Books into movies

[RobinMarlesuth]

Why is it that almost every book made into a movie has turned out to be crap? I mean there are some exceptions (which I cannot think up at the moment), but almost every movie based off of a book series is crap.

Take the Harry Potter movies for example. The books get bigger and bigger and so the director cuts out more and more! The first one was pretty good but the rest are complete crap! [smiley8]

Another book series turned into movie that didn't work out so well was the Alex Rider series. The books are amazing but the movie was horrible.

And what about the Series of Unfortunate Events? The tried to compress the first, was it 5 or 6?, few books in the series into one movie. That was just horrible. Just god awful crap.

What do you guys think?

[WillPhanto1]

Well, one thing is that the story in an book is much longer then an story in a movie. Take Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire, if the movie was scene for scene, word for word, it would have been an eight to twelve hour moive (give or take), so they have to shorten or cut some of it. But alot of time the directors often never read the book(s) to begin with, and/or have to make the movie as the studio wants it. They often never think of of honoring the source material, or the fans of the book.

[RobinMarlesuth]

A lot of times, also, they tend to cut out the most important scenes in the books.

[BoxOfFun]

Books turned into movies are annoying, but not for the reason you give. They are annoying because, why would you want to read a book, and then go see a film with exactly the same plot? It's pointless.

[PersianSpice]

Lord of the Rings, anyone?

Well, Hollywood needs something to run on and books conveniently provide stories that can easily be adapted into the big screen.

[HeavyDDR]

Have you ever thought that maybe the book was crap to begin with?

See this is why once a movie comes out based on the book, I can never read the book, because the fanbase throws a hissy fit every left turn.

[PersianSpice]

Most books movies are based off of aren't bad. Can't really think of five that were based off of shit books that were really heavily advertised.

[WillPhanto1]

For a movie studio to buy the movie rights to a book, the book must be a good book (or at least a best seller) for the studio to be interested in the first place. If a studio doesn't think it'll make them a profit, they won't make it.
To me, it's not as much as they change things, if it was word for word, what would be the point paying to see a story you already know. It's how they change things. Like I said before, alot of times the director hardly honors the source material, and/or they try to make it their own. Or the studio has them change things to either make it sell better or sometimes even to make it P.C. This is usually why book adaption movie often turn into crap.
But there are some good Book adaption movies. But usually when they original writer gets involved with it.

[Tatterdemalion]

While I'm guessing this should be in the books section or the movie section, here goes anyway.

The reason movies made out of books is because they're two different forms of storytelling. Two entirely different mediums which are meant to tell different stories, or tell stories in very different ways.

Novels are long narratives which can go for any number of pages, and into a great deal of detail, whereas movies are a dramatic form, and are only a few hours long. As a result, books can go into details movies can't. Generally movies involve shorter scenes, and the development of characters is limited to how they interact with other characters, and their behavior, which we can see, rather that things that are said about them by a narrator...also, novels are generally longer in terms of the detail of the story, and such.

Movies have a different kind of presentation, and they tell the story through what we the audience can see...so the way a character behaves, the way he speaks and the things he says are more important in terms of development...also, the cinematography, music, and other such things play very important roles, something not seen in movies.

So really the difference is that while they are both forms of storytelling, movies and novels are entirely different mediums, and people expect something different from each because each tells the story in a different way.

Therefore, the movie adaptation sucks because the book was too good. If the book was written by a good author, then the author intended to write it as a novel, not as a movie. Therefore, while the book is a good work of literature, it is not necessarily a good work of cinema because it was not meant to be one.

That being said, there are some very good movies based on books, the key being that the movie is not intended to be a visual representation of the book, but a independent venture. Some good examples are The Graduate and Fight Club. The movies are good movies because they're not meant to be the book...they're meant to be movies.

[bakurasfangirl]

i must agree with the series of unfortunate events they crammed together the books and they didnt have the right outcome for the first one it was annoying

[Titan50]

What I can't wait for is how godawfully crap the Darren Shan movie turns out to be. The role for Debbie isn't even black and they changed her name!

[Tatterdemalion]

Interestingly enough, there are at least a handful of movies that are based on books, and at the same time are very good/classics. For example:

The Graduate
Psycho
The Shining
Fight Club
Midnight Cowboy (another Dustin Hoffman movie)
A Clockwork Orange (another Stanley Kubrick movie)
Blade Runner

So see, not all movies adapted from books suck. Just the new ones do.

[MutantLeprechaun]

I suppose the real reason why most movies based on books are rubbish pretty much comes down to the simple fact that most books were not written with a movie in mind. And as a result of this, the scriptwriters usually end up having to butcher the source material in order to make everything fit in to the film medium. This is a particularly common problem with novels that were written from a first-person perspective (another reason why the Darren Shan movie will probably suck).

However, every so often the movies are simply ruined due to censorship and incompetant editing ( example:The Golden Compass).

