It Wasn't Like That in the Book... Book vs. Movie/TV adaptations

[Bort]

To compare the differences between a book and its movie or TV adaptation. Spoilers ahoy!

[Bort]

13 hours ago, Black Knight said:

Since this is a book thread, I'll just bring up here that I read Forrest Gump after seeing the movie, and it's hard for me to think of many movies that deviated more wildly from the book. I'd like to have seen that script process.

I remember hating Jurassic Park: The Lost World because I loved the book and the movie made a huuuuuge deviation from it. Also, Julianne Moore as Sarah was so not what I pictured at all -- partly because she looked nothing like how the character was described.

[HazelEyes4325]

I'm not one of those people who is always against, ahem, liberties taken in movies (versus the book).  If it done well, it can be effective and a surprise for those who have read the book and are looking for something new in a different retelling. 

Unfortunately, such changes are rarely done well.

[HazelEyes4325]

1 hour ago, kariyaki said:

Also, Julianne Moore as Sarah was so not what I pictured at all -- partly because she looked nothing like how the character was described.

I could never get into the Hunger Games movies because they were so, so off with Peeta.  He was supposed to be a big bulky guy and, instead, they had 5'7" Josh Hutcherson--who was two inches SHORTER than his Katniss.

Hutcherson is a good actor, but he was just terribly miscast here.

[Bort]

10 minutes ago, HazelEyes4325 said:

I'm not one of those people who is always against, ahem, liberties taken in movies (versus the book).  If it done well, it can be effective and a surprise for those who have read the book and are looking for something new in a different retelling. 

Yes, exactly. I actually LIKE changes, especially if it's done to modernize a book that's a little dated. Like Jurassic Park or Congo. I was fine with those changes. Outlander has changed things to streamline the story and expand the narrative, which is primarily a first-person work.

Jurassic Park 2 pretty much just wanted to show a T-Rex loose in San Diego and wrote their way backwards.

[AuntiePam]

The biggest change that comes to mind is the ending of Cujo.  In the book, the little boy dies. 

Memory fails, but I think a lot of Stephen King movie adaptations have had major changes.  

[cherrypj]

Love this topic. Had always thought about starting a similar one: "which was better, the movie or the book?" The problem was, I couldn't find that many examples where the book was demonstrably better (!!), and didn't want to lose my library cred. 

Like Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. I LOVED the book. I LOVED the movie too, even though it wasn't quite the same.

Sometimes I like the movie better because it's less of a time commitment. 

[Bort]

1 hour ago, AuntiePam said:

Memory fails, but I think a lot of Stephen King movie adaptations have had major changes.  

I think Stand By Me is the only movie that was pretty faithful to Stephen King's original work.

4 minutes ago, cherrypj said:

I LOVED the book. I LOVED the movie too, even though it wasn't quite the same.

This is also a thing for me. Sometimes the adaptation is way different from the book but ends up being good in a whole different way. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory comes to mind (the Gene Wilder one, not the Johnny Depp one).

Most of the time I like the book better. But there are rare occurrences where I like the movie better. Years ago, I saw The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and love, love, LOVED it. One of my all-time favorite movies. Decided to read the book and wow, did I hate it. The book was kind of all over the place and I felt like the movie cut the superfluous crap out and made for a much tighter story.

[GaT]

2 hours ago, HazelEyes4325 said:

I could never get into the Hunger Games movies because they were so, so off with Peeta.  He was supposed to be a big bulky guy and, instead, they had 5'7" Josh Hutcherson--who was two inches SHORTER than his Katniss.

Hutcherson is a good actor, but he was just terribly miscast here.

I so agree about Peeta, I never understood the casting. They did the same thing with Twilight which, to this day, still gives me twitches. The first time I saw a picture of the cast I thought "aren't these supposed to be really gorgeous people?" In the books Rosalie is described as exceptionally beautiful, tall, statuesque, and has long, wavy blonde hair. So who do they cast? a Latina who looks terrible as a blonde & is only 5'4", not even close to being "statuesque" I remember the first time I saw Nikki Reed without the Twilight makeup I was surprised that she was actually pretty. And for Alice Cullen, a character that is described as "pixielike, thin in the extreme, with small features." they cast Ashley Greene, who at 5'5" is an inch taller than the "statuesque" Rosalie & not "pixielike" at all.  And don't even get me started on what the movies did to the character's hair, in all the books Edward's hair is described as being bronze colored, so why is his hair black in the last movie? Everybody's hair color changed from movie to movie, there was absolutely no consistency.

