vaguely gestures at World War Z
WTF was that movie? Did they buy the rights to the title, but not the content?
Pretty much how that stuff happens.
yup
I had no experience of the original book and enjoyed the movie.
It’s a fun, enjoyable zombie movie, but the book was never going to transition well to being a movie. It’s a collection of fictional interviews with varied persons’ experiences surviving the zombie apocalypse (from a nuclear submarine captain to a blind man in the Japanese wilderness). Ideally it should be a mini-series with each episode focusing on a different character’s story as they are interviewed.
And the tenth expert bit!
Ruined by Zionist propaganda
The best part of that movie is Peter Capaldi being listed as “W.H.O. Doctor” in the credits.
Ah, I missed that. Clever.
It’s unclear if it was intentional or just a coincidence. World War Z was released two months before Capaldi was announced as The Doctor.
Can you imagine a mockumentary with photos, reenactments, Redeker interview, military helicopters recording a supply drop following the redeker plan and thankful survivors, a historian explaining the Pakistan India war, live head cam footage of the Battle of Yonkers as that soldier retells his experince. It ends with some Drill Instructor explaining the box formation and taking your time with shots. Cuts to a drone going up and showing survivors in formation and hundreds of zombies in a large circle around them.
Much like there has been no Dark Tower movie, there has also been no World War Z movie.
They don’t count.
I thought it was an entertaining movie, but I haven’t read the book. Ima go download it right now.
I really liked the audiobook form. The story is basically told through an interviewer asking people what they experienced and the audiobook has different voice actors for all the characters.
The audiobook was good except for the Chinese characters. For some insane reason they decided to have white voice actors do a bad Chinese accent instead of just hiring actual Chinese voice actors.
You’re right some were a miss. but the concept was cool.
The movie isn’t very interesting, but it’s not outright bad - unless you were hoping for a faithful adaptation. The book has a MUCH more interesting storyline.
I was hoping for a faithful adaptation instead of just another zombie flick.
As was I. It felt like such a generic, by the numbers zombie movie with only some rare nods to the title.
When they announced a movie with Brad Pitt, I knew it would be bad. The book reads like a multi épisode TV show without a main character (and it could be a great adaptation).
When I pirated the movie version… It was so bad I regretted wasting bandwidth for that
Loved the book. When I first watched the movie I hated it. as a movie by itself it’s ok, sort of grew on me. But then I thought the movie works if you treat it as a prequel
Oooo as someone who has seen the movie and never read the book, any sales pitch for me for the book?
The book is wonderfully written, and actually fairly insightful from a disaster preparedness and policy standpoint. It’s been a while since a read it so forgive me if the details aren’t exactly correct. Its written from the viewpoint of a journalist traveling the world post zombie apocalypse. He is collecting stories from survivors of various major events that happened during the zombie outbreak. Each chapter details a different event conveyed by a different witness, so it’s not a cohesive single plot story. More like working notes of someone preparing to write a history of a major global disaster. It highlights some of the mistakes made and lessons learned as events unfolded.
The audiobook is also quite good. It’s fully cast, so each section is voiced by a new actor who writes the letters in the collection.
Imagine the book as almost a Ken Burns style documentary made after the zombie war, going back and interviewing the people who were there and lived through it collecting their stories.
It’s been a while since I read it, but each chapter is a different person being interviewed telling their story, more or less in chronological order. The stories don’t really overlap directly with each other, but together they paint a great overall picture of the war from start to finish.
And it’s a good cross section of different people, soldiers, scientists, ordinary people, an astronaut who was stranded on the ISS for the duration of the war, etc.
I think everyone who read the book really wants it to be picked up as a mockumentary miniseries in that sort of style with “archival” footage with people being interviewed giving voiceovers and all the other usual documentary trappings.
And the Zombie Survival Guide is also a fantastic companion to it that is basically done as a, well, survival guide, that was distributed during the war, and is referenced once or twice throughout WWZ
IIRC: The movie was written long before they slapped the title on it.
That wouldn’t surprise me at all.
You already got great responses. I’ll add that World War Z is a direct ripoff of Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation. And I mean that in a good way.
