The Hobbit. Probably not the worst movies with not the worst bastardisation (that’d be The Dark Tower for me), but I simply can’t wrap my mind around the overbloated monstrosity that the Hobbit TRILOGY is. Like why would anyone do this, it felt like it’s in the bag, they got Peter Jackson, they already made LotR to great success, why do we suddenly need wacky wheels with cartoon CG goblins in 48 FPS for some reason… It doesn’t even match neither the tone of the book nor the tone of LotR movies.
The hobbit movies should have fleshed out the dwarf characters better with all that extra time, give each of them a substory spread out over the trilogy so they would be more memorable. They did that with only one of the dwarves and it’s a silly love triangle that barely goes into the character of said dwarf. With the movie we got, ask any average person directly after seeing the movies to name the dwarves, i bet hardly anyone can.
Not only does the love triangle not make sense, but it really only serves to erode the significance of friendship of Legolas and Gimli. They were supposed to be first friendship between an Elf and dwarf in a long time
Grumpy, Doc, Sneezy, I definitely forget the rest though.
IIRC the crushing of the Actors Union in NZ is what sidelined the dwarves.
Warner Bros didn’t want to make the Hobbit. They wanted to make another Lord of the Rings movie, and had to use the Hobbit for it. The Hobbit is very much NOT a Lord of the Rings story, despite the shared setting. Square book, round movie.
Also, they knew there wasn’t enough content, but Warner Bros had to split the profits of the first movie five ways. They didn’t have to do that for the second movie, and then they added a third to squeeze out even more.
Full CGI ruined the hobbit for me. The costume and make up work was so good in LotR. That and the whole movie operated as if in a physics-free zone. Nothing made sense.
I never watched the other two, I imagine they are just as bad.
See, I think the high frame rate would look great if what you were looking at was real. But what you’re looking at is a room of actors in nylon beards and Martin Freeman in rubber feet.
And where did the spare barrel come from?
Spare barrel? Bear in mind I have only actually seen the first of the Hobbit trilogy, and then later I watched the Tolkien Supercut, that cut out anything not at least alluded to in the book.
I think it’s in the second one. It’s hard to be sure when you’re vaguely remembering a 300 page children’s book inexplicably squeezed into three movies.
It’s the much hated GoPro barrel ride bit. All the dwarves have a barrel, there are no spares, Tim from The Office has to hang onto the side of one. The fat dwarf breaks his, and then after bouncing around like prequel Yoda, jumps into a spare that comes from nowhere.
I would think the version you saw just shows them all going into the water and coming out at the other end. It’s been a long time since I read it (close to 30 years), but I don’t remember any massive river battle going on.
They lost me at what they did to my boy Radagast.
Have you seen the early 90s Finnish Hobbit?
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Well of course I have! I put it on my Plex server, lol.
The 1970s animated The Hobbit is a good adaptation, also the Tolkien Supercut version of the live action movie is watchable.
In defense of The Dark Tower… it isn’t an adaptation of the books. It’s a sequel. It continues the story in a way in which Roland finally breaks the loop.
“I Am Legend” has been made into 3 or more movies, none of which have anything like the book’s ending.
The Last Man on Earth (1964) is dull and misses the point almost entirely, but almost manages the title line. Not quite.
The Omega Man (1971) is exciting and misses the point even further.
I Am Legend (2007) almost gets it. The vampires are competent. Will Smith’s smarter than Neville of the book, but crazier. But then both endings fail to treat the vampires as a society.
The original cut of the 2007 ended with Will Smith’s character realizing he had been abducting and murdering conscious, aware creatures. The ending has the vampires doing a rescue mission, visibly terrified of Smith, and then he allows the one he abducted to rejoin her society.
Test audiences apparently didn’t like it or didn’t understand it
Test audiences apparently didn’t like it or didn’t understand it
I read the book on a whim in high school. I think it was one of those random Barnes and Nobles finds. The ending was an amazing horror twist, with Neville realizing he’s the monster and the audience realizing that they’ve been rooting for the villain The whole time, and the acceptance of the transition to the new society.