As you can probably guess, I still have issues with the movies LOL

[peacheslatour]

I love the Lord of the Rings, both books and movies. But I think the movie majorly fucked up with the casting of Faramir. The book describes him complete;y differently in both affect and looks.

[babyhouseman]

Sex and the City was a book that had little relation to the show. 

Fried Green Tomatoes stuck to the book well.

My Sister's Keeper movie caused a lot of controversy with a different ending from the book. The book was about a dying girl whose sister was expected to be a bone marrow donor. In the book, the donor sister died allowing the dying sister to live. In the movie, the dying sister passed away.

I love reading books from movies or TV shows. That's usually how I find out about a book.

[Bort]

Yeah, in digging around and reading a couple articles about Books vs. Adaptations, I found out that Minority Report was originally a book (a fact I somehow missed) and is different from the movie. I wanna read that.

[Black Knight]

6 hours ago, cherrypj said:

Sometimes I like the movie better because it's less of a time commitment. 

I read pretty fast, so most of the time the book isn't much more of a time commitment (and if I go see a movie in the theater, then factoring in travel time, the wait for previews to start, and then the previews, the gap is narrower or even erased altogether). But the other thing is that my life tends to have one-hour chunks of free time, and I don't generally mind reading a book in chunks, but I do mind watching a movie that way. But setting aside several hours to watch a movie in one sitting is harder for me.

World War Z was such a good book, and then the movie had literally nothing in common with it other than both had zombies.

The new adaptation of His Dark Materials is coming out, and it puts me in mind of the first time they tried adapting it. I actually really enjoyed the movie, which is an unpopular opinion - I thought the casting was great, the animation of the daemons impressive - right up until they chickened out on the ending of the book. It would be like if The Fellowship of the Ring movie had not ended with Boromir's death and the fallout. I was so angry I nearly stood up in the theater and screamed, "It doesn't end there!"

Oh, and for an adaptation that changes tons from the source material but is very very very well-done - Arrival, based on a Ted Chiang short story. I had read the story years before and loved it, and when I heard they were making a movie, I said, "But that story is unadaptable..." I went to see the movie and found that indeed, it's not so much an adaptation as it's an inspired-by of the story. And I was completely fine with that because, yeah, that story is not adaptable! (This is another one where I would have loved to see the script process.) Both the film and the story are superb in their own right.

Edited May 31, 2019 by Black Knight

[cherrypj]

7 hours ago, Black Knight said:

Oh, and for an adaptation that changes tons from the source material but is very very very well-done - Arrival, based on a Ted Chiang short story. I had read the story years before and loved it, and when I heard they were making a movie, I said, "But that story is unadaptable..." I went to see the movie and found that indeed, it's not so much an adaptation as it's an inspired-by of the story. And I was completely fine with that because, yeah, that story is not adaptable! (This is another one where I would have loved to see the script process.) Both the film and the story are superb in their own right.

Oh yes, Arrival is a superb example of a wildly different movie but still great in its own way. 

[Athena]

15 hours ago, Black Knight said:

The new adaptation of His Dark Materials is coming out, and it puts me in mind of the first time they tried adapting it. I actually really enjoyed the movie, which is an unpopular opinion - I thought the casting was great, the animation of the daemons impressive - right up until they chickened out on the ending of the book.

I'm with you on this. I really liked the casting and I thought Nicole Kidman was perfect for the role even though she was not the image of Mrs Coulter in my head; she had the other aspects. The casting for the upcoming series is less impressive as a result even though I like McAvoy and Wilson. I saw it in cinema; it was ok but there was a sense of holding back which made it a tad stagnant and boring towards the end. I am looking forward to rereading the books in anticipation for the series.

Since I am a book reader and a movie/tv watcher, I often read and then watch or vice versa sometimes. I've watched dozens of adaptations. Right now, I've read The Umbrella Academy graphic novels so I can binge the Netflix series. 

