The Film of the Book: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Got a hit book? Turn it into a hit film. What could be more natural? The name alone will sell tickets, and adapting a hit book to the screen can't be that difficult, can it?

Sometimes the film is so successful [[Adaptation Displacement|the book gets forgotten]]. Other times, the book is still read long after the film is forgotten. In the middle ground, the book will probably be republished with a cover based on the movie poster and "Now a major motion picture!" or something emblazoned on it.

 

 

[[The Other Wiki]] has [[wikipedia:Film adaptation|something to say]] about this kind of thing in its usual style. Adaptations like this are likely to lead to [[Old Guard Versus New Blood]] incidents.

 

== Action ==

* ''[[James Bond]]'':

** ''[[James Bond|Goldfinger]]'' the book has a plot to steal the gold from Fort Knox (which the movie Bond points out is impossible) using a nuclear bomb to blow open a door while everyone is suicidally close. The movie changes the scheme into a plan to raid the fort just long enough to place the nuclear bomb in the main vault. Any gold surviving the blast would be radioactive and thus worthless, making the value of Auric Goldfinger's own gold jump at least tenfold.

** ''[[Diamonds Are Forever]]'': While earlier films played it pretty close to the books (especially ''[[On Her Majesty's Secret Service]]'' and, for obvious reasons, ''[[Thunderball]]''), this one changed everything about the book's plot and setting, except its central plot conceit about diamond smuggling. Also, the [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]] was not there, at least not at first, in the actual followup novel, ''You Only Live Twice,'' being replaced instead by a massive and prolonged [[Heroic BSOD]] that takes {{spoiler|Bond being assigned a suicide mission by M to snap him out of it, and which does lead to the smackdown being placed, hard and ruthlessly, on Blofeld.}}

* ''[[Jaws]]'' started life as a harmless-enough page-turner with extremely unlikeable characters, and was adapted into one of the best movies ever made.

* ''[[Die Hard]]'' was based on an [[Airport Fantasy|airport novel]].

* ''[[Watchmen]]''

* The ''[[Band of Brothers (TV series)|Band of Brothers]]'' miniseries is based off of a historical novel written by Stephen Ambrose, and despite a few blatant inaccuracies. The sequel, ''[[The Pacific]]'', is based off of several veterans' memoirs.

* ''[[The Guns of Navarone]]''

* The book ''[[Battle Royale]]'' was made into a film of the same name.

* ''[[The Tomorrow Series|Tomorrow, When the War Began]]'', an adaptation of the book of the same name. This is used for a meta joke when one character, while reading a book, remarks about how the book is always better than the movie.

 

* Tom Wolfe's ''[[The Right Stuff]]''. The movie turned out to be pretty faithful.

* ''[[White Fang]]'' and ''[[The Call of the Wild]]'' by [[Jack London]]. The problem seems to be that Hollywood can't handle an animal as the main star of a movie, and so completely rewrites the story to include an important human who is actually the main character. The canine star becomes the [[Sidekick]].

* The movie supposedly based on ''[[The Dark Is Rising]]''. The book is pretty good, to the point that some consider it an underground classic of (children's?) literature. The movie is pretty bad, to the point where it deserves to have an episode of [[Mystery Science Theater 3000]] based around it. How bad was the movie of The Dark Is Rising?. Eight people stormed out over the course of one showing of the film. Christopher Eccleston is the only reason to even remember that movie.

 

* ''[[Prince of Egypt]]''

* ''[[The Greatest Story Ever Told]]''

 

 

** ''[[101 Dalmatians|One Hundred and One Dalmatians]]'': A [[Pragmatic Adaptation]] that actually stays commendably faithful to the original, more so than almost any other Disney film listed here. There's a mere ''two'' [[Composite Characters]], the remaining human characters get somewhat expanded roles and in Mr Dearly's case a different job, Cruella's [[Living Prop]] husband is excised completely and most of the events of the trip from London to Suffolk are [[Compressed Adaptation|streamlined a bit]]. The only significant criticisms that can be made stereotypical, [[Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping|inconsistent]] or occasionally [[Not Even Bothering with the Accent|non-existent]] British accents that the whole Disney Animated Canon suffers from, and the decision to turn the chapter in which all 101 dalmatians hitch a ride in the back of a removal van into a full-on [[Chase Scene]]. They get away with the latter, however, because it was [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|one of the best parts.]]

