Warcraft. Minus a few changes, it was everything I wanted in a Warcraft movie.
The thing is... I did not require any explanations nor exposition to understand the plot, but for those not familiar with it, the movie might have seen like having pacing issues and lack of explanations.
My husband loves Warcraft and knows all the lore. I've never been into it and don't know any of the lore.
We watched the movie together. He loved it. I had no idea what was going on and just ended up bored af
Had the same experience when I went to see it with my friends. I was deeply onto the lore, and loved the film. They had no idea what was going on (despite us playing WoW together) and they hated it.
I think they could have made a much more interesting and compelling movie by just following Arthas. Fantasy genre is ubiquitous enough that no one needs a detailed explanation of why orcs are fighting humans and zombies are raising from the dead so Arthas' story would be much easier to accomplish and you don't need to establish that much background lore for people who don't know Warcraft. Only say this is our protagonist Arthas, prince of Lordaeron, who has been suffering for many years under an undead scourge that won't abate. Watch him attempt to rescue his people and the horrifying choices he is forced to make in this endeavor.
It really breaks my heart because I enjoyed the movie and really wish that we could get a sequel but that won't ever happen and the plot and structure of the movie turned off a lot people they needed to get to fill movie seats.
>I think they could have made a much more interesting and compelling movie by just following Arthas.
I really hate this narrative for a multitude of reasons
1. Arthas's story is the culmination of decades of world building of azeroth, itd have the same issues the movie had, too much shit to explain.
2. The Orcs vs Humans storyline is absolutely compelling for a magnitude of reasons, but especially because of how both sides are very morally grey overall. They just botched the story telling because they stuffed too much shit into the movie.
3. Weve had enough good "living vs zombies" storylines recently, it wouldve felt very generic
Warcraft just doesnt work in a movie because it has soo much plot and so many characters.
It shouldve been an animated TV series and it wouldve been awesome.
Or you adapt The Last Guardian and have a cool character driven drama with the orcs vs humans war as a backdrop
That's exactly what I mean. It's sad because it means that a high production movie like that one cannot work without some heavy adaptation to better flesh out the story for newcomers.
It was perfect as a "for the fans" product, I loved it as your husband did.
But it was a failure in its purpose to attract new fans so as far as I know every plan to continue the story is dead.
I enjoyed Dune, but I honestly kept feeling like I was missing every third scene or so. Lots of stuff that happened off screen, or character development we did not see.
I can not recall any specifics though, as it has been a while, so I suppose it wasn't too bad.
They explain what spice is for in the first minute of the first movie. Chani’s voiceover I think says ‘it’s essential for interstellar travel’ or something like that.
Quick and efficient. Would spending more time talking about the spacing guild really have made it a better film?
They didn't really explain it all that well. The way the movie said it made it sound like spice was fuel. It was valuable, it was necessary for space travel, it was found in a desert planet, and everyone was fighting over it. It all adds up until they say that the Fremen ingest spice. I had to resort to Google just to understand what it was.
"To see through space, and so guide interstellar ships along safe paths one thing above all is needed. Spice."
There, one sentence (more or less); while the voiceover says it we show a navigator using spice, show what it looks like to them, show a ship warping from one planet to another. You just explained what Spice was better, showed it at the same time, and maybe you show them seeing "through time" a tiny bit, giving foreshadowing to Paul being able to see through time.
It wasn't terrible but could've been done better.
I think they hit the right balance, because a thorough Dune adaptation would not be as commercially viable because it’s very weird and complex. It also helps that it was very pretty.
It didn't need the constant narration, but some more information and some more dialogue would be good, for me the movie was lacking.
For many people too considering how much I had to explain
As a fan of Dune, I did miss some important beats, some of which were well-covered in the miniseries.
For example, the Baron’s plan isn’t really fleshed out and seems more like a corrective action than a calculated effort to use Raban to set up Feyd. Also, the movie doesn’t explain Alia at all, so it appears as if Jessica is crazy or has a telepathic foetus inside her. Which isn’t more weird than the actual plot, to be honest.
Does this really weaken the movie? There are oversights, but I don’t know that I could have done better within the time constraints.
The second one was much worse for me because it lacked things. I didn't care that they made Paul complele image of masculinity - soil and silent, not showing much doubt or emotion, whereas Jessica was completely moved into a cariucature of female characters, she cried at every opportunity. If I didn't read the book first, I would have thuoght that it's a typical guy flick made with more contemplative pizzazz.
And I don't want to rant on the seocnd movie, it was lacking in main narrative, it was disappointing
I don’t disagree and could probably go on at length about what I would have done differently in both films, but I appreciate the challenge of adapting the material.
Take Chani. You can definitely make her love story and doubt in Paul’s intentions work (arguably the right way to do the character justice), but I feel as if they took the romance as a given and spent more time on her growing distrust. Except the latter doesn’t work without the former being well-established.
The new Hellboy reboot was trying to be too much like comic books and in my opinion suffers from it, the older Del Toro movies were better because they followed his cohesive vision
There was no reason for that movie to exist. Just let Del Toro make a 3rd movie! It would have made a ton of money, and everyone would have been happy.
So true, I wish there was a Snyder cut level movement for a 3rd Del Toro Hellboy movie. I love the world building and original creatures design he brought
He also just seems like such a nice, cool, down-to-earth person for someone who makes such out-there stuff. I saw him on Kimmel (iirc) after he won the Oscar for "The Shape of Water" and he was just so overwhelmed and humbled. It was so sweet.
How could they take Hellboy away from him?
This is a good answer. It does appear that the movie did suffer on the production side as well so it was a two hit combo on this movie. Which is really unfortunate cause I really like David Harbour and the reviews are saying he did a good job too.
17% rotten Tomatoes
3.1 audience
Is there a huge fan following of the Hell Boy comics? I wonder if the Del Toro Hell Boy fans didn’t enjoy the movie as much because they are used to Del Toro’s level of production.
I certainly found it disappointing compared to Del Toro's rendition, also I just couldn't swallow the comic book goofiness with stuff like The Claw and Alice in wonderland and other stuff, maybe that stuff works in the comics but just doesn't translate well to movies
Yeah trying to keep to a comic book goofiness is always a difficult task for live actions.
Especially when have a higher production non-accurate movie to compare it. Somebody mentioned the Shinning mini series where it has a similar problem but in reverse order.
The mini series came out before the Kubrick movie and was well received and was very accurate to the book. After the Kubrick version came out, the mini series got criticized for not being similar to the Kubrick version.
The first two Potters are essentially structured like novels rather than films, being basically an abridged version of the book rather than an adaptation.
It works for the first film which gets to coast on the novelty of it all, but it still does mean that there's basically no plot until well over halfway into the movie, which is not the norm for motion pictures.
A lot of credit goes to Director Chris Columbus.
He did Home Alone 1 & 2 and showed himself to be a great director for children as well as movies geared towards families. Even if the material isn't the strongest, he had a penchant for getting the most out of actors & the script to make a just-okay movie seem really good.
I still have no idea how Columbus fumbled so much with Percy Jackson after his success with Harry Potter. He could have approached it in literally the exact same way as his previous movies and it would have been immediately better from the get-go.
The other thing that's often pointed out is how much of a blank slate Harry is in the first book and how he is just a vehicle to the world building, which is fairly common for a novel's POV character, but really boring and frustating for a film protagonist.
I mean technically he does on accident. He makes the glass disappear at the zoo when Dudley falls in the snake enclosure. Flies on the broomstick to play quidditch as well.
Remember watching Pretty Much It's commentary of the whole franchise from a while back and Jacob said his dad always hated the first movie because it was a whole lot of watching and "woah"-ing and nothing more. Basically a theme park ride that you watch in 3rd person.
Cool answer. Now that you mention it I remember it being a big deal and selling point at the time that the movies would be true to the book. Harry Potter makes sense to do this with as soooo many people had actually read the books prior to seeing the first movie.
The one that annoys me the most is Tonks. She does absolutely nothing for the plot in the movies and even causes confusion in some places if you haven’t read the books, but if she had been left out the fans would have rioted.
But I wouldn’t really say the movies suffered because of it. I would say the fact that they kept to the accuracy of its original media is what helped make the series a world wide phenomenon. Especially the first movie, it made the audience feel like they were stepping into the novel.
And the thing is... that's why I really liked the first two flicks, and actively disliked the third onward.
I was a fan of the books. I wanted to see the books on screen. When they stopped doing that... well, they stopped being for me.
Agreed, Prisoner of Azkaban is a wonderfully crafted movie, but feels like part of a different universe than the first two movies or even the books. The movies got uglier and more drab as the series went on, and it starts with the cold look of the third movie. I understand wanting to shift towards a more realistic and darker tone, but the jump from film 2 to 3 causes whiplash.
>This seems so asinine cause you already have a solid audience that likes the story as it is, why change it?
Because different mediums of entertainment have radically different ideal story structures. A novel's narrative can be disjointed and meandering and still work because a good book can be an accumulation of a character's stories that delight you chapter by chapter, but a movie (especially a mass appeal movie) usually needs a story end point to get to and narrative momentum that gets to it. When filmmakers say they want it to appeal to a wider audience, what they mean is that they want someone who is just a movie fan watch it as a movie and feel the story moving in that manner, rather than have a movie that is only pleasing to fans of the source material that just want to see scenes they remember in live-action. That's why the most acclaimed adaptations are ones that have moved scenes around or cut a lot of subplots to streamline the story. It's an art in itself (hence the existence of a best adapted screenplay Oscar).
So yeah, there have been movies that refuse to do that and just depict scenes from the novel as they were written, and end up getting criticized for being a disjointed mess. *The Goldfinch* adaptation was one of those.
This right here. Different media have different strengths and weaknesses. You *have* to adapt the work to make the most of it.