Books and their own adaptations are not the same, and I am fine with changes if they capture the spirit of the book. I think some of my favourite ones include Peter Pan (2003), I Capture the Castle, Cloud Atlas, Fever Pitch (Firth version which is different from the book but captures it), just to name a couple.The worse that an adaptation can be is boring or just bad as a movie/tv series. However hard it is for authors, unless they get significant decision making on the show and even then, they should consider staying away from the adaptation. Adaptations transform into their own thing separate creations. I think it worked for Crazy Rich Asians but a lot of the drama on other productions could have left out author involvement. 

[scarynikki12]

I’m always open to adaptations but I will absolutely yell the loudest when they’re done wrong. 

I honestly love when a movie successfully adapts a book even if/when significant changes are made. I enjoyed book Jurassic Park but I LOVE the movie so much. A major reason is in Spielberg’s direction and the Williams’ music but the story changes allowed for a tighter script than if they’d tried to incorporate everything in the book. I think Jaws is a great book but that movie is so fucking brilliant for essentially the same reasons (Spielberg and Williams being geniuses plus smart changes to the script). The Godfather is another day example of a great book smartly adapted into an outstanding movie. Rosemary’s Baby is an outstanding adaptation, though it is one of the most faithful ones ever as the only significant change was taking out Rosemary briefly leaving the apartment building as that would lessen her isolation and captivity. 

As for the yell worthy adaptations oh boy. Every Frankenstein (excluding Mel Brooks) ever deserves wrath. How freaking hard is it to understand that Dr Frankenstein is the villain of the story while the Creature is his victim rather than the other way around? And a game my friends love to play is bringing up Harry Potter to get me ranting on all the mistakes made in those movies. He defeated Voldemort by removing the myth so that everyone could see the man, in front of a few hundred witnesses at that, yet that was thrown out in favor of a one on one CGI fest. Bite me Warner Bros. In both examples the filmmakers completely missed the actual point of the stories and characters which creatively hurts their product. 

[proserpina65]

On ‎05‎/‎30‎/‎2019 at 12:26 PM, HazelEyes4325 said:

I could never get into the Hunger Games movies because they were so, so off with Peeta.  He was supposed to be a big bulky guy and, instead, they had 5'7" Josh Hutcherson--who was two inches SHORTER than his Katniss.

Hutcherson is a good actor, but he was just terribly miscast here.

I saw the movie first, so it wasn't a problem for me, but if I'd read the book first, it would've bugged me big time.

22 hours ago, peacheslatour said:

I love the Lord of the Rings, both books and movies. But I think the movie majorly fucked up with the casting of Faramir. The book describes him complete;y differently in both affect and looks.

I made the mistake of re-reading Fellowship of the Ring right before the first movie came out, and was deeply disappointed by the movie in a lot of ways.  I actually liked that they cut the scourging of the Shire from the third movie, though.

[proserpina65]

2 hours ago, Athena said:

I think some of my favourite ones include Peter Pan (2003), I Capture the Castle, Cloud Atlas, Fever Pitch (Firth version which is different from the book but captures it), just to name a couple.

I completely disagree about Fever Pitch.  It wasn't a bad movie, but it in no way captured the essence of the book, which was about a man's lifelong love affair with his football club.  The book made the relationship with the girlfriend too central to the story.

Not to say that I didn't enjoy the film, even if the far too posh Colin Firth was miscast.  Mark Strong, who played the best friend, would've made a more convincing Nick, imo.

[Athena]

12 minutes ago, proserpina65 said:

I completely disagree about Fever Pitch.  It wasn't a bad movie, but it in no way captured the essence of the book, which was about a man's lifelong love affair with his football club.  The book made the relationship with the girlfriend too central to the story.

Not to say that I didn't enjoy the film, even if the far too posh Colin Firth was miscast.  Mark Strong, who played the best friend, would've made a more convincing Nick, imo.

I don't disagree with your assessment about both. I adored Mark Strong in the role too but I thought Firth did well considering. I do think the ending of the movie captured the essence of the book with everyone on tenderhooks watching the game and then North London all celebrating the win. 

[proserpina65]

12 minutes ago, Athena said:

I don't disagree with your assessment about both. I adored Mark Strong in the role too but I thought Firth did well considering. I do think the ending of the movie captured the essence of the book with everyone on tenderhooks watching the game and then North London all celebrating the win. 

