By now, fans of Artemis Fowl have had almost a full day to really feel the sting of a terrible adaptation. We’ve all been there.
I’m going to keep today’s Saturday Free-For-All short, like we started, especially since I’ve sent you some book-length e-mails this week.
Basically, my question to you is this: what’s the most disappointed you’ve ever been by an adaptation of something? Were you a massive fan of the animated version of Avatar: The Last Airbender who was seated front row center opening day for the Shyamalan film? A Ghost in the Shell fan left baffled by Scarlett Johansson’s version? Or are you a full-blown Battlefield Earth stan, still bitter because of what those rotten man-animals did with that movie?
As always, you don’t have to stay on-topic. You can use this space to talk about anything. Just be good to each other.
The Saturday Free-For-All is totally free. If you want to subscribe to the newsletter, it’s just $7 a month, and it’s even less if you go annual!
Dark Tower, huge fan of the books. Movie had a great cast and what looked like Stephen King's blessing, so I went in with high hopes. Halfway through the movie, I turned and apologized to my wife that I had dragged along to that terrible movie
Woo boy. There have been more than a few. The Hobbit comes to mind, especially because The Lord of the Rings was done so well as an adaptation of a nigh-on-impossible-to-adapt three-part novel. They could've made two great 2.5 hour movies out of The Hobbit, but Warners got greedy and wanted a trilogy and it never worked. I have this irrational hope that for the tenth anniversary next year Warners will allow Peter Jackson to re-edit his footage into the two films they were supposed to be: "An Unexpected Party" and "There and Back Again." Sorry Evangeline Lily, but you're gone and so is most of Orlando Bloom. Get rid of Bard's kids. Get rid of almost all of the non-Bilbo point of view stuff, including the majority of the White Council scenes. Get rid of most of the Azog crap. It's possible to take what's there and make two very good movies out of that mess. Given the passion of Ringers, I'm surprised there's no movement a la Release the Snyder Cut.
I know I just made a case for why The Hobbit would be the adaptation that hurts the most, but it isn't, not for me. For me, that would be the adaptation of my favorite superhero to the silver screen: Green Lantern.
Yikes. Where to begin? With Geoff Johns having close involvement with that movie, what should have been good went bad from the beginning because it's obvious Johns was basing the Hal in the movie on the upcoming New 52 reboot version of Hal, which the jackass, arrogant, Maverick-like, quippy fighter jock, and not the previous, far-better version of Hal, which is the smooth, confident, professional fighter jock. I hate the New 52 because there was no need for it, and because the changes they made to almost every character was worse than what they were. Hal being one of the worst. While the New 52 version of Hal works with Ryan Reynolds the actor, the script did him no favors in that he was never able to overcome being a jackass to then become likable. Also, as a character, Hal doesn't quit. It's not in his character, and they have him quit after being on Oa for like 10 minutes. It's an insult to fans and to the character. Hal is the type of character who would rather die than quit. They should've made Sinestro into the Lou Gossett, Jr. character from An Officer and a Gentleman, who pushes Hal over the edge to get him to quit because he thinks he's trash, but Hal, like Mayo, has nowhere left to go.
Martin Campbell may have made a great Zorro film, a decent Bond film, and a trash Zorro film, but he was the absolute wrong guy to make a sci-fiction comic book film where the superpower is only limited by imagination. JJ Abrams would've been great, coming off of Star Trek. In retrospect given how much I love Iron Man Three, Shane Black would've also been great. I hope Warners, which has an existing relationship with him, hires Black to write and direct the "Lethal Weapon in Space" version of a Green Lantern Corps movie with Hal Jordan and John Stewart.
Hal Jordan in 2011 should've been Nathan Fillion, or in a shoot for the stars type of casting, Matt Damon. Now, in a 2020's version of the character who has to train a young, angry former active duty Marine veteran John Stewart, he can still be Nathan Fillion, or in a shoot for the stars type of casting, Tom Cruise. John Stewart should be Michael B. Jordan. Except no substitute.
And please, as the man once said, "Please don't make [his] super-suit... animated."
On a different note, one of the things I dislike most when it comes to literary adaptations are people whose lone critique of the film is, "It's nothing like the book," or, "The book was better."
It's called an ADAPTATION for a reason, people! We should judge the movie on its own merits, and understand some changes must be made to fit the narrative of a novel, which can include the POV character's unspoken thoughts, into the narrative of a film.