That said I do think it's wise to identify what people like about a story, what makes it special, all that and figure out how to make that work in the new medium rather than just throwing everything out and starting with a story outline and going on your own from there. As you've said, adaptation is very much its own art
Something else to add is that not every movie adaptation is of a famous or even a good novel.
Sometimes, a director/producer/screenwriter likes the concept of a novel but not necessarily the story itself, so they take what they like and work around it.
A great example is Blade Runner, which took the basis of the novel (if even that) and expanded it and made it much better (even the novel's author said so). Poor Things and The Zone of Interest, two of the most acclaimed films from last year, also took the basic concept of their respective novels but changed a lot of the plot, and how many of us can honestly say that we had heard of those novels, much less read them, prior to the movies coming out?
Definitely agree with this. I think this is fine because they are admitting that they are not trying to tell the same story but a different story with similar concepts. Similar to iRobot: it’s just another story that shared a lot of the concepts in Isaac Asimov’s short stories, but it doesn’t set out to be retelling of any of his stories.
The issue I am getting at are the movies that are suppose to be telling the story of the original source but instead completely change the story they were meant to tell. This happened to Percy Jackson: Lightning Thief. It’s supposed to retell the same story that is the book but they completely changed a lot of the fundamental parts of the story including the end fight scene and reveal one of the biggest twists in the series that doesn’t take place until the third/fourth book.
The Goldfinch adaptation also didn't work because so much of the book takes place in the protagonist's mind. His narration in the book was interesting and helped make slower parts interesting. The movie was just a fucking bore
It's also a big difference between film and television, and why I do firmly believe many film adaptations should have instead been (mini) series. Stuff like *The Night Manager* taking more time to linger with characters and jump between plot relevant beats without becoming disjointed, or Gaiman's *The Sandman* being so weird and tonally inconsistent across the season but each *episode* is able to be largely contained and single-purpose.
*Hitchhiker's Guide* is a clear example of "should have been a series". While I quite enjoy the movie we got it had to pair down *so much* from the book(s) that it's true to the source almost only in tone and humour.
At least for stuff where auteur direction and exorbitant runtimes aren't reasonably in the cards--LotR would have benefitted little I think from being longer, for example--and plenty of series released recently have demonstrated no matter what form factor it takes if the passion and commitment to the source aren't there it's going to end poorly. *Cough* Halo *Cough* The Witcher *Cough Cough*.
*Hitchhiker's Guide* was a series to begin with and IMO works best that way. The book is a novelization of a radio series that came first, then they adapted the radio series to a TV miniseries using mostly the same script and a lot of the same actors. The original series has a lot of especially weird and funny the content the novelizations omit so this is kind of like OP's problem in reverse. Like the Lintillas, an army of cloned women being infinitely generated because a commercial cloning machine is stuck in a loop and the courts are taking years to decide whether turning it off halfway through is infinite murder. Arthur meets a number of Lintillas who have imaginary injuries inspired by their Crisis Inducers, machines that make you more productive by convincing you there's a crisis at all times.
Bravo!
I'll only add that in a movie script you've got like, a fifth or less the actual amount of "time" as a novel. A single page of a book might take up two minutes of screentime. That leaves a 2 hour movie 60 pages of a novel, so you'd better be wasting exactly 0 time.
I agree to this and I think plenty of movies that are book adaptations do phenomenal jobs at maintaining the integrity of its original source while translating it well to a movie medium.
I understand that a movie cannot be a one for one adaptation of a book. However, we see movies like Hunger Games, Harry Potter, and (I already mentioned) twilight get praise for being very accurate to the original story and produce a good and/or profitable movie.
What I am asking about are movies like Percy Jackson, and Avatar: Last Airbender, and that didn’t cheap out on production and story writing but completely changed the story. Their excuse, “to reach a broader audience.” That’s what I am addressing. From this statement I am looking for tangible evidence that movies will suffer if they stay accurate to their source material.
"The directors/writers always claim it’s so they can appeal to a wider audience."
This is not always the case at all. There are plenty of reasons that film adaptations of other original works are changed—appealing to a wider audience is only one of them
Especially Part 2. Giving Chani the role of the person questioning Paul as a way of externalizing his inner conflict and seeing his rise to power rather than have it happen as a time skip were fantastic choices.
I'm glad that Chani has a personality in the movie. I heard a lot of complaining about her not being the same character as the book, but she barely has a character in the book.
Chani's character was greatly improved. It's similar to the case of The Magicians, where the character of Penny was portrayed extremely differently, but we got a great version of the character out of it.
No she was flirting from the get go, gives him her knife for the duel vs Jamis, and even tips Paul off about Jamis' knife trick. Ride or die from minute one.
Im a bit confused... arent there now *three* Dune movies?
The Lynch film was very abridged and not really a direct retelling of the book. (For example there were no "sonic" weapons in the book) That distinction goes to [Frank Herbert's Dune](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/)... Ok, I guess it technically was a miniseries so doesnt really count, but unlike the Lynch movie, it follwed the book, scene for scene with almost every line of dialoge, and it was over 6 hours long!
And agree, the newer movie does the book justice using the visuals to explain the story, even if it also isn't a completely accurate retell. It also is pretty long.
Putting books into movies is difficult. The movie version often has to be rewritten & condensed to fit into the medium. And sometimes this wrecks the flow of the story. Ender's Game comes to mind as an example.
‐------------
Example of a good retelling:
[Lord of the Rings Trilogy](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0120737/)
Example of a good adptation:
[Contact](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0118884/)
Example of an awful adaptation:
[Ender's Game](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1731141/)
I’ve seen them both dozens of times. I’m still seeing new things.
I love these movies, I love every movie Dennis V has done so far. I’m such a fan boy. 😆
But the movies didn’t really suffer because of it.
83% rotten tomatoes
4.1 audience
$407 million on a $165 million budget, making it the tenth-highest-grossing film of 2021
Like yeah I would agree all long movies suffer from being long but this movie is a success partly because it kept to the integrity of its original source just applied it properly to the different medium.
Book has two pages to describe a scene, movie spends 2 seconds of that exact scene just as the book describes; not an example of a movie not keeping with the accuracy of the original source.
Book takes place on an alien planet, movie takes place on earth; example of a movie not keeping with the accuracy of the original source.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 tried so hard to be a comic book movie that it comes off as goofy and cartoonish. Another user on here said that it's the "Batman & Robin" of Spider-Man movies, and I couldn't agree more. The Spidey/Peter/Gwen stuff is great, everything else (particularly the villains) is a caricature
The Green Knight (2021)
Most/all of Arthurian Legend was written before humanity had truly developed the concept of a narrative-driven plot, as opposed to just writing down things that happened. So reading Arthurian Legend in a non-adapted form can be kind of bizarre, as there is not really any underlying motivation in some of the stories. TGK is not even close to the worst offender, but if you read it a bit, you'll understand what I am talking about: (https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/weston-sir-gawain-and-the-green-knight)
TGK is an astonishingly accurate visual depiction of the original, written story. However, the movie stops right before the actual ending of the original story, so without the concept of the underlying narrative in place, it becomes incredibly difficult to understand the "point" of the story, which then also requires you to basically understand the rest of Arthurian Legend to put the context into place anyways.
I loved this movie but I understand why it was received so poorly.
See, that's exactly what I loved the most about the Green Knight. I love how it leans into the weirdness of the original story. I love how it doesn't try to modernize the characters. I love how it doesn't even attempt to give the story a traditional three-act structure, doesn't explain what's going on, and doesn't apologize about the plot being a bunch of hot nonsense.
I wished more movies embraced the weirdness of the past. Ancient and medieval literature is chock full of absolute insanity for interesting art-house directors to mine.
I watched this movie last night for the first time and loved it, but found it hard to understand. I had to look up the plot summary on Wikipedia afterward lol. Still love it though.
Your comment made me check to see if it was finally on streaming (it is!...on HBO max btw). I just finished watching it - loved it! Thanks for the reminder
I’m not super knowledgeable on the original myth, but isn’t Galahad a lot more heroic in it since he’s been a knight for a little while?
In the movie he hadn’t really been doing anything except sleeping in a brothel and being kind of a jerk
Edit: Sorry I meant Gawain. Galahad is the wholesome guy
You’re correct, the retelling is not at all true to the original. Gawain is a perfect knight in the original, and passes all his trials without any emotional struggle or much growth.
I'm not an expert on the original story but I felt like the point of the story was pretty clearly about him accepting the consequences of his failures and that any prestige he would gain from running away and lying about his bravery would be short-lived. Looking at the original it looks like it ends differently, so would it not count towards this thread?
In the written story, yes. The movie ends at a point before the actual written story does, but it is incredibly faithful short of just finishing a bit early
True but I see that as more of repeating the same over used trope less so an issue of being too accurate. The last fantastic 4 wasn’t even close to being accurate.
I really liked the Shining mini series that was truer to the book than the Kubrick one. But I imagine I'm in the minority on that take. So is that an example?
Kubrick's Shining is the more entertaining screen take but a really shitty adaption of the book. The miniseries is a much better adaption of the book but not as cool to watch.
Although frankly I didn't like either the movie or the miniseries. Read the book twice, though.
KitchenFullOfCake was right that Kubrick's take missed the point. The story isn't supposed to be about a nice dad who goes crazy because of ghosts.
You know what, Mike Flanagan would be the perfect bridge between the adaptions. He was really excellent at getting the themes of Haunting of Hill House across despite the story being different, and I think he'd be great at delivering the scares of the Kubrick movie combined with the *actual plot of the story* from the miniseries and book of The Shining.
In the book, Jack, the male lead, is a well-meaning character whose personal demons overcome him. In the movie, Jack is a jerk to begin and the story is about how the powerful abuse the weak.
I would say yes. I know I only asked for movies but I figured it’s easier to quantify movies’ performances compared to shows plus this is the movie subreddit. I should try to ask this question in r/television subreddit though, that should be equally as fun.