I think they would have gotten away with that movie if it wasn’t for the ending. Like yeah they completely destroyed the source material, but at least it’s possible to have an interesting movie. Except like the last freaking third of the movie is just boring. Crushingly boring.
I should reread the book. It was hyped as a good book. It was a good book.
Then I went to see the movie. Came out of the cinema and muttered “well that was a bunch of unrelated nonsense”. Went home.
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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.
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.
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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.
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).
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.
Seek the truth, always.
They might not qualify as “crimes against mankind”, but they definitely felt like it.
Seek the truth, always.
As someone who didn’t read WoT, the tv series is… on average “okay” with some scenes being great.
Like idk I don’t “hate” it, but certain scenes felt kinda awkward, and I’m always like “wtf is going on”, I also had that with watching GoT, but that was only 40% of the time, with WoT, I feel the “wtf is going on” 75% of the time, not sure if it’s a adaptation thing or just the story thing.
I’ve been really liking Wheel of Time. I thought the books were really great world building but desperately needed some editing, and the TV provided some good editing. Sue me.
Seek the truth, always.
So glad it got cancelled. What Rafe did to the story was abysmal. Great casting, filming, and set work, but the writing was not great. I just hope a great animation shop can get the rights from Tor or whoever one day to do it justice.
That said, the Rhuidean episode was superb.
Seek the truth, always.
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.
The Dark Tower. Good movie in its own right, especially if you like Idris Elba.
First, they took 8 Stephen King books, some of which were like 2" thick, and decided to turn it into a 90-minute PG-13 film. A single film.
Second, because the racist element was so offensive (a Black woman taken out of the 1970s, who has personally experienced racism toward her, is taken to a foreign world, an alternate reality, where she basically is led by an old white man (modeled after Clint Eastwood) and naturally she feels a certain type of way about that) they decided they were going to change it up. Make her white, and him Black. Hence casting Idris Elba as a guy based on Clint Eastwood. Then they dropped her character entirely. I will argue that Elba made a hell of a Gunslinger, but the reason they cast him was because they wanted to turn the whole racism plot on its head. For no good reason. It was fine in the books (this would be The Drawing of the Three, and The Waste Lands, the second and third books).
But for all that, it was an entertaining action flick with a bunch of Stephen King references. I quite like it. As a reader of the books and a fan of Stephen King, I shouldn’t, but the movie itself was good.
Honestly that the movie exists at all is the worst change, though.
Idris Elba was an unexpected choice, but I was all for it. Unfortunately, you’re right about the rest of the film. SO much wasted potential.
I only read the first three or four books, but the movie didn’t include a single thing I remember from thee early books that I liked. No crab taking fingers, no giant robot bear, no talking train, or anything else. It seemed to me like they had some other script and slapped a Dark Tower veneer on it.
I realized there was trouble when the producers were being interviewed and stated they had a hard time finding an entry point to the universe and I was like “Bitch, FIRST LINE - ‘The man in black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed.’”
It’s always a treat realizing that you like a piece of fiction much more than the director/producer making an adaptation of it. I’m glad I didn’t bother with that film.
They somehow thought Jake was the star? 🤔
Here’s hoping the next adaptation is better.
Elba was absolutely wrong as Roland but would have kicked 9 kinds of ass as Cort. :(
Idris Elba was the only good thing about that movie.
McConaughy was fucking perfect for Walter. The casting was great. Its a shame they didn’t get to make a dark tower movie, just a dark tower themed move.
LOL 19 GET IT??? There’s your fan service and now back to our regularly scheduled mediocre tripe
No, no, Dennis Haysbert was good in it as the father Roland never forgot the face of, though I don’t remember his father being in the books. Seeing President Palmer teach Luther the gunslinger creed was awesome to me.
I love the Dark Tower series and hadn’t seen the movie yet. They dropped Susannah out ENTIRELY? Seriously???
Yes, her and Eddie both (and Oy). His only companion is Jake.
I agree though with the commenter to which you replied. Just go in knowing it is going to hurt to watch, but in a genuinely entertaining way.
