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Movies that ruin the book.

Sea Moose

Sea Moose

Diamond Member
I just read hitchhikers guide to the galaxy and the thought i would watch the movie. The movie sucked. Big time. It was only took small parts of the book. And they changed the context.


Name other movies where the book was awesome and the movie sucked
 
Starship Troopers.

Which is funny because Paul Verhoven claimed he wanted to make a political satire of how he saw the world at that point (1997), but he didnt read the book. He said he read one chapter, got bored, and tossed it.
Kinda sad because the whole book is about the politics and philosophy of being a soldier. Had Verhoven read it, the movie would have turned out much differently.
 
Like you said The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy is the first one that came to mind. The whole movie was terrible miscast. A six part BBC series of the book was much much better.

The next one that came to mind is Rosanne Barr's horrible The life and Time of a Shedevil.
 
Starship Troopers annoyed the hell out of me because the book is really good and the movie was horrific. Same with HGTTG. The Two Towers had some awful parts that really ruined it (Faramir acting opposite of how he does in the book, Aragorn falling off a cliff, Fangorn being wishy-washy, Elves at Helm's Deep, etc.). There are plenty of movies that differ from the books they're based on that are fine, but completely changing iconic characters is unacceptable.

The Eric Bana Hulk was pretty terrible, too.

Other movies off the top of my head:

How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Cat in the Hat
Garfield
I, Robot
Troy (some girl I know thinks this is an accurate depiction of the Illiad)
Eragon
Dune
 
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David Brin's novel the Postman is absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately, after the Kevin Costner abomination, no one will attempt a real adaption.

There was also Roger Zelazny's Damnation Alley...
they used several character names, and the general post-apocalyptic landscape that was in the book. Other than that, no resemblance.
 
darkxshade said:
movies that ruin books are easy to list... movies that didn't ruin books are less likely
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This. I can't think of any movies off the top of my head that were as good as the book...nor many that even were close.

LOTR was a good series of movies, but IMO, there was too much "artistic license" used in the making.
 
The Hunt for Red October.

I saw the movie first read the book in five days and then went to see the movie again with friends that came into town. At dinner I was telling them all of the things that were wrong with the movie.
 
Hannibal, the book was kick ass, but the movie neutered its so bad, it was not funny. I can't believe they took out he electric eel.
 
The Bourne movies absolutely ruin the books. Completely.

The movies don't suck, in fact they're really good and I enjoyed watching them. They just completely destroyed the premises of the books.
 
CoinOperatedBoy said:
You're implying that was a good book to begin with.
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It's an okay book for what it is...juvenile fantasy written by a juvenile. The movie was a tour de force of crap.

I agree with them Damnation Alley comment. Book was great, movie terrible. I still watch it every opportunity I get, though.
 
pretty much all of them, right?

I have to say that Hogfather and The Colour of Magic, based off the Discworld books of the same name, were pretty good representations.

The Sci-Fi Dune mini-series made me enjoy the books even more.
 
While I completely agree with many of the above, I would have to say it's pretty difficult to cram all that is "good" about a book in a 120 or so minute movie.

Not that this is an excuse, but sometimes changing the character a bit allows the story to develop much quicker than they do page after page in a book.
 
james1701 said:
Hannibal, the book was kick ass, but the movie neutered its so bad, it was not funny. I can't believe they took out he electric eel.
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Hannibal was a pretty mediocre book. The earlier ones were much better. I found that Hannibal read like a book that would be converted into a movie. Not much depth to it.
 
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