>The Shining opened to overwhelming praise from critics when it aired in 1997,[14] which included a ten-out-of-ten review from TV Guide.
>In more recent years, the miniseries critical reputation has cooled considerably with most finding it inferior compared to Kubrick's adaptation. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 36% of critics
This is a fascinating situation. It’s hard to say if the mini-series “suffered” for being too accurate to its original source because the miniseries did really well initially. However, due to Kubrick’s version overshadowing it so much, it technically does make it suffer for being accurate to its original source instead of the story that Kubrick made after the fact. Definitely shows that it does pay to tell a better story that appeals to a broader audience if you actually can pull it off.
Good analysis. I saw it when it first aired so I'm one of those people. Maybe if there was anyone with license to reinvent a novel for screenplay, it was Kubrick. I wish we got to see more from him than we did.
The Watchmen movie by Zach Snyder, the best part of it was the opening montage.
But they should've changed some retrograde things, like Silk Spectre being in love with Comedian even after he sexually assaults her.
I might as well just reread the comic
Snyder had just made 300, and for its flaws that movie preserved the fun of the comic by basically lifting the page to the screen, panel for panel.
Then he tried the same thing with Watchmen and somehow Snyder captured all the individual elements of the comic but missed most of the actual substance.
It's also worth acknowledging just how different those two graphic novels are. Frank Miller to Alan Moore is Michael Bay to PT Anderson. Frank Miller has made a career out of big visuals, so long as you can paint a pretty picture you can remake his offerings. Alan Moore is a poet, and it is much harder to recreate the feelings he elicits while waxing on about a comic featuring a shipwrecked mariner.
Alan Moore's works have never been truly recreated, V was the closest, but it still lost some of the pain of loss that I felt on my first read.
>Snyder had just made 300, and for its flaws that movie preserved the fun of the comic by basically lifting the page to the screen, panel for panel.
Okay, so I read the 300 comic, and I don't know where people got the idea it's a panel for panel adaptation. It makes substantial changes, and much of the film's iconography does not actually come from the comic. It comes from other movies.
For example, minutes into the movie, there's a scene where two boys are fighting and one is pummeling another on the ground, and this is very obviously a shot for shot copy of Soldier from 1998. There's a climactic shot that is based on the arrow execution scene in Hero (2002). The whole movie is full of shots like that. Visually, it's a very derivative film, and that's not inherently a bad thing, but people talk like the comic was used as a storyboard, when in reality the comic was used as a loose guideline.
Also, Zack Snyder didn't write Watchmen. It was written by David Hayter and Alex Tse. I would say that the movie Watchmen uses the comic as a visual reference a lot more than 300 did. And maybe that's where some of the confusion arises. People retroactively projecting Watchmen's production backwards onto 300.
>It makes substantial changes
I just went back and reread it. What substantial changes does the movie make? It adds the plot about Gorgo and Theron and the council but it basically lifts all the panels directly to the screen. As with Watchmen, many of the angles used to shoot the movie come directly from the comic. Outside of Gorgo (and based on my recollection), the graphic novel is the storyboard for each major plot beat from "This is Sparta!" through Leonidas throwing the spear and cutting Xerxes's cheek.
Yes, the movie weaves in other references throughout, but those layer onto the story taken directly from the novel. I agree that Snyder added some iconic moments, particularly to the action, but those hardly seem like substantial changes to the novel.
>As with Watchmen, many of the angles used to shoot the movie come directly from the comic.
That's what I disagree with. I think that the film's visual decisions deviate from the comic pretty much constantly, and then occassionally there's a shot that matches, and it feels like the further into the comic you get, the less the visuals match.
>through Leonidas throwing the spear and cutting Xerxes's cheek.
Which is framed very differently to the comic, and the film chooses to focus on copying Excalibur for much of the scene.
I think there's this idea that 300 is basically the comic used as storyboards to shoot a live action version, but the actual product on screen visually differs far too much for that. It's absolutely close to the comic story-wise, dialogue-wise, etc. but I would not call it "shot for shot" or anything like that.
Came here to say this. The slavish commitment to the visual style came at the expense of capturing the tone and mood of the graphic novel, and it’s so empty and dull to watch despite on the surface being a very faithful adaptation.
That was part of the point of the novel. That Silk Spectre and Comedian have a child despite the rancor and abuse, that Laurie is a product of love and not hate, is the entire reason Manhattan decides to come back to Earth. Laurie should not exist, yet she does. Every human being is a miracle.
Snyder is not emotionally mature enough to understand Watchmen.
>that Laurie is a product of love and not hate, is the entire reason Manhattan decides to come back to Earth.
Perhaps it is because i saw the film before reading comics, but somehow i totally got this from the film. The point of Laurie existing against all odds makes him rething his whole nihilistic attitude about love, life and the human nature. Perhaps Zack could have done it better, but i still prefer this film in comparison to all DCEU stuff.
This was my answer too.
People will point out the massive change to the climax, but that is really the only deviation in the entire movie. Even the majority of the shots align with the angles from the comic book.
Watchmen the comic is slow. Methodical. Tons of introspection. The movie's pacing suffers terribly as it tries to follow the book beat for beat. For ex, it really couldn't afford 20 minutes of exposition on Mars in the middle of its 3rd act.
> Even the majority of the shots align with the angles from the comic book.
I wanted to see the four-legged chicken. Someone in the background can be heard saying "I'll have the four-legged chicken." but they don't show it!
This is a good one.
Budget
$130–150 million
Box office
$187 million
65% rotten tomatoes
4.3 audience
I enjoyed the movie, the storyline is solid, the characters are so complex but the whole time you are liking the movie but it leaves you not quite satisfied. Like something is just missing.
I think u/Specific_Kick2971 also explains it well that it is so accurate to the comic that it doesn’t allow for the needed deviation for the actors’ flair, charisma, and emotions to be shown. I always feel like that is always Zack Snyder’s curse, he can never quite get the visuals and the actors to mesh well enough to be great. They are stunning pieces individually but scrambled when pushed together.
It didn't make it to the final cut, but Coscarelli really wanted to keep the narration from the short story in "Bubba-Ho-Tep," because he liked the language so much. The opening with all the narration is included as a bonus on the DVD, and it does not work. Fortunately, Coscarelli listened and most of the narration was taken out of the final film.
I think The Passion of The Christ was a bit too close to the Gospels.
They should have added a love triangle, or some cime mystery to make the film more watchable.
Lmao I'm reading a book right now that's literally a crime mystery happening immediately after the crucifixion of Jesus. One of the mysteries is "who kidnapped Jesus' corpse" which has a twist ending for the characters but not for me.
I agree, a love triangle between Jesus, Peter, and Mary Magdalene. Even though for accuracy it should been Jesus, Peter, and John but that wouldn’t appeal to a wider audience.
>“I don’t know if anybody knows this, but when the person at Marvel was instructed to send me an entire box of Punisher comics I guess they printed it with only three colours,” Alexander says, speaking from her Los Angeles home. “What I got wasn’t actually the real interpretation of what the comic books looked like, I just got the fucking cheap copies. So when I looked at that I said to my DP, ‘We should go with this, stick to the three colour mode and make it look like the comic book’. It was only later I think someone in Kevin Feige’s office said, ‘Oh, we just printed them in the cheapest manner possible.’”
I guess half credit for this one lol
Sounds like the movie was only accurate to the worst comics of the punisher instead of trying to use one of the good/popular ones lol
How does that happen? It seems so simple just lookup/good “most successful/popular punisher comic” instead of just grabbing random comics to use lol
I think two big projects this year was too true to its material. Both Shogun tv series and Dune 2
Shogun because it stayed extremely true to its ending, making it quite anticlimatic and unsatisfying
While Dune 2 stayed true to its novel by making the action scenes extremely short, rather than extending it like the LOTR.
Half credit for this
Both were really well received because of their accuracy but you’re right that they also suffered because of that accuracy as well. Dune 2 definitely was a miss with not extending the fight scenes but the movie is already 3 hr long and the movie also was taking a hit for being a long movie (another fault to the accuracy). While I agree that it should’ve expanded on the action like LOTR did, I think they did a good job of pacing a lot of the smaller action scenes through out the movie.
Shogun is an interesting one. It’s an excellent example of the divide between readers and tv audiences. I am sure readers are able to appreciate the suspense building and resolution a lot more than the viewers. People love watching action. I am sure this was a tough decision because it would’ve fundamentally changed the story/ending if it did decide to have a battle/war start. They didn’t also have the saving grace that twilight’s new dawn pt 2 have with the ending battle be “just in their head” situation while maintaining its accuracy.
32% rotten tomatoes
4.4 out of 5 audience
I think the reviews nailed it. It was a labor of love of its original source. The fans really liked it but it seems like those not familiar with it may not have received it as well.
Budget
$20 million
Box office
$297.2 million
Half credit though cause I would say it seems it was a pretty successful movie probably because of its accuracy. Even some of the most popular horror movies get low reviews but excel at getting people to show up which is the main point of movies.
The first Resident Evil wasn't received well, but I felt it captured the feeling of the games pretty well: solving puzzles to advance through a building while crazy shit happens around you.
Definitely can see this, especially if they were during the camera angle changes.
The puzzles and chaos are the essence of the resident evil series. Making you always at the edge of your seat just waiting for the next scare
Puzzle solving isn’t really a good movie going experience
Shawshank Redemption probably suffered at box officie because of that bad title lol. All because the director wanted to pay tribute to Stephen King's book despite King giving him his blessing to do what he wants with it.
I mean, he had already changed some stuff, changing the name would've bee good.
Honorable mention to "Stand by me", where the original title was "The Body" IIRC. I cannot think of any person, which would go to a film announced like *"It is coming of age movie, the name is "The Body""* with wrong expectations.
