I, Robot.
Asimov was explicitly trying to get away from the trope of “robots take over humanity”. To be clear, the first short story that became I, Robot was published in 1940. “Robots take over humanity” was already an SF trope by then. Hollywood comes along more than half a century later and dives head first right back into that trope.
Lt Cmdr Data is more what Asimov had it mind. In fact, Data’s character has direct references to Asimov, like his positronic brain.
I, Robot was about as far from the source material as you could get.
That sounds like a challenge to Hollywood. Though I’d put Starship Troopers up there too, haven’t scrolled enough to see it mentioned but I assume it is.
Edit okay I did now and it’s not mentioned. While a fun movie it doesn’t have nearly the same story that the book does. Still I’ll watch it for what it is, but doesn’t have the same tone or scenes the book does.
You’re right, Starship Troopers should be way up on the list, too.
The only thing that advertisement masquerading as a movie has in common with the Asimov work is the title.
Asimov came up with the three laws of robotics.
He then spent the rest of his life writing examples of how they don’t work.
Robots take over humanity has been around since literally the first robot story. R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) is where the word robot was coined.
Shouldn’t be called an adaptation, really. They only dressed it up a tiny bit as Asimov for marketing reasons
From what I heard, they got the rights to I, Robot, grabbed some script about a robot uprising that they already had optioned, and slapped a few things on it.
This is apparently fairly common. If there’s a Hollywood movie based on something that doesn’t really align with the original, there’s a good chance that this is what happened. Starship Troopers was the same way (though that’s a whole different ballgame on whether the Hollywood version is good on its own merits).
The Hobbit. Like, all of it
Literally everything about World War Z. Absolute travesty. The book is a unique and genuinely thought provoking new take on the zombie genre. The movie is an insult to every bit of world building Max Brooks created.
I say this to people and then always have to clarify:
It’s not that the World War Z movie is a bad adaptation of the book, it’s that it’s NOT an adaptation of the book at all. Other than the name, and the fact that it has zombies, there are literally no similarities between the book and the movie.
The characters are different, the settings are different, the format is different, the plot is different, the way the zombies act is different. Literally EVERYTHING.
Calling it an adaptation is like if you took The Neverending Story and changed its title to The Lord of The Rings and called that an adaptation.
I read somewhere that this is basically Max Brooks’ take on the film.
Something about breathing a sigh of relief when he read the script, because it was such a distinct story that there was nothing left of his book to be butchered.
Yeah, this one is the big one.
I feel like World War Z would have been better adapted as a TV show given that the book was episodic in nature.
Very well put. I couldn’t agree more.
I thought the movie was pretty enjoyable but it shouldn’t have been named after the book. It would have been a decent zombie movie on its own.
I agree. Its a fun movie but is the literal opposite of everything in the book. My favorite chapter is where the crashed pilot outwalks the group of zombies. There’s something so organic and absolutely terrifying about that. Humans are persistence predators and it was such a unique way of turning the tables on our evolutionary successes. Brilliant stuff. The movie may be fun, but its anything but brilliant.
All the adaptations of I Am Legend are bad, but 2007 movie was insulting. It gave the illusion of following the book, but then did a u-tutn and completely changed the meaning of the story and the title itself.
In the movie the protagonist becomes a legend because he sacrifices himself to cure vampirism.
In the book he is the last man in a world of vampires, he kills vampires, and understands that he is like a legendary monster that kills people in their sleep. He is then executed.
Yeah, the book vampires were much more fleshed out. In the movie they were just barely-sentient beasts, primarily running off of instinct. They only seemingly had some basic higher-level reasoning. His primary struggle was surviving while surrounded by bloodthirsty animals.
In the book, they were a full blown society with their own culture. When the people around him changed, he was suddenly a stranger in a brand new culture. The point was that in the old society, vampires were the thing that went bump in the night. But in the new society, he was the monster that parents told their kids to watch out for.
In case you haven’t seen the alternate ending for I am Legend, it puts a very different perspective on the whole movie. Apparently it was the original, but didn’t screen well with viewers.
The most telling moment for me is the infected slaps their hand on the glass and draws a butterfly as the last words the protagonist’s daughter ever said to him, “Daddy, look a the butterfly!” echo is his head and he realizes that the infected he has captured has a butterfly tattoo on her shoulder. He even makes a note of it in the capture and experimentation scene claiming that the infected exposing himself to sunlight is a sign that “social de-evolution is complete.” when instead the infected just witnessed a monster kidnap his daughter and drag her into a dangerous area that he cannot follow to do unknown experiments on her to change her into something else.
Instead the ending negates everything built up to the point and ends with a boring action-movie cliche.
It gave the illusion of following the book.
Have you actually read the short story? Because I am baffled as to how anyone who has read the story would say that.
