Best/Worst Movie adaptations of Books/Video Games/TV/Comics - Adaptation.

[Doctor of Autism]

The Pupa anime turned an okay horror manga with cannibalism into pure trash, cutting it up to 3 minutes per episode and censoring the violence and blood in the TV version (the entire appeal of the manga). They even censored a knife.

It didn't help it overplayed the incest, and actually made it more disgusting.

 

[Guts Gets Some]

Fight Club did a very good job at adapting a very meta and complicated book. To the point where the original book and movie compliment each other perfectly. Reading it only enlightens the film and watching it makes some points of the book clearer.

That's kinda rare, but it's what happens when the makers of it love the source material. They go that extra mile.

I'll need a lot of time to think of worsts; big list.

 

[Dolphin Lundgren]

Best: Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Road To Perdition, V For Vendetta, Stand By Me, The Odd Couple, Glengarry Glen Ross, High Fidelity, East Of Eden, Carol.
Worst: Daredevil, The Dukes Of Hazzard, Lost In Space, Howard The Duck, Bewitched.

 

[JohnDoe]

Good Adaptation: Silent Hill - Its not a 1:1 of any particular game but it captures the feel and plotting of the series. Except the parts with Seam Bean the studio forced in, those parts sucked.

Bad Adaptation: Spawn - A failure on all merits, technically as a movie and as an adaptation. Its ugly, its stupid, and it missed the point of Spawn. Absolute garbage.

 

[Belmont]

Excellent adaptation of a book into a film?
The original Jaws.
Terrible adaptation.
Super Mario Brothers The Movie.

You're absolutely right about Jaws. The only real plot point they cut from the movie was that Hooper has an affair with Brody's wife..it's totally unnecessary to telling a story like this. It's a man vs nature story, no need to layer in extra petty human drama. I will say, if it was me and Hooper going back to shore and he says "Oh, yeah..and I fucked your wife."...he wouldn't make it.
'..Well, shark got 'em.'

As for the Mario Bros movie..it does have one of my favorite lines ever said in a bad movie.
"Is she corpulent? Very corpulent?"

Thank you, Fisher Stevens.

Bad Adaptation: Spawn - A failure on all merits, technically as a movie and as an adaptation. Its ugly, its stupid, and it missed the point of Spawn. Absolute garbage.

HBO really got people primed for Spawn. Spawn is supposed to be dark, grotesque, brutal, sometimes hopeless..and that's what builds the 'light as right' payoff in some cases. The movie ignores this..when they see Spawn..they see the costumes and Clown. That's what turned a good idea into camp. It needed Seam Bean as Cagliostro.

 

[Dolphin Lundgren]

Bob Hoskins had me fooled in Super Mario Brothers. He had me thinking he was a real New Yorker. It may be a shit movie but I can actually watch it as a bad movie that's fun because it's bad.

By the way I left out 1408. That's a brilliant adaptation.

 

[Belmont]

Can you imagine Bob Hoskins in like a period New York drama? Like 1895? He'd be brilliant. "Come to fix your pipes, miss?"
"It's a Mushroom Kingdom, innit?"

 

[BrunoMattei]

Good Adaptation: Silent Hill - Its not a 1:1 of any particular game but it captures the feel and plotting of the series. Except the parts with Seam Bean the studio forced in, those parts sucked.

Bad Adaptation: Spawn - A failure on all merits, technically as a movie and as an adaptation. Its ugly, its stupid, and it missed the point of Spawn. Absolute garbage.

This. The only good thing that came of the Spawn movie is that it further propelled the character in the mainstream and directly lead to the utterly fantastic HBO show. Mcfarlane is doing a reboot movie that's coming next year.

 

[Nekromantik]

Rosemary's baby, the original movie, is just like the book. Even with out the inner dialog the movie is able to capture the feeling of dread and paranoia that the book had.

 

[RumblyTumbly]

Having finally read Clive Barker's Books of Blood, I can honestly say that Candyman is a pretty darn good adaptation of his short story "The Forbidden".

 

[The Cunting Death]

Worst Book to Movie adaptation: Cat in the Hat

Spoiler: HOWEVER...

That movie is a huge guilty pleasure of mine and I still get a bunch of stupid chuckles from it, but objectively it's a horrible adaptation.

Best Adaptation: Adaptation.

 

[UglyOldJafar]

One adaptation I never liked was a movie adaptation of Huxley's "Brave New World" from the early 2000s decade.