* ''[[Charlotte's Web]]'': Author [[EB White]] was extremely displeased (and reasonably so) with the first [[Animated Adaptation]] of his story. We will never know how he would have felt about the new live-action film, but at least it's mostly faithful to the book.

* ''[[Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH]]'' is a good book, and ''[[The Secret of NIMH]]'' is an equally good movie, but while they share some similarity of plot, they diverge sharply in genre and character focus.

** ''[[The Secret Of NIMH 2]]: Timmy To The Rescue'', a straight-to-video musical with virtually nothing to do with the first film.

* Much of [[Roald Dahl]]'s children's fiction canon has been made into movies. Results vary considerably.

* ''[[Holes]]'' by Louis Sachar got a pretty faithful adaption. But that's mostly because Sachar wrote the screen play

* ''[[Ella Enchanted]]'', by Gail Carson Levine.

* ''[[Forrest Gump]]'' was adapted from a very funny novel about an [[Idiot Savant]] who becomes an astronaut, a chess master, a harmonica player and a millionaire into a guy who's [[Inspirationally Disadvantaged]], and who [[Historical In-Joke|touches important events and people]]. The character of Jenny was changed from a sensible [[Girl Next Door]] type into a tragic shallow party girl (admittedly deepening her character). The sequel, ''Gump And Co.'', followed more in the vein of the movie, both in increasing the number of random cameos and retaining the deaths of Forrest's Mom and Jenny, neither of whom died in the original book.

* ''[[The Godfather]]'' novel, written by Mario Puzo which becomes:

** ...made into a trilogy of movies (two of which become cinema classics) detailing the story of a "fictional" mafia family through the years. Thus, it is suggested that, within this apparently separate universe, the [[Based on a True Story|events of the books and film are true]] and were [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|brought to us by somebody who was there]].

* ''[[Apollo 13]]'' was based off of ''Lost Moon'', written by mission commander Jim Lovell about his experience on that mission.

* Most of [[John Grisham]]'s early novels have been made into films by this point, with varying degrees of success. Even the novel that Grisham said he would never option for film ([[A Time to Kill]]) was made into a movie... a fairly good one at that. It helps that Grisham's novels are essentially beach-read page-turners.

* ''Never Let Me Go'', based on the book of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro, kept the majority of the plot intact, as well as pulling off spot-on portrayals of the three main characters.

* ''[[No Country for Old Men]]'' by the Coen Brothers is a very rare example of a film that's even better than the book it was based off of. And the book is pretty damn good.

* ''[[Mysterious Skin]]'' is considered another rare success: It is both faithful to the book, and it presents the difficult subject matter with consideration instead of [[Anvilicious|shoving it into the viewer's face]].

* S.E. Hinton's ''[[The Outsiders]]'' was adapted into a movie that was identical. To know one is to know the other.

* ''[[L.A. Confidential]]'' managed to make a great film out out of a brilliant book, despite having to shed about half a dozen subplots, compress the action from five years down to one, and alter the ending slightly.

* ''[[Jackie Brown]]'', Quentin Tarantino's adaptation of Elmore Leonard's ''Rum Punch''

* ''[[La Reine Margot (film)|La Reine Margot]]'', adapted from the novel of the same name by [[Alexandre Dumas]], père.

* ''[[The Inheritance Cycle|Eragon]]''. Multiple missing main characters, more main characters having a single line or so, completely different locations, general failure to understand universal laws such as magic in-universe, and a completely different ending. Proved a [[Franchise Killer]] to the prospect of a movie of the sequel, since so much was omitted or defiled, although it did still make a profit.

* ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', some notable differences are the removal of the Tom Bombadil and the Scouring of the Shire subplots, the increased role for Arwen, and the different motivations and actions of Faramir's character (and, arguably, Elrond's). The biggest change was making Gimli a comic relief when the original book had no comic reliefs, probably a decision based on heightism.

** They removed a swordfight with the god of war.

* ''[[The Princess Bride (novel)|The Princess Bride]]'' had a particularly accurate [[The Princess Bride (film)|film version]]. It helps that [[William Goldman]] (who was an Oscar-winning scriptwriter to begin with) wrote both the book and the movie.

