The Hobbit. Like, all of it
I, Robot.
Asimov was explicitly trying to get away from the trope of “robots take over humanity”. To be clear, the first short story that became I, Robot was published in 1940. “Robots take over humanity” was already an SF trope by then. Hollywood comes along more than half a century later and dives head first right back into that trope.
Lt Cmdr Data is more what Asimov had it mind. In fact, Data’s character has direct references to Asimov, like his positronic brain.
The only thing that advertisement masquerading as a movie has in common with the Asimov work is the title.
I, Robot was about as far from the source material as you could get.
That sounds like a challenge to Hollywood. Though I’d put Starship Troopers up there too, haven’t scrolled enough to see it mentioned but I assume it is.
Edit okay I did now and it’s not mentioned. While a fun movie it doesn’t have nearly the same story that the book does. Still I’ll watch it for what it is, but doesn’t have the same tone or scenes the book does.
Robots take over humanity has been around since literally the first robot story. R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) is where the word robot was coined.
Asimov came up with the three laws of robotics.
He then spent the rest of his life writing examples of how they don’t work.
Shouldn’t be called an adaptation, really. They only dressed it up a tiny bit as Asimov for marketing reasons
From what I heard, they got the rights to I, Robot, grabbed some script about a robot uprising that they already had optioned, and slapped a few things on it.
This is apparently fairly common. If there’s a Hollywood movie based on something that doesn’t really align with the original, there’s a good chance that this is what happened. Starship Troopers was the same way (though that’s a whole different ballgame on whether the Hollywood version is good on its own merits).
Literally everything about World War Z. Absolute travesty. The book is a unique and genuinely thought provoking new take on the zombie genre. The movie is an insult to every bit of world building Max Brooks created.
I say this to people and then always have to clarify:
It’s not that the World War Z movie is a bad adaptation of the book, it’s that it’s NOT an adaptation of the book at all. Other than the name, and the fact that it has zombies, there are literally no similarities between the book and the movie.
The characters are different, the settings are different, the format is different, the plot is different, the way the zombies act is different. Literally EVERYTHING.
Calling it an adaptation is like if you took The Neverending Story and changed its title to The Lord of The Rings and called that an adaptation.
I read somewhere that this is basically Max Brooks’ take on the film.
Something about breathing a sigh of relief when he read the script, because it was such a distinct story that there was nothing left of his book to be butchered.
Yeah, this one is the big one.
I feel like World War Z would have been better adapted as a TV show given that the book was episodic in nature.
Very well put. I couldn’t agree more.
I thought the movie was pretty enjoyable but it shouldn’t have been named after the book. It would have been a decent zombie movie on its own.
I agree. Its a fun movie but is the literal opposite of everything in the book. My favorite chapter is where the crashed pilot outwalks the group of zombies. There’s something so organic and absolutely terrifying about that. Humans are persistence predators and it was such a unique way of turning the tables on our evolutionary successes. Brilliant stuff. The movie may be fun, but its anything but brilliant.
The movie version of A Clockwork Orange was based on the American version of the book, which left out the entire last chapter. In that chapter, at 18 years old Alex pretty suddenly grows out of his violent and criminal ways and wants to start a family. Some say this ending is more optimistic but I actually think it’s darker, because it shows that any normal person you meet might’ve at some point been a wanton brute reveling in the chaos and pain they so arbitrarily inflicted. And that they can just move on and start living like a normal person.
This is a good take although I still prefer the sinister ending of the film over the redemptive one in the book. Later editions include a foreword by burgess lamenting the omission of the 21st chapter in part because he wrote three acts of seven chapters for the symmetry of it and the symbolism of 21 being the age of majority
I know we’re not into Harry Potter now, but the past is the past and I can’t forget how annoyed I was when the movie based on the third book, Prisoner of Azkaban, came out. I was a very disappointed teenager.
It was a whirlwind story to me at the time. I remember exactly where I was when I read it, as the moment that revealed the friendship between Harry’s father James, Professor Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, and the alleged-murderer, Sirius Black, became seared into my brain. It was such a pivotal part of the overall story to me, that that twist alone made it my favorite in the series. So when the movie came out, I expected the use and development of The Marauder’s Map to be a key highlight. It was a huge deal in the books, after all.
Yet in the movie, the map is just a neat thing Harry gets to use. Nobody mentions that Harry’s own father helped create it. The movie never even tells who the Marauders are, even though the reveal of their backstory was the key emotional crux of the Shrieking Shack scene. To omit their story entirely felt like a gut-punch.
