Hello my beautiful watchers, I’m taking a quick break from all things Vampire because
unfortunately my throat issues slowed down production on the last two project so much
I ran out of time to get to Queen of the Damned before the end of the month but don’t worry,
that mess of an adaptation is still coming soon.
In the meantime I thought perhaps I could just take a second to look back at everything
I’ve covered so far and reflect on the best and the worst examples of attempts to successfully
adapt a book into a feature film.
And of course I had to make it a top ten list because Youtube.
I suppose I probably should explain my criteria for what I consider makes an adaptation “good”
or “bad” before we jump in.
Since my revelation that word for word accuracy isn’t the be all and end all of film adaptations,
trying to figure out what exactly DOES matter could take up an entire video all to itself
and probably will someday soon.
But for now the simplest way to say this is I’m going to be judging this list based
on plot accuracy, loyalty to the original themes and how skillfully these two things
were converted and adapted to fit the new medium of moving pictures.
I’m sticking with the philosophy that the film’s overall merit isn’t super relevant
as the quality of a film is dependent on way more than just the things that tie into the
book.
Directing, lighting, framing, scoring, acting, editing and general cinematography can all
result in a bad adaptation being a great film and vice versa.
This is not the only way to judge adaptations but it is the way I'm going with right now.
So it's not just all positivity then all negativity I’m going to alternate between the two categories
as I work my way to the top. Do remember that this is just about the adaptations I’ve
reviewed in the past, not every film based on a book in the world. Okay lets do this:
Number 10 on the good list: Scott Pilgrim Vs the World.
A very solid attempt that definitely scratched the surface of what the graphic novels were
about on a fundamental level and one of my favorite movies of all time but still, attempting
to cram the plot of 6 books (one of which hadn’t even been written yet) into one movie
was never going to end with a phenomenal spot on this list.
I maintain that it deserves at least the bottom rung though because of just how well they
handled the stuff that they did manage to fit in from the books.
Number 10 on the not so good list The Hobbit trilogy.
Not disloyal enough to the plot to put it higher up on the list but its still worth
mentioning for the millionth time on youtube what a catastrophic mistake to stretch it
out over three long films and an even bigger misstep to try to force the tone of the Lord
of the Rings onto a story that was not meant for it.
We could have had something different but good but instead we got yet another shameless
attempt to monetize our nostalgia.
The number 9 spot on the best list goes to……. Uhhh..Urrhhh….. To ehh..Mmmh….. It's The
Fifty Shades Trilogy ok?!
I know. I know! It physically hurt me to put this on any list that had the word best in
it.
These are deeply unpleasant movies based on shockingly bad books but…. They managed
to stay very close to what was meant to be the “plot” while doing their best to make
up for the authors incompetence and make it in some way understandable and I HAVE to acknowledge
that.
I said this in the episodes, I feel pity for them for being so attuned with the books.
They would have made much better movies if they’d been allowed to veer away from them
more.
They polished the hell out of EL Jame’s turd. The end result was a shiny turd but
I can’t deny that it was EL Jame’s turd up there on the big screen. Well..fucking..done.
And in 9th place in the opposing team: Blood and Chocolate
You would think having little to nothing in common with the source material would be a
positive thing when I didn’t really care for the book.
It had a lot of bad messages regarding teenage behaviour, consent and POSSIBLY being accidentally
anti race mixing but gosh damn the film actually managed to outdo it in being problematic,
unlikable and just plain dumb.
What really earned it a place on this list though was their seemply pointless decion
to make the all of the bad guys of the book good all the good guys bad and making people
who were having sex mother and son now. Urh.
My number 8 positive pick goes to Watchmen.
I KNOW a lot of people have serious and legitimate issues with Watchmen and Zack Snider’s decisions
when it comes to comic book adaptations.
And I know that some people think the squid was absolutely essential, even if I think
that's less legitimate to be completely honest..
But come on, like EVERYTHING else in the film clearly shows he used the graphic novel as
a storyboard, Snyder went above and beyond what most directors would consider reasonable
book loyalty.
I also think he did a decent job at trimming down the not strictly necessary parts of the
graphic novel to let him really focus on and do justice to the key parts of the story and
he deserves some props for that.
And number 8 in the negative corner: StarShip Troopers
Just focusing on the what and not the why in my pilot episode of Lost in Adaptation
was a mistake that I do plan to correct some day but for now suffice to say that the film
was intentionally different from the book and actively mocked the ideology of its source
material in places.
A rare example of a bad adaptation by design.
7th place on the winning team goes to: The Princess Bride
It is so delightfully apt that this film just used the good bits from the book and left
out the framing device because that framing device was literally about abridging a story
to only include the good bits.
The adaptation was also fiendishly good at bringing said best bits to life so a very
deserving mention on the positive side of the list.