Yeah I ain’t watching that. They left out like at least a third of what made the books good IMO. Sounds like a waste of time.
A third? It’s one movie. They left out probably 9/10ths or more of all the awesome stuff in the series… but it was still neat in its own way.
No Eddie either. The movie is from Jake’s perspective.
Please don’t fuck up project hail mary… please don’t fuck up project hail mary…
that book was practically written for tv, I think it will probably go well enough
The trailer shows Stratt doing karaoke soo… adjust your expectations accordingly. :)
Shit was written to be a movie like all that guy’s books.
Honestly, I’m not even going to see it. The book was so insanely good that I cannot entertain the possibility of a movie straying even one millimeter from the source material.
I don’t know if the same people are involved in this one, but I love the movie version of the Martian - I think it’s a very faithful adaptation, with acceptable changes for the medium. Slightly more grandiose and optimistic ending, possibly to be palatable to a wide audience, but nothing that ruined the experience.
If it’s even close to that balance of good adaptation and good movie, it will absolutely be worth watching.
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.
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.
We demand our Tom Bombadil!
The Hobbit. Like, all of it
EVERY SINGLE CHOICE made in Ready Player One. What a disappointment.
What a disappointment.
That’s my thought on both the book and the movie. Perhaps its not the book’s fault. There was so much hype surrounding it when it came out I thought it must be awesome. Instead I found the same simply story I’d read in a dozen other books, except this one drowning in a sea of 80s and 90s pop culture references. If it was a simply summer read without the hype I likely would have liked it for what it was.
I had similar disappointment when I finally read Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”. I read that same type of story a dozen times in other much better books but everyone was saying it was a groundbreaking book.
Regarding The Da Vinci Code, I had already read a conspiracy “non-fiction” book called The Templar Revelation that posited the idea of Jesus having living descendants when the Dan Brown novel came out, and I thought “well I’ve already read that, haven’t I?”
I read it after reading The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, which was a much more compelling fiction. I also read Focault’s Pendulum around the same time, and what a ride that was.
I had heard nothing about it before it came out. I had a friend who was just like “you’ll like this book” so I read it. It was a simple story, but I enjoyed it. The movie, not so much.
The people saying Davinci Code (2003) was groundbreaking never read “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” from 1982:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holy_Blood_and_the_Holy_Grail
Or the Preacher comics from 1995-2000:
I found the book kind of insufferable, so I never bothered with the movie. Every ‘puzzle’ was solved by the protagonist saying something like ‘fortunately, I’d memorised the entire script of War Games’ or something. I started to wonder how many lifetimes it’d take to actually learn and memorise all that stuff.
I actually liked it. The book was good too. I wasn’t completely disaffected. Agree to disagree.
A few of the visuals in the movie were stunning to me!
I also didn’t mind it in either medium. It’s not like it’s a novel of a generation. Fun silly book, fun silly movie
On the other hand, it could be called a novel of a generation because the entire thing was basically built on millennial nostalgia. It has no appeal at all for anyone who doesn’t get all of the pop culture references of the 80’s and 90’s.
Most of David Lynch’s Dune.
From what I remember, 1984’s Dune is basically the book condensed down into the highlights. If you’ve read the book, fine but otherwise, it must be quite confusing.
1984 Dune is a very mixed bag despite the pedigree of the folks making it
It’s still my favorite version. Though, I still wonder if Jowarsky’s Dune would have been better.
Have you watched the Sci-fi channel miniseries? I think that one (especially since it also has Messiah and Children) is the best. Not the best graphics, or filming, or acting, but the best as a whole.
James McAvoy as Leto II when he was an unknown actor and an incredible soundtrack are both good reasons to watch the miniseries, particularly the second one.
Jodorowsky you mean?
Yeah. That guy.
Based on his comics I’m going to say it would be a classic, but mostly in a “can’t believe they filmed that” sense.
cough weirding modules cough
“Fine” might be overselling it a little bit.
I would say its ‘comprehensible’ if you’ve read the book, but its still not great.
Still better than whatever garbage Jodorowsky was going to put out. That’s right, I said it.
