Books into Films .... which worked for you?

[shropshire 0]

So, based upon Garrys' post, which films have you seen that stand up against the books on which they are based?

None come to my mind so far, I must say.....

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[NewGuy2005 51]

Lord of the Rings

[mrwrong 0]

Only one I can think of....

War Games from back in -83.......

“The sum of intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.” - George Bernard Shaw
He who dies with the most toys, wins.....
dudeist skydiver # 19515
Buy quality and cry once!

[wmw999 2,121]

Jurassic Park for me. The movie was as good as the book.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[Baksteen 84]

Angels and Demons.

The book sucked ass, the movie was ok-ish.

"That formation-stuff in freefall is just fun and games but with an open parachute it's starting to sound like, you know, an extreme sport."
~mom

[lippy 771]

The Shawshank Redemption

I got nuthin

[usedtajump 1]

Lonesome Dove, pretty much word for word, scene for scene as the book.

The older I get the less I care who I piss off.

[amstalder 0]

Every single line of the Twilight book made it into the movie, but it was so incredibly cheesy

[Niki1 1]

Quote

Lord of the Rings

Yeah. That had to be the first one that comes to mind.
And as Ustajump said, Lonesome Dove.
I would add The Stand.

Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossilbe before they were done.
Louis D Brandeis

Where are we going and why are we in this basket?

[skydog 2]

Green Mile...........most Stephen King adaptations suck!!

Journey not destination.....

[jumpingjunkie09 0]

Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter

I am "ROGUE" (III Degree Smutsketeer)
Official "poster above you" thread starter

"And don't forget we like men with balls and no needle dicks. So, basically, you're out." ~LuckyMcSwervy

[gonzalesna 0]

Haven't finished reading the book, but so far, the "Generation Kill" T.V. series is better than the book.

Some people refrain from beating a dead horse. Personally, I find a myriad of entertainment value when beating it until it becomes a horse-smoothie.

[SARLDO 0]

IMO - The movies from Tom Clancy novels, Hunt For Red October, Patriot Games, and Sum of All Fears, all did a very good job of retelling the story (wish they would do Without Remorse).

Lonesome Dove - excellent job.
The Stand - Not so much. There is no way a movie could do that book justice. Even if your not a fan of Steven King, ya gotta read The Stand. You won't regret it. You might not sleep, but you won't regret it.

"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest" ~Samuel Clemens

MB#4300
Dudeist Skydiver #68

[Rick 67]

yeah Lord of the Rings nailed it

I think Bourne Identity was good also

You can't be drunk all day if you don't start early!

[LouDiamond 1]

I guess it was inevitable, someone has combined both into one now. It's called Level 26, the author is the same guy who brought you CSI. Now there is a book that has online mini movies that supplement the book.

From Amazon:
Level 26: Dark Origins features Steve Dark, the ultimate crime scene tactician on the tail of a killer so brutal law enforcement has invented a new classification of evil to account for him. Dark Origins can be read on the beach or on an airplane without any digital access . . . but where the traditional story ends, a deeper level of immersion is available at www.level26.com, exclusively to readers of the book. About every twenty pages, you will have the option of logging in to experience a digital cyber-bridge—a three-minute motion picture scene with A-list actors you might’ve seen in blockbuster films and award winning TV shows. Before your eyes, the characters will spring to life, crime scene details will explode off the screen, and the Web site might even ask for a phone number—where the killer can reach you directly. You might call it CSI with an edge.

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[MikeJD 0]

I'm surprised how people base their expectations of a film on the book they read - especially if it's a bestselling book, where the subsequent movie is likely to have been rushed out, with a big star in the lead role, to cash in on the same market.

I also think it's a mistake to criticise a movie just because it's not faithful to the source novel. Some books already read like screenplays, which I guess makes them easy to adapt - but in my view they're often not the best books anyway.

On the other hand, some very successful movies have been based on books that were considered 'unfilmable', by taking big liberties with the text. The English Patient is one example.

I love the Jason Bourne movies, but when I tried to read one of the Robert Ludlum novels I didn't like it at all - so to me, subjectively, those films surpass the novels they're based on. And I gather that by the time they got to The Bourne Ultimatum the movie makers used the title of the novel and little else in any case.

Then there's the 'novelisation' of a film that's already been made. Alan Dean Foster's virtually made a career out of it doing it for sci fi movies - Star Wars, Alien, The Thing, Star Trek, Terminator: Salvation and lots of others. Can't say I've read any of those, but much as I liked many of the movies the idea of those books doesn't appeal to me at all - even though presumably they're very similar to the films on which they're based.

[LouDiamond 1]

Quote

I love the Jason Bourne movies, but when I tried to read one of the Robert Ludlum novels I didn't like it at all - so to me, subjectively, those films surpass the novels they're based on.

One? One of the books and how much of that one book did you read? I ask because I read the books long before the movies came out and still find them to be head and shoulders better than the movies. From a technical perspective, the books are very accurate and or realistic. Whereas the movie uses a lot of Hollywood "look something shiny, now an explosion, now I'm in another country." and lack a lot of the realism found in the books.

If you like the movies, I challenge you to take the time to read the series of books. I'll wager your opinion will change.

As an aside, Matt Damon was not the right actor to portray the Bourne Character IMHO. There are far better actors out there that could have portrayed the Bourne character more realistically.

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[AndyBoyd 0]

Casualties of War the movie was a very faithful rendition of the book. Michael J. Fox was very good, I thought.

