The movie version of A Clockwork Orange was based on the American version of the book, which left out the entire last chapter. In that chapter, at 18 years old Alex pretty suddenly grows out of his violent and criminal ways and wants to start a family. Some say this ending is more optimistic but I actually think it’s darker, because it shows that any normal person you meet might’ve at some point been a wanton brute reveling in the chaos and pain they so arbitrarily inflicted. And that they can just move on and start living like a normal person.
This is a good take although I still prefer the sinister ending of the film over the redemptive one in the book. Later editions include a foreword by Burgess lamenting the omission of the 21st chapter in part because he wrote three acts of seven chapters for the symmetry of it and the symbolism of 21 being the age of majority
I, Robot.
Asimov was explicitly trying to get away from the trope of “robots take over humanity”. To be clear, the first short story that became I, Robot was published in 1940. “Robots take over humanity” was already an SF trope by then. Hollywood comes along more than half a century later and dives head first right back into that trope.
Lt Cmdr Data is more what Asimov had it mind. In fact, Data’s character has direct references to Asimov, like his positronic brain.
Asimov came up with the three laws of robotics.
He then spent the rest of his life writing examples of how they don’t work.
I, Robot was about as far from the source material as you could get.
That sounds like a challenge to Hollywood. Though I’d put Starship Troopers up there too, haven’t scrolled enough to see it mentioned but I assume it is.
Edit okay I did now and it’s not mentioned. While a fun movie it doesn’t have nearly the same story that the book does. Still I’ll watch it for what it is, but doesn’t have the same tone or scenes the book does.
You’re right, Starship Troopers should be way up on the list, too.
The only thing that advertisement masquerading as a movie has in common with the Asimov work is the title.
Robots take over humanity has been around since literally the first robot story. R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) is where the word robot was coined.
Shouldn’t be called an adaptation, really. They only dressed it up a tiny bit as Asimov for marketing reasons
From what I heard, they got the rights to I, Robot, grabbed some script about a robot uprising that they already had optioned, and slapped a few things on it.
This is apparently fairly common. If there’s a Hollywood movie based on something that doesn’t really align with the original, there’s a good chance that this is what happened. Starship Troopers was the same way (though that’s a whole different ballgame on whether the Hollywood version is good on its own merits).
I Am Legend
The ending was completely and utterly different than the book, which destroyed the gut punch at the end of the book that was kind of the whole theme of the book.
I don’t even remember the book as a whole. But I remember the ending. Then they Hollywooded it and it was awful.
I believe they did so because people didn’t like the original ending.
Not saying it’s right, just that that’s the reason why
Sympathetic antagonist -> brainless monster
The Hobbit. Like, all of it
I know we’re not into Harry Potter now, but the past is the past and I can’t forget how annoyed I was when the movie based on the third book, Prisoner of Azkaban, came out. I was a very disappointed teenager.
It was a whirlwind story to me at the time. I remember exactly where I was when I read it, as the moment that revealed the friendship between Harry’s father James, Professor Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, and the alleged-murderer, Sirius Black, became seared into my brain. It was such a pivotal part of the overall story to me, that that twist alone made it my favorite in the series. So when the movie came out, I expected the use and development of The Marauder’s Map to be a key highlight. It was a huge deal in the books, after all.
Yet in the movie, the map is just a neat thing Harry gets to use. Nobody mentions that Harry’s own father helped create it. The movie never even tells who the Marauders are, even though the reveal of their backstory was the key emotional crux of the Shrieking Shack scene. To omit their story entirely felt like a gut-punch.
I didn’t understand at the time why the director (Alfonso Cuaron) decided to straight-up change everything that made that story so compelling to me and my friends. To this day, I still don’t understand.
Yet subsequent movies mentioned the nicknames Wormtail and Padfoot. A lot of things in the films must have been confusing to people who didn’t read the books. Another weird thing I’ve noticed is that in the fourth movie, Barty Crouch Jr steals from Snape to make polyjuice potion and he blames Harry. But those who only watched the movies and didn’t read the books wouldn’t have known that Harry and his friends stole from Snape to make polyjuice potion before.