Oh, Firth was fine, just not what I pictured, I suppose.  I guess because Arsenal is my club, and I've experienced the push and pull (and mostly a lot of disappointment) of their seasons, that I felt like the movie didn't get the overall relationship.  Too personal for me, maybe.

[ALenore]

I enjoyed reading the Aurora Teagarden mystery books by Charlaine Harris, they're fun little cozy mysteries.   The main character is a librarian who (of course) solves crimes.   She is described very frequently as being short, with brown curly hair and large glasses, and not conventionally attractive. 

Hallmark made a series of movies from the books, and the main character is played by Candace Cameron Bure, who is tall, blonde, and gorgeous.  I saw only part of one movie, Three Bedrooms, One Corpse, and bailed after 10 minutes.   In the book, the murder victim is found tied to a bed dressed up in skimpy lingerie.   It's an important part of the plot because the police at first assume the victim was killed after a sex game gone wrong.   In the movie, the murder victim is found fully clothed outside the house.  Now I understand Hallmark movie couldn't show any nudity, but they could have shown just the arms or legs tied to the bed, maybe a glimpse of the lingerie.  I have no idea how they changed the rest of the plot, since I turned off the TV at that point.  

[DearEvette]

Francis Ford Coppola is responsible for one of my favorite and one of my least favorite book-to-movie adaptations.

One of my favorite adaptations is The Godfather.  Not only was it faithful to the book, but it got the feel and spirit of the book just right.  In most cases if I really loved a book, and even if the adaptation is good, I am still going to give the book the 'win'.  But this is an exception to the rule.  I loved the book, but the movie, imo, is stronger.  Mainly because of Coppola's direction and the performance Al Pacino gives during the evolution of Michael Corleone.  The final scenes in the movie still hit me in a way they do not in the book.  Which is rare because typically I think a movie isn't  able to capture some of the visceral emotion I feel when reading a good book.  But this one did.  I will say the book gave some context and background of the Corleone family that movie didn't so I understood the characters a bit better in the book.

One of my very least favorite adaptations is Dracula.  I remember having to reluctantly read it in a freshman lit class in college.   My only exposure up to that point had been Bela Lugosi.  I had no expectations when I actually read the book.  But when I did I loved it.  It was actually quite an exciting read and has become one of my favorite books.  And I was so excited when it was being turned into a movie by FFC.  But, holy shit I hated that movie! It looked good and great costumes and set design, but it had none of the spirit of the book.  The book is a horror/suspense story with Mina as the heroine (with Van Helsing as her helper) who slowly runs The Count to ground, cutting off his support systems and his avenues of escape one by one until they basically corner him and finally get him.  The movie was a bloated mess with none of the horror or suspense of the book.  My biggest takeaway is Gary Oldman's laughable wig.

[kathyk2]

My favorite movie based on a book is Misery. Kathy Bates is perfect as Annie Wilkes. My least favorite movie based on a book is Forest Gump. In the book Forest was a jerk and had none of the characters sweetness from the film. I'm glad I didn't read the book before seeing the movie because I would have avoided seeing it altogether.

[peacheslatour]

Quote

My biggest takeaway is Gary Oldman's laughable wig.

 

You have to admit, it is iconic.

[Homily]

Interesting thread!  For me, generalizing of course, it depends on what happened first.  If the movie came first I usually like it better than the book.  If I read the book first I rarely like the movie, certainly not as much as the book anyway!  Little Women is one of those books that I loved and found most of the movies, well, not good.  Exception was the Winona Ryder version, I loved that one.  

The first movie I remember seeing because I had loved the book was Mary Stewart's "The Moonspinners".  What a disappointment! Aside from the title and it being set in Greece I have no idea why they even claimed that the movie was based on the book!  I've reached the point now where if  the movie makers at least make some effort to keep some of the plot from the book in the movie I figure they did a good job!

Edited June 1, 2019 by Homily

[peacheslatour]

Quote

Little Women is one of those books that I loved and found most of the movies, well, not good.  Exception was the Winona Ryder version, I loved that one. 

Really? I guess the casting was ok for the March girls but the dudes? Eric Stoltz as John Brooke? Gabriel Byrne as the avuncular Professor? And like all adaptations of that book, everybody else with the exception of Kirsten Dunst was too old.

[Homily]

12 minutes ago, peacheslatour said:

Really? I guess the casting was ok for the March girls but the dudes? Eric Stoltz as John Brooke? Gabriel Byrne as the avuncular Professor? And like all adaptations of that book, everybody else with the exception of Kirsten Dunst was too old.

