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Big Mike
Scifi and fantasy books are the hardest to translate to film. The movie I was extremely disappointed with was Starship Troopers, turns out the writers and the director never even finished the books.
The two books I would love to see would be Foundation by Asimov and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein, but only if the cast and crew actually read the books.-
kal
yes but if you watch the movie without thinking about Heinlein, it’s a really fun movie. Doogie/Barney as a Nazi is simply brilliant.
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kal
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Anthony
Inexorably? Make that irrevocably.
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Kelly
On the subject of children’s books, Bridge to Terabithia is a beautiful kids’ book that was turned into an unrecognizable piece of live action Disney crap.
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chammer
Love in the Time of Cholera. Wonderful book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, exquisite; the movie version was so awful I stopped watching halfway through. I did not want that awful movie ruining my imagination next time I read the book.
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Audrey
Does it make me a bad person or just impatient to admit that I could never finish “Love in the Time of Cholera,” no matter how many best-of-the-century booklists it’s been on? Come on, it is so far from engrossing. It’s just dull as dishwater. I’m still ninety pages in and nothing had happened except I’ve had the characters’ full names repeated about a gazillion times, to the point where they almost became a kind of chant in my head. I’m brushing my teeth and it’s “Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza… Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza.” I’ll try again in a few years or something…
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Lisa Schwarzbaum
Oh! I had blocked that movie out of my mind, it was such a dreadfull adaptation of the book!
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Audrey
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Richard
Odessa File – great book, awful movie (they changed the ending!?!)
Hitchhikers Guide – great book, awful movie (tho’ I enjoyed the campy BBC TV series)
Dune – superlative book, horrid movie (I thought the sci-fi channel movie better, but still not worthwhile)
Where the Wild Things Are — I’ll never know, because I won’t see it; I just will not jeopardize those memories. -
Damon
Worst movie adaption ever, in my opinion, would have to be A Series of Unfortunate Events. They are some of the most clever, darkly comical children’s books of all times. The movie butchered the rustic, great depression-istic tone to the books. The characters looked nothing like the characters in the book (especially costume wise). When a book is so incredibly popular for what it is, why change the whole look and feel of it for the movie version? The books are loved for being what they are. There is no reason to make unnecessary changes. To this day, I can’t stand Jim Carrey he butchered that part so badly. Olaf wasn’t a comedian, he was an actor. Carrey was just Carrey to me in that and it went way too far.
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Jane
I agree. I too LOVED the series and was disappointed by the butchering of it.
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Jane
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jane
The worst movie that ever came out of a book has to be A Walk to Remember. The movie brought it from the 50s to present day, and the story just didn’t make sense in present day. It was overwhelmingly disappointing.
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Ellen
Great book-to-movie adaptations: “The Black Stallion” (1979) and “The Shining,” the 1980 film, not the awful TV version. Stephen King’s books have either been butchered or improved on screen. Kubrick did his own vision, which was way scarier than the awful TV movie. But King always HATED Kubrick’s movie and had a heavy hand in the TV version.
One of the worst book-to-movie adaptations I’ve ever seen was “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
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Nick T
GOOD: “Wide Sargasso Sea”
BAD: “Series of Unfortunate Events” (Lost the tone of the novel while simoulaneously failing to have it’s own spirit)
GREAT: “Coraline” (Had it’s own heart while still being respectful to the book. -
a person
The worst book to movie adaption was Eragon! i mean Arya wasn’t an elf, they cut out Solumbum(the were-cat), Brom WANTED to go to the Varden (as opossed to hunting down urgals as he did in the book), they took out the prophecy, galbotorex was in the movie, they took out the dawrves, and Elva (the baby, Eragon “blesses”) and they didn’t go to Tierm, or that place eragon and murtagh get locked up in n meet Arya…my rant about that horrible movie could go on, but i’ll stop!
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Gogo-t-w
If I may say so, the book wasn’t all the great to begin with, either.
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Gogo-t-w
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Michael
The Series of Unfortunate Events being turned into a movie was a terrible idea. They combined the first three books, and non-sequentially at that!
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Michael
Oh and From Here to Eternity is an awesome adaptation.
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Malik
The God Father was a wonderful book and a better movie.
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batgirl
Loved both the Narnia books and the movies!
Book The Shining scared the bejabbers out of me but the Jack Nicholson movie that is such a cult fav was stupid IMHO.
The Lightning Thief by Rick Riorden is being made into a movie and has great potential but I am afraid that it will be ruined. However there are 5 books in the series so I am sure it will be a done deal.
BTW, my day job is media specialist (librarian) at an elementary school so I know my books.
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Susan
Good book and good movie, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Terrible movie from a good book, “The Polar Express”. The magic was missing and the movie was creepy.
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'Where the Wild Things Are': Should favorite books be made into movies?
I’ve made it pretty clear how much I love Spike Jonze’s movie Where the Wild Things Are. Read the full post.