The Hobbit
From the shitty shoehorned romance to wholesale elimination of plot points in the original story. Yeah, there was definitely some drama in the whole production of the film, but nonetheless it was crap.
We demand our Tom Bombadil!
I like the Bilbo edit that removes most of the crap, and keeps the story shown to be from only what Bilbo sees. Gets the 3 movies down to 4 hrs I think.
I’ve seen that edit. Much improved, but unfortunately there are some continuity gaps that are inevitable when cutting up a film like that.
The Lawnmower Man
In the book, an unassuming everyman stumbles upon the fact that a local landscaping company is actually a front for a demon who has an arrangement that involves making human sacrifices of those that discover his supernatural nature.
In the movie, a Cyber Virtual Reality 3D Battles ON 3D CYBERSPACE Stunning Effects 3D Internet Pierce Brosnan Warfare Nineties Futuristic VR Headset Technology BATTLE In 3D Mind Expanding Guns, and one of the characters is a man who has a lawnmower.
Edit: Shit, okay, I just read this on Wikipedia and nearly wet myself:
A feature film, The Lawnmower Man, starring Jeff Fahey and Pierce Brosnan, was released in 1992 by New Line Cinema. This film used an original screenplay entitled “CyberGod”, borrowing only the title of the short story. The film concerns a scientist, Dr. Lawrence Angelo (Brosnan), who subjects mentally challenged Jobe Smith (Fahey) to virtual reality experiments which give him superhuman abilities. The film was originally titled Stephen King’s The Lawnmower Man. King won a lawsuit to have his name removed from the film, stating in court documents that the film “bore no meaningful resemblance” to his story. King then won further damages in 1993 after his name was included in the home video release.
Stephen King - Dreamcatcher
In the book the character Duddits had the shining, yes that motherfucking shining.
In the movie they made him an undercover alien. Man what a let down.
Literally everything about World War Z. Absolute travesty. The book is a unique and genuinely thought provoking new take on the zombie genre. The movie is an insult to every bit of world building Max Brooks created.
I say this to people and then always have to clarify:
It’s not that the World War Z movie is a bad adaptation of the book, it’s that it’s NOT an adaptation of the book at all. Other than the name, and the fact that it has zombies, there are literally no similarities between the book and the movie.
The characters are different, the settings are different, the format is different, the plot is different, the way the zombies act is different. Literally EVERYTHING.
Calling it an adaptation is like if you took The Neverending Story and changed its title to The Lord of The Rings and called that an adaptation.
I read somewhere that this is basically Max Brooks’ take on the film.
Something about breathing a sigh of relief when he read the script, because it was such a distinct story that there was nothing left of his book to be butchered.
Yeah, this one is the big one.
I feel like World War Z would have been better adapted as a TV show given that the book was episodic in nature.
Very well put. I couldn’t agree more.
I thought the movie was pretty enjoyable but it shouldn’t have been named after the book. It would have been a decent zombie movie on its own.
I agree. Its a fun movie but is the literal opposite of everything in the book. My favorite chapter is where the crashed pilot outwalks the group of zombies. There’s something so organic and absolutely terrifying about that. Humans are persistence predators and it was such a unique way of turning the tables on our evolutionary successes. Brilliant stuff. The movie may be fun, but its anything but brilliant.
All the adaptations of I Am Legend are bad, but 2007 movie was insulting. It gave the illusion of following the book, but then did a u-tutn and completely changed the meaning of the story and the title itself.
In the movie the protagonist becomes a legend because he sacrifices himself to cure vampirism.
In the book he is the last man in a world of vampires, he kills vampires, and understands that he is like a legendary monster that kills people in their sleep. He is then executed.
In case you haven’t seen the alternate ending for I am Legend, it puts a very different perspective on the whole movie. Apparently it was the original, but didn’t screen well with viewers.
