Good films made from bad books

[Trevor]

The South African film SHANGANI PATROL - a war film classic - was made from the very boring historical book A TIME TO DIE 🥱🥱🥱😝

[zombie no.one]

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.

[M.10rda]

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...

[Trevor]

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.

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.

[Alex]

Battlefield Earth.


Only kidding.   

[Trevor]

Battlefield Earth.


Only kidding.   

😳😂🤣🤣

[zombie no.one]

SLUGS

A good/bad movie made from a good/bad book

(delete as applicable)

[bob]

Apocalypse Now based on Heart of Darkness

[Rev. Powell]

Apocalypse Now based on Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness was not a bad book, though.

[bob]

Apocalypse 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 

[Rev. Powell]

Apocalypse 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 

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.

[bob]

Apocalypse 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 

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

[Trevor]

Apocalypse 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 

😳🤣😂😁😁😁🐢

[Jim H]

Battlefield Earth.


Only kidding.   

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).

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.

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.

[Neville]

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.