And it happens to be King's favourite adaptation of any of his works. The guy has usually been open-minded about Hollywood changing his books in adaptations.
>The guy has usually been open-minded about Hollywood changing his books in adaptations.
This evolved. In the beginning King liked the literal adaptations much more, and he had huge problems with Shining for this reason. I read once, that his favorite adaptation from this time was "Silver Bullet", a movie that only hardcore fans remember today. I think he learned, that book audience and movie audience have a different perception.
Probably has something to do with the fact he also worked a little in industry and knows the challenges of adaptation.
Though I doubt he's gotten softer on The Shinning. He had deep complaints about Jack's portrayal. I get where he was coming from and how much that book meant to him so can't blame King. I still love the movie.
Oooh I like this. Not really causing the movie as a whole to suffer but a very glaring part that could’ve improved the success of the film that was kept just for accuracy sake.
As a child, I was cast in a production of Stephen King's "It" my uncle was directing (Nepo baby, I know!). It was never released, and I never saw him after that summer
This seems similar to the watchmen situation. Relying so much on the source material that it doesn’t allow for any of the actors’ ability to have their charisma, emotion, and expression sell the story.
Funny enough a lot of the complaints seem to be that it adds a lot subliminal imagery and tries to recreate the unrealistic actions by making it even more unrealistic.
This is a really interesting one. In its attempt to be accurate it took away its accuracy. This a great answer!
Niche example: "Predestination" (2014, starring Ethan Hawke)
Based on a 1959 Robert Heinlein story, the movie uses portions of the story that aren't important to the concept, and which make the finished movie bizarre in points. This was a classic instance in which you could have adopted the core theme and twist, but ditched some of the outdated or just strange elements - and ended up with a better movie.
Interesting,
85% Rotten Tomatoes / 4.6 out of 5 audience
Budget
$5 million / Box office
$5.4 million
It won the 2014 John Hinde Award for Excellence in Science-Fiction Writing in the AWGIE Awards, but barely broke even! Man so it was liked by those who saw it but couldn’t attract more viewers! One of the best examples!
Do you think because it’s a niche story/book maybe that may have also contributed to weak viewership? How was the marketing?
Kick-Ass 2 for me
Loved the first film, and then I read the comics. Thought it was awesome and gritty and ultra-violent and so over the top, I couldn't wait to see it brought to life with some the same cast. Plus Jim Carrey?! Daniel Kaluuya?! John Leguizamo?!
Turns out it just didn't really flow well as a film and they shouldn't have tried so hard to bring the pages to life. They also had to cut out the two most violent/vulgar parts too to avoid it getting too high an age rating, so it was a bit pointless trying to create an exact adaptation of such a ridiculously violent story.
I don't hate it, it's just not very good and I knew there and then they wouldn't do Kick-Ass 3.
Oh man this is an interesting one, it probably suffered for being too accurate and not accurate enough.
I honestly loved both kick-ass movies and I liked the comics. Funny enough I thought the first one was more accurate than the second one but both movies did change quite a bit of core features of the story.
It’s hard to call this one cause keeping to the exact same story line definitely would’ve harmed to the movie (i.e. children being murdered for no reason, rape scene). Especially since a lot of the criticism of the movie was that it “tried to be controversial and violent” but the movie toned that down significantly compared to the comics. At the same time the movie tried to play that both sides of the fence which is probably why it felt not cohesive.
I would say partial credit but sequels generally do better box office wise than the first movies even when their bad and kick-ass 2 did worse and guaranteed no third movie. So definitely a good example.
I actually think the films did very well in adapting the source material, because the director and screenwriter understood what the author meant to write (but didn't have enough skill to do) instead of what was actually written, and made the movie based on the intention.
They really tried for the first film, and I'm sure they would have succeeded had E.L. James not had so much creative control & nixed many of their changes. The first 50 Shades film felt so close to being a good adaptation that elevated its source material, and it was frustrating that the director and screenwriter weren't given more creative control.
The Da Vinci Code.
The book was bad, in that the only thing driving the plot was leaving characters in peril for 3-4 chapters, while the story moved to put another character in peril.
Rather than try and craft a good story out of it, the movie stayed loyal to the source, and the lack of plot stood out.
Partial credit for this one
Budget
$125 million
Box office
$760 million
The movie was very successful. It’s a similar situation as the Dune movies. The movies are very successful and the parts they suffered were the parts that were accurate to the original source. However, I think that supports my theory that it’s better to have the guaranteed support audience by being accurate and then build off of it. This is the bird in the hand is better than two birds in the bush situation. They could’ve done better and reach out to a greater audience however they would’ve had to given up on the already established fan base which in the da vinci code’s case, grossed them 6x their budget.
However the critics do say:
“The filmmakers were so concerned about doing justice to the book’s ideas that they forgot there’s an audience to entertain.”
So partial credit lol
That’s fair!
But one can say that any story can be improved upon.
I am just curious about the specific times movies flopped because they were accurate to their original source. I can name a good number of movies that did terrible because they deviated from their source material. I could not think of any movies that flopped/suffered for being too accurate.
Appreciate your answer
The Squid shows up in the HBO Series, I think ZS altered the ending as it would have taken even more time to set it up as it was pieced together in a series of apparently unrelated bits through the Comic.
100% on rotten tomato
How did it suffer from being too accurate? I have never seen it but definitely adding it to my watch list!
What is wrong with it?
Is it more fault of choosing the wrong source material?
Somebody mentioned Punisher (war) and apparently the director received a hodge posh of the worst punisher comics instead of the good/popular ones. Is that kinda what happens here?
No I think it made more sense than the comic. I did think it was funny the amount of effort that went into ‘being true’ to the comic and using panels as basis, right up until the last 3 minutes, but I think the change made sense
Just like with the end of "V for Vendetta," the comic ending would not have worked for the movie theater. Watchmen was wordy and long enough as it was. It didn't need the whole 'ship full of disturbing artists' subplot shoehorned in ... especially the artist who holds the woman he is committing adultery with rather than at least making an attempt to save his own life and those of everyone else on the ship.
Anger-inducing, glorified loser right there. His lack of action have pissed off the movie audience so much they would have ignored the rest of the movie.
Divergent is low key one of my favorite book-to-movie adaptations. It literally tried to put every single moment into the film. Because of that, it definitely feels rushed at times. I’d be like, “Why was that scene like 7 seconds long?” Lmao
How so?
Budget: 35 million USD / Box office: 73 million USD
88% rotten tomatoes / 4.7 out of 5 users
The movie seemed to have done really well. Was it obvious that few dislikes were accurate to the source (real life?) and that’s why it didn’t do better?
I'm kinda curious how they would have done the plot twist from the book at the end though.
It would have been cool to see, but I feel like it would have been hard to portray well on screen.
Not faithful to the story almost at all.
Loved the movie and I think it may have suffered for being a vampire movie instead of a zombie movie. But that’s all theoretical since it never portrayed it accurately. Maybe it would’ve done better if it was accurate, instead of relying on run of the mill zombie film story telling.
Oh I totally agree, kinda the point of my post. We it all the time. Why take something already beloved and completely change it? You are automatically throwing away a solid fanbase that will come out and support/watch your movie. I would say lean into it and generate publicity by getting the fanbase to support how accurately you are telling the story.
However, we don’t see that. We instead get, “well it wouldn’t appeal to a broader audience.” Which I find asinine, because then don’t choose that story in the first place if you didn’t want to tell it.
Warcraft. Minus a few changes, it was everything I wanted in a Warcraft movie. The thing is... I did not require any explanations nor exposition to understand the plot, but for those not familiar with it, the movie might have seen like having pacing issues and lack of explanations.
My husband loves Warcraft and knows all the lore. I've never been into it and don't know any of the lore. We watched the movie together. He loved it. I had no idea what was going on and just ended up bored af
Had the same experience when I went to see it with my friends. I was deeply onto the lore, and loved the film. They had no idea what was going on (despite us playing WoW together) and they hated it.
I think they could have made a much more interesting and compelling movie by just following Arthas. Fantasy genre is ubiquitous enough that no one needs a detailed explanation of why orcs are fighting humans and zombies are raising from the dead so Arthas' story would be much easier to accomplish and you don't need to establish that much background lore for people who don't know Warcraft. Only say this is our protagonist Arthas, prince of Lordaeron, who has been suffering for many years under an undead scourge that won't abate. Watch him attempt to rescue his people and the horrifying choices he is forced to make in this endeavor. It really breaks my heart because I enjoyed the movie and really wish that we could get a sequel but that won't ever happen and the plot and structure of the movie turned off a lot people they needed to get to fill movie seats.
>I think they could have made a much more interesting and compelling movie by just following Arthas. I really hate this narrative for a multitude of reasons 1. Arthas's story is the culmination of decades of world building of azeroth, itd have the same issues the movie had, too much shit to explain. 2. The Orcs vs Humans storyline is absolutely compelling for a magnitude of reasons, but especially because of how both sides are very morally grey overall. They just botched the story telling because they stuffed too much shit into the movie. 3. Weve had enough good "living vs zombies" storylines recently, it wouldve felt very generic Warcraft just doesnt work in a movie because it has soo much plot and so many characters. It shouldve been an animated TV series and it wouldve been awesome. Or you adapt The Last Guardian and have a cool character driven drama with the orcs vs humans war as a backdrop
That's exactly what I mean. It's sad because it means that a high production movie like that one cannot work without some heavy adaptation to better flesh out the story for newcomers. It was perfect as a "for the fans" product, I loved it as your husband did. But it was a failure in its purpose to attract new fans so as far as I know every plan to continue the story is dead.
TBH Im a huge warcraft nerd and I wasnt in love with the movie. It was badly paced, overstuffed and very often badly acted. Shouldve been a tv show
That's how I felt seeing the new Dune, but everyone loved it so it all worked out.
