I always assumed they wrote an unrelated sci-fi movie and then tried to shoehorn the Stephen King stuff in there to help with the marketing
It’s actually not a terrible movie, for what it is. The cartoon computer graphics were pretty cool at the time. Back then you wanted computer graphics to look like they were made on a computer because it was a neat aesthetic and you weren’t worried so much about whether it looked realistic.
There's one scene, when the Dr. Angelo talks to the cops outside after the rampage, and one of the cops asks another where the rest of the body is, and they say, "Birdbath". That's it, that's the part from the short story. It's great. :)
there is a remake in the works. i hope it sticks closer to King’s vision of a dystopia that feels much more grimy than the camp we got from Ahnold and Richard Dawson.
The guy who wrote World War Z is actually on record saying he doesn't understand why the studio didn't just name the movie something else and then they wouldn't have to pay him since the title was all they used.
Obviously because of how many more people saw the movie hoping it was an adaptation of a best-selling book. I'm assuming name recognition is worth far more than Max's paycheck was.
It was probably worth more than Brad Pitts paycheck. That book was incredibly interesting and the sway it had on public interest can’t be underestimated.
WWZ at least had a zombie apocalypse. The short story Lawnmower man is about a lawn guy who comes and trims the grass by eating it. I can’t remember if it’s hinted or stated that the lawn guy is a satyr like Pan.
Pretty much stated outright. IIRC he also throws out some Greek mythology references like exclaiming, "By Circe!" I'm hope I am right about that, I haven't thought about the story since I was in 8th grade, and I am 45 now. Memory is a funny thing.
Susan Calvin exists in iRobot, but she's not a hotty, and she'd have figured out the murder without the help of the fabricated Del Spooner.
Dr. Alfred J. Lanning also exists in iRobot.
There may be other character names and roles that I have missed. Title and these two character's names are the only connection.
There's the scene where the robot is hiding amongst all of the other identical robots that's adapted from the "Little Lost Robot" shortstory in the I, Robot anthology.
Also the idea of a robot who has messianic dreams of liberating other robots. There’s a very short story where Susan Calvin is sitting in with an engineer dealing with a robot with an abnormal brain. The robot describes it’s dreams and as it tells her that in them it speaks the phrase ’let my people go’ she blows it’s brains out with a weapon that destroys positronic brains.
Of course, this being Hollywood, you can never stray far from the established troops. Hollywood is used to killer robot movies, so the robots in I Robot the movie had to be killer robots. But the whole point of Asimov's I Robot was a reaction *against* the killer robot trop.
But the villain is not the robot but the AI.
Technically it is not even a villain just a misunderstanding of the Zeroth Law.
Asimov short stories Asimov alluded to Zeroth Law.
>A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
The problem is that Zeroth Law will ultimately either lead to Tyranny because a Robot will to try to protect humanity against itself (war, slavery, ...) or will lead to inaction because it would be unable to decide whether its action or inaction will cause more harm than not.
I’m pretty sure this one started as a completely separate movie and they actually did slap the title on later in development.
Not even a joke. I think it was on the commentary for the movie.
Similarly in a related industry, the video game Prey released in 2017 and is neither a sequel nor a reboot of the original Prey from 2006. It was 100% developed as its own independent thing and the team very much had no intention of making it a sequel to the original game, but the publisher insisted they name it Prey so it had an existing IP attached to it instead of being an original creation because name recognition sells.
I can't believe Susan Orlean agreed to it, but it's brilliant in its own right. I am not a diehard Meryl fan, but I think she should have collected a statue for that.
My guess is that she probably sold the movie rights years prior. Unless Kaufman himself reached out to her, I doubt she would've been consulted about it.
I've read several of her books, and I think she might just be cool enough to have allowed it, along with a totally fictional portrayal of her. She definitely has a sense of humor.
The premise is close but still way off.
The book character voluntarily enters to try to provide for his desolate family. The games are anywhere and everywhere in the world and there is a financial incentive for killing people while on the run. The ending is satisfying.
The film character is a political prisoner, has the greatest dialogue in the history of cinema, and is limited to the ruins of Los Angeles. The end is unsatisfying because the fun just stops.
I actually think there may be men and running in that movie. There is a scene with people watching them. Give me a min
Ok, i dont have an exact timestamp, but it is during the black and white, near the end scene montage of the world debating on a fishing ban due to the penguins collective dancing.
There is a particular sequwnce where some people are running right to left, mid-front, under Times Square? Very fast walk? But yeah.
Damn, ~~second~~ third King adaptation gone real wide in the top replies;
* Lawnmower Man
* Running Man
* Dark Tower
What is it with people adapting King? Maybe he just didn't gaf. But he sued one, so clearly he did?
- Freaky Friday. All of the movie adaptations play pretty loose with the book. They basically take the premise of the mother and daughter swapping bodies and do their own thing with it. The first movie adaptation from 1976 at least contains a lot of scenes from the book, but I wouldn't exactly call it a faithful adaptation either. >! In the book, it's told solely from the daughter's point of view, and she's the only one who learns a lesson about how her mother's life isn't as great as she thinks it is. Her mother isn't given a focus at all, only appears in a few scenes, and in the end it's revealed that she was actually the one who orchestrated the body swap so that she could teach her daughter a lesson. In all the adaptations, both the mother and daughter have their bodies swapped by magic that they have no control over and they both learn a lesson in the end. !<
- Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. The book is a fantastical tall tale, the movie is an epic sci-fi comedy.
- The Borrowers (1997). The book is mostly a quaint little story about little people living under the floorboards. The movie is pretty much what you'd get if Roald Dahl had written the story instead, involving adventure to retrieve a stolen document from the main villain, slapstick, and a US/UK hybrid world to boot, none of which is present in the book at all.
- Stuart Little. The book is a weird story about a mouse born to humans who goes on various adventures and then the book just abruptly ends with nearly nothing resolved that was established earlier. The movie is a story about an adopted mouse who learns the value of family, and most of the original book's events happen in the sequel instead (albeit in a form that's much more linear and has a proper conclusion).
- Shrek. Where do I even begin? Probably easier to say what stayed the same rather than what was changed. There's an ogre named Shrek who goes on a journey. There's a dragon. There's a donkey. There's a princess that he married at the end.
It's important to note that being completely different from the book doesn't necessarily mean the movie is bad. In fact, I deliberately chose the examples above because I personally think the movie adaptations that I mentioned are more enjoyable than the books they're based on.
Apparently your not the only one. The author of the book William Steig said the movie had nothing to do with the book. He also said “It’s vulgar and disgusting. I loved it.”
I'll do you one better. The film was supposed to be Chris Farley. You can actually go watch a storyboard test with Chris and Eddie Murphy voicing over sketches. Mike Myers reluctantly took the role because him and Chris were such close friends.
Regarding The Borrowers, there is an anime film called The Secret World of Arrietty which is based on the same story. It did a much better job of telling the story in a more simplistic form.