The most telling moment for me is the infected slaps their hand on the glass and draws a butterfly as the last words the protagonist’s daughter ever said to him, “Daddy, look a the butterfly!” echo is his head and he realizes that the infected he has captured has a butterfly tattoo on her shoulder. He even makes a note of it in the capture and experimentation scene claiming that the infected exposing himself to sunlight is a sign that “social de-evolution is complete.” when instead the infected just witnessed a monster kidnap his daughter and drag her into a dangerous area that he cannot follow to do unknown experiments on her to change her into something else.
Instead the ending negates everything built up to the point and ends with a boring action-movie cliche.
Yeah, the book vampires were much more fleshed out. In the movie they were just barely-sentient beasts, primarily running off of instinct. They only seemingly had some basic higher-level reasoning. His primary struggle was surviving while surrounded by bloodthirsty animals.
In the book, they were a full blown society with their own culture. When the people around him changed, he was suddenly a stranger in a brand new culture. The point was that in the old society, vampires were the thing that went bump in the night. But in the new society, he was the monster that parents told their kids to watch out for.
It gave the illusion of following the book.
Have you actually read the short story? Because I am baffled as to how anyone who has read the story would say that.
The movie was in no way an adaptation of the short story at all. It never even pretended to follow the short story.
Just like iRobot the only thing I Am Legend has in common with it’s written work is the title.
He is then executed.
No he wasn’t. He committed suicide.
Have you actually read the short story?
Yes I did, probably 10 years before that 2007 movie. Let me recommend you to check an encyclopaedia if you want precision instead of reading a random forum online.
He is then executed.
No he wasn’t. He committed suicide.
For what I remember he was in a jail cell ready to be executed and they offered him a pill. Anyway, that was not the point of the story.
As I recall it, he is locked in a room awaiting execution at the end of the book and while he is there he observes the vampires creating a spectacle out of his death which causes him to realize that he has been the boogeyman of their society - that he has become the stuff of legends.
vaguely gestures at World War Z
WTF was that movie? Did they buy the rights to the title, but not the content?
Ruined by Zionist propaganda
Pretty much how that stuff happens.
I had no experience of the original book and enjoyed the movie.
It’s a fun, enjoyable zombie movie, but the book was never going to transition well to being a movie. It’s a collection of fictional interviews with varied persons’ experiences surviving the zombie apocalypse (from a nuclear submarine captain to a blind man in the Japanese wilderness). Ideally it should be a mini-series with each episode focusing on a different character’s story as they are interviewed.
yup
And the tenth expert bit!
The best part of that movie is Peter Capaldi being listed as “W.H.O. Doctor” in the credits.
Ah, I missed that. Clever.
It’s unclear if it was intentional or just a coincidence. World War Z was released two months before Capaldi was announced as The Doctor.
Can you imagine a mockumentary with photos, reenactments, Redeker interview, military helicopters recording a supply drop following the redeker plan and thankful survivors, a historian explaining the Pakistan India war, live head cam footage of the Battle of Yonkers as that soldier retells his experince. It ends with some Drill Instructor explaining the box formation and taking your time with shots. Cuts to a drone going up and showing survivors in formation and hundreds of zombies in a large circle around them.
Much like there has been no Dark Tower movie, there has also been no World War Z movie.
They don’t count.
When they announced a movie with Brad Pitt, I knew it would be bad. The book reads like a multi épisode TV show without a main character (and it could be a great adaptation).
When I pirated the movie version… It was so bad I regretted wasting bandwidth for that
Loved the book. When I first watched the movie I hated it. as a movie by itself it’s ok, sort of free on me. But then I thought the movie works if you treat it as a prequel
I thought it was an entertaining movie, but I haven’t read the book. Ima go download it right now.
I really liked the audiobook form. The story is basically told through an interviewer asking people what they experienced and the audiobook has different voice actors for all the characters.