I remember when The Firm came out in the mid-90's. It's a taut thriller-drama with one of Cruise's most underrated performances. The one thing I remember about its release were how even critics would point out where it was different from the book as if that's enough of a critique. I liked The Firm well-enough as a book, but I liked the film for what it was even more than that. Also, it has Tom Cruise running as only Tom Cruise can (at a dead sprint for what seems like miles), so it is amazing.
Zack Snyder's "Watchmen" is my classic example of a film that gets all the plot and surface look right and completely gets the tone wrong. Watching that in the IMAX at Universal City it felt distinctly distressing to be with an audience that was being hyped up over the violence rather than drawn into one of the great narratives.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a huge disappointment for me. My absolute favorite book, I was absolutely gutted at the film adaptation. The casting of Martin Freeman gave me hope, as he is kind of perfect for Arthur, and I had high hopes for Sam Rockwell as Zaphod, but it was just all over the map in how it got the tone of Douglas Adams wrong. And don't even get me started on the half-assed "flip-top-head" Zaphod double-head abomination. Huge disappointment.
I posted it on the remake thread already (i.e. I would remake THIS terrible adaptation)...
Johnny Mnemonic. I think what's most frustrating about it is that the PIECES were all there. Keanu Reeves was PERFECT for the title role (I wonder if that influenced the Wachowskis for The Matrix). The movie's visualization of cyberspace was actually pretty good, even though in the short story cyberspace isn't featured. As I said in the other thread, it was as if the studio or whomever was afraid they'd NEVER be able to adapt another Wm. Gibson story, and decided to pull good bits from other places.
And of course the erasure of Molly. Dina Meyer would've made a good Molly, but that's NOT the character on screen.
It may never come out, but I'm dreading the many-years-delayed Chaos Walking adaptation, even as someone who likes most of Doug Liman's movies. Casting Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley as characters who are 13 in the books should probably have been the first warning sign. Casting Kurt Sutter in an acting role probably should have been another.
THE PRINCE OF TIDES. As someone who grew up in the South and unabashedly loved that book, it was the wrong perspective. Nick Nolte was a right choice among the candidates at the time, but the story choices were wrong.
I was a massive fan in childhood of Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books. Tracking down the Disney DARK CAULDRON took some effort back then. It was ... very much not worth it. There are plenty of mediocre-to-bad animated versions of children's fantasy (I'm thinking of the 1991 PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN) but the Disney track record and my love of the story raised my expectations well beyond what that film could meet.
I feel like everybody should have a favorite John Irving book. It doesn't have to be (what you think is) his best book - just your favorite. For me, it's The Hotel New Hampshire. The sprawling tale of an odd family getting through life made a certain tone when it rang my bell, and I'll always hold it in greatest esteem.
The movie had to telescope the book tremendously, making for much lost detail and many rushed sequences where you had to here the quickly-shouted dialogue to get the gist of what was going on. But there were many other bothersome details - Rob Lowe being prettier than Jodie Foster; Wilford Brimley's saying "We're screwed down for life" in defeat rather than in celebration, losses that felt empty, overly dramatic musical stings, speeded-up footage meant to increase laughs and coming across as Benny Hill-wannabe... It felt like every choice was the wrong choice, and those wrong choices just kept piling up.
There have been plenty of good adaptations of John Irving's novels, so it's not like they couldn't have done it right. Now that he's faded from the zeitgeist, it's looking like it never will. But hell - at least the book's still out there.
How about a bad adaptation of bad source material? The second Jack Reacher movie was not very good, but they chose to adapt one of the lesser books which was baffling to me.
The 2009 Watchmen film. Some good things in it, like Dr Manhattan and The Comedian. But so many terrible decisions. Every character is ten years younger for no reason, when mid-life crisis is a central theme in the book. Malin Akerman being clueless about her character. The superpowered , utracool fight scenes. Dan and Laurie gleefully murdering those muggers.
For me, it's when King is adapted for TV. THE STAND is my favorite book. It's the first novel I ever read cover to cover that wasn't assigned to me in school. And I read the unabridged. That book lived in my brain when I read it like nothing else I've ever read in my lifetime. I was excited for the ABC mini-series but was so thoroughly underwhelmed and disappointed with it that I didn't even make it to the conclusion. I know there are people who love that mini-series, but I don't think you can do R-rated King at a PG level. There's teeth that get lost in the rush to tone it to down. I know they are making a mini-series of it again and I'm hopeful for that. I would love to see a great adaptation of my favorite book.
