Novels and Movies

[jake_fink]

I couldn't get into the Brideshed Revisited miniseries - does it pick up further on in the story?

No.


......................

 

[Sunny]

When I first saw Lord of the Rings I thought it was so fantastic. The only thing that really ticked me off was Arwen's bulked up role as hero to Frodo and the lack of the Faramir-Eowyn romance. I was okay about other things that bothered others (like no Tom Bombadil). I just watched the first movie again the other week (for the first time in a year or two) and it was cheesier than I remembered it. I still think it managed the enormous volume of the stories well, I just appreciate it less than I did when I was 15. (and maybe now I can look beyond the blinding beauty of Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortensen's ruggedness? haha)

You know, it's not the things left out that really upset me. It's the things they changed and rewrote that I really hate. A number of the characters do things that seem incomprehensible or illogical - until you realize that they're not the same characters Tolkien wrote.

Beefing up Arwen's role is one of the biggest things that bugged me. I do understand that they'd need to give her some more visibility for a film, but I really wanted to see Glorfindel - an Elf lord in his glory. And the abysmal stupidity of Aragorn's breakup with her, and her leaving for the Havens, and "Arwen's life force is bound up with the Ring!" Give me a BREAK.

I hated the way Faramir came across in TT, but if you think about it, it's a natural result of Film Frodo's stupidity. Being secretive and lying is not getting on the good side of a man with a hefty dose of N??men??rean blood. And Frodo sending Sam away is just wrong.

And Aragorn is lovely in his ruggedness but the character is so not a king. He's portrayed with this modern penchant for self-doubting antiheroes, instead of the truly kingly wanderer who never wavers in either his love for Arwen or his certainty that his destiny lies in Gondor.

[/rant] Back to your regularly-scheduled, well-regulated discussion.

 

[carebear]

There are two problems with trying to make a good film adaptation of a novel.

One, the best novels involve the reader knowing the character's thoughts to a degree. Absent a voiceover, that can be hard to capture on screen. Sure you can have actors show a little emotional torment or portray "thinking" in a brooding scene, but when what is important is an internal argument in detail, about your only recourse is excessive monologue or voiceover. Movies, being visual, will always struggle at showing the internals that make good reading good.

The larger problem is that novels are just too long for the medium. Those classic stories of Chandler et al are actually pretty short. The Bourne novels or any one book of LOTR just have too much stuff for even 3 movies to capture. The best that can be expected from trying to shove 300 small print pages into 90 pages of shooting script is to get some key scenes in and capture the overall "feel".

That's why transitioning from stage plays or short stories/novellas usually results in a better movie, although many short stories are too short and need too much fleshing out (see any of Jim Harrison's story adaptations as examples) to really work the other direction.

I'd almost prefer they leave the print sources alone or alternately, adapt for the screen without the implicit claim that they've made a movie which is any more than "inspired by" a particular book. At least then we can feel like we aren't being cheated by the filmmaker "ruining" our favorite books. And it gives them an out when we do complain. "Hey pal, it's my adaptation, get a life or make your own."

 

[Lincsong]

James Michener's Hawaii was put to the screen as the movies; Hawaii and The Hawaiians. To make a film following the novel would probably be like making several two hour films since in the novel the characters go back hundreds of years to Bora Bora, China, and Scotland. The films basically portrayed a couple chapters dealing with the missionaries (Hawaii) and their descendents (The Hawaiians). These films stayed close to the novel. Michener's novels are very long and drawn out but they do make good movies.
Shogun was done as a miniseries and kept close to the novel.

 

[carebear]

Most novels demand a multi-format treatment if they want to have anything close to the content of the book.

 

[Sunny]

I just had another thought.

Has anyone read the book of Twelve O'clock High? I've seen the movie many, many times, then I got the book for my brother last Christmas. I read it once and really enjoyed it; but I need to read and re-read to get a feel for it. A number of the facts were definitely changed in the movie. Characterization was different, too, but I can't put my finger on specifics at this point.

Has anyone else read the book and seen the movie? Which do you like better, and why? How do they differ, and has the movie changed things for the better or for worse?

 

[vintage68]

If I can, I usually like to see the movie first, then read the book.

