OK, my family's collective eye-rolling notwithstanding, I know I can't be the only one out there who, whilst watching an adaptation of their favorite reads, starts yelling "Hey! That wasn't in the book! The book version was better, 'cause..."

On the one hand, I can relate to the need to jazz up certain elements for the visual medium...Mary Poppins springs immediately to mind...and sometimes practical changes need to be made (as with the A&E adaptation of Anne Perry's The Cater Street Hangman, which in print is mostly interior character monologue).

But...but...did A&E really need to reduce the scenes between Jane Eyre and Rochester - two of the most passionately articulate lovers in literature - to, quote, "Jane, I can't live without you...come to me and make my life complete!"

My favorite book vs. movie (although it doesn't exactly fit the stereotype) was 2001: a space odyssey. People who hadn't read the book were wondering why the bone became a spaceship, and what is the fetus at the end and why did HAL 2000 go nuts and why is he in Versailles or someplace when he was going to Saturn, etc. I spent most of the time explaining it because the book actually answered those questions. (IMO 2001: a space odyssey is one of the worst motion pictures ever made, and I've seen Plan 9!)

HAL 9000.

I remember reading 2001 a long, long time (like about 15 years) ago and thinking that, yeah, there was a big difference between the intricate philosophical concepts Clarke was trying to get across and Kubrick's very visually-oriented sort of space ballet. I dunno if the novel as written would even be filmable, really.

William, what did you think of the next two books? They made a movie out of 2010, didn't they? Or was that just a novelisation?

The movie 2001: A Space Odyssey was based on a short story by Clarke called "The Sentinel". I believe Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick collaborated on the movie's script. Clarke's book, 2001: A Space Odyssey is actually an adaptation of Kubrick's film.

On the other hand, the movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact was an adaptation of Clarke's novel, 2010: Odyssey II. 2063 has yet to be made into a movie. Seems to me there's yet a fourth and final novel in the series. But I haven't read it yet.

A correction: the third book is 2061: Odyssey Three. The final book is 3001: The Final Odyssey.

Benn, Clarke was writing the book at the same time he was writing the script. For more details, see Clarke's "The Lost Worlds of 2001".

2010 was novel first then movie. The novel was better.

>>"Annoyed grunt"<< Scott, you're right on both counts. I had forgotten that Clarke had written the novel simultaneously with the movie script. And the novel, 2010, was better than the film. (If you'll re-read my post, in case you misunderstood me, I did say the film was an adaptation of the book.)

I know only one movie which was better than the book: the french b/w movie "Krieg der Knöpfe" (if it has been translated into english, it would be somewhere around war of the buttons.) Its about two small french villages where the villagers of A hate B for historic reasons and vice versa. The boys take this too serious, and have big battles, after which the buttons are cut of the clothes to humiliate the loosers. Very quickly everything gets out of hand, and you see that in war, everybody looses, there are no winners.
When I read the book (german translation - I don't know french) a few years ago, I was very surprised and disappointed, that in the book the battles and so on are glorified. The film shows in impressive pictures what war is like, the book just tells what happened and how great these times were when everybody was young.

A movie which shows the same spirit and message of the book (although it had to be heavily edited) was "the name of the rose" with sean connery.

A movie which is very good is the b/w movie from the 50s or 60s with rühmann und fröbe "Es geschah am hellichten Tag" (it happened in broad daylight). Its based on a story "the promise" from dürrenmatt, and he wasn't happy about it at all, they changed they end very much. Okay, I haven't got around reading the original book, but the movie is awesome. (its about several children who are killed in postwar switzerland- rühmann plays the detective, fröbe the bad guy. When the police arrest a tramp, he hangs himself, and the case is considered closed. But the inspector promises himself to find the real one, and goes so far to use his landladys small daughter as bait. The growing possession of the inspector is intriguing, as well as the suspenseful music and pictures. Its really scary. They recently remade it, unnecessary, and as usual, with bad results.)

Most of the other movies based on books are sometimes ok if you don't know the book, but usually destroy most of the book. The latest disappointments were Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings - I read Tolkien after the movie and was appalled how much they had changed the book, esp. the spirit of the story, after the production teams had always stressed how much they loved tolkien, tried everything to get him right... After reading Tolkiens comments on the first movie in the 60s, I'm sure he wouldn't have liked the new edits at all. And Harry Potter showed that leaving most of the dialogue literal doesn't guarantue(?sp) that the spirit of the book comes over into the movie: everything was fast-paced and the effects were overdone (as with most of the movies in the last 10 years, name of the rose being one of the few exceptions. But then, that wasn't done by americans.)

The War of the Buttons was re-made in England, with the villages set in Ireland, IIRC (or possibly Wales or Scotland)

It was very light-hearted (especially when an attacking force from Village B discovered that the the defenders from Village A had nothing to lose because the were not wearing any buttons (or anything else for that matter).

It got serious when a tractor got loose and nearly killed a couple of kids. After that, the adults finally realized what was going on and the two leaders wound up in Juvenile Detention together where, according to the narrator, they became fast friends.

From your description of the book and the French film, I would assume that the English version "edited" (The word I'd like to use would probably be replaces by red dots) the book in the opposite direction.

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea was better as a movie. I tried reading the novel years ago. Man that thing plods along. I had to force myself to finish it. Tried reading other Verne stories, same problem.

That being said any movie based on an Alan Dean Foster novel will probably be better than the book because Foster is another plodding writer.

And while it's not based on a book, I prefered the Dick Tracy movie to the Dick Tracy comic strip. The movie had a better writer.

