we've looked at remakes and sequels so
we might as well keep it going with
adaptations Hollywood's other favorite
money tree but the good ones the
interesting ones the ones that gain a
little something when they make it to
the screen these are our picks for the
five best adaptations of all time
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right out of the gate elephant in the
room the biggest broadest most common
source of adaptations is fiction novels
and novellas and short stories Hollywood
is optioning another one every time you
turn around as for our favorites god
bird we begin from the faithful likes of
No Country for Old Men and To Kill a
Mockingbird and The Lord of the Rings
and Fight Club and Crouching Tiger
Hidden Dragon and stand by me to the
wild born creations of The Shining
Rashomon dr. Strangelove Kiss Kiss Bang
Bang the conformist the trial Forrest
Gump and Blade Runner and on and on and
on
don't say 2001 because that novel was
written with the screenplay and because
for our first adaptation pick we don't
think it gets much better than John
Milius and Francis Ford Coppola turning
Conrad's heart of darkness into
Apocalypse Now
you know neither
you're an errand boy sent by a grocery
clerks
Collective bill while this adaptation
trades the Congo for Vietnam late 19th
century British imperialism for 1960s
American cold war containment in an
ivory trader for a colonel the basic
scaffolding of the story is the same a
company man travels up a river on orders
to find and kill a man who has allegedly
gone mad with power that now threatens
his superiors and along the way he risks
falling victim to that self same madness
in a series of increasingly psychotic
episodes culminating in the final
decision which is really the illness the
madness for the sanity more than the
plot Coppola grabs on to the suffocating
pros and transmuted into a Ponting
overwhelming imagery there is
transformation of it from one kind of
beauty into another but also originality
of the best kind
as if Conrad's book was just a map of
the soul that Coppola used to go find
his own of course there's no adaptation
give away like the ubiquitous based on a
true story title card non-fiction books
have given us dust Li labeled movies
like Goodfellas the social network and
all the president's men while articles
have turned into Dog Day Afternoon in
cold blood and on the waterfront and
then of course there's the biopic that
essentially adapts a life as in The
Elephant Man Raging Bull Lawrence of
Arabia Malcolm X and Andrei Rublev Tina
Fey turned a book about how to handle
bullying as a parent into Mean Girls and
Oliver Stone turned a couple different
accounts of an assassination into the
insanity that is JFK but nobody nobody
has done an adaptation bolder and more
originally than Charlie Kaufman turning
Susan Orleans the orchid thief into
wealth dad apt ation maybe I can help
it's about flowers okay but it's not
only about flowers right I mean you have
the crazy plant nut guy right he's funny
right
there's not nearly enough of him to fill
a book
so Orlean digresses and long passages
blah blah blah no narrative really
unites these passages New York Times
Book Review I can't structure this it's
that's sprawling New Yorker [ __ ] the
book has no story there's no story
alright make one up the orchid thief is
a slightly meandering true story about
orchids and those obsessed with them
and if you think nonfiction book about
collecting plants sounds like an awful
basis for a Hollywood film so does
Charlie Kaufman the author of its
adaptation and so does Charlie Kaufman
the lead character of that adaptation
who is struggling to adapt that book
into the story about his adapting it
into the exact adaptation we're watching
called adaptation and so does his twin
brother Donald cop who was actually
nominated for the Academy Award for Best
Adapted Screenplay despite not actually
existing in real life seriously unless
you're Charlie Kaufman you couldn't make
this stuff up but what emerges is a
narrative about originality and
uniqueness and obsession and the
creative struggle that fluidly combines
the source material with Kaufman's real
struggle with the utterly invented in a
beautiful car crash life imitating art
imitating art imitating life met a
narrative that stretches the very
concept of adaptation to its utmost
limits and my god we love it in the well
no duh category of adaptations we
couldn't forget to look at plays and
they're often pretty ripe for the
picking with all the conflict and
characters and staging and dialogue
already there on the page although that
doesn't mean some of them don't benefit
from slight or significant reimagining
for the new medium so many adaptations
are faithfully filmed chamber Affairs at
12 Angry Men Who's Afraid of Virginia
Woolf Angels in America a streetcar
named desire others have been blown up
into strikingly cinematic bonanzas
Amadeus moonlight Hedwig and the Angry
Inch Casablanca and in Cyndi's of course
it'd be impossible to leave out the bar
you can find him everywhere from filmed
in the round of the Bronx the beach the
jungle modern Rome high school and
everywhere in between but we most loved
finding him in feudal Japan as King Lear
in ran and our third pick Macbeth in
throne of blood
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a fuel entered equal del Capitano
ishizu Medora born to be peu de Pio
avoid here a conquest oh all not here
acai to Homme failure
pejorative enter a Lowell signal