The two are such different mediums, but I'm usually always disapointed with a movie if I've read the book before seeing the movie. Too many preconceived notions of character, ambience, storyline, etc. So if I like a movie I'll try and find the book if there was one and it's usually better.

 

[Feng_Li]

The movie version of Forest Gump was a vast improvement over the novel.

I thought that Cold Mountain was an excellent adaptation of the book, given the nature of the medium. They did make the overall tone much more sweeping instead of poetically gritty like the book. I'll never forget the lines like "He snatched the rifle from his hands and beat him with it until the stock broke, and then he beat him with the barrel."

 

[HadleyH]

For me, most of the books that have been adapted for the movies have left me wanting for more authentic book content. There are hundreds of movies that should never have seen the light of day really... just one, 'The Great Gatsby' from SFitzgerald, the one with Mia Farrow and RRedford...it left so much out....and so many others. Well, at least they try.

 

[Dr Doran]

Someone brought up Shawshank Redemption. I thought that was a very good screen adaptation too. From the same collection ("Different Seasons") was the novella "The Body." That was made into Stand By Me; I thought that was well-done and conveyed the novella well. Did anyone see and read Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe? The book was about the bleakest thing ever (or at least I did not catch any humor when I read it but I might have been too dumb to) but the movie was FUNNY. I have also heard from my brother that the film American Psycho was funny, whereas the book, which I somehow forced myself to read when it came out, was the most upsetting, unfunny, horrible thing I had ever read in my life.

 

[dhermann1]

Pride and Prejudice

Speaking of Pride and Prejudice, did anyone ever see the 1940 version? They butchered it! They had Laurence Olivier as Darcy, Greer Garson as Lizzie, Edmund Gwen as Mr Bennett, who are all great. But they set it several decades later, with costumes supposedly recycled from Gone With the Wind, and they changed the end completely. What a disappointment!
I find great fascination in the various attempts to recreate Philip Marlowe. I've never quite liked any of the great actors who tried to do him (Bogey, Robert Montgomery, Mitchum, James Garner).

 

[jake_fink]

Speaking of Pride and Prejudice, did anyone ever see the 1940 version? They butchered it! They had Laurence Olivier as Darcy, Greer Garson as Lizzie, Edmund Gwen as Mr Bennett, who are all great. But they set it several decades later, with costumes supposedly recycled from Gone With the Wind, and they changed the end completely. What a disappointment!I find great fascination in the various attempts to recreate Philip Marlowe. I've never quite liked any of the great actors who tried to do him (Bogey, Robert Montgomery, Mitchum, James Garner).

Yeah. The same kind of thing for Wuthering Heights. It sounds like it should work with teh cast they have and the director, but it all comes out so clean and prettified and twee that it is a really disappointing treatment of the book. I don't know if Wuthering Heights has ever been done well, at least a few good versions of Pride and prejudice have come about.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

A few good ones:
The Loved One (did someone mention this already?)
The Ox-Bow Incident
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
The Other (The movie is different from the book. They are both good.)

 

[Diamondback]

Another Tom Clancy fan!

Capt. Ramius's motive for sailing the Red October to the U.S. was different in the book and in the movie. In the movie, he was motivated by political conviction. In the book, he was motivated to avenge his wife's death, which was caused by a negligent but well-connected Soviet doctor. I enjoyed both the book and the movie; the book, more so.

Really? I thought Ramius' torment at his wife's death was readily apparent in the scene with Putin. My IT geek likes to think that Ramius did his little job because he didn't think his (soon-to-be) former country could be trusted with a monopoly on "caterpillar" technology. Interesting to note it's the Japanese who actually built a "caterpillar" (on a "target", uhh I mean surface ship--old habit; I used to hang out with one of my mom's bosses who was an old sub-skipper a lot), even though they couldn't get it to work efficiently enough to be viable.

Clear and Present Danger was a total hackjob IMO, about the only things I liked were Horner's music ("Operation Reciprocity" and "Laser-Guided Missile" are both in my "War Mix"), James Earl Jones, and Ford as an older Jack Ryan and Willem Dafoe as Clark. For the rewrite though, Henry Czerny was perfect as the "revised" Ritter--he just portrays characters who make you want to whack and booby-trap 'em so well...

The Bourne Identity was for a long time my favorite book. The movie version is entertaining, fun, but a bit disorganized. I think as a movie a lot of the complexities of the novel are lost. I like the movie, but I enjoy it as independent of the book.