For me it was more the theme of the movie, the feel, that I liked.  I didn't even remember til you said it who played the guys!  Of course with regard to Prof Bhaer I'm old enough now not to think of 40 as being quite as old as I thought it was when I read Little Women at 12 🙂 - I cried then at the very idea of my beloved Jo marrying an old man!

Problem with this version of Little Women for me now is that I have grown to loathe Susan Sarandon and I don't know if I could separate that feeling from her as Marmee.

[TiffanyNichelle]

On 5/31/2019 at 1:34 PM, scarynikki12 said:

And a game my friends love to play is bringing up Harry Potter to get me ranting on all the mistakes made in those movies. He defeated Voldemort by removing the myth so that everyone could see the man, in front of a few hundred witnesses at that, yet that was thrown out in favor of a one on one CGI fest. Bite me Warner Bros. In both examples the filmmakers completely missed the actual point of the stories and characters which creatively hurts their product. 

I will never not be angry at how bad that final fight between Harry and Voldemort was in the movies. I was dying to see them facing off in the great hall before everyone with Harry calling "Tom" the same way Dumbledore did, taking away the fear of his name and for everyone to see him die like a regular person. Instead it was that weird zooming flying about thing outside where no one sees him die (so how did they all know to just stop fighting??) and he dissolved liked a vampire in an old episode of Buffy. I will always be annoyed at Steve Kloves's "adaptations" of the books for the movies. I think the one HP movie I liked the best was Order because he didn't do the screenplay for that one.

If I read the book before the movie or series I will always prefer the book because the movies/series can never put everything I love in it. Though movies can improve on some things (I read the Godfather after I saw the movie and was so happy the chapters about the vagina surgeries were completely cut). One movie adaptation I did end up loving as much as I loved the book was Interview With A Vampire. I'm ignoring Queen of the Damned, they fucked that one up completely.

Yay for this thread because I was looking for some place to complain about the differences between A Discovery of Witches the books vs the show.

Edited June 3, 2019 by TiffanyNichelle

[DearEvette]

15 minutes ago, TiffanyNichelle said:

will never not be angry at how bad that final fight between Harry and Voldemort was in the movies. I was dying to see them facing off in the great hall before everyone with Harry calling "Tom" the same way Dumbledore did, taking away the fear of his name and for everyone to see him die like a regular person. Instead it was that weird zooming flying about thing outside where no one sees him die

OMG! This is so me!  I hate that entire sequence in the movie.  The dragon egg contest in Goblet of Fire is the same.  None of the cool tension in the book.  Just Harry flying all over Hogwarts.

But that final fight between Harry and Voldy in the last movie was a travesty.  Honestly, from the moment Neville beheads Nagini to the moment Harry offs Voldy is just great climactic scene crafting in the book and ALL of that is lost in the movie.

[Sharpie66]

World War Z is an amazing book that deserves a great, extended miniseries that would include the placebo inventor, the Brazilian transplant doctor, the Russian soldier and also the priest, the Chinese sub, and of course the American soldier, including the tale of Avalon. Maybe on HBO.

My favorite book adaptation has to be To Kill a Mockingbird. One of the best moments in the film was actually added to the script, when Scout asks Jem about their mother and the camera pans over to Atticus, sitting on the porch and sadly listening through the open windows.

[proserpina65]

On ‎06‎/‎01‎/‎2019 at 11:18 AM, Homily said:

Interesting thread!  For me, generalizing of course, it depends on what happened first.  If the movie came first I usually like it better than the book.  If I read the book first I rarely like the movie, certainly not as much as the book anyway!  Little Women is one of those books that I loved and found most of the movies, well, not good.  Exception was the Winona Ryder version, I loved that one.  

The first movie I remember seeing because I had loved the book was Mary Stewart's "The Moonspinners".  What a disappointment! Aside from the title and it being set in Greece I have no idea why they even claimed that the movie was based on the book!  I've reached the point now where if  the movie makers at least make some effort to keep some of the plot from the book in the movie I figure they did a good job!