* ''[[Mary Poppins]]''

* ''[[The Neverending Story (film)|The Neverending Story]]'': The film doesn't actually show the whole book. Far from it. It simply couldn't. Even so, some changes were unnecessary. In the book the protagonist (Bastian Balthasar Bux) is an overweight, awkward kid and his Fantasia-based friend Atreyu is green-skinned. The second half of the book puts the protagonist in grave danger. The movie, if faithful to its source, needed to be at least two movies long.

* ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]'' films.

* ''[[Stardust (film)|Stardust]]'' took [[Neil Gaiman]]'s pointedly [[Bittersweet Ending]] and changed it so that the last line of the movie is "And they all lived happily ever after". They also threw out Tristran's sister and step-mother. Then they changed the main character's name (removing the second R), removed the [[Fairy Tale]] and [[Nursery Rhyme|nursery rhymes]] that marked it as a fairy tale for adults, but instead pumped it full of [[One-Scene Wonder|One Scene Wonders]], fleshed-out versions of previously bland characters (especially the one that Robert de Niro played), and gave the story a genuine climax.

** ''[[Queen of the Damned]]''

* [[MGM]]'s ''[[The Wizard of Oz (film)|The Wizard of Oz]]'', somewhat loosely based on the first book, shortened the journey to Emerald City and ended the story shortly after the Wicked Witch was killed. Among other changes was addition of [[Canon Foreigner|original characters]] like Almira Gulch, creating a new subplot involving Dorothy's family. Perhaps the most infamous change in the movie was that Oz had been made an elaborate dream instead of a fantasy country. The reasoning for this was that [[Executive Meddling|executives believed that]] [[Viewers Are Geniuses|audiences were too "sophisticated"]] [[Fantasy Ghetto|to accept a "real" fantasy world.]]

** The notion that making the Oz experience into a dream was an "infamous" change is probably a minority opinion. ''The Wizard of Oz'' is one of the most beloved movies of all time, and in many ways it has overshadowed the success of the book.

* ''[[What Dreams May Come]]'' is based on a 1978 novel of the same name by Richard Matheson. There are substantial differences between the book and movie in the characters, the presentation of afterlife, and the ending. Matheson based his depiction of afterlife on extensive research into mysticism and near-death experiences, which he lists in a bibliography at the end. He states in an author's note at the beginning that the characters are the only fictional component of the book.

* ''[[Dinotopia]]''. The miniseries and TV series were very different than the books.

 

== Horror ==

* Pick any [[Stephen King]] book, and chances are it's been adapted to film (in some cases, ''twice'').

** In turn, pick any of those movies. Chances are, Stephen King himself didn't like it. He's outright stated that he hates some of the movies based off his books, such as the two sequels of 'Children of the Corn.', and strangely, ''[[The Shining]]'' ([[Stanley Kubrick]] turned it into a downright horror masterpiece, but removed several plot elements that King felt very personal about, [[Write What You Know|because they were partly based on his own life]]). He did, however, like the movie's ending of ''[[The Mist]]'' even more than his original.

* ''[[An American Haunting]]'' was based on the novel ''The Bell Witch: An American Haunting'' by Brent Monahan, which was [[Very Loosely Based on a True Story|itself based]] on the Tennessee legend of The Bell Witch.

* Although frequently so altered as to be nearly completely unrecognizable, almost every single movie by [[Stanley Kubrick]] and [[Alfred Hitchcock]] were based on books (notable exceptions are ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey]]'' and ''[[North by Northwest]]'', and Kubrick wanted the ''2001'' book written and out before the movie).

* ''[[The Da Vinci Code]]''.

* ''[[The Name of the Rose]]'' described itself as a "palimpsest" of the book. A palimpsest is a page of a manuscript that has had the text scraped off and been reused as blank space, a medieval practice (paper was expensive). Nowadays, both the original and the follow-up text can be read with UV light and other tricks. Appropriate for a movie based on a book about [[Sherlock Holmes]] in the 14th Century, no?

* [[James Patterson]]'s first two novels, Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls, became films.