The other King adaptation that was rough for me was THE SHINING ABC mini-series. I am obsessed with the Kubrick version. I knew King hated that version. I was also excited to see him answer Kubrick by showing us his version of this great story and it was just so "meh". There's a lot of reasons and it being a toned-down ABC mini-series doesn't help -- I'm sure people were doing solid work in that mini-series, but Kubrick's adaptation is built into our bones once we see it. Seeing someone else try to do THE SHINING straight without the Kubrick cast and tone feels like seeing a community theater production of HAMILTON and comparing it to the Broadway cast. Sure, it's all up there and stage, and everyone is trying their hearts out, but there's no comparison.
My all time favorite novel is Mark Helprin’s “Winter’s Tale.” Unfortunately, this was also a book so beloved by Akiva Goldsman, he decided to adapt the story and make it his feature directorial debut. Goldsman is the MVP of adapting beloved properties into infuriating schlock. Dark Tower, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, I Am Legend, I, Robot, Star Trek: Picard. He adapted those Robert Langdon Da Vinci Code movies, too, but at least those started as schlock.
I can’t tell you the emotional whiplash I went through going from learning that “Winter’s Tale” was getting a movie adaption to moments later learning Akiva Goldsman was attached to write and direct.
I’m being disingenuous in writing this post. I never watched the film. The reviews came in. They were exactly what I feared. I can’t put myself through that pain.
Honestly, I do not get to enough media before the film to be able to see how the adaptation is. That said, "Congo" was one that rightly disappointed me, even before you discuss the lackluster production values. While I wish "The Hobbit" had only been two movies, or even one long one, I felt like the original story was well served.
I hope everyone is doing well and staying safe. My wife and I just finished a binge of "Bones," and I've watched "Rad" twice this week, as well as my second Jesus Franco film. It's been a week.
The Bonfire of the Vanities is usually referred to as Exhibit A of a botched adaptation. The miscasting of Hanks, Willis and and even Morgan Freeman that mangles Wolfe's satiric characterizations DePalma's botched tone management of the dark comedy immediately come to mind. It all dies on the screen. "Devil's Candy" is a solid exhumation of the corpse.
DUNE the Lynch theatrical version. Great production and costume design, but the meat of the story is too rushed. Should've been broken up to properly develop the story threads.
Probably the biggest disappointment I've had is the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom of the Opera" (a musical that's actually not a bad adaptation of the book). It was kind of my "Phantom Menace" in that I was pretty generous to it initially, especially after how long the wait for it was, but the bloom came off the rose within a few months. Lindsay Ellis' video essay on why the film doesn't work the way the show does is a good summation of the general issues it has, though I would add that it's way too interested in being a Proper, Oscar Baity film to be what it actually is -- a fun melodrama that leans into the shadows, not out of them. Actually, that could be said of a lot of movies that are trying to merge romance and horror/the monstrous; most of them are too timid, too willing to water things down. (The greatest exception to this rule is Cronenberg's "The Fly", of course.)
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Great book turned into a terrible awards-bait muddle. Great cast, looked great but just... off. The script hit the story beats but didn’t seem to get what made the book work. And Nic Cage’s accent? Blimey. I can see why they changed the ending, but the one they went with? Not good. The Time Traveller’s Wife was another big disappointment for me, so glad to see that Steven Moffat is having another crack at it. Mind you, it’s only fair given how much he’s - ahem - borrowed from it over the years.
Peter Jackson's adaptation of "The Hobbit". I had misgivings about "An Unexpected Journey" because it turned Thorin into the protagonist and relegated Bilbo to an "Ishmael"-esque third person narrator, but I could roll with it. Then I saw "Desolation of Smaug" after being inundated for a year and a half with Warner Brothers' "We discovered we had enough footage for three movies" horseshit lie of a PR campaign and came out feeling like I'd been sodomized with a hot poker.
I'm not exactly sure what pissed me off the most:
The fact that the film is three hours and seven minutes and the characters don't accomplish anything other then to meander from the end of "An Unexpected Journey" to the start of "The Battle of Five Armies".
