“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.
Omega Man is a fun movie though.
The Omega Man (1971) is exciting and misses the point even further.
Appropriate, as the star of that movie usually did too.
Because no one is going with the classic, I can mention Eragon.
I was going to read Eragon with my kids, but then remembered how bad the movie was - and knew that they’d want to watch it after reading the books. So I haven’t read it with them. Might get around to it eventually.
Easily “World War Z.” What an utter waste of the source material.
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 :-)
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.
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, 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
Are you saying the book does not have a blatant commercial for All Stars?
I thought for sure this would be the top comment.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, there has never been a movie adaptation of the book! Never!
Imagine if they did an anthology series… /drooling
For now I’ve got Pluto to look forward to.
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.
The many adaptations of the Iliad, none of them is gay enough.
Not a classics, but:
- American Gods: they made unnecessary changes and introduced unnecessary filler plotlines until it felt like a drag to watch. The book already explored social issues, but the showrunners decided to dial it up to 100 and spoonfeed it to the audience at the expense of the actual plot.
- Ready Player One: they dumbed down the whole thing about hunting keys and portals, removed tons of important worldbuilding details, made pointless changes that ruined the spirit of the books. They should have made it into a series instead of a movie.
What made me mad at RP1 movie was they put the Easter Egg in Atari Adventure. Which is mentioned in chapter 0 of the book, and again in the fake town (not put in the movie) because it’s so obvious, nobody who cared about games at all would hide anything there.
And no Tomb of Horrors.
Instead Spielberg put a bunch of lame movie references in, because he’s too senile to understand the game references.
And the actors are far too pretty for the “but you’re beautiful inside” plot.
Not to mention the bastardization of the entire plot.
I liked the book because it felt like the villains had actual capabilities to accomplish their goals. The protagonists did everything right and it still wasnt enough to get the bad guys off their backs.
In the movie the protagonists make stupid decisions and the villain helper character which didn’t even exist in the book just overhears them talking about it.
Fucking. Stupid.
Said it better than I could.
Exactly.
And no Tomb of Horrors.
That’s because the novel was about nerd culture in general, while the movie was almost entirely about video games. All the D&D, Rush, Monty Python, etc. references were absent. The Shining was in there because Kubrick was Spielberg’s mentor.
Instead Spielberg put a bunch of lame movie references in, because he’s too senile to understand the game references.
Have not seen the movie, but that sounds like Spielberg nailed the tone of the novel. The book reads like a thinly veiled essay by an aging Gen X geek about how pop culture peaked during the authors childhood and the world would be perfect if we could go back to the 80s.
Thanks for your completely useless post.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollywoodBeautyStandards
It doesn’t happen all the time, though
Ready Player One: they dumbed down the whole thing about hunting keys and portals, removed tons of important worldbuilding details, made pointless changes that ruined the spirit of the books. They should have made it into a series instead of a movie.
I went into the theater expecting it to be not so great, and it still managed to disappoint me.
Ready Player One was a good adaptation of a mediocre book into a mediocre movie.
I won’t argue with the book being mediocre (I myself enjoyed it but many others didn’t), but it wasn’t a faithful adaptation at all.
Both of these.
American Gods really pissed me off though if they had stuck to the books it could have been an amazing series with great characters and weird but fun storylines in a unique setting. But they added too much stuff and there was a total mess with the show runners leaving so it all sort of fell apart before one of the best plot lines of the whole story.
I kinda want to rewatch it again someday though…
Not a classic for most people but zoomers will agree that Percy Jackson and the lightning thief was a tragedy.
Hot take but I kinda liked the percy jackson movies. Yeah they could’ve been done better but it was one of my favorite series and to see some parts of it visualized and on the big screen is a cool experience. Still, I’m very excited for what Rick Riordan has cooked up with Disney right now.
Yeah the new Percy Jackson series has a lot of potential and good young actors who are more accurate in terms of characters age.
Then Sea of Monsters ended up being worse somehow.
Yeah. They even got a second chance. Am opportunity to make respectable sequels for each book… But no. We can’t have nice things.
God, I forgot that even existed…
The Dark Tower. I don’t get what that was, the books were far richer.
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.
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.
The Black Cauldron
That. Is a deep cut, and yes.
Any visual media that you’ve seen after you’ve read the source book. A better way to look at it. It is which movie was better or as good than its book.
Jurassic Park was a better movie than the book. The Martian the movie was as good as the book.
Fight Club. I actually enjoyed the dumbass movie doesn’t-work-that-way ending more than the mental break of the main character in the book.
I have to imagine that Lawnmower Man is in the running. Talk about having nothing at all to do with the ‘book’ , (well, short story anyway).
When I found the short it was based on I was all “cyber-gore here I come” and then I read it…
I guess they both had a lawnmower?