The audiobook was good except for the Chinese characters. For some insane reason they decided to have white voice actors do a bad Chinese accent instead of just hiring actual Chinese voice actors.
You’re right some were a miss. but the concept was cool.
The movie isn’t very interesting, but it’s not outright bad - unless you were hoping for a faithful adaptation. The book has a MUCH more interesting storyline.
I was hoping for a faithful adaptation instead of just another zombie flick.
As was I. It felt like such a generic, by the numbers zombie movie with only some rare nods to the title.
I should reread the book. It was hyped as a good book. It was a good book.
Then I went to see the movie. Came out of the cinema and muttered “well that was a bunch of unrelated nonsense”. Went home.
I think they would have gotten away with that movie if it wasn’t for the ending. Like yeah they completely destroyed the source material, but at least it’s possible to have an interesting movie. Except like the last freaking third of the movie is just boring. Crushingly boring.
Oooo as someone who has seen the movie and never read the book, any sales pitch for me for the book?
The book is wonderfully written, and actually fairly insightful from a disaster preparedness and policy standpoint. It’s been a while since a read it so forgive me if the details aren’t exactly correct. Its written from the viewpoint of a journalist traveling the world post zombie apocalypse. He is collecting stories from survivors of various major events that happened during the zombie outbreak. Each chapter details a different event conveyed by a different witness, so it’s not a cohesive single plot story. More like working notes of someone preparing to write a history of a major global disaster. It highlights some of the mistakes made and lessons learned as events unfolded.
The audiobook is also quite good. It’s fully cast, so each section is voiced by a new actor who writes the letters in the collection.
Imagine the book as almost a Ken Burns style documentary made after the zombie war, going back and interviewing the people who were there and lived through it collecting their stories.
It’s been a while since I read it, but each chapter is a different person being interviewed telling their story, more or less in chronological order. The stories don’t really overlap directly with each other, but together they paint a great overall picture of the war from start to finish.
And it’s a good cross section of different people, soldiers, scientists, ordinary people, an astronaut who was stranded on the ISS for the duration of the war, etc.
I think everyone who read the book really wants it to be picked up as a mockumentary miniseries in that sort of style with “archival” footage with people being interviewed giving voiceovers and all the other usual documentary trappings.
And the Zombie Survival Guide is also a fantastic companion to it that is basically done as a, well, survival guide, that was distributed during the war, and is referenced once or twice throughout WWZ
IIRC: The movie was written long before they slapped the title on it.
That wouldn’t surprise me at all.
You already got great responses. I’ll add that World War Z is a direct ripoff of Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation. And I mean that in a good way.
The book Annihilation centered on a “tower” that was a mysterious, fleshy, downward spiraling tunnel with creepy writing on the walls. The imagery was so unsettling.
For some reason it is entirely absent from the movie. Like… that was half of the point of the book - a “tower” that climbed down into the earth instead of towards the sky. Why would you cut that?
The Dark Tower. Everything. An 8 book series smashed into 1 terrible movie. Who ever green lit that should be fired.
The most egregious that i remember must be Artemis Fowl.
I remember liking the book quite a lot for making fairies into the opposite of pushovers. It also had a mean edge to it that other teen fantasy lacked.
The movie is just… Not that.
I watched the movie first. The only good thing about it is it inspired me to read the book to see what the movie missed. Upon reading all the books, I think the vest way to adapt them to screen would be an animated series that is beat for beat faithful to the books.
My biggest issue with the film is, if they didn’t want a villain protagonist, why adapt a book with a villain protagonist?
I hated the fact that the movie steered away from the fact that Artemis Fowl was a frigging criminal mastermind and instead made him a mid rebel with a relatable motivation… Have the same grouse about Ender’s Game too
Ready Player One. So much about the movie adaptation of this book infuriates me, but the fact they replaced Wargames with the Shining is a crime against humanity!!!
The only thing I remember about that movie was thinking mecha Godzilla looked like shit. Then the one from Godzilla vs Kong took notes…
Amen! !!
