For me it’s definitely the Dark Tower, but the Golden Compas was also a huge letdown.
- Dune (the old one, not the new one)
- Dark Tower
- Eragon
- Ender’s Game
- The Witcher (a real shame, it could have been such a good IP for Netflix)
Most adaptations suck, these are just some from the top of my head.
I like at least the first season of Witcher, though it could’ve been more linear
The old Dune was just lol what the fuck
What about the middle Dune adaptation?
The mini series is fantastic. It’s a lot closer to the book and handles the pacing extremely well.
Honestly, I fucking hate the new Dune. The old Dune at least has charm for how goofy it can get. The characters and editing choices I have huge problems with. It’s a very pretty movie and most scenes made it in but the characters just aren’t there. Also the world isn’t established properly. They don’t even mention the Landsraad until the tailend of the movie but they’re important to know about because they are why the Emperor takes the strategy he does.
What’s so bad about enders game. I don’t remember that being a bad adaptation, but it’s been a while.
It wasn’t a bad movie, I actually liked it a lot - but the book is significantly better and the movie left out a lot. If I had read the book before watching the movie I would probably have hated the movie tbh.
Also even picking that book to make into a movie was a mistake, enders game was only written to give backstory for speaker for the dead which is much better than the enders game book but never made it to becoming a movie itself
The book Ender’s Game has a psychological component that it’s nigh-impossible to nail in a visual medium with child actors. The story works in book form because books are the closest thing we have to telepathy, but it’s harder to do in a visual medium simply because visual storytelling is different from written storytelling.
You could probably do the movie with really good adult actors–but most of the cast are children. And really good child actors are rare to come by–you’re lucky to have one, much less multiple. And when the cast is made entirely up of children who are all supposed to be geniuses, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to get the casting and talent you need.
The Ender’s Game movie wasn’t terrible–it was surprisingly watchable compared to other adaptations of other books–but it didn’t come close to nailing the feel of the book.
Oh God, I remember how disappointed I was when seeing the Eragon movie. After having read the trilogy I was having such high hopes, it could’ve been a LOTR alike trilogy, but instead we got this half baked… Stuff. At least the actors gave their best.
Kind of in the same line with the golden compass I guess?
I really enjoyed the Eragon books as a kid but they aren’t great themselves. It’s a mediocre book series adapted to a bad film.
Oh yeah for sure, they were great to child me, I haven’t read them in years.
I just thought of another example to the theme: I also really enjoyed the vampires assistant thirteenology or so, but the movie was horrendous!
I’ve heard nothing but bad things about Amazon Prime’s “Wheel of Time” adaptation.
Imagine taking a beloved classic fantasy series and handing the material off to the CW for adaptation and you’ve got the gist of Amazon’s WoT series. It’s pretty, it’s vapid and there’s a whole pile of extra teenage soap opera drama thrown into season 1 for no real reason.
Same thing that happened with the Shannara TV show. MTV wanted a kid friendly fantasy romance competitor to GoT, so they butchered a series that’s basically none of those things. They also started with book 2 for whatever reason.
I imagine they couldn’t get the rights to The Lord of the Rings in order to adapt book 1 of Shannara.
What? No it’s totally different, our Gandalf is named Allanon and he’s a Druid, not a Wizard. Druids get a d8. And the Warlock Lord’s Skull Bearers are definitely not Nazgul, they fly with wings not horses.
The first episode was enough for me.
I’ve hate-watched all of it. It’s not good, some things are wrenching departures the books, but there’s also been parts of it they adapted well I think.
I think anyone who has never read the books would enjoy it.
I watched the first season, loved it, read the books, watched the show again and was a bit disappointed by some of the changes. I’ll watch the whole series though and think of it as a different turn of the wheel. It’s a decent series imho it just isn’t a one to one translation.
yeah I find I can enjoy it if I just try not to think about the series. The big issue is the way gender worked in the universe (fictional universe for anyone who is going to get triggered) with magic. By having her search for boys and girls it discounts a pretty large plot point later. Not sure how they are going to deal with it when it comes up other than gloss over it.
How far did they take the teen drama aspect of it?
Have you seen His Dark Materials on HBO? From what my wife tells me it’s a lot closer to the books than the movie.
Was going to say the same, the BBC/HBO Dark Materials series is really excellent, beautifully made.
I haven’t, but I will
That just reminded me I need to watch the 3rd season.
Going to have to second The Dark Tower. To say it was a letdown is nowhere near enough.