Coming in at number 7 on team fail: Ender's game
You might understandably not be aware that I covered this because it got taken down for
copyright reasons awhile ago. I may try to fix it or just completely redo it down the
line but here's the cliffnotes.
This film utterly failed to understand that Ender’s Game is as much a story of the psychological
damage of being pushed past one’s limits as it is a story of a boy tactical genius
who gets handed the keys to a space navy.
Even said tactics were a huge disappointment. Ender's out of the box thinking that revolutionised
every status quo humanity had regarding zero gravity strategy is reduced down to him using
a human meat shield to solve every problem.
All in all a shallow and forgettable film and the worst performance I’ve ever seen
out of Harrison Ford who almost looks like he’s dying of boredom in every scene.
Back to the good, number 6 goes to The Girl with the dragon tattoo
Both the US and Sweidish film adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s book did a really admiral
job of maintaining loyalty to the story while also making sure you got a well paced and
visually pleasing movie.
The story is a lot to handle in every version which I guess is a testament to how well they
recreated it.
There's some semi harmless shifting around of which character achieved what and an unexplained
British man but all in all a really good adaptation.
And number six, in the red corner.. Red No one is denying RED was a fun film, and
I totally get why it was popular at the time, but as an adaptation it really doesn't compare
to the graphic novel.
Like you literally can’t compare them. They have so little in common.
It took a very dark, intelligently presented concept about arrogance, fear, trauma, the
depths a human can sink to in the right circumstances and a very real commentary on the scary amount
of power secretive government agencies have… and devolved it into “lol, look at those
old people kicking ass.”.
So yeah, perfectly fine film, really should have been called something else.
Looking on the bright side..5 The Last Unicorn A good example of a film that understood the
spirit of the book as well as it understood the plot which isn’t super surprising as
the author wrote the screenplay but its still cool.
Loyal to the original to the point of porting over issues that a fresh writer might have
taken out.
I’m still wondering about those blue potatoes and it’s a shame about the singing but you
can’t have everything.
The opposing 5 Ella Enchanted.
Again not a terrible movie but such a let down as an adaptation. Taking a genuinely
clever take on the Cinderella fairy tale that really deconstructed the tropes associated
with it and turning it into a generic paint by numbers visual comedy.
The book is one of the best examples of a story for young people, especially girls,
that does not in any way talk down to its reader and the film… Just really wanted
to be live-action Shreck.
I don’t begrudge people for liking it but it can’t hold a candle to the original.
4 on the successful side of things.. The Godfather
Ahh the adaptation that knew exactly what to keep and what to cut out of a very long
book in order to stay very true to the story without dragging.
Combine that with a talented director and a cast that manages to make book accurate
dialogue sound super natural and you have one of the very few examples of a film that
surpasses its sourse meterial while still respecting it.
And its opposite counterpart.. Sharpe
I know I know… A British TV show from the ‘90s who cares? I CARE DAMMIT! I love these
books and they got done dirty.
Some of this isn't the showrunners fault. Cornwell's books were always going to be exceptionally
hard to adapt because a huge part of their appeal hinges on the awe inducing scale of
the Napoleonic Wars and a British TV show was never going to have the budget to recreate
that.
There was also a big issue with the show going off the air for huge stretches and them losing
like 80% of their cast, forcing them to constantly recast or switch book characters into different
roles.
What IS their fault however is their insistence on rewriting so much.
Motivations become either deeply out of keeping with the time period or just plain nonsensical,
perfectly good book dialogue is replaced with cheesy monologuing, characters who were decent
people in the books become total assholes and assholes become much nicer for no discernible
reason.
I really shouldn’t have watched the behind the scenes features on the DVD box set. It's
so hard to listen to these idiot writers patting themselves on the back and thinking they did
a great job.
Third place on the good list goes to The Shawshank Redemption.
Steven King’s non-horror novels seem to consistently have better luck adaptation-wise
than his scary books. That is another thing that I could probably do an entire episode
on someday if I felt so inclined.
The Shawshank Redemption is a film made by people who very clearly knew exactly what
made the book appealing to people and how to bring that to the screen.
I mean they cover like 20 years of the story and manage not to veer off its plot in any
significant way, book dialogue is lifted right off the page into the script and most importantly
the captured the feeels man the feeeels.
The only thing that cost this the number two slot is the somewhat understandable inability
to resist the urge to change the ending and confirm that the leads are reunited at the
end.
It's really nice and I loved seeing it but the ambiguity of the book's ending wasn’t
an accident and for better or worse not sticking to it changes the dynamic of the end of the
story.
And 3 on the why did you even bother list The Percy Jackson movies
The colossal amount of squandered potential involved in these adaptations still makes
me sad sometimes, they rewrote the book on how to take good source material and drain
everything likeable out of it.
I hate it all, I hate the dumbing down of Rick Riordan's greater understanding of greek
myths and the culture that created them.
I hate that they cast actors who were almost a full decade too old for the roles.