The only adaptation I’ve seen was the Will Smith movie which was generic zombie movie nonsense.
Days Gone (the game) did a better job than the “I am legend” movie, imo. Approached a similar plot from a different angle.
I’m so upset they killed any sequel. Now we’ll never know what happens with O’Brien!
I agree! >:(
Were the zombies not killing any human in sight in the book?
They weren’t zombies, they were vampires in the book. Like talking, civilized people.
It’s funny the irony of I Am Legend, it is an allegory to an older society having to make way to a newer one, and somehow every time that’s the story they can’t do.
I only know of Will Smith version of “I am Legend”. There are more?
the 1964 one at least has vincent price in it
The Omega Man (1971) is exciting and misses the point even further.
Appropriate, as the star of that movie usually did too.
The many adaptations of the Iliad, none of them is gay enough.
somewhere in the distance, the Blue Oyster Salad Bar music starts playing
Easily “World War Z.” What an utter waste of the source material.
Related in name only. I loved the book and got curious about the movie.
What a boring useless mess of tropes. Brad Pitt travels the world and saves everyone. There, I just saved you 90 minutes.
It’s not even a bad movie. But it’s only very tangentially related to the source material.
Yeah I thought that too. I saw the movie before I’d read the book and I was like “that was fine, I dunno what everyone’s fussing about.” Then I read the book and was like “…oh.”
It’d be great to see the book done properly. I know everyone says it but a multi-part HBO-type show would be amazing.
would love to see it done as a mockumentary mini series, like it already has the format built in!
Possibly controversial, but I thought the movie version of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a huge disappointment.
Luckily there’s the radio series, books, TV show, comic, play, and game to get me through :-)
I partly expected that this particular movie would come up in such a thread, as most people seem to be quite disappointed by it. Sure it was different from what everyone expected, and it could have been much better. I still appreciate it though because, like all adaptations/versions of H2G2, it tells a slightly different story, with the same humour and satire that is characteristic of Douglas Adams. And the effects were quite nifty IMO. Too bad DNA did not live to see the completed film…
Luckily there’s the radio series, books, TV show, comic, play, and game to get me through :-)
Don’t forget the BBC TV series, it was not bad either ;-)
At least the easter egg with the old marvin from the bbc series was a nice touch
That was the TV show I meant :-)
Sorry, my bad :-)
It’s all hoopy, my frood :-)
Do you sass that hoopy itsraining? Now there’s a frood who knows where his towel is
I agree. Mos Def and Zooey Deschanel really didn’t pull their weight. Zaphod with only one head nearly the entire time was lame. The whole thing felt too “American” to me.
Bill Nighy was fantastic though.
Zooey was definitely meh, but Mos Def was amazing imho. Especially considering it was his first acting role iirc.
Mos was about 7 years into his acting career by that time.
He’s always good though.
Really? Wow. My bad, then. I must be confusing him for someone else, but i have no idea who.
It’s a mess of a movie, but it’s also the only version of the story where some bits of Adams’ original material actually ended up being seen — namely Humma Kavula and the Point-of-View Gun.
I’m just the opposite. I enjoyed the movie but not the book.
I’ve not read the book. I swear theres some weird curse on my copy, because every time I sit down to read it some major shit hits a fan.
But I loved the movie, and the only disappointing thing with regard to it is that it didnt do well enough to get the sequels made.
That was Catch-22 for me. Every time I had a free moment to read it, some random, horrible thing would happen. First, a garbage disposal exploded, next time my work truck ran into the back of a bus, and then finally I got fired from my job as an appliance installer for reading books on the job.
It was terrible!
I found the book over the top and a cringy “penguin of doom” “I’m so random” style of humour. I don’t get that series
I would imagine that it’s tough to go back to a book that defined humor for a generation of readers, spawning copycat jokes and stories across the world. Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog, per E.B. White, nobody is that interested and the frog dies. So I won’t go into why Adams’ writing is considered some of the funniest literature in modern history, but I will say two things:
First, none of it is actually random. It might seem random, but that’s just how it looks from your limited perspective. That’s part of the beauty in the stories, things come back around later. It’s a story centered around a literal improbability generator, and yet everything exists for a reason (even if that reason is to be a cosmic punchline).
