I have done a lot of book ones but have I ever done worst movie made from a good book? Things got so bad back in the day with the Grisham books turned to movies I gave up for a long time. I will say that if they had made the Harry Potter movies four hours I would have gone alone with it. They were great adaptations. Godfather was good. Hunger Games. They messed up Lovely Bones. Ditto with the Jack Reacher movies. I could go on.
Don Lemmon gave me a book of incantations for Halloween. But it's lousy. Clearly none of the editors had run spell check.
ReplyDeleteI thought Interviews with a Vampire was awful, but then I tried reading the book and got thru 20 pages before I gave it up.so maybe it was true to the book? I think Anne Rice is overrated.
ReplyDeleteAgreed
DeleteIt was pretty true to the book. Tom Cruise was so horribly cast as Lestat, though, that it ruined the movie. (Christian Slater, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas were all perfect but even all together couldn't overcome the visual stink of the miscast Tom Cruise.)
DeleteMy 14 year old son just read "Interview" and loved it. He's about halfway through the second one. He urged me to read "Interview" and I tried mightily, but I put it down and can't make myself pick it back up because I keep getting distracted by GOOD books. Every day he asks me if I've read any more of it, and I suppose I will have to out of sheer love for him, but I just don't get the appeal.
DeleteDune so far, great book, but somehow David Lynch failed. I heard Denis Villeneuve is next in line to do it, we'll see how it will work out.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to veer a bit and go with worst movie adapted from a good comic book. The 2004 Punisher movie. It was mainly based off of the "Welcome Back, Frank" story arc by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon (the guys behind the Preacher comic) and boy was it terrible. It seemed like the filmmakers read the book and then just shoehorned cool bits from it nonsensically into the movie.
ReplyDeleteOh crap, and Watchmen. The book was amazing, the film was a horrible piece of doo-doo.
ReplyDeleteMy rule is: I read manga, but I won't watch live-action, I saw a still of live-action Sailor Moon and I went "HEEELLLLL NO" (I don't even like all anime—I find it irritating, and certain styles of drawing irks me, I like the '70s stuff). And I only watch film adaptations of American comic books (but I will never read the books). That's my rule.
ReplyDeleteI loved the lone wolf and cub series and shoguns assassin but I agree with you on manga adaptations
DeleteTo take it is a different direction, the Legend of the Seeker TV show was a horrible adaptation of the Sword of Truth series.
ReplyDeleteI thought "It" was actually pretty bad and generic and I thought the miniseries was far better in every way, except for the godawful ending.
ReplyDeleteAmerican Psycho on its own was fine -- but was not true to the book in that director Mary Herron decided to make this an all-in-his-mind fantasy/delusion. Which took the horror of it completely out of it. I understand why a feminist might want to do that (in a way), but the book was about an elite Wall Street guy being able to literally get away with murder and nobody really ever would question someone of that status.
ReplyDeleteI begrudgingly liked Interview With The Vampire. Probably because I was convinced it was going to be a real piece of shit. Not the best movie, but not the worst.
ReplyDeleteHave to agree 100% about Dune, though. Someone convinced me to read the book after I saw the movie in the theatre (was surprised at the amount of people who walked out). After reading the book I realized the movie was heavily edited. There was so much information that was left out explaining why many things didn't make sense in the movie. The only good thing about that movie was seeing Sting in that speedo with wings.
The Princess Bride was 100x funnier in the book.
ReplyDeleteHaving just read The Princess Bride I agree - the abridged version that is, although arguably it was edited too fiercely.
ReplyDeleteSome films tease out magic.
Catch 22 - one of my all time favourite books. Totally blah movie.
IDK about "Catch-22", but "Fight Club" was good.
DeleteI thought the first Jack Reacher movie was fairly good. I thought the book was good too except for the ending. I thought the movie ended better.
ReplyDeleteWorst movie? There was an Alice in Wonderland a few years ago that looked pretty awful, but I never saw it. Anyone?
Memoirs of a Geisha couldn't be done justice in the short span of a movie. I loved that book. I actually came to like The Lovely Bones after seeing it a 2nd or 3rd time.
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DeleteNot a movie but TV totally butchered the Shannara series.
ReplyDeleteAlso hate the Outlander adaptation on Starz.
Most butchered- as a kid my favourite book was The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper. Brilliant.
ReplyDeleteFilm in 2007- fubar. Total shite ball of rubbish. Awful. Catastrophic. Ruined.
I liked 'Sleepers'great book and movie.
ReplyDeleteI'd rather read anyway. I feel like I'm wasting time watching a movie.
DeleteCouldn’t agree more! I was actually relieved they gave up after the title book and didn’t try for the others in the series...
ReplyDelete50 Shades, but that's mostly due to poor casting.
ReplyDeleteTwighlight movies, poor casting and bad scripts
Confessions of a Shopaholic
Definitely Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher, wouldn't even see the movie with him as the lead
How the Grinch Stole Christmas, really don't know how you mess up this book, but they did
Cloud Atlas is an amazing book. Never, ever watch the movie.
ReplyDeleteSimon Birch from
ReplyDeleteA Prayer for Owen Meany
Horrible.
The English Patient and To Kill A Mockingbird. Beautiful books ruined, even admired. Want Sophia Coppola to re-do Mockingbird.
ReplyDeletePrince of Tides- book was great, movie not so much. Barbra made it all about her. ugh
ReplyDeletethe first deadly sin. based on lawrence sanders fantastic novel, it starred frank sinatra. loved the book but the movie fell flat.
ReplyDeleteA Winter's Tale. Written/directed by Akiva Goldsman in his directorial debut.
ReplyDeleteMartin Scorsese was attached to it but walked away because he said it wasn't adaptable to the screen. If Marty can't do it, it's time to walk away.
I think Stephen King books are scary but the movie adaptations are often a mess. There are a couple exceptions but usually the books were way better.
ReplyDeleteThe Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe's book butchered by Brian de Palma and Michael Cristofer with the help of Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, Morgan Freeman and Kim Cattrall.
ReplyDeleteMost films based on books, don't do the books any justice, because when we read, we create the story from our own perspective and imagination. It's subjective and personal. A stranger can hardly ever recreate that to our own satisfaction; it becomes objective and therefor general, without investing in our own interpretation.
ReplyDeleteI can think of many films that have butchered the experience of reading the story for myself, but one that I actually enjoyed and that positively surprised me was The Perfume.
yes! bend3r...bonfire...and the da vince code. both unwisely cast tom hanks in the leads.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely the Jack Reacher movies! Little Tommy Cruise as 6 foot 4 in or more is just wrong.
ReplyDeleteI loved the book "The Club Dumas" that was made into the movie The Ninth Gate. They hacked the movie to death. Just destroyed it.
ReplyDelete@Meagan Arturo Pérez-Reverte's books have been butchered frequently The Club Dumas/The Nineth Gate are a good example. La Carta Esférica is Awful, but I didn't like the book either. Alatriste is a good movie... if you haven't read the books. But the worst of all is Uncovered, based on The Flandes Panel. Absolutely AWFUL. The Fencing Master on the other hand is a great adaptation of the book (one of my favourite novel of Reverte).
ReplyDeleteAsia Argento ruined "The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things".
ReplyDeleteA beautiful mind! The book was brilliant and the movie was totally dumbed down and changed in awful ways.
ReplyDeleteJust thought of another one - The Tale of Despereaux. I had read the book to my son, so we went to see it at the theatre. The title and the names of the characters were the same but that was it. We were so disappointed.
ReplyDeleteIn think it was a TV mini series, rather than a movie, but I was so disappointed with Stephen King's The Stand after reading the book
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