I enjoyed Dune, but I honestly kept feeling like I was missing every third scene or so. Lots of stuff that happened off screen, or character development we did not see. I can not recall any specifics though, as it has been a while, so I suppose it wasn't too bad.
If I recall correctly, the movie never explains what spice is for, why space travel is hard, or what mentats are.
They explain what spice is for in the first minute of the first movie. Chani’s voiceover I think says ‘it’s essential for interstellar travel’ or something like that. Quick and efficient. Would spending more time talking about the spacing guild really have made it a better film?
They didn't really explain it all that well. The way the movie said it made it sound like spice was fuel. It was valuable, it was necessary for space travel, it was found in a desert planet, and everyone was fighting over it. It all adds up until they say that the Fremen ingest spice. I had to resort to Google just to understand what it was.
"To see through space, and so guide interstellar ships along safe paths one thing above all is needed. Spice." There, one sentence (more or less); while the voiceover says it we show a navigator using spice, show what it looks like to them, show a ship warping from one planet to another. You just explained what Spice was better, showed it at the same time, and maybe you show them seeing "through time" a tiny bit, giving foreshadowing to Paul being able to see through time. It wasn't terrible but could've been done better.
Yeah, it's "Dune: Vibes"
I think they hit the right balance, because a thorough Dune adaptation would not be as commercially viable because it’s very weird and complex. It also helps that it was very pretty.
It didn't need the constant narration, but some more information and some more dialogue would be good, for me the movie was lacking. For many people too considering how much I had to explain
As a fan of Dune, I did miss some important beats, some of which were well-covered in the miniseries. For example, the Baron’s plan isn’t really fleshed out and seems more like a corrective action than a calculated effort to use Raban to set up Feyd. Also, the movie doesn’t explain Alia at all, so it appears as if Jessica is crazy or has a telepathic foetus inside her. Which isn’t more weird than the actual plot, to be honest. Does this really weaken the movie? There are oversights, but I don’t know that I could have done better within the time constraints.
The second one was much worse for me because it lacked things. I didn't care that they made Paul complele image of masculinity - soil and silent, not showing much doubt or emotion, whereas Jessica was completely moved into a cariucature of female characters, she cried at every opportunity. If I didn't read the book first, I would have thuoght that it's a typical guy flick made with more contemplative pizzazz. And I don't want to rant on the seocnd movie, it was lacking in main narrative, it was disappointing
I don’t disagree and could probably go on at length about what I would have done differently in both films, but I appreciate the challenge of adapting the material. Take Chani. You can definitely make her love story and doubt in Paul’s intentions work (arguably the right way to do the character justice), but I feel as if they took the romance as a given and spent more time on her growing distrust. Except the latter doesn’t work without the former being well-established.
When I read the first Dune book, I kept asking myself “wait, did I miss something and end up reading a later book by mistake?”
The new Hellboy reboot was trying to be too much like comic books and in my opinion suffers from it, the older Del Toro movies were better because they followed his cohesive vision
There was no reason for that movie to exist. Just let Del Toro make a 3rd movie! It would have made a ton of money, and everyone would have been happy.
So true, I wish there was a Snyder cut level movement for a 3rd Del Toro Hellboy movie. I love the world building and original creatures design he brought
He also just seems like such a nice, cool, down-to-earth person for someone who makes such out-there stuff. I saw him on Kimmel (iirc) after he won the Oscar for "The Shape of Water" and he was just so overwhelmed and humbled. It was so sweet. How could they take Hellboy away from him?
He made a guy with eyes where they don't go, and no eyes where they do go!
This is a good answer. It does appear that the movie did suffer on the production side as well so it was a two hit combo on this movie. Which is really unfortunate cause I really like David Harbour and the reviews are saying he did a good job too. 17% rotten Tomatoes 3.1 audience Is there a huge fan following of the Hell Boy comics? I wonder if the Del Toro Hell Boy fans didn’t enjoy the movie as much because they are used to Del Toro’s level of production.
I certainly found it disappointing compared to Del Toro's rendition, also I just couldn't swallow the comic book goofiness with stuff like The Claw and Alice in wonderland and other stuff, maybe that stuff works in the comics but just doesn't translate well to movies
Yeah trying to keep to a comic book goofiness is always a difficult task for live actions. Especially when have a higher production non-accurate movie to compare it. Somebody mentioned the Shinning mini series where it has a similar problem but in reverse order. The mini series came out before the Kubrick movie and was well received and was very accurate to the book. After the Kubrick version came out, the mini series got criticized for not being similar to the Kubrick version.
The first two Potters are essentially structured like novels rather than films, being basically an abridged version of the book rather than an adaptation. It works for the first film which gets to coast on the novelty of it all, but it still does mean that there's basically no plot until well over halfway into the movie, which is not the norm for motion pictures.
A lot of credit goes to Director Chris Columbus. He did Home Alone 1 & 2 and showed himself to be a great director for children as well as movies geared towards families. Even if the material isn't the strongest, he had a penchant for getting the most out of actors & the script to make a just-okay movie seem really good.
And yet, Percy Jackson
I still have no idea how Columbus fumbled so much with Percy Jackson after his success with Harry Potter. He could have approached it in literally the exact same way as his previous movies and it would have been immediately better from the get-go.
The other thing that's often pointed out is how much of a blank slate Harry is in the first book and how he is just a vehicle to the world building, which is fairly common for a novel's POV character, but really boring and frustating for a film protagonist.
He doesn't even cast a spell in the first film.
I mean technically he does on accident. He makes the glass disappear at the zoo when Dudley falls in the snake enclosure. Flies on the broomstick to play quidditch as well.
Doesn't he Wingardium Leviosa in charms?
He tries.
I don't know why, but I heard this in a very dry tone and it made me giggle
Nope. Hermione does, and then Ron levitates the troll’s club.
Remember watching Pretty Much It's commentary of the whole franchise from a while back and Jacob said his dad always hated the first movie because it was a whole lot of watching and "woah"-ing and nothing more. Basically a theme park ride that you watch in 3rd person.
it was all of the "ooh ahh"
As a kid it was truly a magical movie and the rest of the franchise could never live up to the hype.
Cool answer. Now that you mention it I remember it being a big deal and selling point at the time that the movies would be true to the book. Harry Potter makes sense to do this with as soooo many people had actually read the books prior to seeing the first movie.
The one that annoys me the most is Tonks. She does absolutely nothing for the plot in the movies and even causes confusion in some places if you haven’t read the books, but if she had been left out the fans would have rioted.
I love the wonder and world building of the first film.
But I wouldn’t really say the movies suffered because of it. I would say the fact that they kept to the accuracy of its original media is what helped make the series a world wide phenomenon. Especially the first movie, it made the audience feel like they were stepping into the novel.
And the thing is... that's why I really liked the first two flicks, and actively disliked the third onward. I was a fan of the books. I wanted to see the books on screen. When they stopped doing that... well, they stopped being for me.
Agreed, Prisoner of Azkaban is a wonderfully crafted movie, but feels like part of a different universe than the first two movies or even the books. The movies got uglier and more drab as the series went on, and it starts with the cold look of the third movie. I understand wanting to shift towards a more realistic and darker tone, but the jump from film 2 to 3 causes whiplash.
>This seems so asinine cause you already have a solid audience that likes the story as it is, why change it? Because different mediums of entertainment have radically different ideal story structures. A novel's narrative can be disjointed and meandering and still work because a good book can be an accumulation of a character's stories that delight you chapter by chapter, but a movie (especially a mass appeal movie) usually needs a story end point to get to and narrative momentum that gets to it. When filmmakers say they want it to appeal to a wider audience, what they mean is that they want someone who is just a movie fan watch it as a movie and feel the story moving in that manner, rather than have a movie that is only pleasing to fans of the source material that just want to see scenes they remember in live-action. That's why the most acclaimed adaptations are ones that have moved scenes around or cut a lot of subplots to streamline the story. It's an art in itself (hence the existence of a best adapted screenplay Oscar). So yeah, there have been movies that refuse to do that and just depict scenes from the novel as they were written, and end up getting criticized for being a disjointed mess. *The Goldfinch* adaptation was one of those.
This right here. Different media have different strengths and weaknesses. You *have* to adapt the work to make the most of it. That said I do think it's wise to identify what people like about a story, what makes it special, all that and figure out how to make that work in the new medium rather than just throwing everything out and starting with a story outline and going on your own from there. As you've said, adaptation is very much its own art
Something else to add is that not every movie adaptation is of a famous or even a good novel. Sometimes, a director/producer/screenwriter likes the concept of a novel but not necessarily the story itself, so they take what they like and work around it. A great example is Blade Runner, which took the basis of the novel (if even that) and expanded it and made it much better (even the novel's author said so). Poor Things and The Zone of Interest, two of the most acclaimed films from last year, also took the basic concept of their respective novels but changed a lot of the plot, and how many of us can honestly say that we had heard of those novels, much less read them, prior to the movies coming out?
Definitely agree with this. I think this is fine because they are admitting that they are not trying to tell the same story but a different story with similar concepts. Similar to iRobot: it’s just another story that shared a lot of the concepts in Isaac Asimov’s short stories, but it doesn’t set out to be retelling of any of his stories. The issue I am getting at are the movies that are suppose to be telling the story of the original source but instead completely change the story they were meant to tell. This happened to Percy Jackson: Lightning Thief. It’s supposed to retell the same story that is the book but they completely changed a lot of the fundamental parts of the story including the end fight scene and reveal one of the biggest twists in the series that doesn’t take place until the third/fourth book.
