good bad movie adaptations

[yendi]

So, I've been thinking about movie adaptations. Most suck on all sorts of levels. And most of these also take major liberties with the adaptation. I'm not just talking about cutting a few scenes, or shifting the importance of characters slightly. I'm talking full-scale,major plot changes (the novel Forrest Gump begins with a line along the lines of, "My mama used to say, 'Life is nothing like a box of chocolates,'" and continues to diverge, and we won't even mention The Lawnmower Man).

But every once in a while, a movie comes along that, technically, may be a terrible adaptation, but manages to be a great movie in its own right. Blade Runner and The Shining come to mind. Anyone have any personal favorite movies that are, technically, terrible adapations?

Comments

[ga-sunshine.livejournal.com]

They generally screw up most movie adaptations of any work by Stephen King. Ugh, Lawnmower Man! And don't get me started on the others...I nearly almost always prefer my own imagination over movies, so I can't think of any that were bad adaptations of the book, but good movies regardless. I do think a decent job was done with The Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption. My brain's dead, must go fight the server from hades now.

[ex-ilk.livejournal.com]

DUNE comes to mind. (have not seen the recent adaptation)
The Shining, for me, stood on it's own. I didn't care if it followed the book at all. But I am a HUGE Kubrick fan. Other King adaptations have pissed me off. But I'm not really a purist, the form dictates SOME changes. Unfortunately, many of those changes just make NO sense.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

The sci-fi channel version was good. It told some of the story. But it had it's stylistic quirks. The old movie version was AWEFUL. All it had in common with the book was the name, the names of the characters, and the presense of sand.

[mfree.livejournal.com]

I wonder what they'd end up doing with "Gerald's Game"...

[ariedana.livejournal.com]

Basically, all the older, great Grisham novels were completely different than the movies. "The Firm" became a Tom Cruise movie and "The Pelican Brief" turned into a Julia Roberts movie. And they completely changed the ends. But they turned out to be nice films for what they were, just more focused on 1-2 characters than the books were. I haven't watched "A Time To Kill." It's one of my all-time favorite books and I'm afraid to see what they did to it. :P

I also was a pretty big fan of "Interview With the Vampire" - yeah, it wasn't anywhere near as dark as the actual book, but I thought that Tom Cruise was a pretty decent Lestat and the script was pretty tight. We won't even mention "Queen of the Damned." As far as I'm concerned, that movie wasn't made. :(

[yendi]

I'd forgotten about The Firm. I haven't read any other Grishams, so I wasn't sure about the other flicks.

I thoroughly enjoyed "Interview," but I'm not a huge Anne Rice fan, so I wasn't worried about the accuracy of the adaptation.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the movie version of interview, then I read the book and was disappoitned when I had to start skipping pages in the middle just to stay awake.

[yendi]

And the real disappointment is that's the best of the lot.

Hmmm...

[scarcrest.livejournal.com]

The film version of Rob Roy was pretty decent, which was a nice change from the murderously boring novel. I thought Road to Perdition adapted pretty well, as did The Rocketeer.

[tikimama.livejournal.com]

I think the best adaptation every done was L.A. Confidential. It's amazing anyone even tried to adapt that book, it is so unwieldy and has so many characters. However, that adaptation is brilliant. He dumped lots of the book, but managed to create a compelling story and keep some of the best elements.

In fact, I think the movie is actually better than the book. I wish someone would do more of Ellroy's work. They made a crappy Black Dahlia cdrom game, but it would be a genius movie.

[ariadnesthread.livejournal.com]

Another quite good one is "The Maltese Falcon." Excellent book, excellent movie. I love film noir (loved "L.A. Confidential" on screen, haven't read the book yet).

"A Room with a View" might fit Adam's criteria better--the movie was lovely and good, and it does follow the book well, but Lucy in the movie is quite a bit more sensible and likeable than she is in the book. In the book, she comes off (to me, at least) as a snotty airhead. Not that I didn't like the book...

[gwynraven.livejournal.com]

I have to admit to seeing the recent _Count of Monte Cristo_ movie that was made. It was a *terrible* adaptation -- they completely changed the ending, cut out whole huge sections of the novel, and messed with the characters' motovations. But when I just started pretending it wasn't based on a book at all it turned into a pretty fun movie.