The movie was in no way an adaptation of the short story at all. It never even pretended to follow the short story.
Just like iRobot the only thing I Am Legend has in common with it’s written work is the title.
He is then executed.
No he wasn’t. He committed suicide.
Have you actually read the short story?
Yes I did, probably 10 years before that 2007 movie. Let me recommend you to check an encyclopaedia if you want precision instead of reading a random forum online.
He is then executed.
No he wasn’t. He committed suicide.
For what I remember he was in a jail cell ready to be executed and they offered him a pill. Anyway, that was not the point of the story.
As I recall it, he is locked in a room awaiting execution at the end of the book and while he is there he observes the vampires creating a spectacle out of his death which causes him to realize that he has been the boogeyman of their society - that he has become the stuff of legends.
The Hobbit
From the shitty shoehorned romance to wholesale elimination of plot points in the original story. Yeah, there was definitely some drama in the whole production of the film, but nonetheless it was crap.
We demand our Tom Bombadil!
I like the Bilbo edit that removes most of the crap, and keeps the story shown to be from only what Bilbo sees. Gets the 3 movies down to 4 hrs I think.
I’ve seen that edit. Much improved, but unfortunately there are some continuity gaps that are inevitable when cutting up a film like that.
The movie version of A Clockwork Orange was based on the American version of the book, which left out the entire last chapter. In that chapter, at 18 years old Alex pretty suddenly grows out of his violent and criminal ways and wants to start a family. Some say this ending is more optimistic but I actually think it’s darker, because it shows that any normal person you meet might’ve at some point been a wanton brute reveling in the chaos and pain they so arbitrarily inflicted. And that they can just move on and start living like a normal person.
The most egregious that i remember must be Artemis Fowl.
I remember liking the book quite a lot for making fairies into the opposite of pushovers. It also had a mean edge to it that other teen fantasy lacked.
The movie is just… Not that.
I hated the fact that the movie steered away from the fact that Artemis Fowl was a frigging criminal mastermind and instead made him a mid rebel with a relatable motivation… Have the same grouse about Ender’s Game too
I watched the movie first. The only good thing about it is it inspired me to read the book to see what the movie missed. Upon reading all the books, I think the vest way to adapt them to screen would be an animated series that is beat for beat faithful to the books.
My biggest issue with the film is, if they didn’t want a villain protagonist, why adapt a book with a villain protagonist?
I know we’re not into Harry Potter now, but the past is the past and I can’t forget how annoyed I was when the movie based on the third book, Prisoner of Azkaban, came out. I was a very disappointed teenager.
It was a whirlwind story to me at the time. I remember exactly where I was when I read it, as the moment that revealed the friendship between Harry’s father James, Professor Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, and the alleged-murderer, Sirius Black, became seared into my brain. It was such a pivotal part of the overall story to me, that that twist alone made it my favorite in the series. So when the movie came out, I expected the use and development of The Marauder’s Map to be a key highlight. It was a huge deal in the books, after all.
Yet in the movie, the map is just a neat thing Harry gets to use. Nobody mentions that Harry’s own father helped create it. The movie never even tells who the Marauders are, even though the reveal of their backstory was the key emotional crux of the Shrieking Shack scene. To omit their story entirely felt like a gut-punch.
I didn’t understand at the time why the director (Alfonso Cuaron) decided to straight-up change everything that made that story so compelling to me and my friends. To this day, I still don’t understand.
Yet subsequent movies mentioned the nicknames Wormtail and Padfoot. A lot of things in the films must have been confusing to people who didn’t read the books. Another weird thing I’ve noticed is that in the fourth movie, Barty Crouch Jr steals from Snape to make polyjuice potion and he blames Harry. But those who only watched the movies and didn’t read the books wouldn’t have known that Harry and his friends stole from Snape to make polyjuice potion before.
Maybe not the worst, but this one’s personal: Edge of Tomorrow’s take on the fantastic All You Need Is Kill (spoilers ahead).
- Making the movie PG-13. In chapter 2 of the manga, there is a brutal death scene showing how Keiji can’t escape the Mimics wherever he goes. The series was quite bloody, and used that to its advantage.
- Casting Emily Blunt as “Rita Vrataski”. One of her defining character traits was that she was unassuming, and that you wouldn’t expect that level of combat skill from her appearance.
- While Keiji was in love with “Rita” in the original, it was unrequited–the change felt actively detrimental to “Rita’s” character.
SIDENOTE: I feel like changing this was sort of unimportant, but you’ll notice I’m using quotes for “Rita”. That’s because, in the original, her real name is unknown. She took someone else’s identity.
To be fair, I wouldn’t expect an elite combatant when I look at Emily Blunt.