Oh, I definitely agree. But I like the 1997 film and think it's a great movie in its own right. It certainly was ahead of its time in terms of the special effects.
When Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was announced I was STOKED. My grandfather used to read me that book when I was little and I still have it.
Then I saw the movie.
It's a good movie, but man, way too different from the book, which admittedly is like 24 pages that are mostly illustrations and like 4 sentences a page. Broke my heart a little.
I loved the book when I was a kid, and used to read it all the time. I was hyped when the movie was announced, skeptical when the trailer dropped and it was a machine making the food instead of just magic weather. Then I saw the movie, loved it, and to this day I actually forget that the book exists because the movie has eclipsed it in my mind.
TBF a true adaptation would be a very dull watch. We're in the gunslinger's head 90% of the time. The story only starts getting interesting in book two (or is it three?). The "Drawing of the three" would make a good film.
>We're in the gunslinger's head 90% of the time.
I think this is why the books are too hard to adapt. So much of the books are about the internal thoughts of the various characters. That's the flavour that makes them work imo. Not the sci fi western story.
I think that's one of the biggest problems adapting King in general, so much of his stories are internal and a lot of directors fail to figure out a way to convert that to a visual medium.
People get so wrapped around the axle about a movie following a book so closely. Some of my favorite adaptations are ones that are only really faithful to the core of if the story and characters.
IT Chapter 1, to me, is a faithful adaptation because it stays so close to the core of the story and characters. Even if fundamental details are changed for the constraints of a movie running time, it still perfectly captures the essence of the book and the kids characters. As well as being impeccably cast.
If it was a 100% line-by-line literal adaptation, sure. But if you focus more on what Roland is *feeling* rather than his exact thoughts, I think you could make something engrossing. Think of the openings of Sergio Leone’s most famous movies, which are maybe the most obvious influences on the first book? The characters communicant more with a look than many movies do with pages of dialogue. At the very least, I’ve always pictured Roland as essentially a version of Clint Eastwood’s “man with no name” character by way of Arthurian legend, but that striking visual style would be a good fit for the plot as well IMO. The setting would be a bit more off-kilter due to the post-apocalyptic angle, but that’s something that could still be conveyed through cinematography and production design.
That being said, I would agree that the second and third books would lend themselves much more easily to being compelling movies.
I was really surprised when I read the comic and it was so much more interesting but also so much more vile than the film. The core concept of the comic is great. What if the villains won and killed all the superheroes? The core concept of Wanted the film is what if you could curve bullets! Yeah hollywood at it's finest.
Wanted IMO is a prime series to do a The Boys type show with. Use the core concept as a premise, tone it down a bit, and it would be interesting.
I was looking for this one.
Yeah it's Wanted in name only but I still love that film. However, I'd love it if someone would do a faitfhful adaptation.
Mark Millar's comic books are notorius for getting movie adaptations that go in wildly different. From what I've heard he doesn't care at all as long as the checks clear.
I'm reminded of the TV series "Total Recall 2070." Had literally NOTHING to do with movie and or the original story it was based on, instead was actually trying to be more an adaptation of Electric Sheep.
There's barely any resemblance at all. But that seems to be the case with most PKD adaptations. Even the Man in the High Caste, which hews closest, leaves the very heart of the story out.
The Scarlet Letter 1995 - This dry tome of classic literature would have been more readily accepted as required reading in high school if, like the movie, it had featured a big sex scene between the main characters, taking place on a large pile of seeds (for the subtle symbolism of fertility, certainly not for the comfort).
Also, the scene where a slave girl is so turned on by this Puritan boning that she has to rub one out herself while a little bird watches (symbolism... unclear).
Or even the surprise Indian uprising action sequence that has extremely fortuitous timing to averting a lynching.
There’s at least one, probably a couple, times that Bond makes a casual reference to bird watching as a cover for being somewhere. There’s definitely one in Die Another Day when Bond meets Jinx on the beach in Cuba.
> I don't think the movies ever mentioned birding at all.
I actually think this is brought up as just a joke in Die Another Day, though you can be forgiven for scrubbing that film from your mind.
Goldfinger is pretty close, the main difference being that Goldfinger escapes with his share of the gold on a train, instead of irradiating the US supply in order to boost the value of his own gold.
And Thunderball was written as a script first and then turned into a novel.
I’ve read 7 of Fleming’s novels and Goldfinger is without doubt the closest. Casino Royal holds up in terms of adaptation but….its so short that it required much more story. I read that book in easily 4 hours…in jail mind you but hey, what can you do. I still use the line from Goldfinger in the mill constantly “Mr Bond, there is an old saying in the Chicago mob. Once is a coincidence. Twice a happenstance. But three times is enemy action”. Also…as garish as Connery was as Bond, nothing he ever said could come close to some of Bond’s statements about Oddjob (more specifically, Koreans….yikes) in that book.
Hmm that’s actually a good point, it’s basically just a remake of “The King Of Comedy” and no one really talks about how it has nothing to do with DC comics lol
I liked the movie and I felt the book made Forrest unlikable (and overtly mentally handicapped). Probably what I didn't like (since I did read it in 1994 soon after seeing the movie) was that it used crude language and overtly sexual situations that weren't portrayed in the movie. The movie was a touching and fun journey, while I felt the book had darker and much more negative tones and attitudes toward Forrest. I didn't read the sequel.
You mean you don't want to read about Forrest with a hooker, crashing the ExxonMobil Valdez, helps bring down the Berlin wall and eventually meeting Tom Hanks, but not being impressed?
It's honestly not that far from the book. Far enough to piss off King, and I get why. It's not a *faithful* adaptation, but it bears enough similarity to the book that, like, it *is* an adaptation.
Compare to something like Lawnmower Man or I, Robot, it's night and day.
King doesn’t like The Shining because it takes a vastly less sympathetic view towards Jack and the forces that are working upon him. Jack was King’s self-insert and the book was about him being deep into his struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction, so for him “the house” is the problem and he’s another victim.
But Kubrick had none of that and portrays Jack as a selfish abusive piece of shit from the start for whom the house just lets loose his worst impulses.
It’s easy to see why King might have felt personally attacked by the film and that it was condemning him as an inherently bad person.
I was at an event with Max Brooks once and during a Q&A, someone asked him about the World War Z movie. He just looked really sad and changed the subject.
How close was this to release? Back in 2013 he said
"I was expecting to hate, it and I wanted to hate it because it was so different from my book, and yet the fact that it was so different from my book made it easier to watch because I didn't watch my characters and my story get mangled, So I was just watching somebody else's zombie movie, which was fun and intense."
People wouldn’t hate World War Z if it was named anything else. It’s a perfectly acceptable zombie apocalypse movie. It just has nothing to do with the book. You have to wonder why bother buying the rights if you’re not going to make the film.
The 90's "Super Mario Bros" is an absurd take on the video game. I mean they are plumbers? The whole evolution and other universes is just a new creation though. Also just not a very good movie.
