Don't you hate it when Hollywood F*CKS up books?

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Permalink Reply by Conejita on July 28, 2008 at 10:39pm

I don't know. Often I haven't even read the book to be upset. I know I really like the movie MirrorMask, and I even wondered after watching the movie if there was a book about it. I just felt like there should be more to the story; I wanted more. Sure enough, there is a MirrorMask book. Whether I'll like one more than the other.....I guess I have to wait until I actually find a copy of the book and read it.

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Permalink Reply by LoBetaPlus on July 29, 2008 at 5:20pm

hmm, right now I can only think of movies that I actually liked:
example, American Psycho, it didn't follow it to the letter but I thought they captured the general idea and feeling of it. Great actors in it too.
Jarhead. Now the book was awesome and better than the movie, but they didn't fuck up it. The
movie was excellent. Good actors.

I haven't seen the movie "The unbearable lightness of being", but I get upset that they even tried to adapt this amazing book into a movie. It would take an extrordinary director and screenwriter to get that one right. And from what I have heard, they didn't acquire any of those people.
I refuse to see it.

"Lover" by Marguerite Duras, I'm not upset really, the movie was boring. It's just sad that they didn't put in more effort when the book is beyond good.

You know, that's what really upsets me i think, when they take this amazing, legendary even, piece of literature and don't even try to make it into a good film.

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Permalink Reply by Khurtzfield on August 4, 2008 at 8:32pm

I think most filmmakers and producer just use books as an easy way to get a production going. Books, novels being one of the oldest forms of story telling, aside from spoken word, has been around long enough to have developed many well established narrtives, there are more ways to tell a story through a book then movies.
I think a novel it far superior to movies in terms of story telling. It's like language barriers, just always making things akward.

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Permalink Reply by Migari on August 5, 2008 at 4:51pm

I hated the movie adaptation of Bridge to Terebithia. They made a wonderful tale of tradgedy into a piece of shit movie.

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Permalink Reply by SketchedLilly on August 5, 2008 at 8:57pm

The problem is, books do not translate into movies without adaptation. I've seen many a good book get turned into a crappy movie. I've seen many a crappy book get turned into a crappy movie. I've seen movie adaptations that barely resemble their original source.

But I also understand that making a movie from a book has three main flaws:

1) You can't fit *everything* from a full novel into a script or else it would be a 6-12 hour flick.
2) Books deal with a lot of internal diolouge while movies can't simply have a character sit for 15 minutes at a time looking thoughtful. The drama must be moved to an external source to the larger extent.
3) When you read a book, you take what you take from it. Someone else will read the same book and focus on different things about it. Good literature allows a certain interpretational flux. A movie is someone else's interpretation of that story

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Permalink Reply by Frank Costanza's Lawyer on August 5, 2008 at 9:31pm

I think, when adapting a book into a film, it's always best to not use the book as a manual on how to do the movie but as an inspiration for it, translate what the book left you.

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Permalink Reply by Gerald Harvey Peckinpah on August 6, 2008 at 12:43pm

The Count of Monte Cristo-Alexandre Dumas. As far as I'm concerned there's never been a good film adaptation of this novel.

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Permalink Reply by SketchedLilly on August 6, 2008 at 4:55pm

Oh shit...I forgot the fourth flaw...

4) Sometimes fan fiction writers make it in the script business, which means they will take someone else's work and mangle it into their own lame version instead of coming up with their own ideas to wreck

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Permalink Reply by AceofOpus on August 6, 2008 at 8:52pm

I think the Da Vinci Code (and Dan Brown works) are garbage.

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Permalink Reply by Darkstar1010 on November 10, 2008 at 12:16am

Hollywood makes movies for people with 6th grade educations. The kind of people who need everything spoon fed to them.

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Permalink Reply by Alter_Ego on December 20, 2008 at 4:47pm

Sometimes, the studio execs (and even the directors and screenwriters) will change certain elements of the story that they think might make an audience uncomfortable, or try to incorporate new elements that they think appeal more to the audience. This is usually what happens with Dean Koontz adaptations.

There are rare instances, however, when the changes made by the filmmakers actually make the movie better than the book (like Jaws).

On a side note, here are a few more movies that have used narration effectively: American Psycho, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Sin City, Stand By Me.

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Permalink Reply by Momo on November 13, 2008 at 10:22pm

All I can think of is In Her Shoes. The book was kind of bad too, but the chick flick they made out of it is just.... really.... dumb. Dumber than the book. A lot dumber.

Not to mention Phantom Of The Opera.

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