreck as a movie but absolutely compelling on TV.

 

Lol. A film is "dreck" ? Is that Zeitgeisty ? Or an import of ancestors ?

I think Miss Smilla's feeling for snow is a great book, but the movie-adaption.... average, well it's better then big brother. I still wonder, how the ever deared, to try and make a movie about it. Smilla is one of the most unique characters ever, a mathematician living in the poor part of town, half Inuit, half Danish. No social skills and rude but used to be eating in the finest places. Now, that's not easy to translate into a movie.