Costello c'mon now sue the ubiquity of
Shakespeare's text serves as an ongoing
point of cinematic comparison allowing
us to mark the massive effect different
productions can have on the same story
in this case the Scottish play one of
murder and ambition and betrayal and
kueh Sawa's throne of blood moves quite
far away in its writing while still
landing with the same power it is
distinctly quiet and visual and
cinematic where Macbeth was poetic and
verbal the witches become a spirit the
soldiers become Samurai the deaths
happen on screen and in the end while
she's ooze comes from an unexpected
source
the motivations are different distinctly
of another culture powers supplanting
emasculation as a drive but this long
and varied cross-pollination of cultures
of a 17th century England take on 11th
century Scotland as interpreted by a
20th century post-world War two Japanese
man looking at the 16th century samurai
period through distinctly modern eyes
has the effect not of muddying the story
but of clarifying it of polishing that
which is universal between the different
places and eras until the work shines in
those places with the most shared
humanity now where plays get to draw
from a built-in drama and dialogue our
next category gets built in visuals
these are comics mangas graphic novels
and these two run the gamut from the
plucked off the page onto the screen
feel of Sin City to the weight that was
based on a graphic novel of Road to
Perdition somewhere in between you can
find 300 Scott Pilgrim vs. the world
Akira Persepolis a history of violence
and blue is the warmest color and right
there towards the wild end you also find
our second-to-last pic the Korean film
based on a Japanese manga of the same
name old boy
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oh boy is a good manga but Park
chan-wook looked at it and clearly saw
potential he saw a frame in a scenario
in a situation about a man jailed
mysteriously for years and then
manipulated for the purpose of some kind
of mysterious revenge and decided it was
a vein of gold or that he's going to
mine and mine it he did he pops the hood
and completely rebuilds the engine
recalculating motivations redrawing
family ties and completely recalibrating
the tone now I don't want to spoil the
story for those of you who haven't seen
it yet but there's a ton more detail
worth going into if you have so we did
this week's what's the difference about
old boy for your full comparison fix
it's like Shark Week but for old boy and
only just these two things just check it
out it'll be out soon and finally
closing in at our last slot we got to
look at all the other weird and
unexpected places Hollywood has conjured
up adaptations from that's right the etc
category a surefire way to make sure
everybody's unhappy with your top pick
as if that's ever stopped us before
there's the Indian runner and Alice's
Restaurant & convoy all based on songs
not to mention the Fantasia's
Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy that
was a radio show before it was a book
and AMA Lisa adapted from a radio play
and Tomb Raider and Resident Evil both
from video games there's Pirates of the
Caribbean based on a Disneyland ride the
transformer series and the lego movies
from toys and Mars Attacks comes from a
trading card series in researching this
list we were delighted to learn that
there's an Australian film adapted from
a critical review of Percy Jackson and
the Olympians The Lightning Thief called
Benjamin still grass and a cauldron of
penguins although we were glad to admit
we haven't seen it yet but are
definitely going to maybe you're like us
and you think you hate that Hollywood
has taken to adapting board games until
you remember that it also brought us
clue
however our pick is based on a poem the
rarely adapted medium that has given us
powell the color of pomegranates and for
our last slot based on Homer's Odyssey
no not Troy it's oh brother where art
thou
Hey any boys Smitty's if not smoothies
per se were you otherwise trained in the
metallurgic arts before straitened
circumstances forced you into life
penniless wanders oh brother where art
thou is much the same as our first pick
it takes a journey from the annals of
classic literature and recontextualizes
it into some version of modern America
here we find ourselves amidst the
Depression era south on the land with
three rascally escapees instead of
tempest-tossed post trojan war with
Odysseus and crew but where apocalypse
now holds on to the emotional core of
its source material hewing closely in
tone oh brother pivots hard towards
comedy cheek and parody the Prophet
becomes a railroad man the sirens become
singing Maiden the Cyclops becomes big
van a sheep disguise becomes a sheet one
poseidon becomes a jail warden and
obviously both Ulysses and Odysseus
become chart-topping bluegrass singers
the way the Cohens reinterpret the
odyssey's details is all the more fun
for the knowing of it they took epic
Greek poetry and rewrote it as an
old-timey bluegrass ballad which is a
pitch we're buying every single time out
of a hundred and it's part of why we
think it's one of the best adaptations
of all time
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what do you think disagree with any of
our pics do we leave out any of your
favorite adaptations I'm sure we did
it's nothing personal
let us know in the comments below and be
sure to subscribe for more Cinna fix
movie lists
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