I hate that they replaced everything that set Riordan’s writing apart from its contemporaries
with bog standard movie cliches and bad jokes.
And I hate the way they shot themselves in the foot constantly by trying to have their
cake and eat it when it comes to being a self-contained movies AND setting up sequels.
I hope that Perseus Jackson really does get another shot at the big screen because that
lad deserved so much better.
Taking the 2 positive spot is The Hunger Games trilogy.
There's not really much to say here besides wowzer these adaptations are loyal to a fault
to the books.
If you want to see an example of films that try to match every message, plot beat, image
and detail of their source material this trilogy has got to be the forerunner.
Of course that can also lead to some drawbacks which is exactly what cost it the top spot.
Trying to force a book shaped story into a film sized hole doesn't always work, for example
when your lead internalizes so much of her emotions she looks like a robot from the outside
90% of the time.
Still, an impressive look at what can be done when the filmmakers REALLY want to bring the
pages to screen.
And coming in a very close second place on the terrible list.. The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy
It might surprise you that this isn’t at the very top of the list considering my screaming
rage during the review. It remains my own personal most hated adaptation of all time
but that is partly because of how much the radio show meant to me, not because the film
couldn’t have been any worse.
However it still floors me just how consistently this film misses the mark. Following the basic
structure of the story but changing and recontextualising everything until the point of every joke is
missed, every theme is lost and one of the smartest science fictions and social satires
ever written is reduced to a slapstick comedy.
And in the 1 spot. The best adaptation that I’ve reviewed so far.. Coraline
My goodness the stars just aligned on this one.
A wonderful book, the perfect amount of time between it and the film, a good choice in
animation and a talented director, loyalty to the theme of the story and plot of the
book but an awareness of what needs to by hyped up or toned down for the sake of making
it into a cohesive and visually enjoyable film.
Coraline the film somehow manages to recreate what I would have sworn was an ineffable charm
imbued into Niel Gaiman's book.
I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to recommend the film to a hard core fan of the book AND
vice versa and there really are a very limited number of adaptations I can say that about.
And the worst of the worst, the 1 bad adaptation I’ve covered so far... I Robot
The sheer irony alone of this film earned it the top spot for me.
In an almost perfect switch around from the way that everything just works with Coraline,
this film is the perfect storm of terrible adaptation-wise.
They took the title of a well-respected book and attached it to a film that not only bears
no resemblance to its plot, it flies in the face of its core concept.
From what I’ve heard, Azamoth was sick of nothing but robot uprising stories so he introduced
three very strict rules into his robo-filled world and set himself the challenge of writing
a story that would explore everything and anything that could still go wrong while strictly
obeying those rules.
Any robot themed story would fit nicely into this EXCEPT a violent robot uprising. That
is literally the ONLY thing that would be offensively out of keeping with the book.
The fact that they didn’t originally plan for this to be an adaptation and just slapped
on the name for brand recognition at the last minute doesn't make this any less offensive
as far as I'm concerned.
If you want to tap into the preexisting fanbase of a famous title you have a certain amount
of responsibility towards respecting that title and no film has ever failed harder at
that than iRobot.
And finally a quick honorable mention: Who Framed Roger Rabbit could for many complicated
reasons have been somewhere in the middle of both lists so I settled for putting it
on neither. There's a reason I had to completely reinvent the way I format my show to make
sense of it.
Wow, this has actually been a real trip looking back at everything I've covered over the last
what 5? 6 years? Ahh..I just want to say how appreciative I am of all of you guys for taking
an interest in my silly videos exploring my obsession with film adaptations.
Whether you’ve been watching from the start or just found the channel recently. Thank
you. I’m really glad you’re here.
And I’m really excited to keep adding more reviews to the options here. It will be interesting
to see if there is a significant difference the next time I make a list like this.
Of course ALL OF THIS, everything I just described has mostly been my subjective opinion, I would
love to hear if you guys would have put things further up or down the list or are surprised
that other things didn’t make it on.
I’ll also put links to all the reviews in the list in the video description in case
you haven't seen them and would like to hear the long form version of my thoughts.
Thank you for joining me my beautiful watchers do tune in next time for a return to our regularly
scheduled programming and please don't forgot to top off this channel shield against the
whims of Youtube all powerful algorithm by poking that like button in the eye, and sharing
the content on the social medias. Take care of yourselves out there.
Much love and appreciation to my Patrons of honour Shelby Hotz and Sam Cucinotta.
Hello again my Beautiful Watchers. I just wanted to take this opportunity to give you
a quick reminder that there’s a wonderful website called Patreon that’s been allowing
online producers to actually make a living doing what they do, since apparently YouTube’s
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early access to all videos and taking part in that survey you see at the start of every
Lost in Adaptation episode. That’s actually a very important part of the process, as I
use it to gauge how much I’m going to need to explain about the book and the film before
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