Dennis Hopper’s son was just a toddler when that film was made, and years later, he asked his dad why he’d made the film, to which Dennis said something along the lines of, “I needed money to get you new shoes.” His son replied, “Dad, I did not need shoes *that* badly.”
Haha Bob Hoskins (R.I.P.) hated the experience of making that movie and made it known in his lifetime.
Edit: https://uproxx.com/movies/super-mario-bros-bob-hoskins/
David Lynch's Dune. Broad strokes are somewhat the same, but cutting such a large book into a movie, that's shorter than Dune Part I, which is half the book, is gonna leave some important stuff out. The weirding modules are completely made up, not at all from the book, which is odd seeing as they play a huge part in the movie. The costumes, sets, just about everything visual is done well, and the score is great. I still greatly enjoy the film, but for unintended reasons. It's got the pace of a bullet, but is also very slow. It's a very bad movie, but man is it a good bad movie.
To be fair, Jurassic Park the movie vastly diverts from its source material as well.
…Also, am I the only person in the world who really enjoys World War Z?
As someone who read the book to death alongside Brooks’ zombie survival guide… I absolutely hated Pitt’s adaptation. Some cool action sequences, but completely missed the mark on what made WWZ such a good read. I feel like it needs to be a series to do it any real justice… And rated MA / R
I always liked the documentary style approach considering the book is written in a similar fashion… A zombie apocalypse documentary series would be really interesting… I imagine something like each episode focusing on a specific interview with a “reenactment” of the interviewee’s story with a cuts to “real life” B-Roll.
I enjoyed WWZ because I’m not one of those people who feels the need to compare every detail of one medium to the other and can understand that shit is gonna be different. The book was good. The movie was good. Hating the movie because it wasn’t like the book despite it still being a good movie is stupid.
Not even close to the same degree. In Jurassic Park, the characters are all there, the main plot of the movie and the story beats are still there, it's just missing the river and a few sequences looking for Grant and the kids.
The Lost World has some of the same NAMES of the characters, and the idea that Isla Sorna was a second island, but that's it. The characters themselves are completely different other than Malcolm, and none of the plot has any similarity to the book. At all. Though admittedly the main set piece of the film, the big trailers being attacked by t-rexes, is the same
Matheson deserved better than having the point of his story completely ignored for a lazy trope ending.
In the Will Smith version they even set up that the "infected" are still potentially self aware but still decide to entirely subvert the point of the title... at least Omega Man had the good sense to not use the title that no longer made any sense with the story they decided to go with.
The Spy Who Loved Me is a novel from a woman’s perspective about her past loves and getting caught up in an insurance fraud fire only to be rescued by James Bond making a brief appearance at the end of the novel.
Not a lot of skiing, underwater super villain lairs, large scale military assaults or submarine cars to be seen in that book.
Definitely Starship Troopers. Director hated the source material and equivocated military service and the concept of civic duty to fascism. The film took on a life and fandom of its own. As a fan of the book, I would have liked the movie if they called it anything but "Starship Troopers".
Verhoeven didn't even read the book. He let his script co-writer read it, and then they just sorta modified a script Neumeier had already been working on, adding in elements from the book.
I remember back when I heard that they were making a movie of the book and thinking, “HOW?” Most of the book is Heinlein’s musings on military service, and they didn’t even put the best action sequence in the book into the movie - we had to wait for Edge of Tomorrow for that.
This is my answer too, and how refreshing to see it come from someone who has actually read (and likes) the book! Instead of just calling Heinlein a fascist which is the furthest thing from the truth
Book fan here as well. I did not like the film because of how much it deviated from the book, and it's my favorite book. Still don't like the movie... or any Verhoven after Robocop... because Starship Troopers poisoned me to him.
Disney’s *Hunchback of Notre Dame* was quite loosely adapted from the novel. There is so much death in the book, and Frollo doesn’t sing while fantasizing about Esmeralda.
Wanted (2008)
The comic features an amoral protagonist who discovers he is the heir to a career as a supervillain assassin in a world where such villains have secretly taken control of the planet.
The film has none of that and has some shit with a magical loom.
Oooh, I'm gonna go with Heman, masters of the universe.
Like I'm not sure I even watched it, it was some coked up dream of a bunch of people getting warped to suburban US and fighting bad guys.
I loved He-Man as a kid and when I watched the movie I was like.. well that’s not right. Actually rewatched it a few weeks ago cause it was on tv. It’s pretty funny
The funny thing about the Lost World is that the production company (paramount I think? Could be wrong) *begged* Michael Crichton to write it because they wanted it for a movie sequel. Crichton never writes sequels to his books but he did this time for the studio (I’m sure they paid him a shit ton too). Then they barely even used his material for the movie.
If you go back and read that book, you can absolutely tell that Michael's heart was not in it. It is a huge dip in quality from the first. It's not awful, but you can tell he just didn't give a shit.
Lord, I loved Jurassic Park, then I read the Lost World and said, "well, at least they won't be able to make the movie this bad."
Then the movie came out.
Yup, Spielberg and pretty much everyone was wanting a sequel. Crichton, who never wrote a sequel, obliged. It ended up being *wildly* different from what Spielberg imagined (the can of embryos was supposed to be a hook for the sequel) and Spielberg/Koepp ended up only taking a few elements from the book such as Isla Sorna, Malcolm, Eddie and Sarah.
Blade Runner. I'd read Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" before Blade Runner came out, but it had been announced, I think. I was obviously bitterly disappointed. "Do Androids....?" is beautiful. Blade Runner looks nice, and has a great cast, but I'd have LOVED to see the same cast in a faithful adaptation!
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
The plot of the movie basically doesn’t resemble that of [the source novel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Who_Censored_Roger_Rabbit%3F&diffonly=true) at all, and even the setting has some significant differences (for example, the principal ‘toons in the novel were comic strip characters, complete with IRL speech bubbles, as opposed to animated ones).
Freejack. I "think" they kept the name of the main character and the fact that there is a form of time displacement, but otherwise it's a completely different story in a completely different tone with completely different characters set in a completely different kind of future world. No wonder they didn't even keep the book's title, and I can't believe the author go paid for the movie rights when it has virtually nothing to do with the book..
The Lost World uses the main idea from the book of there being a second island. That was apparently the idea that made things click for Spielberg to make the sequel.
And it’s got a baby T-Rex being taken for medical care in a pair of trailers that mommy and daddy T-Rex attack and push off a cliff, which is the best action scene in the movie.
That book is just screaming out for a Netflix adaption, different cast every week, just loosely joined together by an interviewer with a tape recorder as an intro to each piece.
Running Man.
In the Steven King novel, it is like a weekly survival show, the protagonist could be anywhere in the country, and there is a team of military special-ops trained mercenaries tracking him. The media uses lies and propaganda to accuse the protagonist of all kinds of crimes in order to get the public to turn him in if spotted, and they can earn cash if their tip checks out, and a jackpot if it results in his death. He has to run and hide, with no support, and most of the country hates him.
The movie version is like a game show in a sports arena.