Second, I would suggest you don’t compare it to the overwhelming number of pale imitations. There are famous, successful authors who learned to write humor reading the HGttG, and for every one of them there are thousands of untalented failures who think “lol so random” is all it takes to be funny. To complain about how Adams’ writing reminds you of stupid cliches is like complaining about how a Van Gogh painting looks like hotel art.
The last thing I’ll say is you don’t have to like the books. Taste is subjective, and you might not find the books funny. That’s OK. Read something that makes you laugh, makes you think, and makes you want to keep reading. But if you say you don’t understand why something is enjoyable to everyone else, you’re going to get long-winded rants from internet strangers who care very deeply about the thing you don’t understand. You don’t have to read those, either. I probably should have started with that bit.
Dude this is such a lame reply. I gave my personal opinion of the book and you wrote a whole condescending lecture of hand wavy arguments about how my opinion is apparently objectively wrong and then had the gall to follow it up with:
The last thing I’ll say is you don’t have to like the books. Taste is subjective, and you might not find the books funny
Yeah, no shit. I didn’t like the book and frankly I don’t need your permission to not like the book.
Except you didn’t say you didn’t like it, you said you didn’t get it, and proved you didn’t get it with an invalid criticism.
Hope the rest of your day is as pleasant as you are.
I found the book…
This is my opinion, I do not need you to validate my opinion. Surprised you managed to finish the book when you couldn’t be bothered to actually read my comment. Go be a condescending twat elsewhere.
Not a classic book, but Artemis Fowl. Disney managed to confuse fans of the books and newcomers to the series alike by adding a McGuffin that was unnecessary, bringing the antagonist from the second book into the movie on the first book, and mangling the relations between the two main protagonists beyond recognition.
Somewhere deep down I think I remember that book as great, the movie has to be horrible
Butler… is the comic relief.
oh god I remember this nightmare
I’ve been told that Artemis Fowl in the books is actually a nice and smart person. In the movie he comes across as an arrogant dick for a larger part.
Artemis Fowl was just bad, not just a bad adaptation. It was an incoherent mess. Felt like they left way too much on the cutting room floor for the finished product to make sense.
Starship troopers. I say this not because the movie is bad (it’s not, I think it’s exactly what it meant to be and did it well), but that the movie and the book are thematically opposites. The book is very pro military authoritarian. The movie is a satire of that.
Doesn’t that make it the BEST bastardization of the book then? :)
haha, yes, in some sense :D
Heinlein also claimed the book its “swiftian in intent” its just done dry. And probably wouldnt have been adapted well to tv.
That being said in the book it was clear carmencita was way out of jhonys league and he was very aware of that. While other heinlenian heroes are generally horny.
Another difference from the heinlenian hero is that jhony is not very smart. He lacks agency and any positive agenda. He just stumbles around.
‘Johnny lacks agency.’ Well, he was a brand new high school grad who thought owning an Olympic size pool was normal. He joins up because his buddy was going in, and then is too proud to quit.
Exactly. He just goes with the flow. No soul of his own. Just another cog in a fascist machine.
This is even more notisable when you compare him with other heninlein protagonists who are also teenagers and join the army or simmilar institutions. They have their own agendas and goals.
No one appears to have yet mentioned Forrest Gump. In the book he was a chess grandmaster who wrestled professionally and was an astronaut. Also, the book sucks.
I haven’t watched or read it. Are you saying the movie is better than the book in spite of bastardizing it?
Yip. Also, they were very slightly totally different.
I think the book was written to be satire and the movie is, uh, comedic but in a much less pointed way
Liberalism and Great Man Theory, name a more iconic pair.
the book as an audiobook is good
Forrest was a POS and he was a bum because he knew it!
I, robot.
Asimov: “The ‘robots take over the world’ plot is overdone. I think humans would make robots intrinsically safe through these three laws.”
Movie: “What if the robots interpreted the three laws in such a way that they decided to take over the world??!?”