Cormac McCarthy's The Road is one of the most amazing things I've ever read. Almost poetic. If the upcoming movie is half as good as the book, it will be incredible. Here's the trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbLgszfXTAY

[quade 3]

Books and movies are fundamentally different in a number of ways. Usually when a person doesn't like the movie based on a book the reason is because things had to be left out of the movies for length. The latest Harry Potter film would be an excellent example of that. Tons of material left out which, if you think about it, is inevitable when trying to cram a 600 page book into a two hour movie.

However, the other fundamental difference between books and movies is that almost without exception movies are exclusively told in the third person. Generally speaking, there is no way to experience the inner feelings of the characters. Movies can pretty much only show the external actions of a character.

For example, in a book a character might enter a room and get chills from the gloom. His heart may race at the thought of what evil lurks in the shadows. However, in a movie, you can only show the gloom and the evil lurking. There is no real way to show the character got "chills" or that his "heart is racing". Oh, you might be able to imply quite a bit with the actor doing some cartoonish reaction and the sound effects guy may put in the sound of a beating heart, but it's an entirely different thing and has to be dealt with in a completely different way.

Movie scripts are a fine art and a very specific one at that; part poetry, part architectural document for a $20 million dollar construction project. Taking a pre-existing book and adapting one into a script is considerably easier than say, making one from scratch, but it's still a process fraught with danger because virtually everybody has a preconceived idea of how it should be done, yet there are a number of ways to do it; what to cut and what to keep? What gets the essentials of the story across without losing the flavor of the story? What can you let go of without disappointing the fans?

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[downwardspiral 0]

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IMO - The movies from Tom Clancy novels, Hunt For Red October, Patriot Games, and Sum of All Fears, all did a very good job of retelling the story (wish they would do Without Remorse).

Sum of All Fears was massacred thanks to Ben Affleck who was decades younger than Jack Ryan is suppose to be in the book. Jack Ryan is the Assistant Director of the CIA in the book but was made a lowly annalyst thanks to Affleck. IMO Ben Affleck is the new Keanu.

Unfortunately Harrison Ford, who was asked to play Ryan in Sum of All Fears, was busy filming K-19. Although he agreed to do the movie once K-19 was completed the producers elected not to wait and cast the worst actor to ever play Jack Ryan requiring a rewrite of the entire movie. The book was exponentially better than the movie.

Without Remorse is due out in 2011...maybe. Last I checked it was due out in 2010 but I think they decided to release Rainbow Six first which makes sense since they did very little to develop John Clark's character in all of the other Tom Clancy movies.

www.FourWheelerHB.com

[downwardspiral 0]

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Haven't finished reading the book, but so far, the "Generation Kill" T.V. series is better than the book.

I agree and I read the book first. I think that has more to do with the ability of the writer (journalist) since the film stayed pretty accurate to the book.

One thing though...the observation by the writer and eventually the reasoning behind the title Generation Kill was left out of the series.

www.FourWheelerHB.com

[MikeJD 0]

That's why I said 'to me, subjectively'. I know there are a lot of people who really rate the books, and I'm not questioning their judgement. I'm saying that I enjoyed watching the movies far more than reading what I did of The Bourne Identity, which I freely admit wasn't very much. It was the style of writing that put me off and kept me from persevering. I didn't get far enough in to see how closely the stories or the characters matched. Maybe I'll take a second look on your recommendation.

As regards Matt Damon, I thought he was a great choice to play Bourne the movie character. Whether that's the same character that was portrayed in the books I couldn't say, but to me it's a different argument.

I was trying to say in my earlier post that I think your best chance of enjoying both 'the book' and 'the movie of the book' is to approach each on its own terms. If you try to play them off against each other, one of them will generally disappoint you.

[LouDiamond 1]

I agree, you can't expect to cram 10lbs into a 5lb bag in a 2 hour film. However, it seems that either a good deal of character development or facts relevant to making the story complete routinely end up on the cutting room floor. The outcome is what we're all here discussing.

The other side is when the movie veers away from the book(s) and is not in synch with the books. Case in point, True Blood TV series of the Sookie Stackhouse/Charleen Harris books. There are characters and scenes/plots in the TV version that are no where to be found in the book(s). It's a different story all together when that happens and it's also a bit of a bummer if you've read the books.

While I think most would agree that there are nuances in books that cannot be captured on the screen, it is often best to have read the books before seeing the film version. That way the viewer has all the pertinent knowledge about the characters/plot and can fill in the blanks when watching the movie.

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[jumpingjunkie09 0]

I too read all of the "Bourne" books long before the movies were ever thought of, and I have to agree with you. I dont think I've ever been so disappointed with a movie in my life. I was actually pissed off after watching it! I was expecting it to be sub-par compared to the books, but they took it to a whole new level for me. I never even saw the sequels to the Bourne Identity. I got a lot more satisfaction just from re-reading the books. Robert Ludlum is still one of my all time favorite authors.

I am "ROGUE" (III Degree Smutsketeer)
Official "poster above you" thread starter

"And don't forget we like men with balls and no needle dicks. So, basically, you're out." ~LuckyMcSwervy

[downwardspiral 0]

Quote

it is often best to have read the books before seeing the film version. That way the viewer has all the pertinent knowledge about the characters/plot and can fill in the blanks when watching the movie.

If I haven't read a book prior to the movie release, I'll watch the movie first so it's not ruined by pertinent knowledge and since generally the books are better than the movies.

www.FourWheelerHB.com