I saw the movie years ago, before I read the book, and really enjoyed it.  Then it ran recently on a channel I get, so I decided to see if I still liked it after having read (and loved) the book.  Let's just say it hasn't really stood the test of time.  It was entertaining enough if I pretended that it wasn't supposed to be an adaption of Mary Stewart's wonderful book, but that was really hard to do.  It's one of those incredibly loosely adapted things, and doomed to disappoint from the moment Hayley Mills was cast.  Not that she wasn't a good actress, but she was far too young for the character as written, and the story had to be significantly changed to suit her youth.

[Mystery]

On 5/30/2019 at 10:18 AM, AuntiePam said:

Memory fails, but I think a lot of Stephen King movie adaptations have had major changes.  

Like The Shining, where a character lives in the book and dies in the movie. In his decades-later sequel Doctor Sleep, King even had two characters talk about how one of them died in the movie. 

If a movie is going to be very different from a book, I'd rather that they just make a separate movie instead of sucking in the built-in audience that loved the book. For instance, the Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice changed a lot of things that made no sense in the context of the story in that time. And yet "Clueless," without using the book as its title, retained a lot of the spirit of Emma. 

Edited June 4, 2019 by Mystery
OCD

[BookWoman56]

On 5/30/2019 at 4:11 PM, babyhouseman said:

Sex and the City was a book that had little relation to the show. 

The finale for the Sex and the City tv show is the first one I recall pissing me off so much that I refuse to watch reruns or the movies that came afterward. As much as Candace Bushnell’s writing style grated, the fundamental truth in that book was that Big and Carrie (very dysfunctional relationship) were not going to end up together. The first edition of the book was slightly ambiguous on this point at the end, but clearly pointed to that resolution. I think after the show started, Bushnell realized the show was going to go down a different path. In any event, she wrote a second edition of the book, in which she blatantly stated that Big was happily married and Carrie was happily single. Yet the show indulged in something that drives me nuts: spend season after season showing how dysfunctional and toxic a relationship is, break up the couple, only to reunite them in the finale and expect the entire audience to cheer for the couple. Hell to the no. Either have the decency to stick to the spirit of the source material, or else write your own story and your own characters. 

[Sir RaiderDuck OMS]

On 6/4/2019 at 2:26 PM, Mystery said:

Like The Shining, where a character lives in the book and dies in the movie. In his decades-later sequel Doctor Sleep, King even had two characters talk about how one of them died in the movie.

Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is an example of a great movie that's a terrible adaptation of the original novel. Kubrick, much to King's chagrin, took the source material and went his own way with it.

[Spartan Girl]

On June 2, 2019 at 10:31 PM, DearEvette said:

OMG! This is so me!  I hate that entire sequence in the movie.  The dragon egg contest in Goblet of Fire is the same.  None of the cool tension in the book.  Just Harry flying all over Hogwarts.

But that final fight between Harry and Voldy in the last movie was a travesty.  Honestly, from the moment Neville beheads Nagini to the moment Harry offs Voldy is just great climactic scene crafting in the book and ALL of that is lost in the movie.

Visually, the final fight was pretty cool, especially that brief moment when Harry and Voldemort merge into one person. But yeah, I did hate that Voldemort just disintegrated and not fall down dead as an empty shell like in the books.

I wish that the movies had done a better job of developing Ginny letting her be more like her badass book self. It also would have been nice if the movie developed Harry and Ginny's romance more. Ron and Hermione were fun to watch and everything, but Harry's the lead characte, shouldn't more time have been spent on HIS love life?! Lupin and Tonks' plot also got left on the cutting room floor.

Not to mention Dumbledore's whole tragic family history got the shaft too -- although to be fair, we might finally get it in the Fantastic Beasts movies. Hopefully.

Dont get me wrong, I like the HP movies warts and all. But the books had more and will therefore always be better.

[peacheslatour]

Quote

 It also would have been nice if the movie developed Harry and Ginny's romance more. Ron and Hermione were fun to watch and everything, but Harry's the lead characte, shouldn't more time have been spent on HIS love life?!

It always bugged me that the actress they chose to play Ginny looked uncannily like the actress they chose to play Lily. Gave me the creeps.

[Minneapple]

The HP movies really made it seem like Harry and Hermione were going to be a couple. I have a feeling the scriptwriters didn't realize it would be Harry/Ginny and Hermione/Ron when they started adapting the books. 