That being said any movie based on an Alan Dean Foster novel will probably be better than the book because Foster is another plodding writer.

Don't say that in front of my father. He has every single thing Foster has ever written and he might take that personally.

I quite enjoyed Verne's "The Mysterious Island" - basically a story of castaways using the science and engineering of the time to provide themselves with the necessities of life - with Captain Nemo thrown in towards the end.

Unlike the movie version of same, which turned the book into a monster movie. Giant bees?!?!

Cool emoticon, Sophie. How'd you get it?

If you're going to rip the film Mysterious Island for the giant bees, how about all the other giant creatures that appeared (crab, clam, prehistoric bird)?
I have to admit I liked the film as a kid, and it still has its charm. (Not to mention the musical score that's a bit overly dramatic, but quite memorable.) However, fans of the original book have a right to rip on it.
As for Foster novels, I've read a couple I liked, and tried to start several more, but lost interest in them before I could get a quarter of the way through. (Just don't tell Brian's father! )

Just thought of something else, though it deals with a picture-oriented book, rather than a novel: Dinotopia. Man, did that miniseries bite!

= \clipart{angry}

Geez, I keep forgetting about clipart. Thanks!

Haven't seen or read Mysterious Island. (Unless you count reading a comic book adaptation. ;-)

Besides eliminating excess verbiage movie adaptations of stories like 20,000 Leagues can also eliminate mistakes. I laughed when Verne wrote that life doesn't exist below a certain point in the ocean because we now know that it does. And while the Nemo at the South Pole section was interesting, Antarctica doesn't resemble what he wrote.

As for Foster, I swear the man writes like he's getting paid by the word. You could cut half the words out of his stories & it wouldn't harm the story at all. I usually just scan and flip through his novels. Don't think I've missed much that way. Shame he never read Strunk & White's The Elements of Style.
Verne, of course, has an excuse for not reading it. I believe he died before Strunk published the first volume.

While I did like the '60s movie version of The Time Machine, I am amazed that all adaptations of the novella (even some comics) I've seen all seem to create a romance between the time traveller & the girl when there was no such thing in Well's story. (Which surprised me when I read it.)

Speaking of H.G. Wells, the 1954 film The War of the Worlds is about as far from the novel as you can get. It's a prime example of just what "based upon" means when a book is translated into film. As in "loosely based upon." Bear in mind, when the film was made, audience relatability was a factor in updating Wells' story to modern times; just like today, ticket sales at the cinema were important, and reaching a large audience was more likely with a contemporary setting.
I happen to like both the novel (the third I read in my life, by the way) and the film. I'd personally love to see a film adaptation of the novel that actually closely follows the novel, though I suspect I'm in the minority. It's got plenty of action, excitement, creepiness and social commentary to hold an audience's attention, and would make for an interesting counterpoint to all the other "period piece" films that have been made of late 1800's/early 1900's novels. As for the 1954 film, it's fairly well-paced (exciting) and would be interesting if remade/updated to today's standards (as long as it didn't become a cocky, kick a** action flick like Independence Day).
By the way, the fact that Mars ended up being nothing like what Wells (nor few other people of his day) imagined hasn't deterred my interest in the story. It's easy enough to substitute "aliens" for "Martians."
Self nit: should I really be posting this on the Non-SciFi novels board?

KAM,

While I did like the '60s movie version of The Time Machine, I am amazed that all adaptations of the novella (even some comics) I've seen all seem to create a romance between the time traveller & the girl when there was no such thing in Well's story. (Which surprised me when I read it.)

Of course, Wells was a good writer who wanted to write a good book, bringing his points across, so he didn't see any need for bringing an unneccessary love story into it (okay, its been a while since I read the book and saw the first movie of it, so I may be wrong here); but can you imagine how the producers would have reacted to a movie with no love story??? I can just hear them groaning: No one will watch this movie, what is this, an art movie?....

...Or else something like "What's going on here? You're trying to tell a story? Trying to make a point?! This is a movie, not a book!"

TomM,

about the War of the Buttons movie: the scene where the boys of one village go into battle stark naked was in the original movie, too (it was one of the more fun moments, as it was clear that this wasn't about sexuality, and realistic, as the boys complained about bushes scratching them and so on.)

The tractor that got loose plays a part in the french movie, too.

After problems mount, the leader of the gangs of one village (lebrac, I think) runs away, as the parents, esp. his parents, only know of one answer to all the problems of the kids: beat them up, and if they still don't behave, beat them up harder.

After a big search, lebrac is found and put into juvenile prison, where he meets up with the opposite leader. the movie ended with both of them sitting desolate and lonely on their beds, talking to each other more out of loneliness, and the feeling that lebrac had fallen from high command (an admired leader of his gang) to just a number far away).

So the english movie has some elements from the original.

I saw the french movie several times as kid (I guess because it was so old and b/w it was cheap to rent, because it was shown on community activities) and I was deeply impressed by the way it was told. I haven't seen the english version - when was it made?

According to IMDB, there were two B&W French versions 1936, and 1962. The English version was released in 1994

I was looking for references to Dinotopia; the TV series version started in October and I read recently it has been cancelled. I was planning to watch it and never got around to it. Did anybody else see it? Was it too boring to nitpick?
I didn't see any nitpicks in the miniseries, not that I tried to look for any. It was just not as fun as the books. Too bad the series didn't work out.

I, too, was disappointed by the miniseries, especially considering the books were so interesting.

Wells wrote The War Of The Worlds as a critique of colonialism.
Interesting enough The War Of The Worlds and The Invisible Man were also titles later given to tv series that bore only slightly,if any resemblance to the stories themselves.