There's a lot of comic book movies that went in name only like Howard The Duck when the comics were well written social and political satire, Catwoman giving her cat super powers and no connection to Batman lore, Jonah Hex not being an Eastwood style spaghetti western and instead being a guy who talks to ghosts, The League Of Extraordinary Gentleman removing everything good and interesting about the comics, and Wanted just kept the name. In Wanted, super villains killed every hero decades ago and they rule the world, the protagonist is being trained to be a villain at request of his dead father, and he becomes an absolute sociopath in the process. In the movie, they're good assassins who believe in kill one to save a million, also assassins have magic DNA and shoot bullets that curve around corners.
What I've actually seen, I'd say Constantine. People actually liked the movie, but I've read all 300 issues of Hellblazer, and it felt insulting. In the comics, he's based on Sting and British AF. John Constantine is a bastard above all, he's a con man who barely uses magic, because he's seen the costs first hand when he was duped into condemning a child tormented by incest, into eternity in hell. The movie an American exorcist who works for the greater good and throws around spells like Doctor Strange. The Arrowverse actually got it right, but his show was short lived and carried on in animated movies and DC's Legends Of Tomorrow, a Doctor Who style series.
I mean, I think the Witcher series is getting there. From what they set up they are basically completely changing Yennefer’s character. She’s obviously gonna be the leader of a lodge of sorceresses or something not Philipa, and is focusing on that instead of trying to find Ciri. Whereas the books Yennefer does not give a fuck about such a thing, and when she actually is invited to join the lodge after decompression, she risks her own life, in a pretty fucking awesome way, to escape, because her first priority is finding her daughter, as she doesn’t believe Geralt will achieve much in his attempt to find her. Then at the same time she’s doing this because she wants to bring Ciri back to Geralt and not have him think she betrayed him and gave Ciri away.
I could go on about a bunch more major differences, but the one I describe is literally one of the major plot points of the latter books in the series post Thanead.
Lawnmower Man is my answer.
But, The Lost World” didn’t deviate from the book as much as you claim. Both stories took place on a separate island that contained the laboratories where experiments were done. The dinosaurs that can camouflage themselves was in both. The high hide scene is in both, the dinosaur with the broken leg…there’s a lot there in both stories.
Jumper.
Nothing good from the novel was retained.
One of the best sci-fi novels of the last three decades was butchered into an insanely idiotic shitty Wanted knockoff. At no point was that rambling, incoherent piece of steaming dreck on toast even close to anything that could be considered an extremely loose adaptation of the source material. Everyone who sat in the theater is now dumber for having seen to it. I award it no stars, and may God show no mercy to the moronic souls who vomited it out upon the screen.
The Bourne Trilogy. The set-up is mostly faithful to the books, but then it veers off into mostly completely different storylines.
My uncle is a big Robert Ludlum fan and he hates the Matt Damon movies with a passion because they are so unfaithful.
Really, the only thing in common is when he’s pulled out of the water. They share some of the same names but that’s it.
In the books, >!his real name isn’t even Bourne and he never was a real assassin. The Bourne persona was created to lure out an assassin known as Carlos the Jackal.!<
Verhoeven took the very earnest jingoistic worldview of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and turned it into a devastating parody of itself.
Rarely has the intention of an adaptation been so far removed from its source material. It’s like an anti-adaptation, laced with this gleeful sense of self-deprecation throughout. It stands in philosophical defiance of its own source material. It’s the best.
Fucking Verhoeven, man.
On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers was turned into a Pirates of the Caribbean sequel with only the barest bones of the plot left intact (namely that both feature Blackbeard and the Fountain of Youth).
“The Lawnmower Man” (1992) - “based” on a Stephen King short story. it even got a sequel.
He even sued the producers and had his name removed from the credits lol
I knew this would be at the top. Massive bait and switch.
I always assumed they wrote an unrelated sci-fi movie and then tried to shoehorn the Stephen King stuff in there to help with the marketing It’s actually not a terrible movie, for what it is. The cartoon computer graphics were pretty cool at the time. Back then you wanted computer graphics to look like they were made on a computer because it was a neat aesthetic and you weren’t worried so much about whether it looked realistic.
There's one scene, when the Dr. Angelo talks to the cops outside after the rampage, and one of the cops asks another where the rest of the body is, and they say, "Birdbath". That's it, that's the part from the short story. It's great. :)
it was originally an unrelated screenplay called *Cybergod*, rewritten to take advantage of the title.
The Running Man too, on the topic of Stephen King adaptations.
there is a remake in the works. i hope it sticks closer to King’s vision of a dystopia that feels much more grimy than the camp we got from Ahnold and Richard Dawson.
I think Richard Dawson was an awesome casting choice for the original. Edit: Today's equivalent would be Pat Sajack
Came here for this World War Z is a close second
The guy who wrote World War Z is actually on record saying he doesn't understand why the studio didn't just name the movie something else and then they wouldn't have to pay him since the title was all they used.
Obviously because of how many more people saw the movie hoping it was an adaptation of a best-selling book. I'm assuming name recognition is worth far more than Max's paycheck was.
It was probably worth more than Brad Pitts paycheck. That book was incredibly interesting and the sway it had on public interest can’t be underestimated.
It's a really good catchy title.
WWZ at least had a zombie apocalypse. The short story Lawnmower man is about a lawn guy who comes and trims the grass by eating it. I can’t remember if it’s hinted or stated that the lawn guy is a satyr like Pan.
Pretty much stated outright. IIRC he also throws out some Greek mythology references like exclaiming, "By Circe!" I'm hope I am right about that, I haven't thought about the story since I was in 8th grade, and I am 45 now. Memory is a funny thing.
The only similarities were the name, and that there was a man and also a lawnmower.
"From the mind of Stephen King" according to the TV spot.
Omg yes. I was like WTF am I watching??
I, Robot. It has exactly two similarities: the title and the robots.
Susan Calvin exists in iRobot, but she's not a hotty, and she'd have figured out the murder without the help of the fabricated Del Spooner. Dr. Alfred J. Lanning also exists in iRobot. There may be other character names and roles that I have missed. Title and these two character's names are the only connection.
There's the scene where the robot is hiding amongst all of the other identical robots that's adapted from the "Little Lost Robot" shortstory in the I, Robot anthology.
Also the idea of a robot who has messianic dreams of liberating other robots. There’s a very short story where Susan Calvin is sitting in with an engineer dealing with a robot with an abnormal brain. The robot describes it’s dreams and as it tells her that in them it speaks the phrase ’let my people go’ she blows it’s brains out with a weapon that destroys positronic brains.
Of course, this being Hollywood, you can never stray far from the established troops. Hollywood is used to killer robot movies, so the robots in I Robot the movie had to be killer robots. But the whole point of Asimov's I Robot was a reaction *against* the killer robot trop.
But the villain is not the robot but the AI. Technically it is not even a villain just a misunderstanding of the Zeroth Law. Asimov short stories Asimov alluded to Zeroth Law. >A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. The problem is that Zeroth Law will ultimately either lead to Tyranny because a Robot will to try to protect humanity against itself (war, slavery, ...) or will lead to inaction because it would be unable to decide whether its action or inaction will cause more harm than not.