[Animegirlzzzzzzz]

Don't forget about "Gone with the Wind".

[Tatterdemalion]

And The Godfather, and The Wizard of Oz...honestly, it's as though half of all American cinema is based on a book.

[metagaia]

It's better to think of what it takes for a film not to be based on a book; then it makes more sense.

For an original film to come into being you either need a director talented enough to write scipts (rare, as it's a different skillset, just ask George Lucas), or you need a scriptwriter and a separate director.

Scriptwriters can obviously be compared with authors, but authors gain more money, and more respect. The median salary for a scriptwriter in the US is $43 350 (http://careers.stateuniversity.com/pages/135/Scriptwriter.html). The median for an author is higher, both by state (except seemingly in Texas), and for experiance (http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Writer_%2f_Author/Salary/by_Years_Experience&src=yahooA).

This implies the most talented writers become authors, leaving the less talented ones unable to write their own complete and decent stories. It therefore follows that it is easier to write a scipt based on someone elses work, which would lead to an abundance of said scripts.

This is my logic anyway, feel free to pick holes in it.

[Tatterdemalion]

This is my logic anyway, feel free to pick holes in it.
Okay then, don't mind if I do.

I think the real problem is that screenwriters cannot be compared with authors. At least not practically. The key difference is that authors play a much more important role in creating the final product that they are working on, as compared to screenwriters who, when they're not either directors/producers or incredibly famous, generally play a more marginal role.

Keep in mind that when you hire an author to write a book, it is the book that gets put out onto the market. The author is essentially the only person involved in creating this work (along with, I suppose, the editors).

Compare this to the film industry. Compared to authors, screenwriters on big Hollywood movies have very little creative control, multiple generations of screenwriters may be hired to write and rewrite scripts for the same film, screenwriters' ideas may be compromised, or severely influenced by the time, means and budget of the feature they are writing one, especially if they are not involved in production, often times films will be optioned before the actual script is written, leaving screenwriters, or teams of screenwriters, to be hired to write the script for someone else's story, and, above all, no matter how much work and effort goes into a script, the director may very well choose to deviate from it significantly...then, after that, after all of the work that other people put into actually making the movie, it's going to be mercilessly chopped to pieces in the cutting room. So yeah, it's extremely rare that at the end of the day a Hollywood movie is going to even remotely resemble the screenwriter's original conception.

So no, there's nothing at all to suggest that authors are more talented than screenwriters. Screenwriters make less money because they play a more marginal role than authors, and screenwriters recieve less attention/fame because, in addition to there usually not being only one screenwriter, the final product that is judged is not just the work of the screenwriter, but also the work of the director, and the actors, and the cinematographers, and the sound people, and the makeup department, and a whole consortium of other people. So the because the screenwriter is not the only person or the main person judged when a movie is evaluated, then the screenwriter invariably recieves less attention, regardless of the quality of the script or the quality of the film.

So if you're going to say that authors are overall more talented than screenwriters, then you must be, as I believe the saying goes, "bugging." And keep in mind that screenwriting is an entirely different medium than authorship. Yes, the authors get all the attention, but how many authors do you think could write a successful, or even moderately good screenplay on their own? They're very different...maybe the bridge is writing for the stage, I don't know. But make no mistake, it's not as though there are no talented writers or original ideas in Hollywood. It's that the unoriginal ideas are the ones that get optioned.

Also, keep in mind, writing for the screen is a hell of a lot more than just having an idea for a story, or even a fully formed story. Anyone can have one of those. The real work lies in actually turning the story into a solid film script...which is why movies based on good books can still suck...and why classic movies based on books can be recognized as masterpieces in their own right. After all, most stories these days in any form come from Shakespeare or the Greeks anyway...

So yeah, that's about it. Anything else can be taken up with the WGA

[Fenrir502]

I feel that near all modern movies are terrible.
I'm literally dreading the Twilight movie, because I know that someone is bound to drag me to it because they know I like the book, and if it follows the pattern of other books to film, gouging out my eyes with a straw won't even begin to cover the pain of a butchered plot.

(By the way, I completely agree with you about Stormbreaker, RobinMarlesuth)

[Emmy]

The only film adaptation I actually liked of a book I like was The Lord of The Rings. And I liked that because Peter Jackson and everyone on the film were LOTR fans, who went above and beyond the call of film-making duty to fill the movie with detail and love. Things were changed in it, and left out, but it was the most faithful I've ever seen.

I saw the first three Harry Potter movies and then I couldn't take it anymore. I thought the casting and costumes were good on the whole, although the acting of the kids left something to be desired. But the rest...!

And for the Twilight film, I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and go see it. But I don't like the casting at all, and apparantly, they changed loads of things to make it more racy, like having the main character kicked out of her mom's house, instead of just deciding to move in with her dad for a while as a mature, adult decision, that sets up her character as mature and nice. That's what it says on their website, anyway.