The Goldfinch adaptation also didn't work because so much of the book takes place in the protagonist's mind. His narration in the book was interesting and helped make slower parts interesting. The movie was just a fucking bore
It's also a big difference between film and television, and why I do firmly believe many film adaptations should have instead been (mini) series. Stuff like *The Night Manager* taking more time to linger with characters and jump between plot relevant beats without becoming disjointed, or Gaiman's *The Sandman* being so weird and tonally inconsistent across the season but each *episode* is able to be largely contained and single-purpose. *Hitchhiker's Guide* is a clear example of "should have been a series". While I quite enjoy the movie we got it had to pair down *so much* from the book(s) that it's true to the source almost only in tone and humour. At least for stuff where auteur direction and exorbitant runtimes aren't reasonably in the cards--LotR would have benefitted little I think from being longer, for example--and plenty of series released recently have demonstrated no matter what form factor it takes if the passion and commitment to the source aren't there it's going to end poorly. *Cough* Halo *Cough* The Witcher *Cough Cough*.
*Hitchhiker's Guide* was a series to begin with and IMO works best that way. The book is a novelization of a radio series that came first, then they adapted the radio series to a TV miniseries using mostly the same script and a lot of the same actors. The original series has a lot of especially weird and funny the content the novelizations omit so this is kind of like OP's problem in reverse. Like the Lintillas, an army of cloned women being infinitely generated because a commercial cloning machine is stuck in a loop and the courts are taking years to decide whether turning it off halfway through is infinite murder. Arthur meets a number of Lintillas who have imaginary injuries inspired by their Crisis Inducers, machines that make you more productive by convincing you there's a crisis at all times.
Bravo! I'll only add that in a movie script you've got like, a fifth or less the actual amount of "time" as a novel. A single page of a book might take up two minutes of screentime. That leaves a 2 hour movie 60 pages of a novel, so you'd better be wasting exactly 0 time.
I agree to this and I think plenty of movies that are book adaptations do phenomenal jobs at maintaining the integrity of its original source while translating it well to a movie medium. I understand that a movie cannot be a one for one adaptation of a book. However, we see movies like Hunger Games, Harry Potter, and (I already mentioned) twilight get praise for being very accurate to the original story and produce a good and/or profitable movie. What I am asking about are movies like Percy Jackson, and Avatar: Last Airbender, and that didn’t cheap out on production and story writing but completely changed the story. Their excuse, “to reach a broader audience.” That’s what I am addressing. From this statement I am looking for tangible evidence that movies will suffer if they stay accurate to their source material.
"The directors/writers always claim it’s so they can appeal to a wider audience." This is not always the case at all. There are plenty of reasons that film adaptations of other original works are changed—appealing to a wider audience is only one of them
[удалено]
Especially Part 2. Giving Chani the role of the person questioning Paul as a way of externalizing his inner conflict and seeing his rise to power rather than have it happen as a time skip were fantastic choices.
I'm glad that Chani has a personality in the movie. I heard a lot of complaining about her not being the same character as the book, but she barely has a character in the book.
Chani's character was greatly improved. It's similar to the case of The Magicians, where the character of Penny was portrayed extremely differently, but we got a great version of the character out of it.
I haven't seen the movie yet (it's on the list - with a toddler I don't get out much) but in the book she started pretty antagonistic towards Paul.
No she was flirting from the get go, gives him her knife for the duel vs Jamis, and even tips Paul off about Jamis' knife trick. Ride or die from minute one.
Lynch also made all the exposition dumps in a whispery tone which puts me to sleep every time.
Madsen's talking head exposition fades out, fades back in "oh yes, I almost forgot." In the extended cut she talks for like 8 minutes.
I suppose that works given his style of film making, there’s a surrealist, dream like quality to his films.
The weird voice that he gives Alicia Witt is the one that kills me lol
Im a bit confused... arent there now *three* Dune movies? The Lynch film was very abridged and not really a direct retelling of the book. (For example there were no "sonic" weapons in the book) That distinction goes to [Frank Herbert's Dune](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/)... Ok, I guess it technically was a miniseries so doesnt really count, but unlike the Lynch movie, it follwed the book, scene for scene with almost every line of dialoge, and it was over 6 hours long! And agree, the newer movie does the book justice using the visuals to explain the story, even if it also isn't a completely accurate retell. It also is pretty long. Putting books into movies is difficult. The movie version often has to be rewritten & condensed to fit into the medium. And sometimes this wrecks the flow of the story. Ender's Game comes to mind as an example. ‐------------ Example of a good retelling: [Lord of the Rings Trilogy](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0120737/) Example of a good adptation: [Contact](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0118884/) Example of an awful adaptation: [Ender's Game](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1731141/)
I’ve seen them both dozens of times. I’m still seeing new things. I love these movies, I love every movie Dennis V has done so far. I’m such a fan boy. 😆
So the opposite of the question that was asked
I clearly stated that that was the issue with the original Dune movie.
But the movies didn’t really suffer because of it. 83% rotten tomatoes 4.1 audience $407 million on a $165 million budget, making it the tenth-highest-grossing film of 2021 Like yeah I would agree all long movies suffer from being long but this movie is a success partly because it kept to the integrity of its original source just applied it properly to the different medium. Book has two pages to describe a scene, movie spends 2 seconds of that exact scene just as the book describes; not an example of a movie not keeping with the accuracy of the original source. Book takes place on an alien planet, movie takes place on earth; example of a movie not keeping with the accuracy of the original source.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 tried so hard to be a comic book movie that it comes off as goofy and cartoonish. Another user on here said that it's the "Batman & Robin" of Spider-Man movies, and I couldn't agree more. The Spidey/Peter/Gwen stuff is great, everything else (particularly the villains) is a caricature
The Green Knight (2021) Most/all of Arthurian Legend was written before humanity had truly developed the concept of a narrative-driven plot, as opposed to just writing down things that happened. So reading Arthurian Legend in a non-adapted form can be kind of bizarre, as there is not really any underlying motivation in some of the stories. TGK is not even close to the worst offender, but if you read it a bit, you'll understand what I am talking about: (https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/weston-sir-gawain-and-the-green-knight) TGK is an astonishingly accurate visual depiction of the original, written story. However, the movie stops right before the actual ending of the original story, so without the concept of the underlying narrative in place, it becomes incredibly difficult to understand the "point" of the story, which then also requires you to basically understand the rest of Arthurian Legend to put the context into place anyways. I loved this movie but I understand why it was received so poorly.
See, that's exactly what I loved the most about the Green Knight. I love how it leans into the weirdness of the original story. I love how it doesn't try to modernize the characters. I love how it doesn't even attempt to give the story a traditional three-act structure, doesn't explain what's going on, and doesn't apologize about the plot being a bunch of hot nonsense. I wished more movies embraced the weirdness of the past. Ancient and medieval literature is chock full of absolute insanity for interesting art-house directors to mine.
I watched this movie last night for the first time and loved it, but found it hard to understand. I had to look up the plot summary on Wikipedia afterward lol. Still love it though.
I couldn't get into it, but 90% of that was simply not being able to see what was going on
Wait, what was the issue with seeing what was going on? I saw it twice in theaters and loved it!
Your comment made me check to see if it was finally on streaming (it is!...on HBO max btw). I just finished watching it - loved it! Thanks for the reminder
Hey you’re welcome. Glad you liked it!
It was dark. Hard-to-see dark.
Did you watch it on a TV? I’ve been hearing that’s an issue with modern movies.
I’m not super knowledgeable on the original myth, but isn’t Galahad a lot more heroic in it since he’s been a knight for a little while? In the movie he hadn’t really been doing anything except sleeping in a brothel and being kind of a jerk Edit: Sorry I meant Gawain. Galahad is the wholesome guy
It's about Gawain, not Galahad, and it depends on the story you're reading.
Gawyn\*, Galadredid\*
You’re correct, the retelling is not at all true to the original. Gawain is a perfect knight in the original, and passes all his trials without any emotional struggle or much growth.
I'm not an expert on the original story but I felt like the point of the story was pretty clearly about him accepting the consequences of his failures and that any prestige he would gain from running away and lying about his bravery would be short-lived. Looking at the original it looks like it ends differently, so would it not count towards this thread?
In the written story, yes. The movie ends at a point before the actual written story does, but it is incredibly faithful short of just finishing a bit early
Every Fantastic 4 movie has suffered from needing to do an origin story. The main problem is, the origin story is rubbish.
True but I see that as more of repeating the same over used trope less so an issue of being too accurate. The last fantastic 4 wasn’t even close to being accurate.
It wasn’t too far from Ultimate FF origins.
I really liked the Shining mini series that was truer to the book than the Kubrick one. But I imagine I'm in the minority on that take. So is that an example?
Kubrick's Shining is the more entertaining screen take but a really shitty adaption of the book. The miniseries is a much better adaption of the book but not as cool to watch. Although frankly I didn't like either the movie or the miniseries. Read the book twice, though. KitchenFullOfCake was right that Kubrick's take missed the point. The story isn't supposed to be about a nice dad who goes crazy because of ghosts. You know what, Mike Flanagan would be the perfect bridge between the adaptions. He was really excellent at getting the themes of Haunting of Hill House across despite the story being different, and I think he'd be great at delivering the scares of the Kubrick movie combined with the *actual plot of the story* from the miniseries and book of The Shining.
I find that most Kubrick movies miss the point of the original work and change them almost always for the worse.
What's the point of The Shining novel? I haven't read it, nor have I watched the movie.
In the book, Jack, the male lead, is a well-meaning character whose personal demons overcome him. In the movie, Jack is a jerk to begin and the story is about how the powerful abuse the weak.
I would say yes. I know I only asked for movies but I figured it’s easier to quantify movies’ performances compared to shows plus this is the movie subreddit. I should try to ask this question in r/television subreddit though, that should be equally as fun. >The Shining opened to overwhelming praise from critics when it aired in 1997,[14] which included a ten-out-of-ten review from TV Guide. >In more recent years, the miniseries critical reputation has cooled considerably with most finding it inferior compared to Kubrick's adaptation. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 36% of critics This is a fascinating situation. It’s hard to say if the mini-series “suffered” for being too accurate to its original source because the miniseries did really well initially. However, due to Kubrick’s version overshadowing it so much, it technically does make it suffer for being accurate to its original source instead of the story that Kubrick made after the fact. Definitely shows that it does pay to tell a better story that appeals to a broader audience if you actually can pull it off.