I did not know the movie was based on anything. It’s one of my favorite scifi flicks, I always viewed it as based on a game player’s grind to get through a game by trying different moves after each death to succeed.
Surprised to see this one here, but this is also my answer. Been awhile since I read the book, but I seem to remember the other big point being the whole blood transfusions thing from the movie wasn’t there, that was all made up bullshit. In fact, “Rita” had not lost her power, they were going through overlapping loops which is so much cooler, but I guess was deemed too confusing for audiences so we got that schlocky Hollywood ending instead.
OK, here’s the thing. Overall, Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy is extremely good. I think it’s the best Tolkien adaptation we’re likely to ever get.
HOWEVER.
The random “Arwen is dying!” subplot was incredibly fucking stupid and while it didn’t ruin the movies for me, it did dampen my enjoyment of them. There had to be a better way to get more screentime for Liv Tyler, surely.
For me it’s elves at Helm’s Deep. Totally unnecessary.
Although I always laugh out loud when Sam says “We shouldn’t even be here” in Osgiliath.
My devil’s advocate argument for the elves being there is that there were a bunch of battles in the north that didn’t make it into the movie and only get mentioned a little in the books, and one of the important themes of LOTR is that all these disparate groups had to band together to fight Sauron. So having elves be at Helm’s Deep is a way to show the different people fighting together in a movie series that was already pressed for time. Necessary? Maybe not. But it doesn’t bother me as much as some of the other changes, because I can at least see a rationale for it.
The thing is that the elves were explicitly leaving and staying out of the conflicts. It makes no sense for them to help out at Helm’s Deep but piss off for all the rest.
I love the lotr movies but even the extended editions can’t fit in the nuances of all the supporting characters. this gets worse the later you get in the trilogy, the biggest victims probably being the ents, faramir, denethor and pippin.
my own personal pick is probably one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, where they change McMurphy’s crime from battery and gambling to statutory rape. that did not engender sympathy
That’s when Aragorn rode back to Rivendell when they were almost at Mordor, and then back to Mordor again, right?
Not a movie, but a show. “Foundation”.
Look, I get it, if you want to tell your own sci fi story that has nothing to do with Asimov, great! Good for you!
But don’t pretend it’s Foundation.
Eh. I’ve been watching it, and I think it’s a decent adaptation. Entirely faithful to the original? No. But the core trilogy of was written in the 1950s, and it’s absolutely a product of its time. I for one am glad they left the misogyny back in the 1950s where it belongs. Also, the original books were very much in the “our friend the atom” era of nuclear power, the era where they were predicting power too cheap to meter and no one had ever heard of a nuclear plant meltdown. The inclusion of the genetic dynasty was an inspired choice. And frankly, I’m glad we’re not depicting a far future where everybody is white.
But I think the TV series is faithful to the core themes of the books. It still explores the contrast between the “trends and forces” and “great man” theories of history. It still explores the fascinating concept of predicting the future mathematically. It still shows the slow and inexorable decline of a great galactic empire. And the Mule in the show is every bit a force of malevolent evil as the Mule in the novels.
Overall, is it a perfect one-to-one adaption? No, but that was never going to happen for a book like Foundation. It was long considered unfilmable. But some minor adaptations have allowed them to create a good series that explores the core themes of Asimov’s work.
The core concept of the books was, that Hari could predict the future of societies in really broad strokes. Essentially how masses behave in certain situations. In order to actually make the gamble, he forced a situation where he put a group of people that could only behave in a certain way because they were lacking resources.
But, in all of the books it’s quite clear that Hari couldn’t make predictions for single people within a group, because there’re too many variables (Asimov even created an example where Hari deliberately predicted the choices of a single person that exists in the present, and why that doesn’t work for other purposes).
In the books, Hari cannot make any decisions for other people, because the solution can only come from those people (though because he setup the foundation colony like he did, the outcome was always predestined).
In the show, they don’t care about the core concept. In the first season they show how psycho history is supposed to work, and partially adhere to it, but soon ignore all the limitations that it should have. It’s like Hari plays those 1000 years on a musical instrument, manipulating people and situations. He tell’s people the solution to the problem. He (because he’s an AI) constantly interferes. That’s not the idea of the core story.
Imagine it like this, in the books, a “creator” setup the world in a way where people can still make individual decisions, but only in a way that leads to a predestined outcome. Personal choices may lead to a different way to the outcome (see the mule), but in the end, it’ll always come to the intended solution.
The show just has an omnipotent god that is reborn and moves people like chess pieces, constantly adapting to changing situations.
The fact that gods and magic also seemingly exist really fucks me up because its explicit in Tue original book that god is just a tool for smarter people (Foundation) to manipulate dumber people (everyone else).
Obnoxious atheist take? Sure I guess.
But it feels as if someone rebooted harry potter and made the kids saying something nice about trans people or Jews.