Dude didn’t even read Dune, and bragged about it. Could have made an awesome sci-fi film, but instead had to co-opt a classic novel
Jodorowsky brags about not knowing how to make movies and still makes them. He does brings about interesting imagery but the intentionally naive cinematographic style gets stale and boring pretty quickly.
I’d say Denis’ is waaaaaaay worse, they ruined Chani and added some nonsense subplot in part two as well… it’s just prettier. 😤
I loved Arrival though, and I do feel like most disruptive changes in his Dunes were studio notes because it would be more relatable to “modern audiences”.
Denis’s is great.
How do you feel that they ruined Chani?
If anything he made Chani less of rug to be walked all over and gave her a personality outside of “wife to the messiah”. If you were going to bitch about anyone in the Dune movies I’d think it’d be The Lady Jessica because she is an entirely different character in the movies. I don’t think that’s a criticism because she serves the plot well, but that one is a more grounded argument
Lady Jessica’s character in the new films pissed me off. She was one of my favorite characters in the books, and one of the first examples of a powerful, nuanced woman I’d read in my life.
She’s supposed to have so much self control she can literally alter poison with her body, decide the sex of her own baby and hypnotize people with her tone of voice, and yet she’s freaking out and crying in the movie. She went from a brilliant woman trying to survive and save her son to an over-emotional and manipulative dark mother trope.
She’s no “rug”, but I can see why she “needed” to be changed in a ‘modern’ adaptation with a big budget and larger financial expectations.
Zendaya just plays an immature, “rebel without a cause” New Yorker instead of Chani, a strong and intelligent Fremen young lady who falls in love with and follows her Muad’dib, not just because of his prophetic abilities but also/mostly because of his character. But, in the current Western cultural understanding, that just wouldn’t fly as strong means selfish and reactive and intelligent means rebellious and lippy. She’s awed by Paul, as would be anyone surrounding him (to Paul’s chagrin when it changes those around him to more “robotic” beings as it does with Stilgar), but also understands him deeply and is his emotional pillar, while Paul’s the pillar to his entire community. They just wanted a “girl boss” and that’s what we had in Denis’ Dunes. 😔
I get where you’re coming from, and I do feel like Chani really suffered from the adaptation, but I felt like it was more due to screentime and not having internal thoughts than changes made. I felt her being skeptical at the beginning was both a great change to her character (it feels like she falls in love with the Muad’dib Paul becomes, not the Atreides he was) and a really good way to carry themes of anti-messianism into the movie where the book relied on philosophical asides. It also provides a natural foil to Stilgar’s zeal and Jessica’s manipulation, presenting Chani as more aligned with Paul himself.
It was unnecessary and disruptive (and what was that “Chani is a leader of an internal rebellion in the Fremen” all about in Dune Part 2?!), Chani served her purpose in Dune like pretty much other characters did besides the protagonists Paul and Leto II, who simply take more of the stage because, as prophetic beings infused with semi-omniscient knowledge, have more depth to them. The rest are mostly just people, and we all know people, but Dune was never about the characters… and maybe that’s why it cannot be adapted for the masses. I mean, even events like a jihad that kills billions and the death of Paul’s first child (was this even in the movie?! But sludge covered Baron Harkonnen was front and center, lol, without even mentioning his pedophilia!) are just brushed off, written in some sentences tops. The meat and potatoes of Dune are the philosophical explorations, in particular “how would anyone handle excess knowledge?”, and as such Chani played her role as much as Leto and Jessica did, you change the characters and you just muddle something clear. I didn’t even mind when they genderswapped Paul’s short-lived mentor in Arrakis, cause it really doesn’t matter much, but they replaced Chani with just Zendaya. They also put way more action scenes in it but didn’t show the very important dinner scene, didn’t properly explain why it was important to have a “male Bene Gesserit” (again, modern sensibilities), didn’t properly explain Paul’s visions and left it very inconsistent/inconclusive, but these long (beautiful, certainly) shots with empty silences were there, because that’s what matters in fricking DUNE…
For those who don’t care about the depth of Dune and the points Herbert tried to make, the movies are lovely. And for the ones who do, we’ll always have the books, so whatever, I guess. But I got my COVID shots quickly just to watch Dune Part One and I’m still a little bit salty, lol, that’s all.