[Sir RaiderDuck OMS]

A few exceptions aside, the James Bond movies were (in)famous for having almost nothing in common with the novels they took their names from, aside from the bad guy's name and maybe one or two very loose plot threads.

[Athena]

3 hours ago, Minneapple said:

The HP movies really made it seem like Harry and Hermione were going to be a couple. I have a feeling the scriptwriters didn't realize it would be Harry/Ginny and Hermione/Ron when they started adapting the books. 

Steve Kloves adapted all the books to scripts with the exception of Goblet of Fire. Aside from his love of Harry/Hermione, there were a lot other issues with his scripts. I'm not a big fan of the movie series aside from the casting and the direction by some of the directors. I think the adapted scripts really let the series down.

[TiffanyNichelle]

On 6/9/2019 at 6:01 PM, Minneapple said:

The HP movies really made it seem like Harry and Hermione were going to be a couple. I have a feeling the scriptwriters didn't realize it would be Harry/Ginny and Hermione/Ron when they started adapting the books. 

That never makes any sense because Hermione/Ron have been telegraphed in the books since the first book. How did they miss that?

[Zoe]

8 hours ago, TiffanyNichelle said:

That never makes any sense because Hermione/Ron have been telegraphed in the books since the first book. How did they miss that?

As a non-reader, I thought Hermoine/Ron was telegraphed by the ending of the second movie /shrug

[Black Knight]

Roger Ebert hadn't read the Harry Potter books, and in his review of Goblet of Fire, he wrote: 

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I'd always thought Harry would end up in love with Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), even though their inseparable friend Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) clearly has the same ambition. 

I think part of it is general expectation: It's not uncommon for the sidekick to be in love with the female lead, but the sidekick is usually not the one who gets the female lead. Plus the Prisoner of Azkaban film, which is the one where they move from being kids/tweens to actual pre-teens, is pretty heavy on Harry/Hermione. Honestly I'm not sure if the Harry/Hermione fandom would have become as big if not for that film. As a reader I was all in on Ron/Hermione before then. In the books, Ron and Hermione had good chemistry, but Rupert Grint and Emma Watson just don't have romantic chemistry while Watson and Daniel Radcliffe do. I remember seeing PoA in the theater with other friends who had read the books up to date and all of us afterwards being like, "So...it really should be Harry/Hermione."

(The other thing that probably contributed to the Harry/Hermione fandom becoming bigger than it might otherwise have been is the weakness of the Harry/Ginny pairing. There just wasn't very much book time devoted to it, neither Ginny nor the relationship felt fleshed out, and "It'll make him an actual member of the Weasley family" is a selling point, but it's not a romantic selling point. Now, if Harry/Luna had been the alternative...)

[peacheslatour]

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 Rupert Grint and Emma Watson just don't have romantic chemistry while Watson and Daniel Radcliffe do.

I'll never forget Daniel and Emma dancing to O Children in TDH. Yes, they had chemistry to spare.

[Browncoat]

22 minutes ago, peacheslatour said:

I'll never forget Daniel and Emma dancing to O Children in TDH. Yes, they had chemistry to spare.

That's one of my favorite scenes of the whole series.

[joanne3482]

On 5/30/2019 at 4:11 PM, babyhouseman said:

My Sister's Keeper movie caused a lot of controversy with a different ending from the book. The book was about a dying girl whose sister was expected to be a bone marrow donor. In the book, the donor sister died allowing the dying sister to live. In the movie, the dying sister passed away.

Movie ending made me so happy.  I LOATHED book ending with the donor sister dying. It was as though she, as a person, didn't matter at all and reinforced the whole concept that she was only there to provide for her sister. That's one adaptation that made me very happy. 

I went to see Percy Jackson and the Olympians as a movie before I read the book. My friend had read the book first so she was very angry at the movie adaptation. For me, it piqued my interest in the books so I read them all and now I get why she's mad at the adaptation, but I don't hate it.  Funnily enough, I did dislike the 2nd movie because it was such a bad adaptation. 

I watched the first two Bourne movies and was so excited about the third one I decided to read the book, Bourne Ultimatum, to get some hints.  They could not have been more different if they tried. For me, since I saw the movies first, I really liked the movies more. 

[partofme]

1 hour ago, joanne3482 said:

Movie ending made me so happy.  I LOATHED book ending with the donor sister dying. It was as though she, as a person, didn't matter at all and reinforced the whole concept that she was only there to provide for her sister. That's one adaptation that made me very happy. 

