Movies that vary from the book for no reason

[Red Panda]

Over the wekend I finished reading Sometimes a Great Notion for the second time. Absolutly amazing book, my second favorite of all time. Yesterday I got a chance to watch the movie so I did.

One thing I noticed right away is there were scenes taken straight from the book, which seemed like a good sign, even if they were out of order. However a few things became very clear.

1. The characters pretty much all had very differant personalities.

2. The philosophies concerning strength and weakness held by Hank and Lee were completly absent, which is dissaponting because not only do these drive the character development and motivation of the characters but without them these characters barely have any conflict.

3. Lee's revenge plot is also completly absent. This is a major part of his character and his entire motivation for even being in the story. Without it he basically has nothing to do. He is one of two main characters in the book and they made it so he could be written out of the movie with little changing.

4. Spoilers


The entire tone of the ending was changed. In the book Hank completly gives up and is beaten down. Then after finally being pushed too far by Lee and the union members he decides to make a dangerous trip down the river with his logs without any help in the middle of a storm. Lee joins him because he doesn't want his brother to outshine him anymore and to prove his own strength. The book ends with them setting off on a probable suicide mission

In the movie they bring the logs down the river together, but without much motivation to do so, without the dangerous storm, and the entire thing is shown to be pretty easy and just an "F you" to the town rather then the last ditch effort of an desperate man to prove that he can't be made to back down. Its enfuriating that they changed something so powerful into something so pointless.

In fact the entire movie was changed from something powerful to something pointless. They could have changed the name and the characters and saved money on licensing the dumb thing. So much is differant that if it weren't for the scenes taken ver baiten from the book it wouldn't even be recognizable.

[Plaidman]

Lots of movies do that.

One flew over the cukoo's nest, The Postman, MASH spring to mind as a few I can remember at top of my head that had ether minor differenecs, or in case of the Postman, had NOTHING but a small part in common. (in the book/film the only same thing is he finds a postman uniform. In movie, brings people to gether fights the army. In movie, fights against super computer that belives it's god).

[AdminAssistant]

Storylines change for lots of reason, usually having to do with either making money or "improving" the original. I haven't read the original books, but I heard a lot of people complain about the editing in the LOTR movies. Thing is, they have to do some cutting. Those movies were already over 3 hours long, and that's pushing it for a modern film audience. Or, they cast a major star and they want to make sure he or she's seen in the proper light. Books and film are very different media, and sometimes changes have to be made in order for the film to work.

[crashhelmet]

This is my second biggest beef about movies. The first being crappy writing.

In fictional serieseseseses(sp?) like the Harry Potter series, they took vital plot elements and assigned them to other characters or took them completely out. Don't even get me started on the Jurassic Park series.

In non-fictional conversions, they change the story and it technically becomes fiction. The movie The Blind Side was like this. In real life, Michael Oher lived with the Tuohy family for 3 years, playing football and basketball. He was the same grade as their daughter. The movie portrayed it as less than 1 year, football only, and that he was a year ahead of their daughter.

I could understand taking creative liberty with a legend or "rebooting" an older story, but some of this other crap is ricockulous.

CH

[Cassandra]

Wow, I'm about to agree completely with Red Panda....weird...

This is the reason why I try not to watch movies based on books. Especially if I've read the book. So far the only movies that have stayed as true to the books as possible in my mind are Interview With the Vampire and the Harry Potter movies. The one movie that totally pissed me off by trying to say that it was based on the book was Queen of the Damned.

That whole movie was basically someone skimmed through The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned, highlighted a few things from that scan, and made a movie out of it. The characters were completely off, they even missed the one character's twin sister who was really important in the book. The plot made no sense. The acting was okay at best. The only thing that kept me in my seat at the theater, other than me paying to see it, was the soundtrack.

Interview with the Vampire was much better adapted from the book, simply because Anne Rice actually was consulted for the production. Harry Potter stayed very true to the books for the first three, then the books became so long that they had to start cutting out some of the less important stuff just so that the movie wasn't six or seven hours long, but they still got most of the more important info.

[crashhelmet]

While the Potter movies were close, they changed things that didn't need to be. Like taking crucial plot points from Dobby to give to Neville Longbottom in Goblet of Fire, or changing who the squealer was and how they squealed in order of the Phoenix. There are others , but those are the first two that came to mind. It completely changes the characters and part of the storyline.

