Biggest Deviations from Book to Film

[Spirit]

Sometimes adaptations of books to movies can go well and other times... they don't go well at all.

Requiem for a Dream written by hubert Selby jr. was adapted very well (imo) by Darren Aronofsky but other than that i can't seem to think of many others which really did the source material justice.

But how about the ones which deviate a lot from the source material, which books to do you feel the movies didn't do justice to that you'd have liked to.
As both a movie and book fan it does depress me when something i've read turns out to suck on the silver screen; for me the worst offender is any adaptation of I Am Legend, which is a damn shame, we've had 3 versions of that film and none of them have been very close to th source material and the book is one of the best sci-fi novels i've read in my life, (in my top 3 definitely)

So... how about you guys? Which movies of which books have let you down?

 

[Mamono101]

My biggest gripe with book-film adaptations is that the producers that buy the rights to make the movie don't actually buy the story but the concept or base idea that the novel is based on which is why there is so much deviation between the two mediums.

I think the movie with the biggest deviation from book to film is Pay it Forward. The novel was written by Catherine Ryan Hyde and happens to be one of my favorites.

Some of the biggest changes made are as follows:

Spoiler

Of all the people Trevor helps in the movie, only two of them are the same as in the novel. The Social Studies teachers who Trevor ends up trying to fix with his mom has dark skin in the novel, a different name and he was burnt in Vietnam rather than by his alcoholic father. Finally, the biggest difference is the ending.

Spoiler

You have been warned

Spoiler

In the movie, Trevor ends up being stabbed at school by a bully just after he films the news story but in the novel, after the concept of Paying it Forward takes off, Trevor gets an invite to meet the president. Whilst in Washington, he sees a gay guy (who has a subplot in the novel which was eliminated in the film) being harassed due to his sexual orientation. Trevor tries to intervene and ends up being stabbed instead of the gay guy in a random act of violence which is an ironic way for him to go since all he ever did was try to make the world a better place by helping people with random acts of kindness.

 

[Cfrock]

Moonraker - Ian Fleming

Yes, I love to use bold. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Anyway, I'll give you a general idea of how radically different the film is from the book. In the film, Bond starts in England and goes to California, then Venice, then Rio De Janeiro, then the Amazon Rainforest and then Outer Space. In the book, he never leaves the south of England.

The story of the book sees Bond keeping an eye on Hugo Drax and his 'Moonraker' missile project. The British Government want to make sure no funny business occurs before the test firing of the new nuclear weapon, only for Bond to discover that Drax intends to attack London with it. In a desperate bid to prevent disaster, Bond, unable to destroy the missile, redirects it to strike Drax as he flees in a submarine. All of this takes place around Dover.

The story of the film sees Bond investigating the apparent theft of one of Hugo Drax' 'Moonraker' Space Shuttles. Suspiscions arouse and Bond ends up following the lead of very perculiar glass cannisters that are being manufactured in Venice. While in Venice, Bond learns that these cannisters are being filled with a nerve toxin that kills humans but not plants or other animals and that large amounts of this toxin are being sent to Rio De Janeiro. Following the trail, Bond eventually discovers Drax' secret base in the Amazon Rainforest and sneaks onboard one of the Moonrakers as they blast off into space. Once they arrive at Drax' Space Station, Bond learns that Drax plans to fire pods containing his nerve toxin all over the Earth, basically extincting human life but leaving the planet otherwise unharmed. Then, he will breed the people he brought to his Space Station (chosen for their 'perfect' genetics) and repopulate the Earth with 'perfect' humans. Basically, Hitler but on a global scale. From space. A massive laser battle in the vaccuum of space naturally ensues and Bond has sex in a zero-gravity chamber.

As you can see, anyone who watched the film expecting it to be anything like the book would be in for a surprise. The reason why is that the novel was written in 1955 and concerned Britain's determination to acquire a threatening nuclear deterrent. By 1979, the Cold War had changed significantly and such a story would not have been relatable to a late-70s audience. Also, Star Wars had just been released in 1977 and the entire world wanted sci-fi. Bond, a series which has always found strength in moving with the changing trends of modern cinema, decided to capitalise on this sudden cry for space adventures and came out with a completely original story and simply attached the science-fiction sounding title Moonraker to it, since Eon Productions had the rights to the book and had to do something with them. The previous film, The Spy Who Loved Me, actually advertised For Your Eyes Only as its sequel, but the sudden appearance of Star Wars forced a new direction.

So yeah, Moonraker the film deviates quite astonishingly far from Moonraker the book.