I didn’t understand at the time why the director (Alfonso Cuaron) decided to straight-up change everything that made that story so compelling to me and my friends. To this day, I still don’t understand.
Yet subsequent movies mentioned the nicknames Wormtail and Padfoot. A lot of things in the films must have been confusing to people who didn’t read the books. Another weird thing I’ve noticed is that in the fourth movie, Barty Crouch Jr steals from Snape to make polyjuice potion and he blames Harry. But those who only watched the movies and didn’t read the books wouldn’t have known that Harry and his friends stole from Snape to make polyjuice potion before.
The most egregious that i remember must be Artemis Fowl.
I remember liking the book quite a lot for making fairies into the opposite of pushovers. It also had a mean edge to it that other teen fantasy lacked.
The movie is just… Not that.
I watched the movie first. The only good thing about it is it inspired me to read the book to see what the movie missed. Upon reading all the books, I think the vest way to adapt them to screen would be an animated series that is beat for beat faithful to the books.
My biggest issue with the film is, if they didn’t want a villain protagonist, why adapt a book with a villain protagonist?
I hated the fact that the movie steered away from the fact that Artemis Fowl was a frigging criminal mastermind and instead made him a mid rebel with a relatable motivation… Have the same grouse about Ender’s Game too
The Dark Tower. Good movie in its own right, especially if you like Idris Elba.
First, they took 8 Stephen King books, some of which were like 2" thick, and decided to turn it into a 90-minute PG-13 film. A single film.
Second, because the racist element was so offensive (a Black woman taken out of the 1970s, who has personally experienced racism toward her, is taken to a foreign world, an alternate reality, where she basically is led by an old white man (modeled after Clint Eastwood) and naturally she feels a certain type of way about that) they decided they were going to change it up. Make her white, and him Black. Hence casting Idris Elba as a guy based on Clint Eastwood. Then they dropped her character entirely. I will argue that Elba made a hell of a Gunslinger, but the reason they cast him was because they wanted to turn the whole racism plot on its head. For no good reason. It was fine in the books (this would be The Drawing of the Three, and The Waste Lands, the second and third books).
But for all that, it was an entertaining action flick with a bunch of Stephen King references. I quite like it. As a reader of the books and a fan of Stephen King, I shouldn’t, but the movie itself was good.
Honestly that the movie exists at all is the worst change, though.
I love the Dark Tower series and hadn’t seen the movie yet. They dropped Susannah out ENTIRELY? Seriously???
Yes, her and Eddie both (and Oy). His only companion is Jake.
Idris Elba was an unexpected choice, but I was all for it. Unfortunately, you’re right about the rest of the film. SO much wasted potential.
I only read the first three or four books, but the movie didn’t include a single thing I remember from thee early books that I liked. No crab taking fingers, no giant robot bear, no talking train, or anything else. It seemed to me like they had some other script and slapped a Dark Tower veneer on it.
I realized there was trouble when the producers were being interviewed and stated they had a hard time finding an entry point to the universe and I was like “Bitch, FIRST LINE - ‘The man in black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed.’”
It’s always a treat realizing that you like a piece of fiction much more than the director/producer making an adaptation of it. I’m glad I didn’t bother with that film.
They somehow thought Jake was the star? 🤔
Here’s hoping the next adaptation is better.
The Hobbit
From the shitty shoehorned romance to wholesale elimination of plot points in the original story. Yeah, there was definitely some drama in the whole production of the film, but nonetheless it was crap.
I like the Bilbo edit that removes most of the crap, and keeps the story shown to be from only what Bilbo sees. Gets the 3 movies down to 4 hrs I think.
I’ve seen that edit. Much improved, but unfortunately there are some continuity gaps that are inevitable when cutting up a film like that.
We demand our Tom Bombadil!
All the adaptations of I Am Legend are bad, but 2007 movie was insulting. It gave the illusion of following the book, but then did a u-tutn and completely changed the meaning of the story and the title itself.
In the movie the protagonist becomes a legend because he sacrifices himself to cure vampirism.
In the book he is the last man in a world of vampires, he kills vampires, and understands that he is like a legendary monster that kills people in their sleep. He is then executed.
In case you haven’t seen the alternate ending for I am Legend, it puts a very different perspective on the whole movie. Apparently it was the original, but didn’t screen well with viewers.