** As did "First to Die," the first book in the Women's Murder Club series, though that was direct-to-DVD.

* ''How Stella Got Her Groove Back''

* ''[[The English Patient]]''; the movie [[Pragmatic Adaptation|left out]] a lot of the book, in the process shifting the focus onto the title character's backstory. Often blamed for encouraging [[Misaimed Fandom]] directed the destructive, violent love affair central to said backstory.

 

 

== Science Fiction ==

* With the exception of ''[[A Scanner Darkly]]'', no book by [[Philip K. Dick]] will ever be faithfully adapted. Mostly because he was crazy, and yet the books were incredibly smart. Also, almost none of the movies keep the titles of the books and stories that inspired them, mostly due to trying to turn quirky, introspective science fiction into bigass action movies, and the names had to reflect that switch.

* Richard Matheson's novel ''[[I Am Legend]]'' has been adapted to film four times in four wildly different adaptations; [[Vincent Price]]'s ''[[The Last Man On Earth]]'', Charlton Heston's ''[[The Omega Man]]'', the [[Will Smith]] vehicle which [[I Am Legend|shares the title of the book]], and [[The Asylum]] [[The Mockbuster|mockbuster]] ''I Am Omega'', starring Mark Dacascos. Not a single one of those adaptations is faithful to the book.

* ''[[Starship Troopers]]'': The script was already mostly written (under the title "Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine") when they heard about "a book that had a bug war similar to the one in the script" as well as Verhoeven ''never finishing the actual novel''.

* ''[[Planet of the Apes]]'' has had two very different film adaptations.

* ''[[Jumper (novel)|Jumper]]'' was adapted into movie form. "[[In Name Only|Based on the novel]]" was very noticeable during the opening credits. Other than the title, only three points from the source material remain: the protagonist ran away from his alcoholic father, he uses his ability to teleport ("jump") to steal money from a bank vault, and he ends up in a relationship with a girl named Millie. The backstories involving each of these events were considerably changed. Even the way he jumps was changed, jazzed up with special effects to make it flashy enough for a movie (admittedly also allowing for certain mechanics relevant to the script). The worst part was that they left out {{spoiler|the [[Attempted Rape|near rape scene]], featured on page 8 in the book.}}

* The movie ''[[Children of Men]]'' was more enjoyable than the book, which was a 350 or so page guide to how to do Christan symbolism in the least subtle way possible.

* The Japanese book ''Parasite Eve'' circa 1995 got sent to the big screens in 97. Then in 98, ''[[Square Soft]]'' caught on and made a video game sequel called (you guessed it) ''[[Parasite Eve]]''.

* Richard Matheson's novel ''Bid Time Return'' was made into the movie ''[[Somewhere in Time]]'' (the title of which was used for later editions of the book). There are some significant changes in its adaptation to screen, most notably in the period to which the protagonist travels back in time (in the book, it's the late 19th century, in the movie early 20th) and in the nature of what's happening (in the book, but not the movie, the protagonist is dying from a brain tumor, raising questions about whether the time-traveling experience is real or not). Also, the movie but not the book includes a spectacular [[Temporal Paradox|ontological paradox]] centering around a watch with apparently no origin (the protagonist receives it from an old lady in the present day; he goes back in time and gives it to a younger version of the same lady, and that's how ''she'' got it in the first place; and so on).

* Edgar Rice Burroughs' ''A Princess of Mars'' was made into the movie ''John Carter''. Some needful updating was done but some very pointless major alterations were also made. Instead of Mars being a dying planet simply because it's really frigging old, the Therns were dragged in from a later book, ''Gods of Mars'', as the real power behind the Zodangan leader Sab-Than. He leads the mobile city (perhaps inspired by Greg Bear's ''Strength of Stones''?) of Zodanga. Mars' deprecated state is blamed on the planet-wide resource pillaging of the Zodangans, with the Therns as the shadowy big bad behind the scenes, though they show up in the first few minutes. The atmosphere factory, powered by Ninth Ray energy is nowhere in the film. It was likely excised to give Dejah Thoris a reason to be made over into a scientist working on a machine to use the Ninth Ray to restore the environment. To make it a family friendly instead of NC-17 film, everyone on Mars is wearing way too much clothing. ;) To the good, the designers got the Tharks, thoats, Woola, white apes and other critters dead on to the book. Too bad they didn't adhere so close to the actual story.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Media Adaptation Tropes]]

[[Category:Film Tropes]]