 

[Mamono101]

As I indicated in your other, other, other thread...(you've made quite a few this morning!), The Harry Potter series deviates far too much in my opinion. I liked movies 1 and 2 as there was very little deviation between the two mediums. As far as I'm concerned, 3 was the last semi-decent installment in the film franchise. Goblet of Fire had the entire Reeter Skeeter story cut out and because of that I had no idea how the films would then do the whole Reeter Seeter blackmail thing that Hermione did. I won't go into too much detail about the rest of the series but these movies were released at a point in my life that any movie I saw that was based on a book, I would actively seek out the book to make a comparison and it usually turned out that I disliked these movies because having read the books, I knew the gaps in the plot that were being omitted and that was a huge pet peeve of mine.

Another movie that was absolutely horrendous was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The BBC radio drama and the books that Douglas Adams adapted from it are some of the most intelligently written comedies I've ever read. I also fell in love with the 80's TV adaptation of the first two novels in the series. Fast forward to when the movie came out *shudders*. The main plot was so different from what I was expecting that I took an instant dislike to the remake and regretted paying to go and see it at the cinema. The only consolation was that there were a few Easter eggs for those who were fans of the books/TV adaptation.

These days though I'm not as fussy. These things still annoy me but not to the point where I'll need to obsess and seethe over the differences that impeded my viewing pleasure.

 

[Hanyou]

Blade Runner

The setting in the movie is somewhat similar to the setting in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but the story is still wildly different. It is a fantastic example of why movies don't always have to be true to the book, though; both are different, and both are fantastic.

Any Disney movie.

Also, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

This story actually suffered for the changes. I've found that changes in the series worked best when they were either omissions (the time spent in the Shire at the start of FotR; the removal of Tom Bombadill) or when dialog is transplanted from one scene/character to another.

But The Two Towers makes way too many changes, and unlike Blade Runner, it suffers for it. Aragorn is unnecessarily sent over a cliff, Faramir is inexplicably tempted by the ring and takes Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath, ruining his character, and the elves join the Rohirrim at Helm's Deep. Awful.

It's easily the worst of the Lord of the Rings movies, but it's still good.

 

[Cfrock]

Just started watching A View To A Kill and remembered that the film is very, very different to the book.

The movie sees Bond looking into a chap call Max Zorin in order to solve a little caper to do with microchips (it's basically the plot of Goldfinger but with microships instead of gold bullion). Bond goes to Paris and drives the front half of a car then ruins a wedding before a bunch of horseplay with an Avenger ensues right and Bond ends up in San Fransisco, hanging off of fire engines and shooting people with salt. He eventually blows up a black woman and then throws Christopher Walken off a bridge.

In the book, he sits in a bush for a few hours and then shoots a bloke.

The film takes literally nothing from the book except the title. In fact, it technically doesn't even do that. A View To A Kill was 'based' on a short story called From A View To A Kill. As a short story, it was obviously not sufficient to adapt into an entire movie by itself (Octopussy and For Your Eyes Only were both based off a combination of several short stories) and so Eon Productions just created an original story and slapped the title onto it, since they had to use it somewhere. The short story is just about a secret service courier being murdered along a country road and Bond sitting in a bush waiting for the killers to emerge so he can shoot them. While he waits, he muses over the idyllic setting he finds himself in, hence the title. No aspect of that story makes its way into the movie whatsoever. So, just like Moonraker, this is another Bond adventure that is basically two entirely separate stories that share a title, except in this case they don't even manage that!

 

[GirlWithAFairy]

Any movie ever based on a book ever has let me down. Talk about a bunch of BS and everyone and their grandma has told me that Tom Bombadil being removed from the film adaptation of LOTR was not a big deal, well youre ****ing wrong!

 

[Djinn]

I, Robot is such a shift from not only the book but from Asimov's entire point of view to the point where one could think the whole thing was just trolling him. The original book was a collection of 9 short stories of how various robots interact with humans involving the three laws and a few learning things like what lying is, or how humans think. All of it was in the form of a report from a scientist at the major company that produces them to a reporter. But this movie is another generic robot uprising, go stop the machines movie that has been done time and time again. Which did not happen in Asimov's stories and he was genuinely against the entire concept of machine uprisings at all. He stated numerous times that he was against the concept as a plot and purposely did not include it in his writings. But then Fox makes another Terminator-esque robot rebellion movie and just gives it the name I, Robot and then proceeds to have absolutely nothing to do with the original story whatsoever. Outside of using a couple character names, and mentioning the three laws a few times. It does not resemble the original works in any major way. Just a couple smaller plots like the robot that was having dreams comes from one short story, Sonny hiding out among the similar robots happens in another (for different reasons), and the robots deciding to collectively protect humanity was in another short story (which was also handled very very differently than in the film).