Miss Novella, I'm somewhat with you on this one. A prof suggested, since I tend to incorporate elements (more like entire sections) of the personalities of people I admire and favorite fictional characters into my own with each successive "hotfix", that I read the Bourne trilogy as a form of therapy. (It helped!) The movie really lacked all the heavy psychology that made the book so good IMO, and didn't give as much chance to identify (apologies for the pun) with Bourne/David Webb. It also lost a lot by removing Bourne's nemesis, I really think it shoulda been a period piece. And it sounds like the changes for Supremacy have totally derailed things from the original novels--with the whole "dueling split-personalities" thing of David Webb, family man and academic versus Jason Bourne, master infiltrator and assassin gone, Ultimatum will be barely recognizable from its novel source--if at all, if it's ever even made.

Jurassic Park: For only being the first half the book or so, when you consider it in that context it coulda been far worse. (And when the rex chomped and threw the lawyer, first time I saw it, I remember half the theater cheering!) The sequels, though, suck like GE90 jet engines.

Bond movies: Not even remotely considerable as novel-inspired. They really have to be considered a separate thing, linked only by some characters. (Connery's wisecracking ladies' man is a far cry from the dark, brooding antihero Fleming originally wrote, and Roger Moore... I won't go there, other than to say when I'm looking for action-comedy, I turn to Moore's Bond.)

 

[Elaina]

Another really good adaptation was "Stand by me" and if memory serves, was pretty much spot on.

I've read Dicken's great expectations (and largely loved it because it mentioned my maiden name) and I've read the new adaptation of the Hawke/Paltrow film. Both have pros and cons, but as I'm a book snob, I obviously like one over the other.

I became a Clancy fan from THFRO. I have read the vast majority of his books, but that is the one and only film adaptation I have seen.

I have mixed feelings on Mortensen as Aragorn. I can see why one can come to the "he's not a king" but also in the book, he was supposed to have been so far from it at that time, that it would have fit (aka Strider.) Had they of made the actor look more like himself at the end (nerdy and clean shaven) it may have been a better transformation. I like the movies, and I like the books (anyone who knows me can figure that out after a while) but truth be told, I'm much more fascinated by Tolkien's inner workings of the myths then I am those particular books. The history and languages alone have given me many years of inner debates (and only because I've only met one other person who can/would debate the philosophy with me.)

 

[Diamondback]

Elaina, as a longtime Clancy fan (first read THfRO in elementary school, and "Mr. Clark" was a heavy influence through some of my reconstruction), I didn't think Patriot Games as a movie was too bad. Recommend you skip The Sum of All Fears, though. Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan? Seriously... Almost as bad as DiCaprio as Howard Hughes. (Who I believe Tommy Lee Jones was pretty close to dead-on portraying, but that's fftopic:...)

 

[Elaina]

Yeah. Afleck..Ryan. My brain hurts.

I have "Patriot games" in the house somewhere. Problem is, I don't like TV. I should watch it here soon tho, thanks.

 

[Diamondback]

I don't either, which is why I keep several DVD's packed in with the laptop. (Which goes quite literally everywhere, except the, ahh, "little Field Marshal's office"... If I ever attend an FL lunch and you see a metal hardside case nearby, it's just General Krueger crated up and waiting for me to finish...)

Although, I am a major History Channel junkie. (R. Lee on Mail Call? Gotta love the guy's attitude and sense of humor. OOHRAH! "Best of Seasons 1 and 2" are among my staples.)

Spoiler

In PG, I rather liked the change where Fat Traitor (Blank) gets it from his own buddies. Almost as much as when Fat Hacker (Blank) gets it in JP...

 

[Elaina]

The History Channel doesn't count. I find that I prefer History international to the basic one. My TV is on all day to it.

 

[erikb02809]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest yet (or maybe they have and I missed it). I saw the movie years before I read Kesey's book, and figured there was no way on earth I could like the novel more than the movie, just because I liked the movie so much. Well, surprise, surprise, once I got around to reading it I ended up liking the novel even more.

With a few of exceptions however, (the death of one of the supporting characters, MacMurphy's size in the novel vs. Nicholson's, the story being told from Chief's point of view in the book), I thought the movie was remarkably true to the book.