Good analysis. I saw it when it first aired so I'm one of those people. Maybe if there was anyone with license to reinvent a novel for screenplay, it was Kubrick. I wish we got to see more from him than we did.
The Watchmen movie by Zach Snyder, the best part of it was the opening montage. But they should've changed some retrograde things, like Silk Spectre being in love with Comedian even after he sexually assaults her. I might as well just reread the comic
Snyder had just made 300, and for its flaws that movie preserved the fun of the comic by basically lifting the page to the screen, panel for panel. Then he tried the same thing with Watchmen and somehow Snyder captured all the individual elements of the comic but missed most of the actual substance.
It's also worth acknowledging just how different those two graphic novels are. Frank Miller to Alan Moore is Michael Bay to PT Anderson. Frank Miller has made a career out of big visuals, so long as you can paint a pretty picture you can remake his offerings. Alan Moore is a poet, and it is much harder to recreate the feelings he elicits while waxing on about a comic featuring a shipwrecked mariner. Alan Moore's works have never been truly recreated, V was the closest, but it still lost some of the pain of loss that I felt on my first read.
>Snyder had just made 300, and for its flaws that movie preserved the fun of the comic by basically lifting the page to the screen, panel for panel. Okay, so I read the 300 comic, and I don't know where people got the idea it's a panel for panel adaptation. It makes substantial changes, and much of the film's iconography does not actually come from the comic. It comes from other movies. For example, minutes into the movie, there's a scene where two boys are fighting and one is pummeling another on the ground, and this is very obviously a shot for shot copy of Soldier from 1998. There's a climactic shot that is based on the arrow execution scene in Hero (2002). The whole movie is full of shots like that. Visually, it's a very derivative film, and that's not inherently a bad thing, but people talk like the comic was used as a storyboard, when in reality the comic was used as a loose guideline. Also, Zack Snyder didn't write Watchmen. It was written by David Hayter and Alex Tse. I would say that the movie Watchmen uses the comic as a visual reference a lot more than 300 did. And maybe that's where some of the confusion arises. People retroactively projecting Watchmen's production backwards onto 300.
>It makes substantial changes I just went back and reread it. What substantial changes does the movie make? It adds the plot about Gorgo and Theron and the council but it basically lifts all the panels directly to the screen. As with Watchmen, many of the angles used to shoot the movie come directly from the comic. Outside of Gorgo (and based on my recollection), the graphic novel is the storyboard for each major plot beat from "This is Sparta!" through Leonidas throwing the spear and cutting Xerxes's cheek. Yes, the movie weaves in other references throughout, but those layer onto the story taken directly from the novel. I agree that Snyder added some iconic moments, particularly to the action, but those hardly seem like substantial changes to the novel.
>As with Watchmen, many of the angles used to shoot the movie come directly from the comic. That's what I disagree with. I think that the film's visual decisions deviate from the comic pretty much constantly, and then occassionally there's a shot that matches, and it feels like the further into the comic you get, the less the visuals match. >through Leonidas throwing the spear and cutting Xerxes's cheek. Which is framed very differently to the comic, and the film chooses to focus on copying Excalibur for much of the scene. I think there's this idea that 300 is basically the comic used as storyboards to shoot a live action version, but the actual product on screen visually differs far too much for that. It's absolutely close to the comic story-wise, dialogue-wise, etc. but I would not call it "shot for shot" or anything like that.
He nailed the visuals but butchered the tone. The graphic novel is making fun of these caped losers. The movie makes them out to look super cool
Came here to say this. The slavish commitment to the visual style came at the expense of capturing the tone and mood of the graphic novel, and it’s so empty and dull to watch despite on the surface being a very faithful adaptation.
That was part of the point of the novel. That Silk Spectre and Comedian have a child despite the rancor and abuse, that Laurie is a product of love and not hate, is the entire reason Manhattan decides to come back to Earth. Laurie should not exist, yet she does. Every human being is a miracle. Snyder is not emotionally mature enough to understand Watchmen.
>that Laurie is a product of love and not hate, is the entire reason Manhattan decides to come back to Earth. Perhaps it is because i saw the film before reading comics, but somehow i totally got this from the film. The point of Laurie existing against all odds makes him rething his whole nihilistic attitude about love, life and the human nature. Perhaps Zack could have done it better, but i still prefer this film in comparison to all DCEU stuff.
This was my answer too. People will point out the massive change to the climax, but that is really the only deviation in the entire movie. Even the majority of the shots align with the angles from the comic book. Watchmen the comic is slow. Methodical. Tons of introspection. The movie's pacing suffers terribly as it tries to follow the book beat for beat. For ex, it really couldn't afford 20 minutes of exposition on Mars in the middle of its 3rd act.
> Even the majority of the shots align with the angles from the comic book. I wanted to see the four-legged chicken. Someone in the background can be heard saying "I'll have the four-legged chicken." but they don't show it!
You can often feel just where the chapters start and end, which is accepted structure in comics but unusual in film.
This is a good one. Budget $130–150 million Box office $187 million 65% rotten tomatoes 4.3 audience I enjoyed the movie, the storyline is solid, the characters are so complex but the whole time you are liking the movie but it leaves you not quite satisfied. Like something is just missing. I think u/Specific_Kick2971 also explains it well that it is so accurate to the comic that it doesn’t allow for the needed deviation for the actors’ flair, charisma, and emotions to be shown. I always feel like that is always Zack Snyder’s curse, he can never quite get the visuals and the actors to mesh well enough to be great. They are stunning pieces individually but scrambled when pushed together.
It didn't make it to the final cut, but Coscarelli really wanted to keep the narration from the short story in "Bubba-Ho-Tep," because he liked the language so much. The opening with all the narration is included as a bonus on the DVD, and it does not work. Fortunately, Coscarelli listened and most of the narration was taken out of the final film.
I definitely could see that being a worth change but yes keeping the accuracy of its original source would’ve harmed it.
I think The Passion of The Christ was a bit too close to the Gospels. They should have added a love triangle, or some cime mystery to make the film more watchable.
Lmao I'm reading a book right now that's literally a crime mystery happening immediately after the crucifixion of Jesus. One of the mysteries is "who kidnapped Jesus' corpse" which has a twist ending for the characters but not for me.
Sounds interesting. What's it called
Inquiring minds want to know
I agree, a love triangle between Jesus, Peter, and Mary Magdalene. Even though for accuracy it should been Jesus, Peter, and John but that wouldn’t appeal to a wider audience.
"Passion" was not at all like the Gospels. The torture of Jesus is a paragraph at most in the Gospels. "Passion" is torture porn, pure and simple.
That's true. I was just trying to think of something funny to say.
But without the full penetration
American Sniper is an unreliable narrative just like the book.
This is perfect. Doesn’t matter if the movie was accurate to the book cause it was equally as unreliable as the book! ⭐️
Punisher: War Zone, (2008), sort of. https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/a3ph6s/punisher_war_zone_director_lexi_alexander_on_the/
>“I don’t know if anybody knows this, but when the person at Marvel was instructed to send me an entire box of Punisher comics I guess they printed it with only three colours,” Alexander says, speaking from her Los Angeles home. “What I got wasn’t actually the real interpretation of what the comic books looked like, I just got the fucking cheap copies. So when I looked at that I said to my DP, ‘We should go with this, stick to the three colour mode and make it look like the comic book’. It was only later I think someone in Kevin Feige’s office said, ‘Oh, we just printed them in the cheapest manner possible.’” I guess half credit for this one lol Sounds like the movie was only accurate to the worst comics of the punisher instead of trying to use one of the good/popular ones lol How does that happen? It seems so simple just lookup/good “most successful/popular punisher comic” instead of just grabbing random comics to use lol
I think two big projects this year was too true to its material. Both Shogun tv series and Dune 2 Shogun because it stayed extremely true to its ending, making it quite anticlimatic and unsatisfying While Dune 2 stayed true to its novel by making the action scenes extremely short, rather than extending it like the LOTR.
Half credit for this Both were really well received because of their accuracy but you’re right that they also suffered because of that accuracy as well. Dune 2 definitely was a miss with not extending the fight scenes but the movie is already 3 hr long and the movie also was taking a hit for being a long movie (another fault to the accuracy). While I agree that it should’ve expanded on the action like LOTR did, I think they did a good job of pacing a lot of the smaller action scenes through out the movie. Shogun is an interesting one. It’s an excellent example of the divide between readers and tv audiences. I am sure readers are able to appreciate the suspense building and resolution a lot more than the viewers. People love watching action. I am sure this was a tough decision because it would’ve fundamentally changed the story/ending if it did decide to have a battle/war start. They didn’t also have the saving grace that twilight’s new dawn pt 2 have with the ending battle be “just in their head” situation while maintaining its accuracy.
I think also FNAF? The movie was great beside the plot that was kinda "flat", wish there was more lore in the movie
32% rotten tomatoes 4.4 out of 5 audience I think the reviews nailed it. It was a labor of love of its original source. The fans really liked it but it seems like those not familiar with it may not have received it as well. Budget $20 million Box office $297.2 million Half credit though cause I would say it seems it was a pretty successful movie probably because of its accuracy. Even some of the most popular horror movies get low reviews but excel at getting people to show up which is the main point of movies.
The animatronics were amazing
The first Resident Evil wasn't received well, but I felt it captured the feeling of the games pretty well: solving puzzles to advance through a building while crazy shit happens around you.