In Huxley's dystopia, the main character kills himself at the end because he can't stand the society humanity created for itself, in which essentially no one is an individual, but a blissful, mindless consumer of the "pleasures" offered by the system. A system that reduces any forms of creativity and personal relationships to the most shallow, consumer friendly thing possible, something the main character (a "native" person, grown up into a reservat for the most part of his life) can't stand, after at first being curious about this world of which his biological father was a part of. He kills himself in th eend, because he essentially becomes against his will a "curiousity" for this society and no one leaves him at peace.
The ending was in my opinion very impactful this way, because in its somber and depressing way it was also essentially meant as a wake up call, telling the reader that if they think this sucks, they should do something about it to prevent this world from becoming reality.

In the movie adaptation, the guy actually still becomes a curiousity and is hunted down by some "fans" like he was Lady Di in a french traffic tunnel hunted by reporters. And he dies by accident, when he trips over a stone and then falls down a hill. In doing so essentially stripping the movie of the "impact" his death has in the story, cause while in th ebook it was him being driven to desperation by the society, here it is an accident "society" can't be blamed for as such.

Additionally the movie ends on a scene showing a kid in the society being "adjusted" to the social norms, but indicating that it won't fall in line with what is expected by it, as it drowns out some subliminal messages it is supposed to hear during sleep.

Which again is a "betrayal" to the book, where in this society everyone was essentially from the crib in line with the "norms" because they did never know really better. Something that showed how this world is awful in the way of how huans have turned into something more hollow. the movie however, by ending on the "hopeful" note that something will change, kinda turns the depressing end meant to be a wake up call to the reader into a "bittersweet ending" convincing the viewer that stuff can change without their input and disdain for what this world is.

 

[Übertroon]

Remember when they tried to turn a cartoon tv series into a movie?

Spoiler

Best part is they're attempting it again with a Netflix tv series adaptation, those never violate the source material, at all

 

[Kaiser Wilhelm's Ghost]

Bob Hoskins had me fooled in Super Mario Brothers. He had me thinking he was a real New Yorker. It may be a shit movie but I can actually watch it as a bad movie that's fun because it's bad.

By the way I left out 1408. That's a brilliant adaptation.

Can you imagine Bob Hoskins in like a period New York drama? Like 1895? He'd be brilliant. "Come to fix your pipes, miss?"
"It's a Mushroom Kingdom, innit?"

The story behind the movie is actually quite fun to look into. Hoskins hated the film so much that he and Leguisamo spent the afternoons getting drunk in Hoskins trailer between takes, both of them knew after the first week of shooting that the film was going to be a complete turkey.

Hoskins best role for his early career has to be Eddy Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Also with a great America accent.

 

[Preferred Penne]

Before Bob Hoskins died I wanted to see him and Danny DeVito as brothers in something. In fact, he would've been perfect as Frank Reynolds' brother.

 

[Belmont]

So is Who Censored Roger Rabbit? as good as or better than the movie? That's the main crux of it here.

 

[neverendingmidi]

Stephen King's "The Stand" miniseries. All of the characters (except notably Frannie) look how they were described in the book. And I consider it the only good Stephen King adaptation.

On the other hand, I'm terrified at how bad Amazon could wind up screwing up "Good Omens". There was an interview with the authors asking them if they thought there would ever be a tv series/movie based off of Good Omens released. Terry Pratchett said he didn't think he'd live to see it, but Neil Gaiman thought there would be one. They were both right.

 

[Belmont]

On the other hand, I'm terrified at how bad Amazon could wind up screwing up "Good Omens". There was an interview with the authors asking them if they thought there would ever be a tv series/movie based off of Good Omens released. Terry Pratchett said he didn't think he'd live to see it, but Neil Gaiman thought there would be one. They were both right.

I'm curious to see how this will turn out. Neil Gaiman seems to be hit or miss with the general public. Remember Beowulf? How that version really dug down deep into the legend of a dude who killed a monster that stalked a beer hall turned into this 'folly of man' story?
I really have liked the Discworld adaptations that have come out over the last couple decades. The two cartoon miniseries of Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters, the Sky versions of Hogfather, The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. On the other hand I hated Neverwhere.
I'm gonna hold out hope that Good Omens will be good..and have that Gaiman bittersweetness with the touch of Pratchett charm.

 

[McAfee'sCorpse]

Best Video Game Adaptation of a Movie:
Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic

Worst Movie Adaptation of a Video Game
Street Fighter: The Movie

 

[Pokemonquistador2]

Richard Stanley's "Color Out of Space" was a pretty good adaptation of the Lovecraft story. I'm sad that Stanley never really got to make the adaptation of "Island of Dr. Moreau" that he wanted to, thanks to mental issues (his and various actors) and studio interference. The monster sketches he drew for that film looked amazing.