That the much vaunted "Strong Female Character" was essentially the corner stone of an insipid and stale love triangle *invented by the screenwriters* that made the Twilight books look like a thoughtful meditation on teenage romance.
The ham-fisted call backs to the Lord of the Rings, everything from Legolas discovering a pocket photo of Gimli, to the laser light show that tried to turn Tauriel into discount Arwen.
The fact that the film was so clearly slapped together at the last minute that they didn't even bother to construct a proper denouement and instead randomly cut to black Sopranos style.
The fact that there's not even a thematic point to any of it, it's just a bunch of random stuff that happens.
I've loved the original novel since I was a teenager and the soundtrack to the animated movie since well before that. Even now, just talking about it, it's taking everything I've got to make sure this post doesn't devolve into a defamatory screed against Peter Jackson and co. If it was simply a matter of making different creative choices then I would've done, then I could make peace with that, but the second film is such a blatant cash grab that I was out for blood when I left the theater.
I loved Transformers as a kid. Hated the film and its sequels. It made me angry at the time. Transformers and Starwars have taught me not to be bothered by that stuff so much. So for that, I grateful. :)
The adaptation of Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher was one that left me feeling ill afterwards. For a book that I actually loved and acknowledged would be a challenge to adapt, it deserved better than what we got. Imagine what Andy Muschietti could’ve done with that material if they had just waited.
For something that I still enjoy even though I know many who don’t, Zack Snyder’s Watchmen did so many things right for me that I was just impressed he pulled it off the way that he did.
Hey, I’m also good with waiting for Antlers to get some kind of proper release. The short story packed a massive punch, and from the look of the trailers so far, I’ve got realistic expectations that it’ll come close.
Probably the saddest for me was Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I'm a big Narnia fan, and thought the 2005 adaptation of the first book in the series was wonderful, magical. Then Prince Caspian made some odd choices and had me giving side eye. But then Dawn Treader (my favorite book in the series) went completely off the rails with a new plot line and motivations absent in the original story, and all that was basically left was a handful of greatest hits from the book. Occasionally it even stuck the landing, like in the final scenes. I wasn't surprised, though, when the series ground to a halt after that one, though. It needed to be filmed as the ambling travel story the way it was written, not as yet another quest story. Bittersweet, for sure.
I gotta say, returning to 1999's THE HAUNTING after finally reading Shirley Jackson's 'Haunting of Hill House' was astonishing. Especially as, three unnecessary characters and a handful of unnecessary scenes aside, the first half seemed to be going okay. Neeson's a different direction for the Doctor, sure, but Taylor, Zeta-Jones and Wilson were spot-on casting, and the monstrous house is a marvel of creepy-ass production design... and then, everything falls apart. EVERYTHING. As the barrage of CGI nonsense and dumb, screamingly ineffective ghost-train "frights" is hurled at us, I could only sit there baffled as to how filmmakers so thoroughly misunderstand - or, possibly more likely, wilfully ignore - what made a book so great... ESPECIALLY WHEN IT HAD BEEN ADAPTED SO WELL BEFORE. "Yeah, I know Jackson's all about loneliness and psychosis and projecting your inner turmoil into outer phenomena, but what this really needs are more giant grabby CGI hands and stuff falling over. Because the house is ALIVE, yo." Jesus christ, does this movie shit the bed. I hated it in '99, but I really hate it now... even more so because they had the actors, technicians and sets to make it work.
Heh, same answer as the previous Adaptation topic: World War Z. For me, it’s the pinnacle of bad adaption. They took everything interesting and fresh about Max Brooks’s Book, removed it and made an incredibly run of the mill, forgettable disaster movie. Hopefully, someone else will have a go at adapting it properly sometime in the future.
One of my standouts was the adaptation of Nick Hornby's 'A Long Way Down'. While the film isn't an outright trainwreck, it felt ironically rather lifeless. Given the successes with 'High Fidelity' (twice now), 'About a Boy' (kinda twice with the uneven TV series), 'Fever Pitch' (also twice), and 'Juliet, Naked', it's sad to me that this film didn't soar as well. The novel is my fave of Hornby's. Would love to see someone else tackle it at some point.
The most important creative piece of art that’s been my lifelong obsession since I was 12 (will be 40 this year) is.....The Dark Tower. Yeeaaaaaaah. Devastated.