CH

[Greenday]

Storylines change for lots of reason, usually having to do with either making money or "improving" the original. I haven't read the original books, but I heard a lot of people complain about the editing in the LOTR movies. Thing is, they have to do some cutting. Those movies were already over 3 hours long, and that's pushing it for a modern film audience. Or, they cast a major star and they want to make sure he or she's seen in the proper light. Books and film are very different media, and sometimes changes have to be made in order for the film to work.

Also, some movies don't make as much sense if they do it directly as in the book since in books, you can read people's thoughts making it easier to understand. For movies, they have to add stuff to explain it all.

And yea, a lot of books would take FOREVER for a movie if you don't change anything.

[Red Panda]

I can understand the need to cut stuff, but you still need to get the feel of the book.


I think a great example of a movie that does it right is The Plague Dogs. They cut Digby Driver who is the most developed character in the book, but by doing so were able to take out half of the plot that didn't directly affect the dogs who were more important.

Spoilers



Although a side effect of that is Driver isn't there to put into action the events that save the dogs which leaves the ending alot more ambiguous and sad, which isn't even a bad thing.

[KnitShoni]

Exactly. People understand that some things will change when adapting a book into movie form. Where folks begin to get irritated is when, as sometimes happens, the only thing a movie has in common with the book it's "based on" is the title, and maybe character names.

[muses_nightmare]

This bothers me. I read a lot, so I mostly end up reading the books before the movies, the books are ALWAYS better. When they made Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klaus into a movie, they royally screwed with the story. In fact, the only things that were the same as the book were the names of some of the characters, the fact that they are werewolves, and the title. They even added in the fact that the main character works in a chocolate shop in order to overtly explain the title, because apparently that's what people need.

And yes, Queen of the Damned. The soundtrack was the only good thing about that movie.

I have heard they may make The Dark Tower series into movies, I'm both excited and scared of that happening (possibly more excited :P) I actually think it could be well done as a TV series, there is enough material there for a couple of seasons at least. but I digress.

[Racket_Man]

In fictional serieseseseses(sp?) like the Harry Potter series, they took vital plot elements and assigned them to other characters or took them completely out.
I could understand taking creative liberty with a legend or "rebooting" an older story, but some of this other crap is ricockulous.

CH

While the Potter movies were close, they changed things that didn't need to be. Like taking crucial plot points from Dobby to give to Neville Longbottom in Goblet of Fire, or changing who the squealer was and how they squealed in order of the Phoenix. There are others , but those are the first two that came to mind. It completely changes the characters and part of the storyline.

CH

you obviously have see the 1000's of posts on some of the HarryPotter boards. there are two camps (pro-movie and pro-book) and little inbetween

Half Blood Prince IMO was the worst one so far with "taking movie liberties" sooo much vital info/clues were left out and meaningless "stuff" put in place. a couple of the added scenes just did NOT make sense.

the one change they DID make in the HBP movie that I do agree with was the fish story told by Slughorn. better than the book and gave the scene far more emotional punch than the book

My daughter is a HP fan (though I am more into it than her) and she had just read HPB the book when we saw the movie last year. even she come out of the movie going HUH????? what was this??? what did that mean??? WHERE was X, Y, and Z??????

NOW that they have TWO entire movies to do Dealthly Hallows there is endless debates on how much "crap" they will stuff in there AND be able to tell the story in a manner where the non book audience will at least "get it".

[Ginger Tea]

Hello, first post and all (my last one got swallowed up in the I'm still new filter or something)
but hey ho

sometimes movies rework the original better, others are so abstract from the source that aside from the title and character names there is nothing remotely similar (wanted im looking at you).
V for Vendetta worked better in some parts on the big screen (and the book adaptation) than the original comic (or graphic novel if you insist, thats a whole different rant I might ps it at the end of this if I don't go on for too long ), originally as Great Britain had signed a nuclear peace treaty, we were never nuked and only had to worry about the fall out from europe, but other than that we were all hunky doory air quality wise.
Now as the movie was made post 9/11 and delayed a UK relese due to the july bombings, the theme of terrorists attacking with germ warfare was more relevant on the whole. And I liked Stephen Fry's character being the one Evey ran to instead of some random bloke whome she falls in love with and the least said about the prime minister and his love affair with the computer system the better .

I never knew constantine was based on the hellblazer comic book so I didn't go into the cinema expecting to be let down, to me it was an OK movie which could have been called anything and didnt need the hellblazer name behind it, especially as that was to draw the comic book audience to the movie and in doing so, pissed them right off.