Calling Zendaya’s Chani a girl boss New Yorker seems incredibly misogynistic to me.
I don’t understand what “woman hating subtext” you read from my comment but, if you read the books, it will just seem appropriate.
I’ve read all of them after Foundation it’s my favorite science fiction series.
You’re feigning ignorance then if you actually recall the books. Zendaya’s/Denis’ Chani and Herbert’s Chani are like night and day. And, again, what exactly was ‘misogynistic’ about my comment? And do I have to start copypasting passages of Dune and Messiah and make a comparative analysis with Denis’ Dune? It’s past midnight over here, my guy.
I think it can still recover, but I felt the same way after leaving the theater for part 2. I was confused why they decided to change it that much. It’s supposed to make her seem intelligent and independent or something, but honestly it just make her seem nieve. They discuss Paul needing to do something like this, and she knows his mother’s position was the same, but was still his father’s only love.
It’s bad enough that they cut out an entire portion of their lives where they have a son together, and lose that son to the Harkonnen. Then they do what they did at the end and it’s just wrong.
It’s definitely the easiest to watch though, and I don’t know that it’s less accurate than 1984’s (Paul calls in rain after he wins the battle?). The miniseries is most accurate though.
Shortenning the timeframe of the first book from a few years to a few months definitely had some weird effects, like Paul and Chani’s relationship not being as solid yet. When I watched Part 2 the first time I kept wondering where they were going to put the timeskip before I realized they just weren’t going to have one.
Jurassic Park. The original was a horror/thriller that would have had to be unrated if they made it literally from the book. Instead, we got a PG-13 family film that really did not live up to the book.
In fact, it’s the first time that I read the book before seeing the movie, and I learned to never ever do that again.
to 4yo me, JP was a horror film. I mean, the kitchen sequence alone. And the run underground in the dark in search of the fuses, only to find a severed arm.
I’d say that’s more thriller than horror.
For example, in the book, that fuse search ends in something far more horrifying than just Arnold’s dismembered arm. If I remember correctly, they discover him in pieces. All of them, but all over the place. Not just his arm. I think one of the kids pukes.
The whole book seems like Michael Creighton really tapped his imagination for how many ways wild dinosaurs could absolutely and utterly eviscerate a person.
Nice ! I should really read it. I consider JP my favourite film
Then you’ll enjoy the book more. Probably.
I’m not sure I can say the same thing for the lost world, as that book was written specifically so it could be turned into a sequel for Jurassic Park the film. It’s still very good, but not nearly as good as the first book.
Funny thing though, Jurassic Park is STILL wildly successful, and if it had followed the book, most people would have never heard of it today.
I don’t see why it wouldn’t have been as successful
From what I heard the book had a lot more deep science and chaos theory, but I never read it. If true, nobody’s taking their kids to that.
I read it 3 times. When I was like 12. Chaos theory and science were certainly aspects; aspects of an exciting, edge of your seat, smart, well-plotted thriller, with engaging and relatable characters. It wasn’t a kids book, and doesn’t need to be a kids movie. This may shock you, but movies don’t have to be for kids in order to be successful.
This may shock you, but movies don’t have to be for kids in order to be successful.
I’m not shocked, because I never claimed this point at all, but I appreciate your attempt at insulting me for no reason.
The formula that is Jurassic Park is complicated and has many variables. I’m sure the movie you would have preferred to get would have been great, but it wouldn’t be the universally recognized franchise it is today.
It would’ve been a much better movie though
Honestly? Gotta disagree. It’s been a long time since I’ve read the book but I remember being disappointed by it after seeing the movie. Maybe I’ll give it a reread and see if my opinion’s changed. ETA: fuck all the movie sequels though, no one needed that shit.
I have no idea what would’ve happened to me if I had done it in that order, but, unfortunately, for me, I read the book 1st, and based my expectations for the movie around that, rather than the other way around.
