Did the movies butcher your favorite book? They certainly did mine. The Outsiders is probably one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. The acting was atrocious, the writing was poor, and the pacing was slow. These are legitimate criticisms. And while the Harry Potter movies aren’t considered the best adaptations ever, my friend’s complaint was that they left too much of the book out. This, I think, is an unfair criticism. When a book is over three hundred pages, it’s inevitable that something will be left out of a two hour movie. Even a three hour epic (like Lord of the Rings). Here are two other novels that were turned into movies with varying success:
Ring by Koji Suzuki was adapted twice in Japan. Once as a faithful but poorly done TV movie, the second time as Ringu. The American movie The Ring is more of a remake of Ringu than an adaptation of the book, Ring.
The Ring is a terrifying horror movie that only contains the bare bones plot of the novel: a journalist who investigates a video that causes people to die seven days after they watch it finds out that it was made by a girl who was murdered under mysterious circumstances and now wants to exact her revenge. But despite Suzuki’s being touted as the “Stephen King of Japan,” Ring isn’t a novel of horror. The video itself is creepily described (though it has nothing to do with rings) and there are a few moments that make you want to look over your shoulder, but it is essentially a detective thriller. The journalist Asakawa and his friend Ryuji travel around Japan trying to figure out who made the tape and how to break its curse. There are no monsters and nobody dies along the way. It’s just an interesting story, with unusual Japanese occult beliefs at its core. But it falls flat on characterizations and writing. The journalist Asakawa is pretty blank. The only things we know about him is that he’s in a traditionally loveless Japanese marriage and has a tendancy to obsess over things at his job. His friend, Ryuji, is even less sympathetic as he’s a self-professed rapist with misanthropic tendancies. It makes no sense that these two would be friends in the first place. Also, the writing is dull and cliched, especially in the beginning before the story picks up. But because I don’t read Japanese, I don’t know whether this is the fault of the author or of the translators, Robert B. Rohmer and Glynne Walley.
Article comments
1 - visualsimplicity
A Walk to Remember was fairly butchered when made into a movie. It might have been pretty good if I hadn't read the book first. The matter that they changed the play was sacrilege, since so much of the book was focused around it. Of course I'm not exactly a fan of Shane West's acting either.
On another note, Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune were superbly adapted into "Frank Herbert's Dune" and "Frank Herbert's Children of Dune" (both mini-series originally aired on SciFi Channel). However, they weren't word for word adaptions due to pacing issues (attention span of watching films differ from reading, naturally). But I thought the some of the changes were for the better actually.
There's probably other's but I can recall them right now.
2 - Rodney Welch
OK, OK -- we get the point. You know, visual, the fact that a post wasn't consumed by the server within a microsecond doesn't mean it won't show up. Just give it time.
3 - Phillip Winn
Note the elapsed time between the first and last comments - nine minutes! Plus, the comment was edited. In fact, all but the last two happen after a delay certainly long enough for the post to finish. This doesn't seem like a technical problem or a microsecond problem.
4 - visualsimplicity
Oh shoot, sorry about that, I kept getting some error everytime I posted. Seemed to be some sort of rebuilding problem. If you notice the post was rewritten because I thought the error ate it up. Then I rewrote it and copied it the next time just in case. Then the error happened again. I checked the posting by refreshing but my comment didn't show up.
However, I check today and I made like 5 posts. My mistake.
5 - Eric Olsen
The LOTR films have done an excellent job with atmosphere, which is probably the most elusive element to grasp. The Potters have done well with atmosphere as well, though less well in other regards.
6 - jadester
although it was good, having read the original book afterward, i was diappointed to find so much was left out of Blade Runner (or, as the book was originally called, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?)
for a start, there's a whole side-story intertwined with the main plot, involving a relatively new religion, and it's genesis through the course of the story. Attention is drawn to why real animals are prized so much (as opposed to animoids and robots) - most real animals have become extinct on Earth.
There is less ambiguity as to whether Deckard is a replicant or not (leaning towards he's not) and a few other extras that, IMO, would've made the film more of a masterpiece. Especially if they'd left that godawful voiceover off the general release cut too
7 - abbey
hiya peeps!!! well im 14 and i love shane west soooooo much. i first herd about him when i watched A Walk To Remember. it would really make my life if i had a real life photo of him.
than you!!!
8 - abbey
hiya peeps!!! well im 14 and i love shane west soooooo much. i first herd about him when i watched A Walk To Remember. it would really make my life if i had a real life photo of him.
thank you!!!
9 - jordan
i love shane west!!!! sooooo sooooo soooo soooo much
10 - jane doe
the underlying philosophy in the adaptation of Chocolat is not the same. reread the book. A war between church and pagan values is replaced with a war between a morally surerior man and an immoral woman. not the same thing at all. The villian in one is a priest and he is truely a villian. in the film he is a mayor, he controls the weak younger priest and he, like everyone else can be redeamed, through the magic of chocolate and its intuitive maker. They are very different. The book raises interesting question about the primacy of christian values and thier function in society, these are glossed over in the sugary sweetness of the film version.