The most telling moment for me is the infected slaps their hand on the glass and draws a butterfly as the last words the protagonist’s daughter ever said to him, “Daddy, look a the butterfly!” echo is his head and he realizes that the infected he has captured has a butterfly tattoo on her shoulder. He even makes a note of it in the capture and experimentation scene claiming that the infected exposing himself to sunlight is a sign that “social de-evolution is complete.” when instead the infected just witnessed a monster kidnap his daughter and drag her into a dangerous area that he cannot follow to do unknown experiments on her to change her into something else.
Instead the ending negates everything built up to the point and ends with a boring action-movie cliche.
Yeah, the book vampires were much more fleshed out. In the movie they were just barely-sentient beasts, primarily running off of instinct. They only seemingly had some basic higher-level reasoning. His primary struggle was surviving while surrounded by bloodthirsty animals.
In the book, they were a full blown society with their own culture. When the people around him changed, he was suddenly a stranger in a brand new culture. The point was that in the old society, vampires were the thing that went bump in the night. But in the new society, he was the monster that parents told their kids to watch out for.
Stephen King - Dreamcatcher
In the book the character Duddits had the shining, yes that motherfucking shining.
In the movie they made him an undercover alien. Man what a let down.
The book Annihilation centered on a “tower” that was a mysterious, fleshy, downward spiraling tunnel with creepy writing on the walls. The imagery was so unsettling.
For some reason it is entirely absent from the movie. Like… that was half of the point of the book - a “tower” that climbed down into the earth instead of towards the sky. Why would you cut that?
TV adaptation of Wheel of Time was just fucking awful. Like every stupid character change and story change was done literally as stupidly as possible and seemingly with a view to ruin the actual story as it was written.
I genuinely think the showrunners hadn’t read the series to the end by most of the changes they made and canned it when they caught up and realised how much they had fucked the story that was still to come.
Book and TV spoilers
Tower in exile run by Siuan mentoring Egwene who is aes sedai by virtue only of being elected Amyrlin? Nope, Siuan is dead and Egwene was made Aes Sedai so I guess that arc is dead.
Moiraine thought to be dead and later rescued from the tower of Ghenjei by Matt and Thom? Nope, she never got “killed”, and never went through the doorway.
Min, Elayne and Aviendha all accepting the situation and bonding with each other as sister wives and sharing the bond with Rand through their own connection? Nope. Min is shacking up with Matt (maybe? Either way doesn’t gaf about Rand) and Elayne and Aviendha are shacking up with each other instead.
Having Rand kill Turak with the power instead of entertaining his challenge was a little funny but completely outside of both Rand and LTT’s code of honour and especially LTT’s massive ego.
The first one that me swear out loud was killing Uno and making him Gaidal Cain. Like… I guess Uno won’t be leading armies in the last battle then, and Birgitte won’t be wondering where Gaidal was woven into the world as a young child…
Oh god I forgot they gave Perrin a wife and had him kill her for literally no reason…
So many stupid changes made for no conceivable reason. Not little things to make a character easier to write for TV or more relatable, but sweeping giant story changes that make great chunks of the original canon impossible.
I genuinely implore anyone who even got the slightest amount of joy out of the show to read the books. Learn the original and really very good story, and experience Jordan’s writing, rather than Judkins’ made-up-as-they-went-along shit erroneously accepted as passable work.
I read the books and liked the TV version. They were just different things. I am not sure I’d even enjoy a very faithful TV adaptation.
Well it got canceled due to poor viewership so they failed and made it even less likely a fair adaptation ever gets made. Everybody loses.
Just finished reading the books. But i started book one and season 1 together and quickly saw they were completely different. But i watched the show first and it cemented how characters looked which is what i wanted before i read it.
After finishing all 14 and now on new spring im glad the show gave me direction to imagine a lot of them.
Yeah the casting and costuming was pretty good for the most part with the very slight exception that I felt Rosamund Pike was a bit tall for the diminutive Moiraine. Apart from that I loved how faithful they were to the characters’ descriptions even if they did go wildly off the rails with the story.
Well i never knew the audio book was done by moiraine herself. But i do ageee, especially after just finishing new spring tonight everyone mentioned how short she was and i never thought to much of that difference while reading the books. I guess when she got her ageless face no one spoke to much of it.
