Soderbergh does just what Lem was warning against in his book – he anthropomorphizes the great unknowable. He distills expansive ideas into their simplest terms; he holds our hands and gives easy clarity to motivation.
It can’t hold a candle to Tarkovsky’s version, though there are things I miss from the novel. In the commentary track they point out some lapses in logic… but after reading the book I realized that they weren’t so much brain farts, but omissions. If you haven’t read the book you might go, but how does A connect to B?
There’s also a decent 2-part Russian TV film from 1968 (which is of course hampered by a small budget).
I will say, of the three filmed versions presenting the scene where Kris sends Hari out into space - no one has yet to capture the terror of that moment; the inhuman sounds, the inhuman strength, and Kris’ fear. Not even Tarkovsky nailed that.
Gonna agree with The Hobbit for the top of my list. I don’t know if Peter Jackson was replaced by a Skrull or what, but I couldn’t stand the Hobbit movies even though I loved the LotR ones. I actually prefer the Rankin-Bass animated musical.
Le Guin’s Earthsea books have been adapted twice… once as a miniseries and once as an animated movie. Both were terrible. The latter might be the only truly bad movie Studio Ghibli has released.
A Wrinkle in Time was a misfire.
Disney’s The Black Cauldron.
David Lynch’s Dune has been mentioned. I still haven’t seen the Villenueve one.
Almost every time the book is better, but I’ll add this to the discussion: even though I am a film noir fanatic, not a single Raymond Chandler adaptation, no matter how great (and many of them are), can match the novels. The same is true for Dashiell Hammett (edited bad cell phone fingers). Part of it of course is that the production code made it hard to make movies as gritty. But just in general, they were such brilliant storytellers and wordsmiths and the movies couldn’t quite get there in only 90 minutes.
That being said, it you’re not into noir and have never seen “The Big Sleep” or “The Maltese Falcon,” do it now.
That one goes by The Last Man On Earth and is decent all things considered. It hews faithfully to the novel for the most part, and really is the only one of the three adaptations to deliver on the meaning of the book’s title.
Rifftrax covered this one but I haven’t seen their edition.
Seuss said that Bakshi’s “Butter Battle Book” (1989) was the most faithful adaptation of his work. And this is true.
Re The Hobbit, I read that aloud to the family before the movie came out and my daughter wasn’t super interested so she left after the dwarf party. Actually, she sorta wandered in and out during that whole opening scene.
The movie’s changing of the contract pissed her off so much that we’re, like, ten minutes in and already sure we’re not seeing sequels.
This is the part where I admit that I can’t abide Jackson’s LOTR either. I thought the first one was okay and it actually grew on me over time. Even the extended version.
I’m sitting through the second one and just thinking, “Oh, okay, this is the part where they have meeting about getting the 13-19yo girl demo into the film and add long segments of Viggo and Liv communicating telepathically to drag the story to a complete stop. It’ll be like Titanic!”
Gandalf wins the day by leading a cavalry charge into long pikes, as if the very invention of pikes wasn’t to tear charging cavalry to shreds. Magic!
Say, you know what this story about humble creatures defeating a great evil through perseverence and innate goodness needs? SUPERHEROES! So, we’ll have an elf that can slide down a giant elephant’s trunk and shoot it dead with an arrow at the same time! I mean, that’s not how arrows work or elephants, much less mega-elephants but…Magic!
Pfeh.
[This has been an unscheduled performance of “Grumpy Guy Doesn’t Like What Everyone Likes”. Check your local listings for future episodes. Or just hang around a while longer and another will be right along.]
An offshoot of that would be to explore them by scene, what can each bring to the table? Take Moose Malloy’s startling first appearance in “Murder, My Sweet”. He’s seen as an oversized reflection on Marlowe’s window - where his looming figure appears and disappears like a ghost. One could argue that the book is better, but you don’t get that in the book. That’s a pure cinema.
Charulata is another - Ray’s film, where you have visuals and music telling the story / and Tagore’s book, which can dig deeper into interior thought, and can expand characters (Manda for example, is given more importance). Both are poetry in their own way. Both are masterpieces.
Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace? He gets the novel, does justice to it - but he also understands how to make things cinematic, that are purely novelistic. How does he achieve this? (sounds like fodder for film school)
The list of movies that are better than the books would be a much shorter list. Off the top of my head, it’s Ready Player One and Fried Green Tomatoes.
Just take a look at movies from Stephen King’s books. Most are horrible, some bear only a passing resemblance to the written, a few are ok and a hand full are about as good(1408, Misery, IT 1 and 2, The 2nd Pet Cemetary, Stand by Me, Creepshow, Carrie) So 8 of the 42 movies are about as good as his original work.
They were thinking he’d be like a cute lil’ dog guy and not a weird-looking monkey Gollum thing. Admittedly, I like the Disney design but more of it being its own thing. IDK, I like that time period where Disney was just weird for a while, right before the renaissance. The Black Cauldron is a mess and not terribly faithful to the book but I kind of dig it.
I haven’t read the book since middle school, forgive me.
Pardon the double post, should use the multi-quote more often, but even though it’s very different from the original, The Shining is one of my favorite movies. I did read the book first, and the book is good, I like the book very much, but the movie is just… it’s captivating. Hypnotizing, even. I like it better than the book. I love it. Yeah, it’s not at all a faithful adaption, and I understand King not being happy with it but… goddamn. If I’d written a book and Kubrick adapted it and did some crazy stuff with it, I’d probably be okay with it, just because it’s Kubrick.
Howl’s Moving Castle. I recall a feature on ANN when the reviewers chose favorite and least favorite Miyazaki films. No one chose HMC as a favorite, while three picked it as their least favorite. That did my heart good, because I hate that adaptation of HMC.
My husband hates The Two Towers, or, at the very least, likes it the least out of the trilogy. He still thinks Fellowship should have won Best Picture instead of ROTK.
)
Magic!