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

[Chris Guillory]

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.

I never knew that, but it makes sense. Some dudes wrote a movie about shooting bugs. They realized they had rights to a book that mentions bugs in like two sentences. And, boom!

 

[Extollager]

Perhaps the best adaptation of a book to movie/TV that I know of is the 1979 BBC version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (miniseries) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I've read the book three times, but I've lost track of how many times I've watched the miniseries. It's superb in very way -- script and characterization, sense of time, location, and atmosphere, construction of the mystery, handling of violence, music, etc. Direction and acting seem to me to be about as good as television (in my experience) has ever attained. I didn't think much of the recent movie version.

 

[BAYLOR]

I thought The Mist (2007) was a pretty decent adaptation. Better than some of the other Stephen King films out there.

It was great up until the end. I absolutely hated that ending.

 

[Tim Murray]

What are choices for the best and worst adaptations and what makes them so?

TV adaption's of Dune and the Earthsea chronicles: Both BAD versions. I did like the original Dune, the directors and uncut versions have so much more than the theatrical version never had.

 

[Tim Murray]

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.

Tom Bombadil was ignored, what a sin! That led up to the Barrow downs where the adventursome hobbits got their elven blades.

 

[Extollager]

Tom Bombadil was ignored [in Peter Jackson's movies]

And a good thing, too. If the Bombadil material (especially Bombadil himself, and Goldberry) is going to be filmed, you need, it seems to me, a director and actors of genius. Otherwise you will get something that might be amusing, but won't be Bombadil; you'll get something that cries "Fake! Fake!" at every moment. If Jackson had done the Bombadil material, we would have got, I suppose, something like Tim Benzedrine, in the old Bored of the Rings parody, a hippie-like buffoon. Could Jackson have "realized" the Master of wood, hill, and water? Bombadil and Goldberry seem to have been where they are "forever" and yet it is as if they have just married. The hobbits find Tom familiar, easy to talk to, and yet the more we know him the stranger he seems. He seems to be full of power and possibility, and yet even in the book his episode seems detachable.

Here is a short article--

Tom Bombadil

Tom Bombadil

 

[galanx]

Until the laughable ending. If Durabont had kept the book's ending, it would have been a great little horror movie, rather than a flop.

Stephen King begs to disagree:

“Frank wrote a new ending that I loved. It is the most shocking ending ever and there should be a law passed stating that anybody who reveals the last five minutes of this film should be hung from their neck until dead.”

 

[galanx]

And a good thing, too. If the Bombadil material (especially Bombadil himself, and Goldberry) is going to be filmed, you need, it seems to me, a director and actors of genius. Otherwise you will get something that might be amusing, but won't be Bombadil; you'll get something that cries "Fake! Fake!" at every moment. If Jackson had done the Bombadil material, we would have got, I suppose, something like Tim Benzedrine, in the old Bored of the Rings parody, a hippie-like buffoon. Could Jackson have "realized" the Master of wood, hill, and water? Bombadil and Goldberry seem to have been where they are "forever" and yet it is as if they have just married.

Considering what PJ did to Radagast the Brown....

 

[galanx]

Perhaps the best adaptation of a book to movie/TV that I know of is the 1979 BBC version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (miniseries) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I've read the book three times, but I've lost track of how many times I've watched the miniseries. It's superb in very way -- script and characterization, sense of time, location, and atmosphere, construction of the mystery, handling of violence, music, etc. Direction and acting seem to me to be about as good as television (in my experience) has ever attained. I didn't think much of the recent movie version.

Yeah, fantastic. The new movie version was good, but nowhere near comparable.

 

[The Bluestocking]

The BBC's adaptation of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE has never, in my opinion, been equaled by any other adaptation of said book.

Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle are Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet respectively. (There - happy @farntfar? ).

 

[farntfar]

Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle are Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy.

How to spoil that statement. Add "respectively" at the end.

 

[Edward M. Grant]

Stephen King begs to disagree:

Yeah, and everyone on set really is always wonderful and amazing to work with and it really is always the best movie shoot ever.