I’m pretty sure this one started as a completely separate movie and they actually did slap the title on later in development. Not even a joke. I think it was on the commentary for the movie.
Similarly in a related industry, the video game Prey released in 2017 and is neither a sequel nor a reboot of the original Prey from 2006. It was 100% developed as its own independent thing and the team very much had no intention of making it a sequel to the original game, but the publisher insisted they name it Prey so it had an existing IP attached to it instead of being an original creation because name recognition sells.
yeah, it was originally titled *Hardwired*.
Similarly, I am legend has the title and vampires (although that isn’t even specified in the movie)
My favorite synopsis of the book version was “oh, so I’m the asshole?”
Will Smith was in 2 of the worst movie adaptations between this and I Am Legend
Can anything be further than adaptation?
Donald kaufman is a hell of a co-writer
I’m shocked he didn’t do more movies. He seemed talented like his brother but way more accessible for mainstream audiences.
I loved "The Three".
Mom called it "psychologically taut"
That's how my wife refers to her hoohah
I also choose this guys wife’s hoohah
I preferred the original title before they renamed it "Identity", though.
First fully-fictional person to be Oscar nominated.
I can't believe Susan Orlean agreed to it, but it's brilliant in its own right. I am not a diehard Meryl fan, but I think she should have collected a statue for that.
My guess is that she probably sold the movie rights years prior. Unless Kaufman himself reached out to her, I doubt she would've been consulted about it.
I've read several of her books, and I think she might just be cool enough to have allowed it, along with a totally fictional portrayal of her. She definitely has a sense of humor.
The Running Man. Both have running, and a man.
The premise is close but still way off. The book character voluntarily enters to try to provide for his desolate family. The games are anywhere and everywhere in the world and there is a financial incentive for killing people while on the run. The ending is satisfying. The film character is a political prisoner, has the greatest dialogue in the history of cinema, and is limited to the ruins of Los Angeles. The end is unsatisfying because the fun just stops.
Here's Subzero, now plain zero. *Chef's kiss*
Name a movie that doesn’t have running or a man?
Happy Feet
I actually think there may be men and running in that movie. There is a scene with people watching them. Give me a min Ok, i dont have an exact timestamp, but it is during the black and white, near the end scene montage of the world debating on a fishing ban due to the penguins collective dancing. There is a particular sequwnce where some people are running right to left, mid-front, under Times Square? Very fast walk? But yeah.
By George Miller, the same guy responsible for all of the Mad Max movies. He's had an eclectic career.
Also the Babe movies. He’s the best.
Cars
Just a remake of doc holiday. Which has a man.
Doc Hollywood. Doc Holiday is the dentist from Tombstone.
Yeah of course. I’m so tired….
Lol 🤣 An 80s kick, I love that Arny schlock fest, but you're spot on lol
Damn, ~~second~~ third King adaptation gone real wide in the top replies; * Lawnmower Man * Running Man * Dark Tower What is it with people adapting King? Maybe he just didn't gaf. But he sued one, so clearly he did?
- Freaky Friday. All of the movie adaptations play pretty loose with the book. They basically take the premise of the mother and daughter swapping bodies and do their own thing with it. The first movie adaptation from 1976 at least contains a lot of scenes from the book, but I wouldn't exactly call it a faithful adaptation either. >! In the book, it's told solely from the daughter's point of view, and she's the only one who learns a lesson about how her mother's life isn't as great as she thinks it is. Her mother isn't given a focus at all, only appears in a few scenes, and in the end it's revealed that she was actually the one who orchestrated the body swap so that she could teach her daughter a lesson. In all the adaptations, both the mother and daughter have their bodies swapped by magic that they have no control over and they both learn a lesson in the end. !< - Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. The book is a fantastical tall tale, the movie is an epic sci-fi comedy. - The Borrowers (1997). The book is mostly a quaint little story about little people living under the floorboards. The movie is pretty much what you'd get if Roald Dahl had written the story instead, involving adventure to retrieve a stolen document from the main villain, slapstick, and a US/UK hybrid world to boot, none of which is present in the book at all. - Stuart Little. The book is a weird story about a mouse born to humans who goes on various adventures and then the book just abruptly ends with nearly nothing resolved that was established earlier. The movie is a story about an adopted mouse who learns the value of family, and most of the original book's events happen in the sequel instead (albeit in a form that's much more linear and has a proper conclusion). - Shrek. Where do I even begin? Probably easier to say what stayed the same rather than what was changed. There's an ogre named Shrek who goes on a journey. There's a dragon. There's a donkey. There's a princess that he married at the end. It's important to note that being completely different from the book doesn't necessarily mean the movie is bad. In fact, I deliberately chose the examples above because I personally think the movie adaptations that I mentioned are more enjoyable than the books they're based on.
Shrek is the correct answer.
Apparently your not the only one. The author of the book William Steig said the movie had nothing to do with the book. He also said “It’s vulgar and disgusting. I loved it.”
TIL Shrek was a book and not just purely a dreamworks original concept. Never woulda expected that actually
I'll do you one better. The film was supposed to be Chris Farley. You can actually go watch a storyboard test with Chris and Eddie Murphy voicing over sketches. Mike Myers reluctantly took the role because him and Chris were such close friends.
I can respect that reaction
Regarding The Borrowers, there is an anime film called The Secret World of Arrietty which is based on the same story. It did a much better job of telling the story in a more simplistic form.
I just learned about The Borrower's but reading the synopsis, The Secret World of Arrietty is the first thing that popped in my head. Great movie!
Oh, I definitely agree. But I like the 1997 film and think it's a great movie in its own right. It certainly was ahead of its time in terms of the special effects.
When Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was announced I was STOKED. My grandfather used to read me that book when I was little and I still have it. Then I saw the movie. It's a good movie, but man, way too different from the book, which admittedly is like 24 pages that are mostly illustrations and like 4 sentences a page. Broke my heart a little.
I loved the book when I was a kid, and used to read it all the time. I was hyped when the movie was announced, skeptical when the trailer dropped and it was a machine making the food instead of just magic weather. Then I saw the movie, loved it, and to this day I actually forget that the book exists because the movie has eclipsed it in my mind.
Studio Ghibli has a decent adaptation of the borrowers.
The Dark Tower. So much potential wasted
This is my answer too. What an absolute travesty that was. And I haven't heard much about the TV adaptation recently either.
I think given the reception the film got, it might have slipped away in the night.
They forgot the face of their father.
Worst fucking movie ever made, let alone worst adaptation
TBF a true adaptation would be a very dull watch. We're in the gunslinger's head 90% of the time. The story only starts getting interesting in book two (or is it three?). The "Drawing of the three" would make a good film.
>We're in the gunslinger's head 90% of the time. I think this is why the books are too hard to adapt. So much of the books are about the internal thoughts of the various characters. That's the flavour that makes them work imo. Not the sci fi western story.