I really wanted Warcraft to be good, but the issue there was that it was EXACTLY like the source material, and Warcraft is just not a well made story. I have no idea why the decision was made to literally begin with the actual first game in the series, given that none of the characters from it have any development and it's the series at its most generic, and the movie goes to lengths to recreate the very surface level writing of the originals. At least the focus on Orcs and Humans kept it from bringing in the more racist elements of the games.
Dark Tower, huge fan of the books. Movie had a great cast and what looked like Stephen King's blessing, so I went in with high hopes. Halfway through the movie, I turned and apologized to my wife that I had dragged along to that terrible movie
Woo boy. There have been more than a few. The Hobbit comes to mind, especially because The Lord of the Rings was done so well as an adaptation of a nigh-on-impossible-to-adapt three-part novel. They could've made two great 2.5 hour movies out of The Hobbit, but Warners got greedy and wanted a trilogy and it never worked. I have this irrational hope that for the tenth anniversary next year Warners will allow Peter Jackson to re-edit his footage into the two films they were supposed to be: "An Unexpected Party" and "There and Back Again." Sorry Evangeline Lily, but you're gone and so is most of Orlando Bloom. Get rid of Bard's kids. Get rid of almost all of the non-Bilbo point of view stuff, including the majority of the White Council scenes. Get rid of most of the Azog crap. It's possible to take what's there and make two very good movies out of that mess. Given the passion of Ringers, I'm surprised there's no movement a la Release the Snyder Cut.
I know I just made a case for why The Hobbit would be the adaptation that hurts the most, but it isn't, not for me. For me, that would be the adaptation of my favorite superhero to the silver screen: Green Lantern.
Yikes. Where to begin? With Geoff Johns having close involvement with that movie, what should have been good went bad from the beginning because it's obvious Johns was basing the Hal in the movie on the upcoming New 52 reboot version of Hal, which the jackass, arrogant, Maverick-like, quippy fighter jock, and not the previous, far-better version of Hal, which is the smooth, confident, professional fighter jock. I hate the New 52 because there was no need for it, and because the changes they made to almost every character was worse than what they were. Hal being one of the worst. While the New 52 version of Hal works with Ryan Reynolds the actor, the script did him no favors in that he was never able to overcome being a jackass to then become likable. Also, as a character, Hal doesn't quit. It's not in his character, and they have him quit after being on Oa for like 10 minutes. It's an insult to fans and to the character. Hal is the type of character who would rather die than quit. They should've made Sinestro into the Lou Gossett, Jr. character from An Officer and a Gentleman, who pushes Hal over the edge to get him to quit because he thinks he's trash, but Hal, like Mayo, has nowhere left to go.
Martin Campbell may have made a great Zorro film, a decent Bond film, and a trash Zorro film, but he was the absolute wrong guy to make a sci-fiction comic book film where the superpower is only limited by imagination. JJ Abrams would've been great, coming off of Star Trek. In retrospect given how much I love Iron Man Three, Shane Black would've also been great. I hope Warners, which has an existing relationship with him, hires Black to write and direct the "Lethal Weapon in Space" version of a Green Lantern Corps movie with Hal Jordan and John Stewart.
Hal Jordan in 2011 should've been Nathan Fillion, or in a shoot for the stars type of casting, Matt Damon. Now, in a 2020's version of the character who has to train a young, angry former active duty Marine veteran John Stewart, he can still be Nathan Fillion, or in a shoot for the stars type of casting, Tom Cruise. John Stewart should be Michael B. Jordan. Except no substitute.
And please, as the man once said, "Please don't make [his] super-suit... animated."
On a different note, one of the things I dislike most when it comes to literary adaptations are people whose lone critique of the film is, "It's nothing like the book," or, "The book was better."
It's called an ADAPTATION for a reason, people! We should judge the movie on its own merits, and understand some changes must be made to fit the narrative of a novel, which can include the POV character's unspoken thoughts, into the narrative of a film.
I remember when The Firm came out in the mid-90's. It's a taut thriller-drama with one of Cruise's most underrated performances. The one thing I remember about its release were how even critics would point out where it was different from the book as if that's enough of a critique. I liked The Firm well-enough as a book, but I liked the film for what it was even more than that. Also, it has Tom Cruise running as only Tom Cruise can (at a dead sprint for what seems like miles), so it is amazing.