What else do you expect King to say?

Audiences agree with me, which is why the movie flopped. No-one was likely to tell their friends 'hey, I saw this great horror movie, you should see it too,' when it had such a stupid ending. Poor word of mouth beats anything Stephen King might say.

 

[aThenian]

Worst: Jackson's Hobbit movies.

Yes, I'm going along with this. I could only bear to watch one of them. It was so painful I thought I was going to gnaw off my own arm.

The best - yes to Tinker, Tailor. Very different, but I like Prince Caspian because they actually turned a weak book into an enjoyable film.

 

[Randy M.]

Yeah, and everyone on set really is always wonderful and amazing to work with and it really is always the best movie shoot ever.

What else do you expect King to say?

Audiences agree with me, which is why the movie flopped. No-one was likely to tell their friends 'hey, I saw this great horror movie, you should see it too,' when it had such a stupid ending. Poor word of mouth beats anything Stephen King might say.

Well, yes and no. King has strongly stated his dislike of Kubrick's The Shining. He's wrong, but he's not been shy to criticize it, so much so that when the opportunity came along he produced a TV mini-series to film it the way he wanted it. He was wrong about that, too, though I did like Rebecca De Mornay as Wendy more than Shelley Duvall, whose only function in Kubrick's movie was to scream and shiver (about my only complaint with the Kubrick).

Oh, and I want to second To Kill a Mockingbird. The performances in that are excellent, and the story-telling approach appropriate to the novel.


Randy M.

 

[MWagner]

Well, yes and no. King has strongly stated his dislike of Kubrick's The Shining. He's wrong, but he's not been shy to criticize it, so much so that when the opportunity came along he produced a TV mini-series to film it the way he wanted it.

Yeah, King hasn't been at all shy in the past to criticize movies make from his books. I've even seen jokes from him about how bad most of the adaptations are. If he says he genuinely liked the Mist, then I take him at face value.

 

[BAYLOR]

Yeah, King hasn't been at all shy in the past to criticize movies make from his books. I've even seen jokes from him about how bad most of the adaptations are. If he says he genuinely liked the Mist, then I take him at face value.

Kubrick took a great book and turned it into something else entirely.

 

[Edward M. Grant]

Well, yes and no. King has strongly stated his dislike of Kubrick's The Shining.

Did he state it at a press conference while the movie was still in theatres?

Saying 'the ending sucked' at that point would have killed the movie overnight.

 

[BAYLOR]

Did he state it at a press conference while the movie was still in theatres?

Saying 'the ending sucked' at that point would have killed the movie overnight.

Given the film , he had right to complain at Kubrik's interpretation.

 

[Edward M. Grant]

Given the film , he had right to complain at Kubrik's interpretation.

Sure. I've never read the book of The Shining, and can't remember much about the movie, but I can quite imagine it's another bad King adaptation. But I very much doubt King said that publically while it was in theatres.

However, I was still referring to King's comments on The Mist, apparently made during a promotional PR conference for the movie. In comparison, if I remember correctly, my girlfriend's comment after watching the movie was 'dumbest ending ever'. Probably with a few more four-letter words.

 

[Randy M.]

Fair enough. I didn't pick up on the occasion of the comments on The Mist. He might have felt constrained, though he may also have liked the ending; the director had already filmed two of his works successfully, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile so King may have felt it politic to cheerlead since those are two of the movies he's most pleased with. (Also, Stand By Me.)

As for his comments on Kubrick, I don't recall when I first heard them. I think he was wrong, by the way: The Shining is quite good, though Kubrick did bend it toward his view, his creation, sliding over something that was important to King. Kubrick's view of alcoholism was much more ruthless and he shifted focus from the book's main character, the kid, to the kid's father. And frankly, King may have said something at the time. He wasn't KING then, he was just a guy writing horror novels, on a good streak along his way to becoming a publishing phenomenon.


Randy M.