Personally, I’m still irritated at the end of Hannibal (the 2001 movie). Spoilers for the end of the film and book ahead:
In the book, Clarice Starling has gone as far as she can in her FBI career. She became famous for solving big cases, moved up the corporate ladder, but that glass ceiling kept her from advancing. Too many misogynistic “good ol’ boys” at the top, who not only prevent her from excelling in her career, but take every tiny mistake and blow it up into a potentially career-ending scenario.
Enter Hannibal Lecter; the suave and highly intelligent cannibal serial killer. He’s outraged that Clarice’s coworkers and bosses are actively objectifying her and ruining her career.
Long story short, at the end of the book, Hannibal rescues Clarice and gives her misogynistic boss an impromptu (and tasty!) lobotomy. Clarice ends up running away with Hannibal, because she realized he’s the only person who respects her as an intelligent human being and not a piece of ass.
The movie chose to keep her loyal to the FBI and combative against Hannibal, even though the FBI actively tried to destroy her life. Hannibal escapes alone and the film just kind of ends. It was a complete non-ending.
The whole point of Silence of the Lambs and its sequel, Hannibal, was that Clarice was a woman trying to survive in a “man’s job,” yet proved she could belong - and excel - through her own skill and intellect. Silence of the Lambs did a pretty good job showing that on the big screen, but Hannibal didn’t get the point of the story and decided the hero shouldn’t end up with a cannibal, period. They treated him as more of an irredeemable monster.
It’s kind of the “man vs. bear” meme, except replace the bear with a cannibal serial killer, and the girl still chose the cannibal as the safer choice to her co-workers.
FFS, my unread list is long enough. Now I gotta add this series too. Thanks op
(but actually, thank you, that sounds interesting)
If you want to read the books, it’s 4 novels: Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, and Hannibal Rising.
You can skip that fourth book if you want. It’s a prequel story that shows how Hannibal grew up and what turned him to cannibalism. The author (Thomas Harris) wanted to keep him a mysterious character, but Hannibal was so popular, people kept demanding to know his backstory and Harris knew that if he didn’t tell the story, someone else would. So he begrudgingly wrote an origin story.
You can tell he didn’t want to write it. The writing style is completely different than his other books. It’s very direct, like he’s just dictating information instead of weaving a tale.
Red Dragon follows Hannibal in prison and the detective who caught him, using Hannibal’s intellect to help catch a psychotic killer on the loose.
Silence of the Lambs is basically the same story as Red Dragon, except replace the brilliant veteran detective with an amateur FBI trainee, whom Hannibal takes an interest in.
Hannibal is a direct sequel to Silence of the Lambs, showing the FBI trainee’s exceptional career and eventual downfall, thanks to the patriarchy.
The Hannibal quadrilogy is one of my favorite book series. I’m sad that the movie version of Hannibal didn’t understand the point the books were telling. And the Hannibal Rising movie was a terrible B-movie plot about a young psychotic kid getting a taste for murder. Didn’t really feel like a Hannibal movie at all.
I haven’t seen the Hannibal TV series, although I hear it’s pretty good. But it’s an original story, so may not be very loyal to the book series.
OK, here’s the thing. Overall, Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy is extremely good. I think it’s the best Tolkien adaptation we’re likely to ever get.
HOWEVER.
The random “Arwen is dying!” subplot was incredibly fucking stupid and while it didn’t ruin the movies for me, it did dampen my enjoyment of them. There had to be a better way to get more screentime for Liv Tyler, surely.
For me it’s elves at Helm’s Deep. Totally unnecessary.
Although I always laugh out loud when Sam says “We shouldn’t even be here” in Osgiliath.
My devil’s advocate argument for the elves being there is that there were a bunch of battles in the north that didn’t make it into the movie and only get mentioned a little in the books, and one of the important themes of LOTR is that all these disparate groups had to band together to fight Sauron. So having elves be at Helm’s Deep is a way to show the different people fighting together in a movie series that was already pressed for time. Necessary? Maybe not. But it doesn’t bother me as much as some of the other changes, because I can at least see a rationale for it.
The thing is that the elves were explicitly leaving and staying out of the conflicts. It makes no sense for them to help out at Helm’s Deep but piss off for all the rest.
I love the lotr movies but even the extended editions can’t fit in the nuances of all the supporting characters. this gets worse the later you get in the trilogy, the biggest victims probably being the ents, faramir, denethor and pippin.
my own personal pick is probably one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, where they change McMurphy’s crime from battery and gambling to statutory rape. that did not engender sympathy
The Navidson Record
As a fellow HoL fan, dig your response.
Someone got the reference!
There’s dozens of us!
