Book into movie

[Humphrey]

OK. We all know that if the upcoming movie was origonally a book it will most likely be horrible and be nuthing like the book itself. There are some exceptions (Andromeda strain, Jurassic park, The Right Stuff, and the Dune books) but overall this rule follows throught.


The most infamous example is Starship troopers. That was absolutely nuthing like the book.

Others off the top of my head that had little if no relation to the book they say they take credit from are: The lost world and Sum of all fears

Some will argue that the Lord of the rings movies take off in strange directions from the books, but i have not read them, so cannot comment.

So why do directors say they follow a book when it is obvious they have never read the book beyond the back cover?

We all know whay Verhoven took off from Troopers, but what about the other movies?

[snowcelt]

Books to movies are like comparing poems to songs.

A book is a feast and a movie is a desert.

A poem is a book and a song is a movie.

A feast is a book and a desert is a movie.

[captain swoop]

Books can leap off into all kinds of narrative directions and bring characters in and out that would just make a confusing movie. When reading you can leave and re-enter the main narrative strand in a way that would bring a movie to a jarring halt. Loops and side plots can be included and things done out of narrative order,detailed descriptions can be given that would grind a movie. Your brain makes sense of it and can pick up where it left off.

Movies also have time constraints but can benefit from fitting lots of description into just a few seconds of screen time, the old 'picture paints a thousand words' sort of thing.

Movies have to appeal to tyhe widest possible audience to make financial sense which at the end of the day is what the movie industry is and always was about.

[scotsman]

I agree that the Right Stuff captured the spirtit of the period from 1947 to 1964 and the spirit of the book

BUT there are a LOT of technical faults with the movie , these include;

A) Yeager left Edwards in 1951-2 to command a fighter wing in Hann Germany, and only returned to Edwards in the early 1960's to command the USAF Astronaut school, (graduates included Dave Scott)

b) Yeager didn't just jump into the X-1 and the following day break Mack 1, the was a long and painstaking pcocess of test flights leading upto the 17th of October Mach1 flight

There are other things I could pick out, (The Hawker Hunter looks nothing like the D558 Phase 2)

But it'll start to sound like nit picking, which is a pity since I love the movie

I just wish Tom wolfe had completed the story , and ended the book with the apollo 11 flight...

PS How many of you know that the eal Brig. Gen Charles Yeager is in the movie, (wizened old bartender in Pancho's!)

[Iain Lambert]

it will most likely be horrible and be nuthing like the book itself.

Once again I really feel that we need to remember that these are two completely different things. A film can stick to its book like glue, and be utterly without merit, and a film can wander off in a completely different direction and be a masterpiece.

Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? and Blade Runner are only loosely connected, and yet I'd happily praise both. More controversially, I think Verhoeven and Neumeier's Starship Troopers is a well-written and biting attack on Heinlein. Meanwhile, the likes of American Psycho and The Crow Road are for the most part accurate depictions of their sources and yet I wouldn't give them the time of day.

Of course, this isn't always the way either. Fight Club is an excellent example of a book that was improved on its journey to the screen without changing too much of the original's feel (yes, I know the end is quite different, but its just a more filmic adaptation of the feel of the original).

[Phreaky]

I always find myself buying adaptations of movies. The reason for this is that you get inside the characters heads and find out what they are thinking or some of the other side plots that expand on what you see in the movie. So I find that movies adapted into books to be quite enjoyable.

On the reverse, books into movies is a very difficult thing to do. Faithful adaptations usually aren't nearly as good as the source material. The director has to find ways to tell a good story in a much shorter period of time.

But I disagree with you about Starship Troopers being the least faithful adaptation. The Running Man only had one similarity with the book: the lead characters name.

[Humphrey]

Phreaky: I agree with movies into books. Some have been very good. I read the Novelization to Spiderman after the latest one came out. I enjoyed it much more than the movie,. IT filled in all of the plot holes.

[Ripper]

I am suprised that modern authors do not seem to make any effort to make their stories a little more movie ready. On the other hand, even some script writers do not take the realities of movie making into account and have to change things to make it work. In Jacobs Ladder there was a scene that included a view of the Void. They had to change the scene when one of the set designers asked for some guidence on what a void looked like. It kind of brought to mind the scene in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy when DA explained the the huge planet building room gave a better idea of infinity than infinity did because infinity just looked flat and black.

[Glom]

This was done here. Except the title was in plural.

[Humphrey]

Doh! Doh!

Sorry. :-(

[Iain Lambert]

I am suprised that modern authors do not seem to make any effort to make their stories a little more movie ready.

Actually, I'm really glad they don't. Michael Crighton's books all read far too much like film pitches to me, with little to no characterisation, and the whole plot balanced on one flimsy "Scientists might be able to do this, but it would be Bad if they did, ok. Nothing good will ever come from science" premise. Jurassic Park in particular struck me as a monumentally pointless read once I could watch Spielberg's superior film version instead.

[daver]

Jurassic Park in particular struck me as a monumentally pointless read once I could watch Spielberg's superior film version instead.