So, I’m not trying to discount your experience, I just don’t think it’s the same thing because of the order. Who knows? If I’d’ve seen the movie first, I might agree with you.
The worst part of all these stupid spin off movies (besides how atrocious I’m assuming they are) is that they significantly reduce the likelihood we will ever get a movie that is faithful to the book.
I think since the Jurassic World series started, all of the reboots have mostly been “remember this” from the first movie, and none could really be anything more than that. Every one has to include a scene that’s a homage to the original. Honestly feels like the franchise needs to have a genre switch up to force it to be something original.
Okay, okay, hear me out. What if we, and stay with me on this, mix the DNA of two
monstersdinosaurs together? Crazy right?Ctr-c
Ctr-v four times
Print
No-one saw it coming. Four. More. Times.
I mildly enjoyed that the message of Jurassic World was “This park (movie) is a soulless project that shouldn’t exist and only props itself up on increasingly mindless spectacle.”
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?
Personally, I’m still irritated at the end of Hannibal (the 2001 movie). Spoilers for the end of the film and book ahead:
In the book, Clarice Starling has gone as far as she can in her FBI career. She became famous for solving big cases, moved up the corporate ladder, but that glass ceiling kept her from advancing. Too many misogynistic “good ol’ boys” at the top, who not only prevent her from excelling in her career, but take every tiny mistake and blow it up into a potentially career-ending scenario.
Enter Hannibal Lecter; the suave and highly intelligent cannibal serial killer. He’s outraged that Clarice’s coworkers and bosses are actively objectifying her and ruining her career.
Long story short, at the end of the book, Hannibal rescues Clarice and gives her misogynistic boss an impromptu (and tasty!) lobotomy. Clarice ends up running away with Hannibal, because she realized he’s the only person who respects her as an intelligent human being and not a piece of ass.
The movie chose to keep her loyal to the FBI and combative against Hannibal, even though the FBI actively tried to destroy her life. Hannibal escapes alone and the film just kind of ends. It was a complete non-ending.
The whole point of Silence of the Lambs and its sequel, Hannibal, was that Clarice was a woman trying to survive in a “man’s job,” yet proved she could belong - and excel - through her own skill and intellect. Silence of the Lambs did a pretty good job showing that on the big screen, but Hannibal didn’t get the point of the story and decided the hero shouldn’t end up with a cannibal, period. They treated him as more of an irredeemable monster.
It’s kind of the “man vs. bear” meme, except replace the bear with a cannibal serial killer, and the girl still chose the cannibal as the safer choice to her co-workers.
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If you want to read the books, it’s 4 novels: Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, and Hannibal Rising.
You can skip that fourth book if you want. It’s a prequel story that shows how Hannibal grew up and what turned him to cannibalism. The author (Thomas Harris) wanted to keep him a mysterious character, but Hannibal was so popular, people kept demanding to know his backstory and Harris knew that if he didn’t tell the story, someone else would. So he begrudgingly wrote an origin story.
You can tell he didn’t want to write it. The writing style is completely different than his other books. It’s very direct, like he’s just dictating information instead of weaving a tale.
Red Dragon follows Hannibal in prison and the detective who caught him, using Hannibal’s intellect to help catch a psychotic killer on the loose.
Silence of the Lambs is basically the same story as Red Dragon, except replace the brilliant veteran detective with an amateur FBI trainee, whom Hannibal takes an interest in.
Hannibal is a direct sequel to Silence of the Lambs, showing the FBI trainee’s exceptional career and eventual downfall, thanks to the patriarchy.
The Hannibal quadrilogy is one of my favorite book series. I’m sad that the movie version of Hannibal didn’t understand the point the books were telling. And the Hannibal Rising movie was a terrible B-movie plot about a young psychotic kid getting a taste for murder. Didn’t really feel like a Hannibal movie at all.
I haven’t seen the Hannibal TV series, although I hear it’s pretty good. But it’s an original story, so may not be very loyal to the book series.
I’d argue he didn’t even want to write Hannibal… “Oh, you want another Lecter book? Here’s another f-ing Lecter book!”
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.
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.
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.
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