The religion of technology was something that I especially enjoyed in the books. There were many highlights that Goyer chose to ignore.
Does it get any better after season 1? The terminus plot was just incredibly stupid so I lost all interest. Empire was great though, especially as he didn’t exist in the books
It’s not a show that I wait for with bated breath, but I will usually watch the episodes and they’re alright. As someone who only read part of the first book, there’s nothing there to be ruined for me.
The Mule stuff is kind of interesting. I think the genetic dynasty stuff is the coolest part, and apparently that wasn’t even in the books.
Couldn’t agree more, it’s not exactly a faithful adaptation, but I feel they did a damn good job conveying the overall message and story.
It’s three shows intertwined into one, and it feels as if three teams wrote them independently. They are completely different, the only thing in common is reusing Asomov’s Foundation names. It totally sucks.
The coolest part of the show is the genetic dynasty stuff that wasn’t even in the series
Legitimately, if they had just done a “A Foundation Story: Empire” and then just did the genetic dynasty stuff, I don’t think any of us would be mad.
But I don’t think general audiences have read much Foundation these days so they would have struggled to set it in that universe without an established Foundation Cinematic Universe.
Anyways, I’m super excited for Tue Foundation super cut that’s just Empire.
Cleon in the books was a random emperor who got shanked by a gardener he promoted into peter principle. Which was beautifully referenced in a s1 plotline.
My thoughts exactly before I gave up on it. It felt like all the good writers on the team had shuffled over to write the dynasty stuff, and the difference in quality when the show bounced between the dynasty and foundation stories was something of a whiplash.
Foundation is getting a pass because they’re being extremely clear on one thing - in fact the entire serias is predicated on it, which is in and of itself a solid book callback:
A single person can throw the whole damned thing into chaos
that aside, you can’t claim the series has “nothing to do with asimov” when it absolutely bloody does
Just pick a scene from The Hobbit movies and there’s your answer. Any scene.
Nononono, the singing dwarfes were absolutely true to the book. And Gandalph looking at Galadriel like a Schoolboy with a crush on his friends older Sister was definitely not in the books, but I loved it.
I was pretty hyped when the trailer had the dwarves singing in Bag End. Then the movie shit in my pants.
I was hyped for a 3 hour hobbit film. I noped out the second I learned it was a trilogy.
I could read the entire book in less time than the films. How are they managing it? Cba finding out.
You don’t remember in the book when Gandalf did a kick-flip 720 to a backside rail slide down the goblin king’s decapitated body?
I Am Legend. Just the whole thing.
Oh, I quite liked the film but didn’t know there was a book. What did they mess up?
In the book (short story?) the protagonist dies and the reason he is legend is that he was the last human and was like a boogeyman because of his hunting and killing them.
Going over the wikipedia article as a refresher and I totally forgot about how he (author Richard Matheson) had some cool biological explanations for the vampirism.
From Wikipedia:
Neville additionally discovers that exposing vampires to direct sunlight or inflicting wide oxygen-exposing wounds causes the bacteria to switch from being anaerobic symbionts to aerobic parasites, rapidly consuming their hosts when exposed to air and thus giving them the appearance of instantly liquefying. However, he discovers the bacteria also produce resilient “body glue” that instantaneously seals blunt or narrow wounds, explaining how the vampires are bulletproof. Lastly, he deduces now that there are in fact two differently reacting types of vampires: conscious ones who are living with a worsening infection and undead ones who have died but been partly reanimated by the bacteria.
Oh interesting. Does indeed sound different from the film. Might give it a read.
Stephen King - Dreamcatcher
In the book the character Duddits had the shining, yes that motherfucking shining.
In the movie they made him an undercover alien. Man what a let down.
Can I flip the script? Black Hawk Down was the most faithful adaptation of a book I’ve ever seen. As to the book, the author wanted to tell the story of the Battle of Mogadishu, faithfully. He had unprecedented, at the time, access to Defense Department files, interviewed everyone involved, strived for perfect accuracy.
When those guys are on that street corner, that’s what happened.
This is going to sound super nitpicky but even the first time I saw it, the modern body, ahistorical Aimpoints seen throughout the entire movie bothered me. It’s only because they are so unavoidably prominent and because the rest of the movie’s props are so well done that they stick out.
Aimpoints?
The red dots used on almost all of the Delta Force guns.
That style of red dot didn’t exist until a few years later. At the time it should have been the equally distinct looking “long tube” Aimpoints.
Again, I know it is super nitpicky, but they are so prominent and visible especially with those red lenses throughout the movie. They are only a few years wrong, but it’s like if a WW1 movie was full of Thompson submachineguns.
The BDH movie otherwise does a lot of great prop and costume details. Not flawless, but the other inaccuracies are much less noticeable.
