Best and Worst Adaptation(s) of Book(s) To Cinema and Television

galanx - "Godfather I and II were excellent adaptations of a barely mediocre novel."

I have to disagree with you there, I thought Godfather was a good book.
 
Game of Thrones - Obvious and very current, but season one is very tight to the source material. Subsequent seasons, although drifting off the literary origins a little, are simply awesome.

Deadpool is superb and captures the character and wit very well.

Sin City was a brilliant adaptation, I also love 300, both sequels are good but pale in comparison to the original films and graphic novels.

Superman IV 'The Quest for Peace' . . . Oh dear, simply awful.

Does anyone remember the old Japanese based Spideman films with the webslinger having crystal eyes? I always loved those as a kid. (Fond memories)
 
The best for me would be the 1960 version of the Time Machine and the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series. Somewhere in the middle, Jurasic park (why did they cast Laura Dern?) and Dune. Worst, i hate to say it but I have to, the recent Hobbit films. I really tried to enjoy them but there was just far to much wrong there for me to beggin to list.

Honorable mentions. Patriot Games was better than the book, Lord Of The Rings trilogy was just bearable, although two of my favourite scenes from the book were gone.
 
The best for me would be the 1960 version of the Time Machine

That's an interesting one. I prefer the movie to the book--it's one of the disks I put on when I have nothing better to do--but I also remember there being quite a lot of differences between the movie and the book. It's too long since I read it to pull out any specific examples.

But I'd say it captured the spirit of the book pretty well, if not necessarily the story.

And, yeah, I agree on the Hobbit. There were a couple of things in the movies that I remembered from reading the book as a kid. But only a couple.
 
That's an interesting one. I prefer the movie to the book--it's one of the disks I put on when I have nothing better to do--but I also remember there being quite a lot of differences between the movie and the book. It's too long since I read it to pull out any specific examples.

But I'd say it captured the spirit of the book pretty well, if not necessarily the story.

And, yeah, I agree on the Hobbit. There were a couple of things in the movies that I remembered from reading the book as a kid. But only a couple.

Yeah it was reasonably far removed. written before both the first and second world wars, both of which were in the film, the story was a very different yet familiar one. You put it perfectly when you say that the spirit was captured. I think this is often the fault with adaptations. Sometimes they try to hold to close to the book and by the very nature of the restrictions screen time imposes they loose the spirit. For me the feeling I have when i read the time machine is the same when I watch that old film. The same cannot be said of the adaptation of the war of the worlds of the same era.
 
The same cannot be said of the adaptation of the war of the worlds of the same era.

Yeah, War Of The Worlds was a bit of a disaster. I like First Men In The Moon too, though again there are quite a few differences to the book.

Actually, talking about these older movies, I'd have to say that the 1960s Day Of The Triffids was one of the worst adaptions I've seen, while the 1980s BBC mini-series was a good one.
 
Best=Dredd (2012) Worst=Judge Dredd (1995)
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I think it depends how you define a good adaptation. If you think closely keeping to the book is important, Bladerunner and The Hobbit are pretty awful. If you think the quality of the movie is the only important factor, then I'd say Bladerunner is excellent. The Hobbit is still s#@*.

I'd say Schindler's Ark was pretty successfully translated to the screen.
 
Legend of the Seeker was really bad. Eragon too, was horrible. I agree with the comment about The Road. The movie stayed true to the book. I also feel like Starship Troopers deserves a mention. The book was great, and the movie was fun, however, the adaptation was horrible. If that makes any sense.
 
I also feel like Starship Troopers deserves a mention. The book was great, and the movie was fun, however, the adaptation was horrible. If that makes any sense.

The thing about Starship Troopers is that it really wasn't an adaptation. As I understand it, the movie was already in pre-production as Bug Hunt when the studio realized they had the rights to the Starship Troopers book, and could lift some of it to add to the movie they were already making.
 
The thing about Starship Troopers is that it really wasn't an adaptation. As I understand it, the movie was already in pre-production as Bug Hunt when the studio realized they had the rights to the Starship Troopers book, and could lift some of it to add to the movie they were already making.

Paul Verhoeven was not the right choice to direct this one.
 
Apparently I missed the point of Lord of the Rings because I thought the movies were absolutely brilliant, -some of my top favourite movies of all time.

Sounds fairly plausible actually.


("of all time" is a bit of a grand chronological description when I've watched mainly, almost purely, recent movies, (and movies are so young anyway), but I already used "absolutely", and was all out of ideas.)
 
The adaptation of THE HUNGER GAMES series is the best one of a YA series that I've seen done in recent years.

Everything was on point - the casting was appropriate, the acting was excellent, the script was great, the world was recreated on screen accurately, all major plot points and themes were presented very well while preserving the spirit and core of the story.
 
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Didn't Stephen King write the short story that inspired 'the shawshank redemption ' ? I love that movie. Worst has gotta be eragorn I loved the books. Best has to be Forrest Gump he he guilty pleasure. Despite my love of fantasy
 

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