The Witcher show starts off pretty well but quickly gets worse and worse. That’s probably my number two.
I also thought The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie was pretty disappointing, though not the worst of the worst.
I could probably think of a lot more if I browsed my book collection. Rare is the adaptation that meets the quality of the book. That would be a much shorter list. If we were looking at that question, the first movie that comes to mind is The Amityville Horror because that book had some of the worst writing that I have ever subjected myself to.
The Dark Tower being such a train wreck was a real shame too, because I thought Idris Elba was an inspired, unexpected choice for Roland.
I really thought he would make an excellent Roland. And he probably still would, if he were given a decent script and director.
I don’t know how you could do HGTTG well, because the nonsense narration is pretty much the whole point, and I kind of liked what it was, but it was definitely a letdown still. Zaphod’s heads bothered the absolute shit out of me.
Honestly, it’d be easier to say which books have GOOD adaptations, since the norm is poor adaptations and it’s hard to choose which one is the worst since so many suck in different ways.
The Princess Bride is the best movie adaptation I can think of off the top of my head. I fact, I’d argue that it was better than the book.
1996 Matilda was faithful to Roald Dahl and brought the trunchbull to life in a way only movies can. Rest of cast was great but Trunchbull aces it, one of my favorite cinema villains of all time.
Not seeing Ready Player One listed here. There were some choices made in that movie that might seem fine to someone who hasn’t read the book, but the huge number of absolutely unnecessary discrepancies was just gross.
The movie totally went against the novel and sucked hardcore because of it.
It was and will always be impossible to turn RPO into a movie, first there are the copyright issues and second the challenges are really boring to watch.
That doesn’t excuse swapping Wade’s deliberate-servitude-to-hack-the-system with Art3mis’s damsel-in-distress-happening-to-save-the-day-by-chance sequence, nor Wade’s decision at the end to shut off the Oasis two days of the week (what about people who rely on the Oasis for their livelihood or for self-worth, like severely disabled people? Hello), nor him saying his friends are his “clan,” something they are vehemently against in the book.
I’d say Foundation, but the show has been so far away from the books since literally episode 1 that the name might as well be a coincidence.
I agree but a direct adaptation of the books would not make a good TV show.
The books are a series of vignettes spaced decades apart with no continuing characters and each is a separate short story. While they work in the written form, they would not on the screen.
It could be done as a series of vignettes, for example, as 6 episode series, with each series centred around each crisis. That would give you 4-5 hours - or 2.5 Mrs Doubtfires - to do what Asimov does in around 60 pages (depending on crisis).
I don’t understand the argument that this is impossible to do, pretty much every film you will have ever seen will have had a shorter runtime than 5 hours, and handled all aspects of character introduction, motivation, conflict, growth, and resolution, within than time too.
I am not saying it has to be identical or a word for word adaptation - I have no issues what so ever with gender swapping Hardin - but as another poster points out, having Seldon live on (other than as recordings getting increasingly divorced from reality) directly rejects the core premise of the book, which is a refutation of the great man hypothesis.
I don’t have Apple TV, and I was irritated that I’d be missing Foundation. The more I hear about it, though, the less irritated I am.
I tried to watch Foundation, mostly because Asimov is one of those writers whose style I can’t stand in his actual books (his characterization is really flat–you could tell he was far more interested in his ideas and the characters were just pawns on a stage), and I’ve had a few cases where books I couldn’t finish were very watchable on screen. Also, I was following Jared Harris from the Expanse to Foundation in the hopes of seeing something awesome.
But what I saw, and what I remembered from the books, didn’t add up. Nor did it suck me in on its own merits, like some other adaptations have.
The first two episodes are the most gorgeous sci-fi tv production I’ve ever seen. Beyond that it’s a bit shakier but it’s definitely watchable.
It feels more like an addition than an adaptation (it isn’t, but it’s the only perspective in which the show can be good). I’m a big fan of the books, and I’m also enjoying the show so far.
The show is so well done I don’t even mind that it’s not like the books
Even by itself, the show makes no sense.
From the first season I thought the Trantor stuff was awesome but the Terminus stuff sucked. Never have I had a show where I was more divided.
I was this close to skipping the Terminus stuff, I just couldn’t give a shit about it and was constantly waiting to see Trantor and the beefcake to do some boss shit
Pretty much every movie based on a Crichton novel except the first Jurassic Park and the original 1971 adaptation of The Andromeda Strain. Every other one has been awful (including The Lost World which is so far from the book it shouldn’t even get to be called “based on”).