Zack Snyder's "Watchmen" is my classic example of a film that gets all the plot and surface look right and completely gets the tone wrong. Watching that in the IMAX at Universal City it felt distinctly distressing to be with an audience that was being hyped up over the violence rather than drawn into one of the great narratives.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a huge disappointment for me. My absolute favorite book, I was absolutely gutted at the film adaptation. The casting of Martin Freeman gave me hope, as he is kind of perfect for Arthur, and I had high hopes for Sam Rockwell as Zaphod, but it was just all over the map in how it got the tone of Douglas Adams wrong. And don't even get me started on the half-assed "flip-top-head" Zaphod double-head abomination. Huge disappointment.
I posted it on the remake thread already (i.e. I would remake THIS terrible adaptation)...
Johnny Mnemonic. I think what's most frustrating about it is that the PIECES were all there. Keanu Reeves was PERFECT for the title role (I wonder if that influenced the Wachowskis for The Matrix). The movie's visualization of cyberspace was actually pretty good, even though in the short story cyberspace isn't featured. As I said in the other thread, it was as if the studio or whomever was afraid they'd NEVER be able to adapt another Wm. Gibson story, and decided to pull good bits from other places.
And of course the erasure of Molly. Dina Meyer would've made a good Molly, but that's NOT the character on screen.
https://drewmcweeny.substack.com/p/remake-doesnt-have-to-be-a-dirty/comments#comment-204759
It may never come out, but I'm dreading the many-years-delayed Chaos Walking adaptation, even as someone who likes most of Doug Liman's movies. Casting Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley as characters who are 13 in the books should probably have been the first warning sign. Casting Kurt Sutter in an acting role probably should have been another.
THE PRINCE OF TIDES. As someone who grew up in the South and unabashedly loved that book, it was the wrong perspective. Nick Nolte was a right choice among the candidates at the time, but the story choices were wrong.
I was a massive fan in childhood of Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books. Tracking down the Disney DARK CAULDRON took some effort back then. It was ... very much not worth it. There are plenty of mediocre-to-bad animated versions of children's fantasy (I'm thinking of the 1991 PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN) but the Disney track record and my love of the story raised my expectations well beyond what that film could meet.
I feel like everybody should have a favorite John Irving book. It doesn't have to be (what you think is) his best book - just your favorite. For me, it's The Hotel New Hampshire. The sprawling tale of an odd family getting through life made a certain tone when it rang my bell, and I'll always hold it in greatest esteem.
The movie had to telescope the book tremendously, making for much lost detail and many rushed sequences where you had to here the quickly-shouted dialogue to get the gist of what was going on. But there were many other bothersome details - Rob Lowe being prettier than Jodie Foster; Wilford Brimley's saying "We're screwed down for life" in defeat rather than in celebration, losses that felt empty, overly dramatic musical stings, speeded-up footage meant to increase laughs and coming across as Benny Hill-wannabe... It felt like every choice was the wrong choice, and those wrong choices just kept piling up.
There have been plenty of good adaptations of John Irving's novels, so it's not like they couldn't have done it right. Now that he's faded from the zeitgeist, it's looking like it never will. But hell - at least the book's still out there.
How about a bad adaptation of bad source material? The second Jack Reacher movie was not very good, but they chose to adapt one of the lesser books which was baffling to me.
The 2009 Watchmen film. Some good things in it, like Dr Manhattan and The Comedian. But so many terrible decisions. Every character is ten years younger for no reason, when mid-life crisis is a central theme in the book. Malin Akerman being clueless about her character. The superpowered , utracool fight scenes. Dan and Laurie gleefully murdering those muggers.
For me, it's when King is adapted for TV. THE STAND is my favorite book. It's the first novel I ever read cover to cover that wasn't assigned to me in school. And I read the unabridged. That book lived in my brain when I read it like nothing else I've ever read in my lifetime. I was excited for the ABC mini-series but was so thoroughly underwhelmed and disappointed with it that I didn't even make it to the conclusion. I know there are people who love that mini-series, but I don't think you can do R-rated King at a PG level. There's teeth that get lost in the rush to tone it to down. I know they are making a mini-series of it again and I'm hopeful for that. I would love to see a great adaptation of my favorite book.