The only good part of that movie was when Will Smith’s sidekick was like “this thing runs on gasoline! Don’t you know gasoline explodes?!”
A running theme of Asimov’s Robot stories is that the Three Laws are inadequate. Robots that aren’t smart and insightful enough keep melting down their positronic brains when they reach contradictions or are placed in irreconcilable situations. Eventually Daneel and Giskard come up with the Zeroth Law; and if I recall correctly they only manage that because Daneel is humaniform and Giskard is telepathic.
spoiler
And the robots do take over, eventually!
There were flaws, yes, but they never rose to the level of attempting to destroy humanity that I recall. We had a sort of plot armor in that Asimov wasn’t interested in writing that kind of story.
I’m getting this from a forward he wrote for one of the robot book compilations.
Oh, sure, the robots never want to destroy and replace humanity, but they do end up taking quite a lot of control of humanity’s future.
Wasn’t the last I, Robot story about how the robots directly the world’s politics decide that we were living better and longer lives without technology and brought the world back to medieval level of tech?
Wasn’t there books that he wrote that were about flaws in the Three Laws?
Flaws or interesting interpretations of them, but he rarely if ever approached the “robots destroy humanity” trope even if it was technically possible in his universe because he thought it was boring.
Yeah it’s more about whatever safe guards you put life will find a way to twist them.
Life, uh, finds a way
Imagine if they did an anthology series… /drooling
For now I’ve got Pluto to look forward to.
Pluto? I never finished reading the manga, but it was looking promising. Is there a movie made or coming up?
I was so disappointed I just forgot of its existence until now.
I thought for sure this would be the top comment.
World War Z. Not a classic book, but still…Wtf.
World War Z is absolutely a modern classic. You can just tell when people are going to be talking about a book a hundred or so years later.
Shit-ass politics though.
I agree on the basis that classics are defined by reception and not if they are any good or not, like how Birth of a Nation was for a while considered basically the best movie ever.
It would have been so easy to do a straight up adaptation of the battle of Yonkers, narrated by Mark Hamill, his two following parts, and a few of the smaller stories here and there to flesh things out, too…
At least it got the perfect audiobook adaptation.
The Wheel of Time. I waited for reviews before watching it, so glad I never wasted a second of my life watching that piece of blasphemous garbage. Just stick to the source material, how fucking hard is it??? Apparently too hard for modern directors, they have to “fix” everything and make it appealing for a “modern audience.” Bitch, I am the modern audience, and fuck you.
Hard disagree here. I’m a rabid wheel of time fan who has read the books at least 6 times.
Ir would be downright impossible to “stick to the source” for book one (or really, any if them) and have it be good on film. It just wouldn’t work on film, there is too much going on. The story would feel like it drags and is being forcefully stretched out, because the book is rather repetitive. That repetition works in a book because you are getting to read the characters inner thoughts, and in paper it adds tension that, for example, Rand and Mat are unsure whether the next place they stay will be full of dark friends.
But after the third time they get chased out by dark friends a TV audience would be like “OK they did this already get on with it.” Repetition on TV gets boring FAST.
And the magic system is all kinds of messy in the books. They’re diving into it a bit more now, but it’s still got Tobe simplified for screen. You can’t convey characters thoughts on screen, which basically neuters the whole system. The book is VERY exposition heavy, and that gets boring real quick on screen. Look at the LOTR theatrical VS extended editions. There is a reason that Bilbo talking about Hobbits at the beginning got cut. I like that scene, but it also is too much exposition to drop on the viewer right after the intro, which is also exposition. EOTW is like half exposition, and most of the books are at least a third exposition. That all has to get cut or reworked to be actually fun to watch without being super preachy. It’s
Listen to Brandon Sanderson talking about the adaptation of Mistborm he has been working in for ages now. He has said that he had to make big, fundamental changes to the characters and story to make it work on film. He said his first draft was closest to the book, and that it was quite bad.
The biggest fuckup season 1 of the show did was not including the prologue. Idk why they cut it, it’s such a good intro. Besides that, I thought they did alright. Season two has been much better so far, and has shown that they really do understand the core of this story and all of the characters in it.