I thought this was definitely the message of the book.  The mother(who I remember being awful in the book, not so much in the movie) wanted her perfect little family with one boy and one girl and she got that back in the end.

[Ceindreadh]

The Towering Inferno aired today and it's the first time I've watched it since I read the second of the two books it was based on (The Tower and The Glass Inferno), and damn it's so frustrating the way they treated Lisolette.

(movie and book are over 40 years old, so I'm not doing spoiler space)

In the movie, Lisolette leaves the party during the evacuation and ends up on her own floor to check on her deaf neighbour.  She meets up with Jernigan (who rescues the neighbour) and Roberts the architect who brings her and the neighbours kids with him, and they end up having to go back to the party.  Lisolette gets a place on the scenic elevator but dies when it's knocked off its tracks by an explosion.  She's mourned by Claiborne the conman who'd been trying to fleece her

In the book however, Lisolette deliberately leaves before the evacuation gets going and meets up with Jernigan and a few firefighters at the neighbours apartment.  Lisolette and the kids (three of them not two), get separated from the others on the way down, and Lisolette not only manages to climb down the damaged handrail with a kid on her back, but also gets them down safely without having to go near the top floor. 

I know that since Paul Newman was playing Roberts, he was naturally going to get to be a big damn hero, but I wish they hadn't had to downgrade Lisolette in order to have that happen. 

[Homily]

On 6/1/2019 at 11:18 AM, Homily said:

The first movie I remember seeing because I had loved the book was Mary Stewart's "The Moonspinners".  What a disappointment! Aside from the title and it being set in Greece I have no idea why they even claimed that the movie was based on the book!  I've reached the point now where if  the movie makers at least make some effort to keep some of the plot from the book in the movie I figure they did a good job!

I hadn't heard mention of this movie for years but funnily enough not longer after posting to this thread  it got shown on TCM.  And....yep, just as bad as I remembered it.  I didn't make it past the first 15 minutes though so maybe it improved.

Edited July 7, 2019 by Homily

[peacheslatour]

4 hours ago, Homily said:

I hadn't heard mention of this movie for years but funnily enough not longer after posting to this thread  it got shown on TCM.  And....yep, just as bad as I remembered it.  I didn't make it past the first 15 minutes though so maybe it improved.

If that was supposed to be a Haley Mills vehicle to catapult her into adult stardom, why did they have her travelling with an aunt who wasn't in the book?

[Minneapple]

On 6/13/2019 at 12:13 AM, Black Knight said:

Roger Ebert hadn't read the Harry Potter books, and in his review of Goblet of Fire, he wrote: 

I think part of it is general expectation: It's not uncommon for the sidekick to be in love with the female lead, but the sidekick is usually not the one who gets the female lead. Plus the Prisoner of Azkaban film, which is the one where they move from being kids/tweens to actual pre-teens, is pretty heavy on Harry/Hermione. Honestly I'm not sure if the Harry/Hermione fandom would have become as big if not for that film. As a reader I was all in on Ron/Hermione before then. In the books, Ron and Hermione had good chemistry, but Rupert Grint and Emma Watson just don't have romantic chemistry while Watson and Daniel Radcliffe do. I remember seeing PoA in the theater with other friends who had read the books up to date and all of us afterwards being like, "So...it really should be Harry/Hermione."

(The other thing that probably contributed to the Harry/Hermione fandom becoming bigger than it might otherwise have been is the weakness of the Harry/Ginny pairing. There just wasn't very much book time devoted to it, neither Ginny nor the relationship felt fleshed out, and "It'll make him an actual member of the Weasley family" is a selling point, but it's not a romantic selling point. Now, if Harry/Luna had been the alternative...)

Maybe Roger Ebert should have read the books. Hermione is not the "female lead" of Harry Potter. If she was then the books would have been called "Harry and Hermione." Harry is the lead and Ron and Hermione are his sidekicks. Another failure of the films.

I thought Ginny as a book character was quite well-fleshed out, but again, the movies failed at that, and thus, at the Harry/Ginny relationship. Ron/Hermione was always telegraphed, but once it became smack-in-your-face clear that Harry/Ginny was to be a pairing, it's easy to go back in the books and see the subtler hints.