Films from Books

Thomas Harris' Red Dragon was brilliantly transformed into Manhunter by omitting a great deal of the book.
Much of this material was replaced when Red Dragon was made and it was a noticeably inferior film as a result.
Plus they also didn't ask Brian Cox to reprise amazingly creepy Hannibal Lecter, opting instead for A. Hopkins' pantomime dame... again. :rolleyes:
 
Hey, me too! And I thought I was the only one...

The only films from books I've really seen are the Harry Potter ones- and they're TERRIBLE compared to the books. Important plotlines (e.g Marauders' Map) are left out or unexplained, a whole CHARACTER (Peeves) is completely forgotten about and the Ron and Hermione luvvey-duvvey scenes are just completely Hollywood Romance. Another example of this is in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy- the 'love triangle' between Zaphod, Arthur and Trillian is just the style of a big Hollywood director sticking a nice romance clich
 
All of John Grisham's books, which I adore, have made terrible films - the exception being 'A Time To Kill' which was his first novel. He refused for a long time to sell the rights to the book and when he did, he was one of the producers so he had a large say in what went on. He actually selected Matthew McConaughey to play Jake Brigance as the book is semi autobiographical. A lot of the characters, particulary Ozzie Walls and Harry Rex Vonner, are exactly how I pictured them in my head, something that certainly cannot be said of Susan Saradon in 'The Client' and Denzil Washing in 'The Pelican Brief'. It's certainly the closest adaption but it's still not perfect. The worst adaptation by far was 'The Runaway Jury' in which the whole plot about tobacco litigation was changed to gun control. Ridiculous!

Some of the raw emotion in his books, particularly in The Rainmaker and A Time To Kill, both of which made me cry when reading them, just fails to be captured in the film and I find myself very frustrated when watching them and constantly thinking 'they missed that out' or 'that didn't happen in the book' :(
 
American Psycho was a terrible remake of a brilliant (but gory) book. It almost made it pantomime, when it's actually a very clever modern horror story. Not to everyone's taste mind!
 
Well, the stories in the book/film are not very cheerful, are they? But it never struck me as particularly uncheerful or depressing film/book though :confused:
 
Those of you who have seen "The Ring", with Naomi watts, have any of you read "Ring" by Koji Suzuki?

A completely different feel/atmosphere. The book was made into a Japanese film and then remade into an american film, the result was all the main characters undergoing huge changes, much of the original story being removed and a new one inserted.

The best scene in "The Ring" isn't even in the book. The american film only sticks to the loose premise of the book, with a few things matching up here and there.

I would say despite all these changes The Ring is still an excellent film and you can hardly even compare it to the book (as they are so different). The original author himself has said that he enjoyed the film.
 
Girl, Interrupted- one of my favourite films EVER... the book is awesome

And as much as i loved the American Psycho movie... I read the book afterwarRAB and thought it was amazing
 
Back
Top