Agreed, there is a ton of internalized exposition in the books which can’t be done on the screen without it getting awkward. I have also generally enjoyed the show so far, and I think the pacing is actually pretty good. There are definitely times in the books where we are getting “scale” via brute force word count, and the visual medium definitely opens some things up in that regard.
“Stick to the source” doesn’t mean “show every line on film”. It means things like “don’t shoehorn in this random-ass Warder that isn’t in the books and nobody cares about” or “don’t make up a dead wife for Perrin that adds nothing to the plot”. And that’s not getting into things that they almost did, like “Yeah, it’s cool if Moiraine murders the ferryman in direct violation of the Three Oaths”.
Sorry, the show was trash. It had a rich and complex world to draw from, and fucked it up hard. Just awful writing.
I just realized that Wheel of Time ≠ Sword of Truth, or rather I read WoT and was thinking of SoT
I’ve never read the books, although I’d really like to. I only know two things: Its fucking awesome and really, really long and convoluted. Someone told me that getting into it is hard, but there is nothing quite like it and its worth it. I watched the series while drinking beer and hanging out with my father. We both like fantasy, needed something to binge and I heard of the source material. We thought the series (only seen the first season) was pretty cool. Knowing the infamy of the books it was clear that they had to cut vast parts of the books, but for someone uninitiated it was a fun watch. At the same time I already thought it had to be unbearable for fans of the book for the same reason.
They even ignored Brandon Sanderson who offered free advice on how to write the story FFS. Even the show runner had the gall to say he’s a fanboy of the series.
I liked it, as long as I looked it at as an interpretation rather than an exact translation.
I like this! Maybe the book is a telling of the story as it happens and the show is a retelling centuries later with the information available to them. They don’t have the inner monologue of the characters, they don’t know all the exact details (ok, so Perrin wasn’t married? Eh, his early life wasn’t super clear in the written histories).
Yeah it’s a popcorn show. You watch it to relax your brain. It’s entertaining as a Xena episode, and the production feels as cheap as Xena’s.
But if you’ve read the books you’re wondering what the hell is happening. And it doesn’t make you want to read them. That’s the lamest part. A show based on books should make you want to read them at some point. I mean, if you adapt them to screen, they must have been loved by a lot of people…
Just watch the Prime “x-ray” animated shorts. That’s the perfect preamble to the books reread.
To be fair, Wheel of Time may be one of those garbage in, garbage out scenarios.
And don’t get me started on black unbearded female dwarves who have no need for melanin underground… what the fuck.
There’s no dwarves in the Wheel of Time.
And it’s not a problem for LotR either, lol.
Among other things, the setting isn’t just creationist, there are elves running around in the show that remember it.
Well actually, the dwarves were created by the smith god Aulë deep in darkness under the mountains of Middle-Earth, made to be strong and unyielding. I don’t think he cared much about their reaction to the sun, it stands to reason their skin would mirror the materials used by the god that created them - clay and stone. A darker skin tone makes more sense to me frankly.
“Do Androids Dream of Eletric Sheep”
You’ll probably recognize it as Blade Runner but the film took so much liberty the author allowed a good friend to write three sequels in order to harmonize the book with the movie.
Also “Starship Troopers”.
Electric Sheep is the first book I thought of when I read the thread title.
I’m pretty indifferent on Blade Runner. It’s got a great soundtrack and aesthetic, but as an adaptation of my favorite SF book of all time I can’t stand it.
Haha I would put both of those at the top of my list of movies that were actually much better than the books.
Do Androids Dream of Eletric Sheep felt so flat to me, I think it probably didn’t age well. The animal obsession didn’t land for me, I guess it’s supposed to be an allegory for material obsession, since the animals are more for showing off than being actual pets, but it just seemed to slap you in the face with it like many of the very not subtle metaphors. The main character is also just dull as hell and walks straight into dangerous situations or traps without a second thought, but it always works out for him because plot armour and the androids either just comply for some reason or they’re so incompetent that it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t a fun book imo and it’s themes were so obvious that it didn’t “make you think”.
