Books into Movies

Remove all ads!

The subject is books (or stories) that have been turned into movies.

How did they turn out?

Were they any good?

Are there any books you think would make good movies?

Discuss.

 

Well, at some point Steven Erikson's Deadhouse Gates--specifically the 'chain of dogs' campaign--is going to be made into a film. Should be good, given that Erikson will have a fair amount of involvement.

 

Tolkien's LOTR to Peter Jackson's LOTR. Enough said.

 

Gardens of the Moon started life as a movie script so it makes sense that Erikson will try to bring something to the big screen. I bet it doesn't work out though.

 

Sahara by Clive Cussler is by far one of the best books that I have ever read but the movie was utter crap because the director changed the characters and storyline around completely. Al Giordino is supposed to be a short, extremely muscular Italian but instead he is small American with barely any muscle at all. That was probably the worst of the characters but even that comes no where near how badly they screwed up the story. I'll stop here as I do not want to spoil this awesome book for anyone who is going to read it and also because listing all of the plot holes and differences would take a hell of a long time.

 

A movie based on a book can never be as good as the book.

 

Unless the book was complete pants.

 

Generally true, there are rare exceptions. Get Shorty comes to mind.

Also, as the old bird points out, there are those even rarer times when the movie is BETTER than the book. Take The Godfather for instance. Awesome stuff. But who here has also read the book? There was tons of useless filler crap in there that would've killed the movie.

 

I actually liked the book version of the Godfather but I have just about the ultimate example of a bad book that was made into an excellent movie - Jaws. The book is absolutely terrible.

Still, on the whole I must concur that in almost every case the book is better. Of course that is when they make a movie out of an existing book - when they release a novelization of an existing film the book usual sucks.

 

Yeah. Has anybody read the Planet of the Apes book? No? Probably because it's likely to be a bit lame, even though the movie was awesome. The real movie, that is, not the crappy re-imagination version.

 

Most Stephen King books are more PC in movie form, which gets a thumbs down for me.

 

I would like to take this opportunity to bitch about The Children of Men.

I loved the book - it was awesome. So naturally I was incredibly excited when I saw that there was a movie of it going to be released.

Well, a movie called 'The Children of Men' was released - but it wasn't The Children of Men. It was something else entirely.

Really - at almost no point did it actually tell the same story as the book. It told a whole other story with totally different characters, with an entirely different theme even. The end half of the movie had absolutely nothing in common with the book, while the first half had maybe a tiny fraction in common with it.

Really - if you're going to make a movie - why slap a random book name on it and go 'Based on the book by PD James' if you're not going to tell the same story that the book told? It's just stupid.

 

With a book, I can see how it looks. With a movie, I see what the director and editor think is important for me to see. The interpretation has to be done in 2 hours +/-. A book doesn't have a time limitation.

 

^ - Agreed...case in point being the Harry Potter movies...complete crap!!! But the books are the only childrens' books I read...everything else is Pratchett, Asimov, Martin etc...

 

@ Kuemper: What about the Grapes of Wrath?

 

With The Grapes of Wrath, both the book and the film are quite good.

 

Best books (or stories) to movies are Steven King's:

The Body
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

The movies differed slightly from the stories, but the movies certainly were at least equal to the story.

Every other book-to-movie, the book is much better -- even Bond (and I love those movies).

 

The Wizard of Oz. Both the book and the movie are awesome.

 

@JSBB

seriously? I thought those 2 side-plots about the girl with an "overly-large" vagina (girl that Sonny was banging in his sister's wedding in the beginning) and Johnny something (singer at the wedding) were absolutely boring and pointless.

The only thing that they should have, imo, included from the book was some of the backstory on Luca Brazzi in order to explain why he was such a bad-ass and had to be the first guy that the Tataglia's took out before taking the Don.

 

I read two books by Jean-Christophe Grangé (The Crimson Rivers & The Empire of Wolves) and watched their movies. Books were wonderful but movies sucked. Like LOTR.

I also think that time limitations, different interpretation of editor and director can make movies worse. IMHO second reason is more important. What made LOTR movies worse than the books wasn't missing characters and events because of time limitation, the problem was the different atmosphere of the books and the movies. In Tolkien's books (especially Silmarillion) the border between evil and good isn't so sharp but LOTR movies (like most Hollywood movies) judge and classify characters for you, show who is good and who is evil clearly. You don't need to use your brain while watching. Just take a bottle of cola, sit and watch good guys killing evil guys. Sorry, even I find this stupid. IMHO the most(and probably only) interesting character was Gollum in the movies.