Movie Adaptations

[MalaCloudy Black]

What do you think about Movie Adaptations of books and other works? Personally, I'm not too keen on them. I mean, Stephen King's books are terrific, but they never translate well to the big screen - The only one that's been decent, IMO, is "It" (and the TV Series "The Dead Zone", but that's not a movie)

[Kaney]

I agree, movie adaptations are rarely as good as the books. As someone once said "Don't judge a book by it's movie" I'll edit it later once I find out who said it.

[apsham]

Meh, the only thing about a movie is that it TELLS you what things are like instead of letting you imagine for yourself. Take the Lord of the Ring or Harry Potter movies for an example.

They're both great adapetations, and you're happy if you imagined a character to look exactly like what he does on the big screen, but then again if you were wrong, it takes a little bit away from it.

[Laice07]

True. But I do say they have done well with Harry Potter and a terrific job with LOTR.

[apsham]

I didn't say that they did a bad job on them, in fact I said that they were both great.

I was just noting how it hurts the imagination part of it.

[fineintent]

The adaptations that stand out for me are Trainspotting and Captin Corelli's Mandalin. I felt both of them really did fantastic books justice. I also enjoyed the LOTR trilogy.

Cloudy, you didn't like the Shining? I thought Jack Nicholson was fantastic in that. It was also helped by an awesome screen play writer in Kubrick, but the book itself is also solid.

[Guest Angry Baboon]

I thought 'The Stand' was really well done, apart from the end bit (They made the hand of god bit WAY too fucking cheesy)

How can anyone forget about the Godfather? Let us not forget that this is in fact a book transfer.

[TheArsenal]

Cloudy, did you not like The Shawshank Redemption?

The problem with movie adaptations is that people complain if the film isn't "True to the book". Well that's the whole point....it's an adaptation. It's been adapted!

[apsham]

How can anyone forget about the Godfather? Let us not forget that this is in fact a book transfer.

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Oh shit, and i've read the books too. They're quite good too.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Ah, I temporarily forgot about the more recent ones like the Shawshank Redemption, and I've only seen tiny bits and pieces of The Shining and The Stand.

[tristy]

Shawshank Redemption is a terrific movie. I need to buy it on DVD sometime.

A Walk To Remember was a book...then a movie with Mandy Moore...good movie.

I'm not even kidding.

Edited June 19, 2004 by Tristy

[Mick]

The book I feel that got a crappy deal on the movie edition wasDune. I won't go into details, but I believe that some books should stay as books, and not be marketed to Hollywood.

But, if you want something that was blown out of proportion, get a copy of some short stories by Phillip K. Dick. He's the writer who conjured up short stories taht would later turn into films like Blade Runner, Paycheck, Minority Report, and Total Recall.

Funny thing is, Recall is called "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale". It's fucking funny.

[Mishmow]

but I believe that some books should stay as books, and not be marketed to Hollywood.

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You take that philosophy and %70 of movies wont have been made.

[gunnar hendershow]

Movies aren't as good as books, but some movies based on books are good (LotR, Stephen King movies).

[Colly]

The weird thing is how movies and TV can effect you when you read the book again. In Bernard Cornwells Sharpe books Sharpe is meant to be from Essex or somewhere similar, whereas in my head its always Sean Bean now. Bastard.

[Ananas]

How can anyone forget about the Godfather? Let us not forget that this is in fact a book transfer.

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So were the Star Wars films if I remember correctly, I think The Adventures of Luke Skywalker were published well before the movies. IMO movies with the least about of interior monologue make the best adaptations. Take Harry Potter, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, for example. Harry Potter and Star Wars are more or less dialogue driven, while Lord of the Rings is more scene and image based. All of these books have adapted superbly to screen, albeit with a stacked crew. On the other side, a great book like 1984 was doomed to failure, mainly because the book operates mostly inside of the character Winston Smith's head, something that is very difficult to transfer to screen. For a book like this to work on screen, they have to make significant changes to the way the story is presented, and that is bound to alienate many of the book's fans.

[TheReaper316]

The Silence of the Lambs. Heard a lot bout to movie and eventually saw it, loved it. Found out it was a book, loved it even more and read the other books. Those book's movie's sucked. Trilogy wise.

[Boulder]

I thought "Thinner" was a great example of a good movie made out of a Stephen King book. Also, the movie was very true to the original novel.

[Laice07]

I thought the Peter Pan novel was translated well in the live action movie Peter Pan that came out last christmas 2003. The difference between the cartoons and the live-action one is that the live-action movie brings the central themes closer and has more events from the novel.

[Carnage]

I read 'Ethan Frome' and then I saw the movie

I wanted to read 'Fight Club' after I saw the movie

The End