Starship Troopers (Book) was just hoorah military propaganda. The movie did such a good job of making fun of it and turning into a ridiculous over the top satire.
I’m beyond the debate over the Starship Troopers book vs movie. Both are very much being their own thing, and I am able to enjoy them both.
The knife training scene in each summarizes the different approach they have.
I highly recommend scifi fans read Starship Troopers and Forever War back to back. I consider them complimentary books regarding the nature of war, and government.
Was my first thought, as well. I saw the movie first and hated it, glad I stumbled across the book at some point and found one of my now favourite authors.
Oh, another one I just thought of - How to Train Your Dragon.
The movies are fine, but they are so completely different from the books in almost every respect that it’s barely worth giving them the same name.
The books are absolutely brilliant, especially the further you get into them. Would love to see them developed as a TV series that stuck to the style and messages of the books. Would likely need about 10 seasons though!
TIL How to Train Your Dragon is originally a book. Thank you.
Yeah, Cressida Cowell. It’s very different though, be warned. There’s a guy called Hiccup who is a Viking and has a dragon… And that’s about it :-)
Isn’t there literally a TV series for it? I could have sworn I’ve seen it at some point
I think there’s a series based on the movies, but not really on the books as far asni know.
The Gunslinger. It was supposed to be more of a continuation of the books but it just sucked all around.
And to think I was so excited to see Elba play Roland. What a disappointment.
As a very long time reader of the Dark Tower series, I was super excited to see what they would do with it. I couldn’t watch more than 5 minutes before I had to shut it off, it was just so fucking BAD.
That was probably a good idea. I made it about 30 minutes in. The movie kept moving further and further away from the books. And it was in the weirdest ways. I’m not sure what all it showed in the first 5 minutes, but Randal suddenly has a group of people to help him, and they’re using sifi technology with computers to open portals instead of the doors. I get things will always change from book to movie. I go in expecting it. And usually it’s not a huge deal. But I just don’t get the decisions they decided to make.
It wasn’t an adaptation of The Gunslinger
The foundation series by apple is pretty bad.
How bad? The absolute best part is a part not present at all in the books (the Cleons). Everything related to the book is bastardised, imo.
I love the series and I love the books. It’s just not for book purists but they’ve made a really good take on the universe and it’s also beautiful.
It’s amazing just how visually impressive the show is. If it was done with the best we had 30 years ago it still would have been good, but the vfx would have dragged it down. Now it raises it to a whole other level.
Do you think the show itself is bad or is it just bad as an adaptation of the book?
I’d say it’s a bad adaptation of the book. But as a sci-fi series, it’s quite good. I rate it at least 7 out of 10. Although I haven’t watched the second season because I’m waiting for it to be finished so I can binge it if I wanted to.
The show is based on the universe and some characters created by Asimov but it’s freely adapted. You’ll have to see the TV shows and the books as two entities, there are a few similarities, Easter eggs, etc. But they’re different and both great IF you’re not looking for a translation from text to screen.
The TV series is eerily beautiful, the story is better in S2 and more complex. Great cast too and on a “small” budget.
I enjoyed it so far as well and really like the development the Cleons go through. Maybe I’ll look into the books when the series is concluded
The way I see the TV show is like the creators are constantly placing details to say “Hey! This Asimov guy was really smart and he wrote this rad SF saga, you should really check it out!”.
David Goyer and his team, they’re not just making a show about some old scifi books : they’re truly fans of Asimov’s work and you can feel it. It’s a work of love.
The Cleons aren’t even in the book!?? What the…
The original book spends almost no time with the old empire. Once the Foundation is established, the details of the empire’s fall are irrelevant to the story. In fact, the premise makes a point that the exact details of its fall don’t really matter.
Nah all the “downfall of the empire” stuff happens off screen.
Also the series is an anthology with each short story being hundreds or thousands of years apart.
I actually really like the show, but I’ve just decided to act as though it’s completely unrelated to the books, because besides the names of characters, and the initial events, it basically is.
The most recent episode had opened an interesting path of exploration. I’m hopeful, but they are bound to twist it somehow.