The other King adaptation that was rough for me was THE SHINING ABC mini-series. I am obsessed with the Kubrick version. I knew King hated that version. I was also excited to see him answer Kubrick by showing us his version of this great story and it was just so "meh". There's a lot of reasons and it being a toned-down ABC mini-series doesn't help -- I'm sure people were doing solid work in that mini-series, but Kubrick's adaptation is built into our bones once we see it. Seeing someone else try to do THE SHINING straight without the Kubrick cast and tone feels like seeing a community theater production of HAMILTON and comparing it to the Broadway cast. Sure, it's all up there and stage, and everyone is trying their hearts out, but there's no comparison.
My all time favorite novel is Mark Helprin’s “Winter’s Tale.” Unfortunately, this was also a book so beloved by Akiva Goldsman, he decided to adapt the story and make it his feature directorial debut. Goldsman is the MVP of adapting beloved properties into infuriating schlock. Dark Tower, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, I Am Legend, I, Robot, Star Trek: Picard. He adapted those Robert Langdon Da Vinci Code movies, too, but at least those started as schlock.
I can’t tell you the emotional whiplash I went through going from learning that “Winter’s Tale” was getting a movie adaption to moments later learning Akiva Goldsman was attached to write and direct.
I’m being disingenuous in writing this post. I never watched the film. The reviews came in. They were exactly what I feared. I can’t put myself through that pain.
Honestly, I do not get to enough media before the film to be able to see how the adaptation is. That said, "Congo" was one that rightly disappointed me, even before you discuss the lackluster production values. While I wish "The Hobbit" had only been two movies, or even one long one, I felt like the original story was well served.
I hope everyone is doing well and staying safe. My wife and I just finished a binge of "Bones," and I've watched "Rad" twice this week, as well as my second Jesus Franco film. It's been a week.
The Bonfire of the Vanities is usually referred to as Exhibit A of a botched adaptation. The miscasting of Hanks, Willis and and even Morgan Freeman that mangles Wolfe's satiric characterizations DePalma's botched tone management of the dark comedy immediately come to mind. It all dies on the screen. "Devil's Candy" is a solid exhumation of the corpse.
-pretty much all video game adaptations.
-Green Lantern
-Dark Tower
-World War Z
DUNE the Lynch theatrical version. Great production and costume design, but the meat of the story is too rushed. Should've been broken up to properly develop the story threads.
Probably the biggest disappointment I've had is the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom of the Opera" (a musical that's actually not a bad adaptation of the book). It was kind of my "Phantom Menace" in that I was pretty generous to it initially, especially after how long the wait for it was, but the bloom came off the rose within a few months. Lindsay Ellis' video essay on why the film doesn't work the way the show does is a good summation of the general issues it has, though I would add that it's way too interested in being a Proper, Oscar Baity film to be what it actually is -- a fun melodrama that leans into the shadows, not out of them. Actually, that could be said of a lot of movies that are trying to merge romance and horror/the monstrous; most of them are too timid, too willing to water things down. (The greatest exception to this rule is Cronenberg's "The Fly", of course.)
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Great book turned into a terrible awards-bait muddle. Great cast, looked great but just... off. The script hit the story beats but didn’t seem to get what made the book work. And Nic Cage’s accent? Blimey. I can see why they changed the ending, but the one they went with? Not good. The Time Traveller’s Wife was another big disappointment for me, so glad to see that Steven Moffat is having another crack at it. Mind you, it’s only fair given how much he’s - ahem - borrowed from it over the years.
Peter Jackson's adaptation of "The Hobbit". I had misgivings about "An Unexpected Journey" because it turned Thorin into the protagonist and relegated Bilbo to an "Ishmael"-esque third person narrator, but I could roll with it. Then I saw "Desolation of Smaug" after being inundated for a year and a half with Warner Brothers' "We discovered we had enough footage for three movies" horseshit lie of a PR campaign and came out feeling like I'd been sodomized with a hot poker.
I'm not exactly sure what pissed me off the most:
The fact that the film is three hours and seven minutes and the characters don't accomplish anything other then to meander from the end of "An Unexpected Journey" to the start of "The Battle of Five Armies".
That the much vaunted "Strong Female Character" was essentially the corner stone of an insipid and stale love triangle *invented by the screenwriters* that made the Twilight books look like a thoughtful meditation on teenage romance.
The ham-fisted call backs to the Lord of the Rings, everything from Legolas discovering a pocket photo of Gimli, to the laser light show that tried to turn Tauriel into discount Arwen.