But in the book they kill off the mathematician (YAY!).

[Iain Lambert]

I'd forgotten that. How on Earth does the book of Lost World work then? I've never bothered reading it after how much I hated the first book in comparison to the film.

And for the record, yes I am one of the few people who adore the Lost World film, despite its many and varied flaws.

[informant]

So why do directors say they follow a book when it is obvious they have never read the book beyond the back cover?

Because they know it will draw some suckers into the theaters.

I don't think a film has to be just like the book it's based on to be a good adaptation. Blade Runner is an example of a good adaptation that strays from the original source, IMO. What the film adaptation should do is respect the source, and keep its main message, intent, themes, etc.
Many SF film adaptations are bad because they do neither of that. You can tell that they're made with the attitude that the book was "only science fiction, anyway", and so it needs to be "revamped", "sexed up", or whatever. In other words, the people who make the film think they know better than the author of the book, but they don't.

[daver]

I'd forgotten that. How on Earth does the book of Lost World work then? I've never bothered reading it after how much I hated the first book in comparison to the film.

He pulled a Mark Twain ("The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated"). Copout--the only thing the book did right and he backed off.

[stelmosfire]

The worst idea I've heard of in years for an SF film is this one for (apparently) condensing Foundation and Second Foundation into a film version. The original "Foundation" series, because it involves a large number of characters over a period of three centuries, would seem to be the least imaginable work for successful transferral to film. I can't see any way this effort would be anything but a total disaster.

[informant]

I agree that it's a bad idea for a film adaptation, but, after reading the article, I can't see why you say that they intend to condense the two novels.

P.S. No mention of Foundation and Empire! Bad sign?

[Humphrey]

I am suprised that modern authors do not seem to make any effort to make their stories a little more movie ready.

Actually, I'm really glad they don't. Michael Crighton's books all read far too much like film pitches to me, with little to no characterisation, and the whole plot balanced on one flimsy "Scientists might be able to do this, but it would be Bad if they did, ok. Nothing good will ever come from science" premise. Jurassic Park in particular struck me as a monumentally pointless read once I could watch Spielberg's superior film version instead.

See i disagree with the Jurassic park book comment. I felt that it was very well done. It is one of my favorite by him. Now if you mentioned Prey, Timeline, or Airframe (the latter two i both liked) i would agree with you.

But i think you are reading more into his writing style than anything. If you read some of his first novels, you will see that it is his style to write like it could be turned into a movie. A case of need is a good example.




I will concede that the movie version of Jurassic park was changed in certain placed to in my mind make it more PC. Grant turning on the power changes to Ellie. Lex being a nervous anoying brat and Tim being the dino and computer expert goes to Lex being a computer expert and tim staying the dino kid.

[Phreaky]

Don't forget the ever present Steven Spielberg theme of father's that don't care about their kids. Much more emphasized in the movie than the book.

[Iain Lambert]

"Hey, its a Unix system! I know this!" - brilliant, though possibly not intentionally so.

You're right that its basically Crichton's style to write like that. Don't forget that he first really came to prominence as the writer of films like Westworld and by directing The Andromeda Strain, so he clearly thinks in film terms. Its just that I feel that many of his books work better as screenplays rather than novels, even (perhaps especially) when it is Crichton doing the first draft.

[gethen]

Personally, I think trying to make a movie into an exact copy of a book is a mistake. In the first Harry Potter movie they devoted one scene to each chapter, more or less, and I felt it made for an unnecessarily slow movie. A little judicious editing would have helped.

[Phreaky]

Another great example was the miniseries for Stephen King's It. They tried to follow the book religiously and it just made the series plod along. Abrupt changes in storyline are much easier to follow on the page than on the screen. The Stand also failed in this respect, but not quite as badly as It did.

[mike alexander]

Foundation stories as a movie? How? The action is mainly verbal/intellectual. The stories are episodic (How not? they were published as episodes, mostly).

But I would like to see A Canticle for Liebowitz done as a movie.

[Iain Lambert]

Actually, Stephen King is pretty much the defining example of why movies shouldn't follow books. Almost certainly the best adaptation of a Stephen King story, Kubrick's The Shining, is disliked by King himself; he prefers the frankly dire miniseries version, simply because it is closer to the book.

[Phreaky]

Artists are very protective of their works. That's why you get Anne Rice complaining about Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in Interview With The Vampire and Stephen King preferring the miniseries adaptations to the movies. Both were wrong, considering the publics acceptance of those versions of their work. IWTV was an excellent movie, very successful in the theaters and IT and The Stand were horrible. I never saw the miniseries adaptation of The Shining, but I honestly don't see how it could equal or better the Kubrick version.

In Anne Rice's defense, she liked the movie once she saw it.

[mike alexander]

They could take Tom Clancy's book and rewrite the script for a hero who is deathly afraid of mathematics:

The Fear of all Sums

[SeanF]

They could take Tom Clancy's book and rewrite the script for a hero who is deathly afraid of mathematics:

The Fear of all Sums

I once referred to the Reader's Digest Condensed version as A Partial Sum.