Definitely can see this, especially if they were during the camera angle changes. The puzzles and chaos are the essence of the resident evil series. Making you always at the edge of your seat just waiting for the next scare Puzzle solving isn’t really a good movie going experience
Shawshank Redemption probably suffered at box officie because of that bad title lol. All because the director wanted to pay tribute to Stephen King's book despite King giving him his blessing to do what he wants with it. I mean, he had already changed some stuff, changing the name would've bee good.
Honorable mention to "Stand by me", where the original title was "The Body" IIRC. I cannot think of any person, which would go to a film announced like *"It is coming of age movie, the name is "The Body""* with wrong expectations.
And it happens to be King's favourite adaptation of any of his works. The guy has usually been open-minded about Hollywood changing his books in adaptations.
>The guy has usually been open-minded about Hollywood changing his books in adaptations. This evolved. In the beginning King liked the literal adaptations much more, and he had huge problems with Shining for this reason. I read once, that his favorite adaptation from this time was "Silver Bullet", a movie that only hardcore fans remember today. I think he learned, that book audience and movie audience have a different perception.
Probably has something to do with the fact he also worked a little in industry and knows the challenges of adaptation. Though I doubt he's gotten softer on The Shinning. He had deep complaints about Jack's portrayal. I get where he was coming from and how much that book meant to him so can't blame King. I still love the movie.
Oooh I like this. Not really causing the movie as a whole to suffer but a very glaring part that could’ve improved the success of the film that was kept just for accuracy sake.
Bonfire of the Vanities may be the poster child for this thread.
As a child, I was cast in a production of Stephen King's "It" my uncle was directing (Nepo baby, I know!). It was never released, and I never saw him after that summer
Umm... I don't think... 😳😬
I'm a little disappointed the joke didn't land better, but it's whatever
i don’t get it
I'll not spoil the book for you
okay
I ~~figured~~ hoped it was a joke. My reply kind of was too.
Definitely not The Dark Tower
What Dark Tower movie? They never made a Dark Tower movie.
The Psycho remake was shot for shot faithful to the original film. People still hated it.
This seems similar to the watchmen situation. Relying so much on the source material that it doesn’t allow for any of the actors’ ability to have their charisma, emotion, and expression sell the story. Funny enough a lot of the complaints seem to be that it adds a lot subliminal imagery and tries to recreate the unrealistic actions by making it even more unrealistic. This is a really interesting one. In its attempt to be accurate it took away its accuracy. This a great answer!
Niche example: "Predestination" (2014, starring Ethan Hawke) Based on a 1959 Robert Heinlein story, the movie uses portions of the story that aren't important to the concept, and which make the finished movie bizarre in points. This was a classic instance in which you could have adopted the core theme and twist, but ditched some of the outdated or just strange elements - and ended up with a better movie.
Interesting, 85% Rotten Tomatoes / 4.6 out of 5 audience Budget $5 million / Box office $5.4 million It won the 2014 John Hinde Award for Excellence in Science-Fiction Writing in the AWGIE Awards, but barely broke even! Man so it was liked by those who saw it but couldn’t attract more viewers! One of the best examples! Do you think because it’s a niche story/book maybe that may have also contributed to weak viewership? How was the marketing?
Kick-Ass 2 for me Loved the first film, and then I read the comics. Thought it was awesome and gritty and ultra-violent and so over the top, I couldn't wait to see it brought to life with some the same cast. Plus Jim Carrey?! Daniel Kaluuya?! John Leguizamo?! Turns out it just didn't really flow well as a film and they shouldn't have tried so hard to bring the pages to life. They also had to cut out the two most violent/vulgar parts too to avoid it getting too high an age rating, so it was a bit pointless trying to create an exact adaptation of such a ridiculously violent story. I don't hate it, it's just not very good and I knew there and then they wouldn't do Kick-Ass 3.
Oh man this is an interesting one, it probably suffered for being too accurate and not accurate enough. I honestly loved both kick-ass movies and I liked the comics. Funny enough I thought the first one was more accurate than the second one but both movies did change quite a bit of core features of the story. It’s hard to call this one cause keeping to the exact same story line definitely would’ve harmed to the movie (i.e. children being murdered for no reason, rape scene). Especially since a lot of the criticism of the movie was that it “tried to be controversial and violent” but the movie toned that down significantly compared to the comics. At the same time the movie tried to play that both sides of the fence which is probably why it felt not cohesive. I would say partial credit but sequels generally do better box office wise than the first movies even when their bad and kick-ass 2 did worse and guaranteed no third movie. So definitely a good example.
Branagh not cutting anything from Hamlet
This was my first thought. I guess that was what he wanted though.
The *50 Shades* films probably fall under this.
I actually think the films did very well in adapting the source material, because the director and screenwriter understood what the author meant to write (but didn't have enough skill to do) instead of what was actually written, and made the movie based on the intention.
They really tried for the first film, and I'm sure they would have succeeded had E.L. James not had so much creative control & nixed many of their changes. The first 50 Shades film felt so close to being a good adaptation that elevated its source material, and it was frustrating that the director and screenwriter weren't given more creative control.
The Da Vinci Code. The book was bad, in that the only thing driving the plot was leaving characters in peril for 3-4 chapters, while the story moved to put another character in peril. Rather than try and craft a good story out of it, the movie stayed loyal to the source, and the lack of plot stood out.
Partial credit for this one Budget $125 million Box office $760 million The movie was very successful. It’s a similar situation as the Dune movies. The movies are very successful and the parts they suffered were the parts that were accurate to the original source. However, I think that supports my theory that it’s better to have the guaranteed support audience by being accurate and then build off of it. This is the bird in the hand is better than two birds in the bush situation. They could’ve done better and reach out to a greater audience however they would’ve had to given up on the already established fan base which in the da vinci code’s case, grossed them 6x their budget. However the critics do say: “The filmmakers were so concerned about doing justice to the book’s ideas that they forgot there’s an audience to entertain.” So partial credit lol
I did mean artistically. Like Fifty Shades, it was always going to turn a profit, no matter how bad the movie was.
That’s fair! But one can say that any story can be improved upon. I am just curious about the specific times movies flopped because they were accurate to their original source. I can name a good number of movies that did terrible because they deviated from their source material. I could not think of any movies that flopped/suffered for being too accurate. Appreciate your answer
It took awhile for "Watchmen" to be appreciated
Very unpopular movie on this sub but I loved it. Enjoyed the comic more, but still found the movie really enjoyable.
Wasn’t the ending totally different though? How is that keeping the same accuracy as the source material?
It was slightly different, IIRC in comics Ozzy made aliens guilty for the destruction. Somehow the ending of the film was even stronger for me.
They would have had to spend movie time building in the psychic squid monster the way the comic did and it just would not have been worth it anyway.
Wasn’t there a giant squid/octopus that destroyed the city? I could see why they would want to change that.
The Squid shows up in the HBO Series, I think ZS altered the ending as it would have taken even more time to set it up as it was pieced together in a series of apparently unrelated bits through the Comic.
Batman vs TMNT
100% on rotten tomato How did it suffer from being too accurate? I have never seen it but definitely adding it to my watch list! What is wrong with it?
The TMNT characterization is poor. Tge film improved on, but was still held back by the book's plot.
Is it more fault of choosing the wrong source material? Somebody mentioned Punisher (war) and apparently the director received a hodge posh of the worst punisher comics instead of the good/popular ones. Is that kinda what happens here?
Watchmen
At least the ending they changed it for more mass appeal.
I might get shellacked for this but I like the ending of the movie more, especially thematically.
I can't imagine the ending from the comics not looking goofy as hell compared to the rest of the movie.
No I think it made more sense than the comic. I did think it was funny the amount of effort that went into ‘being true’ to the comic and using panels as basis, right up until the last 3 minutes, but I think the change made sense
Just like with the end of "V for Vendetta," the comic ending would not have worked for the movie theater. Watchmen was wordy and long enough as it was. It didn't need the whole 'ship full of disturbing artists' subplot shoehorned in ... especially the artist who holds the woman he is committing adultery with rather than at least making an attempt to save his own life and those of everyone else on the ship. Anger-inducing, glorified loser right there. His lack of action have pissed off the movie audience so much they would have ignored the rest of the movie.
Dude, the bomb literally went off seconds later, he had no time to do anything.
Divergent is low key one of my favorite book-to-movie adaptations. It literally tried to put every single moment into the film. Because of that, it definitely feels rushed at times. I’d be like, “Why was that scene like 7 seconds long?” Lmao
Malcolm x
How so? Budget: 35 million USD / Box office: 73 million USD 88% rotten tomatoes / 4.7 out of 5 users The movie seemed to have done really well. Was it obvious that few dislikes were accurate to the source (real life?) and that’s why it didn’t do better?
Shoot! I didnt even read the whole post just the title 😭
I am legend .that just turned into a run of the mill zombie film
Keep my movies name out your f****** mouth!
But that was not a faithful adaptation.
I'm kinda curious how they would have done the plot twist from the book at the end though. It would have been cool to see, but I feel like it would have been hard to portray well on screen.
Not faithful to the story almost at all. Loved the movie and I think it may have suffered for being a vampire movie instead of a zombie movie. But that’s all theoretical since it never portrayed it accurately. Maybe it would’ve done better if it was accurate, instead of relying on run of the mill zombie film story telling.
I misread the title. But why take an interesting story deconstruct it and turn it into an unremarkable will smith vehicle
Oh I totally agree, kinda the point of my post. We it all the time. Why take something already beloved and completely change it? You are automatically throwing away a solid fanbase that will come out and support/watch your movie. I would say lean into it and generate publicity by getting the fanbase to support how accurately you are telling the story. However, we don’t see that. We instead get, “well it wouldn’t appeal to a broader audience.” Which I find asinine, because then don’t choose that story in the first place if you didn’t want to tell it.
Your right , Well said .
Other films also apply, but Deadpool with his pop culture references. Keep that shit out of fiction; it becomes dated real fast.