The fact that the film was so clearly slapped together at the last minute that they didn't even bother to construct a proper denouement and instead randomly cut to black Sopranos style.
The fact that there's not even a thematic point to any of it, it's just a bunch of random stuff that happens.
I've loved the original novel since I was a teenager and the soundtrack to the animated movie since well before that. Even now, just talking about it, it's taking everything I've got to make sure this post doesn't devolve into a defamatory screed against Peter Jackson and co. If it was simply a matter of making different creative choices then I would've done, then I could make peace with that, but the second film is such a blatant cash grab that I was out for blood when I left the theater.
I loved Transformers as a kid. Hated the film and its sequels. It made me angry at the time. Transformers and Starwars have taught me not to be bothered by that stuff so much. So for that, I grateful. :)
The adaptation of Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher was one that left me feeling ill afterwards. For a book that I actually loved and acknowledged would be a challenge to adapt, it deserved better than what we got. Imagine what Andy Muschietti could’ve done with that material if they had just waited.
For something that I still enjoy even though I know many who don’t, Zack Snyder’s Watchmen did so many things right for me that I was just impressed he pulled it off the way that he did.
Hey, I’m also good with waiting for Antlers to get some kind of proper release. The short story packed a massive punch, and from the look of the trailers so far, I’ve got realistic expectations that it’ll come close.
Probably the saddest for me was Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I'm a big Narnia fan, and thought the 2005 adaptation of the first book in the series was wonderful, magical. Then Prince Caspian made some odd choices and had me giving side eye. But then Dawn Treader (my favorite book in the series) went completely off the rails with a new plot line and motivations absent in the original story, and all that was basically left was a handful of greatest hits from the book. Occasionally it even stuck the landing, like in the final scenes. I wasn't surprised, though, when the series ground to a halt after that one, though. It needed to be filmed as the ambling travel story the way it was written, not as yet another quest story. Bittersweet, for sure.
I gotta say, returning to 1999's THE HAUNTING after finally reading Shirley Jackson's 'Haunting of Hill House' was astonishing. Especially as, three unnecessary characters and a handful of unnecessary scenes aside, the first half seemed to be going okay. Neeson's a different direction for the Doctor, sure, but Taylor, Zeta-Jones and Wilson were spot-on casting, and the monstrous house is a marvel of creepy-ass production design... and then, everything falls apart. EVERYTHING. As the barrage of CGI nonsense and dumb, screamingly ineffective ghost-train "frights" is hurled at us, I could only sit there baffled as to how filmmakers so thoroughly misunderstand - or, possibly more likely, wilfully ignore - what made a book so great... ESPECIALLY WHEN IT HAD BEEN ADAPTED SO WELL BEFORE. "Yeah, I know Jackson's all about loneliness and psychosis and projecting your inner turmoil into outer phenomena, but what this really needs are more giant grabby CGI hands and stuff falling over. Because the house is ALIVE, yo." Jesus christ, does this movie shit the bed. I hated it in '99, but I really hate it now... even more so because they had the actors, technicians and sets to make it work.
Heh, same answer as the previous Adaptation topic: World War Z. For me, it’s the pinnacle of bad adaption. They took everything interesting and fresh about Max Brooks’s Book, removed it and made an incredibly run of the mill, forgettable disaster movie. Hopefully, someone else will have a go at adapting it properly sometime in the future.
One of my standouts was the adaptation of Nick Hornby's 'A Long Way Down'. While the film isn't an outright trainwreck, it felt ironically rather lifeless. Given the successes with 'High Fidelity' (twice now), 'About a Boy' (kinda twice with the uneven TV series), 'Fever Pitch' (also twice), and 'Juliet, Naked', it's sad to me that this film didn't soar as well. The novel is my fave of Hornby's. Would love to see someone else tackle it at some point.
The most important creative piece of art that’s been my lifelong obsession since I was 12 (will be 40 this year) is.....The Dark Tower. Yeeaaaaaaah. Devastated.
I really wanted Warcraft to be good, but the issue there was that it was EXACTLY like the source material, and Warcraft is just not a well made story. I have no idea why the decision was made to literally begin with the actual first game in the series, given that none of the characters from it have any development and it's the series at its most generic, and the movie goes to lengths to recreate the very surface level writing of the originals. At least the focus on Orcs and Humans kept it from bringing in the more racist elements of the games.