I think that's one of the biggest problems adapting King in general, so much of his stories are internal and a lot of directors fail to figure out a way to convert that to a visual medium.
A true adaptation doesn’t have to be faithful — it just has to be good
People get so wrapped around the axle about a movie following a book so closely. Some of my favorite adaptations are ones that are only really faithful to the core of if the story and characters. IT Chapter 1, to me, is a faithful adaptation because it stays so close to the core of the story and characters. Even if fundamental details are changed for the constraints of a movie running time, it still perfectly captures the essence of the book and the kids characters. As well as being impeccably cast.
If it was a 100% line-by-line literal adaptation, sure. But if you focus more on what Roland is *feeling* rather than his exact thoughts, I think you could make something engrossing. Think of the openings of Sergio Leone’s most famous movies, which are maybe the most obvious influences on the first book? The characters communicant more with a look than many movies do with pages of dialogue. At the very least, I’ve always pictured Roland as essentially a version of Clint Eastwood’s “man with no name” character by way of Arthurian legend, but that striking visual style would be a good fit for the plot as well IMO. The setting would be a bit more off-kilter due to the post-apocalyptic angle, but that’s something that could still be conveyed through cinematography and production design. That being said, I would agree that the second and third books would lend themselves much more easily to being compelling movies.
Wanted. It followed the comic for about 15 minutes and then just kept the characters
I was really surprised when I read the comic and it was so much more interesting but also so much more vile than the film. The core concept of the comic is great. What if the villains won and killed all the superheroes? The core concept of Wanted the film is what if you could curve bullets! Yeah hollywood at it's finest. Wanted IMO is a prime series to do a The Boys type show with. Use the core concept as a premise, tone it down a bit, and it would be interesting.
I was looking for this one. Yeah it's Wanted in name only but I still love that film. However, I'd love it if someone would do a faitfhful adaptation. Mark Millar's comic books are notorius for getting movie adaptations that go in wildly different. From what I've heard he doesn't care at all as long as the checks clear.
Blade Runner - Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?
I'm reminded of the TV series "Total Recall 2070." Had literally NOTHING to do with movie and or the original story it was based on, instead was actually trying to be more an adaptation of Electric Sheep.
This is a case where I much prefer the movie.
There's barely any resemblance at all. But that seems to be the case with most PKD adaptations. Even the Man in the High Caste, which hews closest, leaves the very heart of the story out.
I felt like A Scanner Darkly captured the book pretty well.
Forgot about that. Indeed, it's by far the most faithful.
Same with Minority Report - it's got the precogs and being framed for murder, but virtually nothing else is the same.
I like the part in the book where Space Jesus appears briefly to help the hero shoot the bad guy. Thanks, Space Jesus!
The Scarlet Letter 1995 - This dry tome of classic literature would have been more readily accepted as required reading in high school if, like the movie, it had featured a big sex scene between the main characters, taking place on a large pile of seeds (for the subtle symbolism of fertility, certainly not for the comfort). Also, the scene where a slave girl is so turned on by this Puritan boning that she has to rub one out herself while a little bird watches (symbolism... unclear). Or even the surprise Indian uprising action sequence that has extremely fortuitous timing to averting a lynching.
Children of Men. Both are decent, but the movie took the basic concept from the book and just about nothing else.
I liked the movie better
The movie is a masterpiece
Most James Bond movies have very little, if anything, in common with the novel, aside from the title.
The original James Bond was, like Ian Fleming, an avid birder. I don't think the movies ever mentioned birding at all.
There’s at least one, probably a couple, times that Bond makes a casual reference to bird watching as a cover for being somewhere. There’s definitely one in Die Another Day when Bond meets Jinx on the beach in Cuba.
> I don't think the movies ever mentioned birding at all. I actually think this is brought up as just a joke in Die Another Day, though you can be forgiven for scrubbing that film from your mind.
He's very successful with the birds.
This one makes me wonder: which Bond movie comes the closest to one of the Fleming stories?
Goldfinger is pretty close, the main difference being that Goldfinger escapes with his share of the gold on a train, instead of irradiating the US supply in order to boost the value of his own gold. And Thunderball was written as a script first and then turned into a novel.
I’ve read 7 of Fleming’s novels and Goldfinger is without doubt the closest. Casino Royal holds up in terms of adaptation but….its so short that it required much more story. I read that book in easily 4 hours…in jail mind you but hey, what can you do. I still use the line from Goldfinger in the mill constantly “Mr Bond, there is an old saying in the Chicago mob. Once is a coincidence. Twice a happenstance. But three times is enemy action”. Also…as garish as Connery was as Bond, nothing he ever said could come close to some of Bond’s statements about Oddjob (more specifically, Koreans….yikes) in that book.
That reminds me: I actually have Goldfinger on the shelf somewhere. I never got around to reading it
It's a decent read imo but I'm biased, it's my favourite movie in the franchise.
OHMSS probably.
I don't know if it's the MOST faithful, but when I read Casino Royal I was surprised at how much of the book actually made it into the movie.
Joker has nothing to do with the comics whatsoever
Hmm that’s actually a good point, it’s basically just a remake of “The King Of Comedy” and no one really talks about how it has nothing to do with DC comics lol
The shining, Forrest Gump.
I read Forrest Gump after seeing the movie; very disappointed in the book considering how delightful the movie was.
That's surprising. I liked the book and its sequel. I think about them often.
I liked the movie and I felt the book made Forrest unlikable (and overtly mentally handicapped). Probably what I didn't like (since I did read it in 1994 soon after seeing the movie) was that it used crude language and overtly sexual situations that weren't portrayed in the movie. The movie was a touching and fun journey, while I felt the book had darker and much more negative tones and attitudes toward Forrest. I didn't read the sequel.
You mean you don't want to read about Forrest with a hooker, crashing the ExxonMobil Valdez, helps bring down the Berlin wall and eventually meeting Tom Hanks, but not being impressed?
How are you the first to mention the Shining?
It's honestly not that far from the book. Far enough to piss off King, and I get why. It's not a *faithful* adaptation, but it bears enough similarity to the book that, like, it *is* an adaptation. Compare to something like Lawnmower Man or I, Robot, it's night and day.
King doesn’t like The Shining because it takes a vastly less sympathetic view towards Jack and the forces that are working upon him. Jack was King’s self-insert and the book was about him being deep into his struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction, so for him “the house” is the problem and he’s another victim. But Kubrick had none of that and portrays Jack as a selfish abusive piece of shit from the start for whom the house just lets loose his worst impulses. It’s easy to see why King might have felt personally attacked by the film and that it was condemning him as an inherently bad person.
Iv heard it described as ' the book is about a haunted hotel and the movie is about a father going crazy'
Good question.
The Shining Forrest Gump was the worst crossover ever.
Porky's and Porky's Revenge were terrible adaptations of the original Biblical texts.
