Books > Movies?

[Thanatopsis123]

Anyone else think they should stop ruining great written stories by turning them into shitty movies? The only thing that pisses me off more than that is when people who haven't read the story sees the movie first and doesn't even know how badly they fucked it up!

Examples:
LOTR
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (a.k.a. Blade Runner)
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (a.k.a. The Shawshank Redemption)
Apt Pupil
The Body (a.k.a. Stand By Me)

And that's just a few. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed LOTR and Stand By Me, I just think they don't do the books justice. The others...not only do they not do the their origins justice but are horrible on their own.

My whole family agrees with me wholeheartly. I didn't believe them before I became a reader (I didn't really start reading much until half way through highschool). My friends (non readers) are completely oblivious to this fact and it annoys me at times.

Anyone else?

 

[spaffe]

well i agree with you there, but i don't think "they" should stop making movies of books since it sometimes turns of pretty good (e.g.lotr, but don't get me wrong there, the books are vastly superiour to the movies, like in most cases). i think the main reason for people beeing of the opinion that the books are better are mainly due to that when one reads a book you create your own pictures and conseptions of how the characters look and talk, but in movies there's not much room for imagination since one just gets the charactets and environments shown the way they "are". and i think that it often differs quite starkly from the image one's got of the same thing.

btw when speaking of this topic, do you (or anyone else reading this) know if there's going to be a movie made of "the hitchhikers guide". it will most likely be utter blasphemy but i'm curious

 

[Fuþorc]

I thought The Green Mile did the book alot of justice. I just hope that they don't make a movie to the Dark Tower.

 

[Thanatopsis123]

The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy was made into a crappy radio show and short lived series in England but no movie that I've heard of.

 

[spaffe]

The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy was made into a crappy radio show and short lived series in England but no movie that I've heard of.

ah ok, i've heard some of that radio show, think i still got it somewhere on my harddrive, but it was so much that had been left out i stopped listening after some minutes.

i tried searching imdb for it but found nothing but a "making of" movie, thanks anyway.

 

[Ol' Dirty Bastard]

The film adaptation of 1984 was well made.

 

[xenophobe]

Blade Runner was a good movie, I didn't read the book, so I can't comment.

LOTR was well done, though they deleted characters and stuff...

Dune was a great book and neither the movie or mini-series did it justice.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was well done, I think the book was a little better, but I can't see how they could have made a better movie from that book.

I would hope most Stephen King books would be better than his movies, only Pet Cemetary and Misery are movies that I actually liked of his.

All the comic book to movies done lately, Xmen, The Hulk, and Daredevil all came out really well I think...

 

[chemicalburn]

as much as I love comics and many of the adaptations they are really overdoing this trend.

 

[Ben_t]

I have almost always been disapointed when i read a book and then see the movie.

Red dragon (Thomas Harris) was fun to read and there were a lot more emphasis on the psychology of the killer and its childhood. But I didn't like the movie that much.

Silence of the lambs...well, I have never seen a book adapted like that. Its exactly the same...So both the movies and the book were goods.

I think Lotr was very well done though.

Apocalypse now based on the book by Jospeh Conrad's Heart of darkness was very well done too.

Anyway i also read many other books that have been adapted...I took a course in university called litterature and cinema once so I read and I saw many things . I'm just too tired to write everything .

 

[squeemu]

I liked the silence of the lambs movie but I think it didn't go as much into the mind of Buffalo Bill as the book did. Still a wonderful adaptation.

 

[Ben_t]

I agree with you but it did go much more into the mind of the killer in silence of the lambs then Red dragon (or manhunter before) did.

 

[squeemu]

That's true, Red Dragon mainly just showed one voiced over flashback to basically take the place of twenty pages of the book...

 

[Ben_t]

Exactly! In my opinion, Red dragon is a better book then Silence of the lambs...but Silence of the lambs is a better movie the Red Dragon (or manhunter).

 

[squeemu]

Wow i have the same opinion. The book of red dragon is better than the book of silence of the lambs. When I tell people that, they can't believe me, because they've only seen the movies. Glad to hear you think the same!

 

[Ben_t]

I always knew I was not alone on this! Thank you

 

[Astral Poetry]

The Lord of The Rings is a fairly accurate rendition of the books. Well, quite a few details were taken out, but its all basically in their.

 

[Malleus]

The Lord of The Rings is a fairly accurate rendition of the books. Well, quite a few details were taken out, but its all basically in their.

Agreed. Adapting a book that size to even 3x3hr films is a huge task, and everyone who are familiar with tolkiens' work will always feel that something important has been left out or wrong scenes emphasized. There has to be made changes to make the book work cinematically. My one real point of criticism is Arwen and Aragorns love story, whcih has been blown way out of proportion compared to the book.

What the movies achieve, big time, is building the feel of Middle Earth. Liberties have been, and had to be, taken story-wise, but they have stayed very true to the book in terms of atmosphere and scenery. One of my big reliefs when I first watched FOTR was that they had not made a "kid" movie out of it. I was extremely scared of the studio wanting to "cute things up" in order to appeal to a broader audience.

 

[The_Soulforged]

I prefer movies. There are filmes that put into books make themselves totaly crap. Of course there is the oposite, but, i love cinema and i like movies mutch more than books.

 

[lord667]

The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy was made into a crappy radio show and short lived series in England but no movie that I've heard of.

Hitchhiker was a radio show before it was a book. I think the idea worked better on paper though; or maybe Douglas Adams is just a better novelist than a scriptwriter.

 

[lord667]

I don't care how the film relates to the book as long as it's a good film. They chopped an entire chapter off the end of Clockwork Orange and fiddled with most of the scenes, but it was a good film. The trouble is when you see the film and then read the book afterwards - you can't help but imagine the actors' faces and voices while you read.