Blade Runner Vs Do Androids Dream Of Electronic Sheep
having watched most cuts at some point in my life I cant say which is my fave, but it flows better on the screen, the book had too many redundant page fillers and priss and rory's deaths were far too quick, OK in the movie priss' fight was abruptly ended in an Indiana Jones moment, but it was longer than I recall the books, which was basically just a shooting, Rory comes in sees Priss gets pissed and shot mid charge. Anti climax much?
on the whole i compare the book and movie to reading the koran and watching Bible the movie, sure they are different things, but they both have the origin of man and one god/alah

Lynch's Dune is ok to watch, but as the story progresses over many years, It's not really shown and I originally thoguht the baby grew up to a child in a matter of weeks cos shes from another planet, I thought at the time they were aliens that looked like humans, not humans in the far future. whereas the TV show had the time to show all the little things Lynch left out, either intentionally didnt film or ended up on the cutting room floor.

Ok most of my examples stem from the comic book world and not books, but I have to admit I've not read a book in a while, I used to work 12 hours a day for a solid year so reading was low on my list, I could watch many movies in the time it would take me to read one good book, but I used to read alot more, I finished reading Ghostbusters the day we went to see it in the cinema and in my mind the large marshmallow blob that hit Walter Peck? was shaped like a London double decker bus, as "a blob the size of a bus lands on him", so I was a little dissapointed with that bit.

I'm intermittantly listening to the abridged audio book of "the girl with the dragon tattoo" and have the other parts as well as 6 Discworld books, although normally more expencive than the printed version I bought these relativly cheap and I can do other things whilst listening to the story, although they miss bits out being abridged and all, I can live with it as the movie will no doubt cut even more out.

Another reason I have for avoiding the printed word, is that they guy in the room downstairs from me uses old chapters as toilet paper

some books are over monologued and in the old PI movies, you would get minutes of monologue as the story unfolded on screen, but that doesn't work as well if ever in this day and age, so you have to have something blatant show up on screen for us to understand what is going on in his/her head

and here is my ps
Years ago alot of people used to diss comic books as just for kids, not taking into account the vertigo imprint with preacher transmetropolitan and Y the last man to name a few.
These stories would probably never make it to TV without heavy handed changes if they started out there and all are too long for just one movie, so like books that dont make it as a movie, it doesnt negate them having good stories and better characters and more plausability than the soaps most anti comics would watch.
Most would also say "ohh did you see batman yet?" you cant watch bat man "why not?" its a comic book and you hate comic books "oh its different its got heath ledger in it"

[Red Panda]

This bothers me. I read a lot, so I mostly end up reading the books before the movies, the books are ALWAYS better. When they made Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klaus into a movie, they royally screwed with the story. In fact, the only things that were the same as the book were the names of some of the characters, the fact that they are werewolves, and the title. They even added in the fact that the main character works in a chocolate shop in order to overtly explain the title, because apparently that's what people need.

And yes, Queen of the Damned. The soundtrack was the only good thing about that movie.

I have heard they may make The Dark Tower series into movies, I'm both excited and scared of that happening (possibly more excited :P) I actually think it could be well done as a TV series, there is enough material there for a couple of seasons at least. but I digress.

I'd like to see The Dark Tower as a mini series on HBO or Showtime. Someplace where it can get a good budget and not be restrained by censorship.

I say mini series because with just a tv series you run into the problem of it being successful and then they try to drag it on longer to get more episodes from it. I want there to be a set number of episodes so they can map out when events will happen ahead of time.

[muses_nightmare]

Yeah I meant to say mini series, but it would possibly be a very long mini series, or several, considering there are 7 books. And yes, HBO, or showcase or something along those lines would be the best place, because a regular station would just cut out the "inappropriate" stuff.

I heard awhile ago that they're possibly going to be making a series out of The Walking Dead Graphic Novel. The thought of a regular Zombie TV show excites me more than I'd like to admit.

[Racket_Man]

I'd like to see The Dark Tower as a mini series on HBO or Showtime. Someplace where it can get a good budget and not be restrained by censorship.

I say mini series because with just a tv series you run into the problem of it being successful and then they try to drag it on longer to get more episodes from it. I want there to be a set number of episodes so they can map out when events will happen ahead of time.

I am assuming Dark Tower by Steven King???? YES that would be a great limited # of episodes mini-series.

the one book I have seen that got turned into a GREAT detailed 3 episode movie/mini-series was Frank Herbetrt's original book Dune. The Sci-Fi (now called SyFy) channel did a fairly good job with the screen adaptation.

NOW I hear tell that someone else is going to remake DUNE again with a release date whenever