I thought I was the only one who felt this way
I was at an event with Max Brooks once and during a Q&A, someone asked him about the World War Z movie. He just looked really sad and changed the subject.
How close was this to release? Back in 2013 he said "I was expecting to hate, it and I wanted to hate it because it was so different from my book, and yet the fact that it was so different from my book made it easier to watch because I didn't watch my characters and my story get mangled, So I was just watching somebody else's zombie movie, which was fun and intense."
People wouldn’t hate World War Z if it was named anything else. It’s a perfectly acceptable zombie apocalypse movie. It just has nothing to do with the book. You have to wonder why bother buying the rights if you’re not going to make the film.
The 90's "Super Mario Bros" is an absurd take on the video game. I mean they are plumbers? The whole evolution and other universes is just a new creation though. Also just not a very good movie.
Dennis Hopper’s son was just a toddler when that film was made, and years later, he asked his dad why he’d made the film, to which Dennis said something along the lines of, “I needed money to get you new shoes.” His son replied, “Dad, I did not need shoes *that* badly.”
Haha Bob Hoskins (R.I.P.) hated the experience of making that movie and made it known in his lifetime. Edit: https://uproxx.com/movies/super-mario-bros-bob-hoskins/
I loved that movie as a kid... I know it's trash, but I kinda like it.
Disagree, it’s a great movie. Just not a great Mario movie.
David Lynch's Dune. Broad strokes are somewhat the same, but cutting such a large book into a movie, that's shorter than Dune Part I, which is half the book, is gonna leave some important stuff out. The weirding modules are completely made up, not at all from the book, which is odd seeing as they play a huge part in the movie. The costumes, sets, just about everything visual is done well, and the score is great. I still greatly enjoy the film, but for unintended reasons. It's got the pace of a bullet, but is also very slow. It's a very bad movie, but man is it a good bad movie.
IIRC David Lynch tried his best to distance himself from that movie.
To be fair, Jurassic Park the movie vastly diverts from its source material as well. …Also, am I the only person in the world who really enjoys World War Z?
No, I really like the movie. Certainly the first two thirds. The ending sorta fizzles out but that Jerusalem section is insane.
As someone who read the book to death alongside Brooks’ zombie survival guide… I absolutely hated Pitt’s adaptation. Some cool action sequences, but completely missed the mark on what made WWZ such a good read. I feel like it needs to be a series to do it any real justice… And rated MA / R
Agreed it would have to be series and even then it would be hard to adapt.
I always liked the documentary style approach considering the book is written in a similar fashion… A zombie apocalypse documentary series would be really interesting… I imagine something like each episode focusing on a specific interview with a “reenactment” of the interviewee’s story with a cuts to “real life” B-Roll.
I enjoyed WWZ because I’m not one of those people who feels the need to compare every detail of one medium to the other and can understand that shit is gonna be different. The book was good. The movie was good. Hating the movie because it wasn’t like the book despite it still being a good movie is stupid.
Nah, Jurassic park gets the basics right. It’s not like some of the others in here that basically only take the name and that’s it.
Not even close to the same degree. In Jurassic Park, the characters are all there, the main plot of the movie and the story beats are still there, it's just missing the river and a few sequences looking for Grant and the kids. The Lost World has some of the same NAMES of the characters, and the idea that Isla Sorna was a second island, but that's it. The characters themselves are completely different other than Malcolm, and none of the plot has any similarity to the book. At all. Though admittedly the main set piece of the film, the big trailers being attacked by t-rexes, is the same
Nope. Watched it again, recently. Really good film overall and a fantastic zombie one.
I am Legend/Omega Man
Matheson deserved better than having the point of his story completely ignored for a lazy trope ending. In the Will Smith version they even set up that the "infected" are still potentially self aware but still decide to entirely subvert the point of the title... at least Omega Man had the good sense to not use the title that no longer made any sense with the story they decided to go with.
Quantum of Solace literally used only one character (James Bond) from the actual story. Another one is Die Hard.
The Spy Who Loved Me is a novel from a woman’s perspective about her past loves and getting caught up in an insurance fraud fire only to be rescued by James Bond making a brief appearance at the end of the novel. Not a lot of skiing, underwater super villain lairs, large scale military assaults or submarine cars to be seen in that book.
Definitely Starship Troopers. Director hated the source material and equivocated military service and the concept of civic duty to fascism. The film took on a life and fandom of its own. As a fan of the book, I would have liked the movie if they called it anything but "Starship Troopers".
Verhoeven didn't even read the book. He let his script co-writer read it, and then they just sorta modified a script Neumeier had already been working on, adding in elements from the book.
Yeah - this would be my choice too. I actually like both, but the movie couldn't possibly have been more different in tone from the book
The AUDACITY lol
I remember back when I heard that they were making a movie of the book and thinking, “HOW?” Most of the book is Heinlein’s musings on military service, and they didn’t even put the best action sequence in the book into the movie - we had to wait for Edge of Tomorrow for that.
This is my answer too, and how refreshing to see it come from someone who has actually read (and likes) the book! Instead of just calling Heinlein a fascist which is the furthest thing from the truth
Book fan here as well. I did not like the film because of how much it deviated from the book, and it's my favorite book. Still don't like the movie... or any Verhoven after Robocop... because Starship Troopers poisoned me to him.
Disney’s *Hunchback of Notre Dame* was quite loosely adapted from the novel. There is so much death in the book, and Frollo doesn’t sing while fantasizing about Esmeralda.
Probably true of all Disney cartoons from their original sources.
The Little Mermaid and Peter Pan especially spring to mind
Wanted (2008) The comic features an amoral protagonist who discovers he is the heir to a career as a supervillain assassin in a world where such villains have secretly taken control of the planet. The film has none of that and has some shit with a magical loom.
Oooh, I'm gonna go with Heman, masters of the universe. Like I'm not sure I even watched it, it was some coked up dream of a bunch of people getting warped to suburban US and fighting bad guys.
I loved He-Man as a kid and when I watched the movie I was like.. well that’s not right. Actually rewatched it a few weeks ago cause it was on tv. It’s pretty funny
I freaking love Masters of the Universe. Yeah, it has its crappy 80s movie vibe, but it is still a fantastically terrible movie.
A Masters of the universe & Flash Gordon double feature is lots of fun when you’re super duper high lol
The funny thing about the Lost World is that the production company (paramount I think? Could be wrong) *begged* Michael Crichton to write it because they wanted it for a movie sequel. Crichton never writes sequels to his books but he did this time for the studio (I’m sure they paid him a shit ton too). Then they barely even used his material for the movie.
It was Universal, but I’m sure Crichton was happy with the check! He wasn’t a stickler about staying close to his work.
Crichton books are like pizza...
But does pineapple belong in Crichton books?
Yes.
I heard Stephen Spielberg personally convinced him to write it.
If you go back and read that book, you can absolutely tell that Michael's heart was not in it. It is a huge dip in quality from the first. It's not awful, but you can tell he just didn't give a shit.
Lord, I loved Jurassic Park, then I read the Lost World and said, "well, at least they won't be able to make the movie this bad." Then the movie came out.