Except that the first Jurassic Park movie is only one small part of the book and they never let Hammond get eaten like he was supposed to.
Endless disappointment on that front, but I still love the movies.
Oh, I didn’t mean it was perfect, just acceptable. lol
I’m still holding out for a streaming mini-series that is a 1:1 adaptation of the book. I just can’t let that dream go.
I agree it is acceptable, I don’t often miss an opportunity for a marathon- it just isn’t really true to the book, it’s more like bits of the book are scattered throughout the movies.
And I’m really upset that Hammond didn’t get eaten cause that would have been awesome.
I’ve never read Congo, but I enjoyed the movie.
Stop eating my sesame cake.
The movie may be ridiculous, but it is also fabulous.
I’ve read it but never seen the movie. lol. Based on the other bad adaptations, I assumed it was one as well. Will check it out sometime!
Haha. I was hoping you could comment on the movie. Oh well - I hope you do enjoy it!
I’ve never watched Disclosure nor finished the book, but it seems like one of the few they should have been able to get right.
I enjoyed Sphere, but I haven’t read the book and watched the movie close enough to compare them.
Mandatory The Witcher mention. They simply started to make shit up because they didn’t like nor repect the books.
Damn shame, a faithful adaptation would’ve been amazing. Hope we get one some day
Dark Tower - But I don’t think it can be done. I think the reason a lot of Stephen King’s adaptations fail as movies is because his books spend a lot time describing his character’s inner monologue.
Ender’s Game - I was so excited for this movie. But if you are a fan of the books then you saw a lot of discrepancies between the movie and the book. So it ended up being a decent general sci-fi movie.
Hitch hiker’s Guide (movie version)… what a lost opportunity.
That first Dune movie decades ago. Yikes.
Sting was great though
No one wears metal underwear better!
I’m a huge David Lynch fan, but yeah, that movie is insane. Has some good moments, but not many!
This movie slaps if you watch it high. Like really high.
Some Dean Koontz and Stephen King adaptations were pretty bad. Hideaway, Phantoms, The Dark Half, Sleepwalkers.
I really enjoy the movie Phantoms, but not because it’s as good as the book. It’s just a fun movie if you’re into that genre. But we could definitely add almost every Stephen King adaptation to this list. Don’t get me wrong–some of them I very much enjoy, but that doesn’t mean they’re not terrible (looking at you, The Stand (first one), Storm of the Century, and Tommyknockers).
I mean, Ben Affleck was da bomb in Phantoms, yo.
And Liev Schreiber!
Phantoms was by Dean Koontz.
I know. The comment I replied to discussed both Dean Koontz and Stephen King.
I couldn’t get past the first couple chapters of Hideaway
Starship Troopers. The book is great, but the movie is like if someone wrote a short summary of the cliffs notes of the book. I guess they both had bugs.
Put a list of Ursula Le Guin works on a wall and throw a dart at one of them. Don’t know which one you threw a dart at? That’s okay, because absolutely none of them have gotten good adaptations.
The only exception, extremely ironically given I’m saying this, is Tales of Earthsea. The first half is alright but I guess they lost their train of thought during the second act (their words not mine) and it became a Legend of Zelda story. Still not terrible though, I can’t understand why people hate on it when the same people love Ponyo.
Tales From Earthsea is the 2nd worst Ghibli film after Ocean Waves (of the ones I’ve seen, which is more than half)
What was that bad about it? Most of the movies don’t even have plots.
What Ghibli films don’t have plots? Ponyo, Totoro, Arrietty, Poppy Hill and Marnie have plots. Whisper of the Heart? I don’t remember the plot of that one.
Tales From Earthsea’s problem was the predictability. The course of the story was formulaic. Ooh there’s this evil wizard who must be defeated, big deal. Ghibli characters are usually more complex. Villains should have something noble or beautiful about them to get some of the viewer’s sympathy. When the protagonist was imprisoned and then the friend came and saved him, it was just too predictable. The rescue could have been done artfully but it was not.
The villain of Castle in the Sky was similarly boring, but the colorful supporting cast made up for it.
By a plot, I mean a structural one. None of the ones you mentioned except for the last two had plots. The studio is famous for going on record saying they go out of their way to make their movies scriptless, instead preferring pure improv, though it kind of shows in how freeform and non-rule-based it feels. To be fair though, it does help to have read the book it was based on, you get the context of where exactly the movie begins to lose its identity (and appreciate it was trying to have one).
