The South African film SHANGANI PATROL - a war film classic - was made from the very boring historical book A TIME TO DIE 🥱🥱🥱😝
not sure I'd call JAWS a 'bad' book, however a movie 100% faithful to the source text would've been more 'long drawn-out domestic melodrama' than creature feature.
I'll back you up on JAWS... I read it as a kid and enjoyed its longueurs... having been weaned on many 300-1200 page Stephen King novels where 80% of the page count is atmosphere and character development. But, yeah, prosaic horror fiction requires a breezy hand in adaptation.
This is a tricky prompt, though. Outside of some loose comic book adaptations, I don't know if I've ever read a "bad" book and then decided to go watch the movie version. If the story was all that bad, I'd probably just avoid the IP in the future. I'll keep thinking...
Quote from: zombie no.one on October 20, 2024, 06:08:49 AMnot sure I'd call JAWS a 'bad' book, however a movie 100% faithful to the source text would've been more 'long drawn-out domestic melodrama' than creature feature.
Agreed.
Not a bad book but the characters in the book, like Ellen and Hooper, are real horrible people and the film makes them better.
Battlefield Earth.
Only kidding. :bouncegiggle:
Quote from: Alex on October 20, 2024, 08:29:41 AMBattlefield Earth.
Only kidding. :bouncegiggle:
😳😂🤣🤣
SLUGS
A good/bad movie made from a good/bad book
(delete as applicable)
Apocalypse Now based on Heart of Darkness
Quote from: bob on October 20, 2024, 08:58:54 PMApocalypse Now based on Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness was not a bad book, though.
Quote from: Rev. Powell on October 21, 2024, 07:47:30 AMQuote from: bob on October 20, 2024, 08:58:54 PMApocalypse Now based on Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness was not a bad book, though.
you didn't have to read that nothing ever happens thing for a college class though did you :smile:
Quote from: bob on October 21, 2024, 04:49:14 PMQuote from: Rev. Powell on October 21, 2024, 07:47:30 AMQuote from: bob on October 20, 2024, 08:58:54 PMApocalypse Now based on Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness was not a bad book, though.
you didn't have to read that nothing ever happens thing for a college class though did you :smile:
I did and it was one of my favorites! "Pride and Prejudice" was boring to me, but I would never call it a
bad book.
Quote from: Rev. Powell on October 21, 2024, 04:56:57 PMQuote from: bob on October 21, 2024, 04:49:14 PMQuote from: Rev. Powell on October 21, 2024, 07:47:30 AMQuote from: bob on October 20, 2024, 08:58:54 PMApocalypse Now based on Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness was not a bad book, though.
you didn't have to read that nothing ever happens thing for a college class though did you :smile:
I did and it was one of my favorites! "Pride and Prejudice" was boring to me, but I would never call it a bad book.
it looks like we had very different experiences with the book
Quote from: bob on October 21, 2024, 04:49:14 PMQuote from: Rev. Powell on October 21, 2024, 07:47:30 AMQuote from: bob on October 20, 2024, 08:58:54 PMApocalypse Now based on Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness was not a bad book, though.
you didn't have to read that nothing ever happens thing for a college class though did you :smile:
😳🤣😂😁😁😁🐢
Quote from: Alex on October 20, 2024, 08:29:41 AMBattlefield Earth.
Only kidding. :bouncegiggle:
I'm seemingly a weirdo in that I like the book. It's like 200-300 pages too long though (paperback was like 1000 pages).
QuoteI did and it was one of my favorites! "Pride and Prejudice" was boring to me, but I would never call it a bad book.
I remember despising Heart of Darkness. Like one of all-time least favorite books. The way it is written is like it's a deliberate impediment to understanding for no good reason, a double first person narration that adds nothing and is super annoying. I wouldn't deny it's got good ideas, but woof. I even have liked OTHER Conrad novels, like Lord Jim.
Maybe I'll go back and give it a second go. It's been more than 20 years at this point.
Conrad was... a peculiar writer. I've read a few of his works over the years and my opinions are all over the place. "Nostromo" is on of the finest books I've ever read. "Typhoon" is also damn good. "End of the tether" is OK, I guess. And I didn't enjoy much of "The Shadow-line" or "Heart of Darkness".
The problem with "Heart of darkness" seems to be that it was written as a "coded book". It made sense in its time and context, because many characters seem to symbolize the different nationalities and their attitudes towards colonialism. Outside of this context, it's hard to understand what the Hell is going on most of the time.
I recently watched a movie based on another of his books, Christopher Hampton's "The Secret Agent", and it felt 50% masterful, 50% slapdash.
Back on the subject of the thread, "The Godfather" is one that appears regularly in this kind of lists. It's very entertaining, but not very well written, and some of the subplots are ridiculous, like Sonny's widow needing surgery on her privates and hooking up with the surgeon. Thankfully Coppola saw through all this and gave us a memorable film.
Then there's "Blade Runner". The book by Philip K. Dick is... interesting, but has little to do with the film. The main characters are there, and so is the hunt for the replicants. But the characters feel underdeveloped, and the plot deviates to all sorts of bizarre places, like a mixture of TV show / religion called Mercerism many humans in the book follow. More than adapting his book, they adapted some of Dick's obssessions then made something much more elaborate with them.
Quote from: Neville on December 06, 2024, 12:41:53 PMThen there's "Blade Runner". The book by Philip K. Dick is... interesting, but has little to do with the film. The main characters are there, and so is the hunt for the replicants. But the characters feel underdeveloped, and the plot deviates to all sorts of bizarre places, like a mixture of TV show / religion called Mercerism many humans in the book follow. More than adapting his book, they adapted some of Dick's obssessions then made something much more elaborate with them.
I guess if we're going to expand the conversation to include adaptations that depart significantly from (not bad) source materials, NAKED LUNCH seems related to the BLADE RUNNER discussion. I think Burroughs was a masterful writer, if not one whose gifts lent well to satisfying narratives. His "novel" (well, people call it a novel) is brilliant blank verse poetry, surrealism, and/or free associative nightmare journaling, but there's little structure there on which to hang a cogent storyline.
I always liked Cronenberg's film but also used to think Cronenberg had missed the boat by injecting/imposing so much exterior material, particularly stories from Burroughs' life that aren't actually in the book. I've come around on it though. It feels like as authentic a Burroughs' biopic as one could hope for but also kinda' feels like a Rosetta Stone for Cronenberg's own catalog of personal preoccupations. Watching VIDEODROME again a couple months back (for the first time in decades) really sealed this deal. In many ways Cronenberg's NAKED LUNCH is almost a remake of VIDEODROME, just reskinned for the Burroughsverse. I guess Cronenberg really found a kindred spirit in Ol' Bil Lee.