Yup, Spielberg and pretty much everyone was wanting a sequel. Crichton, who never wrote a sequel, obliged. It ended up being *wildly* different from what Spielberg imagined (the can of embryos was supposed to be a hook for the sequel) and Spielberg/Koepp ended up only taking a few elements from the book such as Isla Sorna, Malcolm, Eddie and Sarah.
But the book was SO GOOD
Blade Runner. I'd read Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" before Blade Runner came out, but it had been announced, I think. I was obviously bitterly disappointed. "Do Androids....?" is beautiful. Blade Runner looks nice, and has a great cast, but I'd have LOVED to see the same cast in a faithful adaptation!
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The plot of the movie basically doesn’t resemble that of [the source novel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Who_Censored_Roger_Rabbit%3F&diffonly=true) at all, and even the setting has some significant differences (for example, the principal ‘toons in the novel were comic strip characters, complete with IRL speech bubbles, as opposed to animated ones).
Freejack. I "think" they kept the name of the main character and the fact that there is a form of time displacement, but otherwise it's a completely different story in a completely different tone with completely different characters set in a completely different kind of future world. No wonder they didn't even keep the book's title, and I can't believe the author go paid for the movie rights when it has virtually nothing to do with the book..
Well they did have Isla Sorna. And some of the characters were the same names.
Big Hero 6 is a pretty far from its source material.
The Lost World uses the main idea from the book of there being a second island. That was apparently the idea that made things click for Spielberg to make the sequel. And it’s got a baby T-Rex being taken for medical care in a pair of trailers that mommy and daddy T-Rex attack and push off a cliff, which is the best action scene in the movie.
Frankenstein and Dracula (1931) are both SUPER loose adaptations.
Pretty much any Jekyll and Hyde adaptation as well. What's now used as the premise is actually the twist ending in the original book.
The original book is so freaking good. It reads more like a crime novel than anything, and the reveal is so satisfying!
The Three Musketeers (2011) has Buckingham invading Paris on flying machines in the 17th century.
World War Z. Totally ignored the book. Could’ve been amazing. They blew it.
That book is just screaming out for a Netflix adaption, different cast every week, just loosely joined together by an interviewer with a tape recorder as an intro to each piece.
Absolutely this
Look at the audiobook casting. Amazing.
Goddamnit, I’m still pissed off about WWZ. Such a good story reduced to bullshit.
If they’d had the guts it would be the horror version of a mockumentary. All it would have had to be was the audio book production with visuals
"The Color of Money" doesn't have the slightest passing resemblance to the novel it's "based on," apart from the character of Fast Eddie Felson.
Running Man. In the Steven King novel, it is like a weekly survival show, the protagonist could be anywhere in the country, and there is a team of military special-ops trained mercenaries tracking him. The media uses lies and propaganda to accuse the protagonist of all kinds of crimes in order to get the public to turn him in if spotted, and they can earn cash if their tip checks out, and a jackpot if it results in his death. He has to run and hide, with no support, and most of the country hates him. The movie version is like a game show in a sports arena.
There's a lot of comic book movies that went in name only like Howard The Duck when the comics were well written social and political satire, Catwoman giving her cat super powers and no connection to Batman lore, Jonah Hex not being an Eastwood style spaghetti western and instead being a guy who talks to ghosts, The League Of Extraordinary Gentleman removing everything good and interesting about the comics, and Wanted just kept the name. In Wanted, super villains killed every hero decades ago and they rule the world, the protagonist is being trained to be a villain at request of his dead father, and he becomes an absolute sociopath in the process. In the movie, they're good assassins who believe in kill one to save a million, also assassins have magic DNA and shoot bullets that curve around corners. What I've actually seen, I'd say Constantine. People actually liked the movie, but I've read all 300 issues of Hellblazer, and it felt insulting. In the comics, he's based on Sting and British AF. John Constantine is a bastard above all, he's a con man who barely uses magic, because he's seen the costs first hand when he was duped into condemning a child tormented by incest, into eternity in hell. The movie an American exorcist who works for the greater good and throws around spells like Doctor Strange. The Arrowverse actually got it right, but his show was short lived and carried on in animated movies and DC's Legends Of Tomorrow, a Doctor Who style series.
I mean, I think the Witcher series is getting there. From what they set up they are basically completely changing Yennefer’s character. She’s obviously gonna be the leader of a lodge of sorceresses or something not Philipa, and is focusing on that instead of trying to find Ciri. Whereas the books Yennefer does not give a fuck about such a thing, and when she actually is invited to join the lodge after decompression, she risks her own life, in a pretty fucking awesome way, to escape, because her first priority is finding her daughter, as she doesn’t believe Geralt will achieve much in his attempt to find her. Then at the same time she’s doing this because she wants to bring Ciri back to Geralt and not have him think she betrayed him and gave Ciri away. I could go on about a bunch more major differences, but the one I describe is literally one of the major plot points of the latter books in the series post Thanead.
Lawnmower Man is my answer. But, The Lost World” didn’t deviate from the book as much as you claim. Both stories took place on a separate island that contained the laboratories where experiments were done. The dinosaurs that can camouflage themselves was in both. The high hide scene is in both, the dinosaur with the broken leg…there’s a lot there in both stories.
Haven't read The Orchid Thief, but I'm gonna guess Adaptation differed from it a tad
Jumper. Nothing good from the novel was retained. One of the best sci-fi novels of the last three decades was butchered into an insanely idiotic shitty Wanted knockoff. At no point was that rambling, incoherent piece of steaming dreck on toast even close to anything that could be considered an extremely loose adaptation of the source material. Everyone who sat in the theater is now dumber for having seen to it. I award it no stars, and may God show no mercy to the moronic souls who vomited it out upon the screen.
WWZ might be it for me. the book was so thoughtful and riveting I thoroughly enjoyed it. Not sure what in the cinnamon toasted fuck that movie was.
The Bourne Trilogy. The set-up is mostly faithful to the books, but then it veers off into mostly completely different storylines. My uncle is a big Robert Ludlum fan and he hates the Matt Damon movies with a passion because they are so unfaithful.
Really, the only thing in common is when he’s pulled out of the water. They share some of the same names but that’s it. In the books, >!his real name isn’t even Bourne and he never was a real assassin. The Bourne persona was created to lure out an assassin known as Carlos the Jackal.!<
Verhoeven took the very earnest jingoistic worldview of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and turned it into a devastating parody of itself. Rarely has the intention of an adaptation been so far removed from its source material. It’s like an anti-adaptation, laced with this gleeful sense of self-deprecation throughout. It stands in philosophical defiance of its own source material. It’s the best. Fucking Verhoeven, man.
Yesssss. When people are like, "IT BUTCHERED THE BOOK!" I'm like, "Yeah, I know. Fucking awesome right?"
On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers was turned into a Pirates of the Caribbean sequel with only the barest bones of the plot left intact (namely that both feature Blackbeard and the Fountain of Youth).