Five Worst Book to Film Adaptations

Last week, I discussed some of my favorite film adaptations. Today, I'm going to discuss the five worst adaptations I've seen. Some of these are bad altogether in my opinion, while others are good movies but bad adaptations of the books they're based on. In order to be fair, I'm limiting the list to books I've actually read and the subsequent film that was made adapting it that I've seen. 

I asked people on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook for their feedback, and there were a few honorable mentions: The Shining, the 1984 adaptation of Dune, The Magicians and assorted Harry Potter films after Prisoner of Azkaban.

With the honorable mentions out of the way, here's my list of the five worst book-to-film adaptations:



5)The Hobbit

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love the book The Hobbit and I love the The Hobbit films. However, as an adaptation of The Hobbit, the films aren’t great. The book itself is a very short story and there is no reason why a book that’s under 300 pages needed to be adapted into three 3-hour-long films. A trilogy made sense for Lord of the Rings, it didn’t make sense here. Padding the runtime led to introducing unnecessary subplots and dragging things out longer than they needed to be.



4) The Giver

I really can’t explain why happened here. I think this movie was only made because YA dystopias were so popular. Now, The Giver is a classic book and an adaptation done right could’ve been great, but that wasn’t allowed to happen here. instead of focusing on the Community and its dystopian elements, the film shuffled those ideas off to the side and instead went for set pieces and action sequences. A lot of the “magic” of the story was lost in translation and the film is worse for it. This is a story with a conflicted protagonist and a layered issue at its core, but none of that appears in the film.



3)My Sister’s Keeper

My Sister’s Keeper makes this list for one reason and one reason alone: they changed the ending. Unlike some films where the book ending doesn’t make sense for the way the film is telling the story (i.e. The Shining), it wasn’t a case of the book ending being a problem. One of the major themes of the novel is how fragile life is and the ending cements that. In the film’s case, changing the ending makes it much less poignant and reduces it to just another chick flick, made to make you cry.



2) Percy Jackson and the Olympians

A lot of the magic of this story was lost in adapting it. Some of it was due to unnecessary changes, like ages and the way the rules in this world work. Some might be due to having not enough runtime or some form of studio interference. The story has no depth. The characters aren’t 1/5 as interesting as they are in the books and after rewatching the film, it feels like no one seemed to care very much. It feels hollow, like the studio using the popularity of the series as an easy cash grab and not caring about how well they managed to adapt the story.



1) Eragon

This is the best (worst?) example of why studios shouldn’t adapt novels if they aren’t going to put the effort in to do it properly. This movie could’ve been Lord of the Rings, but for a younger audience. It could’ve spawned a franchise in the same way that Harry Potter and The Hunger Games did, but in order to do that, the film would need to actually be good. The film has the basic plot outline of the novel- a boy finds a dragon egg and goes on an adventure- but strips away everything else that made the story unique or even slightly interesting. There’s no emotion, no wonder and no depth. I loved this series, so I was excited when this film came out. This movie was a huge disappointment and to date, Eragon is the only film where I walked out of the movie theater halfway through. (I watched it on TV months later, just to be sure I didn’t miss some significant tonal shift or improvement. I didn’t.)

I don't blame the actors or the authors here. Some stories are naturally easier to adapt than others. The problem is that most of the movies I've listed failed to capture the magic and depth of the books they were based on. Or they created the right world, but missed the theme or purpose of the story. The book is always better, but if a film makes me stop liking the series its based on, because of how badly the adaptation was handled, I get really upset.

Those were my least favorite book-to-film adaptations. What are some of yours?

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Blogtober Day 23: Ghosts

Unlike witches, ghosts don't serve many purposes in fiction. They fall into one of two categories. Ghosts are either evil and responsible for the misfortunes befalling the protagonists. Or, they're victims and the only way they can be free and "move on" is for the protagonists to learn what happened to them and either right a specific wrong or let the world know their story. Today, let's talk about the common plots and storylines that ghosts tend to have.

Get Out of My House!

This one is pretty straight forward. Everyone's seen or at least knows about this one. The ghost just wants to be left alone. He or she died in the house the main characters just moved into, disturbing it's rest. The story goes as follows: the ghost tries to make the new inhabitants leave, they don't succeed, the protagonists call a priest, a paranormal investigator or some other "expert" to make the ghosts leave. The ghost is usually defeated by said expert, but there's enough leeway to justify a sequel.

Evil, Evil, Evil

This ghost doesn't want to be left alone. It wants to cause mayhem. These are the ghosts that either draw people into the place that they haunt. Sometimes, it's to trap more people in the building, and create more ghosts. Other times, getting someone to enter the creepy, abandoned house might allow them to possess living, so they can be an even bigger menace.  Sometimes, they were evil in life, and they're not going to let something as trivial as dying stop them. Other times, they died so traumatically that they become vengeful spirits and need to kill. They were good once, but now, they've been twisted into something else.

"Tell The World"

These ghosts can't move on to the afterlife. Maybe they died violently and can't work through the trauma of that. Maybe they've got unfinished business they need to complete. Maybe the only way they can move on is for the truth of their death to come to light. The movie The Sixth Sense is based on this premise, although we don't know how central it is to the plot at first. In one of the later sequels/spin-offs of The Ring it's implied that Samara created the deadly tape so that her story can be shared, but that was later retconned. This category is where a lot of films featuring ghosts that aren't horror fit. Like Ghost or pretty much every kids movie with ghosts.

What's your opinion about ghosts in media?

Blogtober Day 10: Characters with bad luck

Ever notice how often luck comes into play in stories? It's rarely ever commented upon, but in traditional literature, films and television, the protagonist usually has good luck. They reached their destination, or complete their journey relatively unscathed. They usually end up finding a mysterious stranger with all of the answers at the right time, or in the case of TV or film, they find a helpful newspaper or turn in the TV and see a news report related to the exact thing they're after. Some characters have all of the luck.

Others do not and they're on this list. Aside from Halloween, the most superstitions seem to revolve around Friday the 13th. Since this year, October 13th isn't a Friday, I've decided to discuss unlucky characters today instead.




Odysseus from The Odyssey

Odysseus is known for two things. One is that he came up with the idea of the Trojan Horse. The second, and more well-known, achievement of his was that it took him an obscenely long time to return home after the Trojan War. The Trojan War ended and it took him 10 years to get home. The man suffered way more crap than anyone could've or should've been forced to endure. He dealt with cyclopses, giants, witches, siren, and multiple shipwrecks, just to name a few obstacles. Yes, he brought some of that on himself by angering Poseidon,  but he still had to go through way more trials and tribulations than was necessary. I'm pretty sure Odysseus earns the gold medal for "Most Unlucky Protagonist"



Sansa Stark, A Song of Ice and Fire

I could put any of the Starks on this list and it would fit, but I feel like Sansa deserves the title more than the others. From the beginning of A Song of Ice and Fire, it seems like the universe has it out for the Starks, but it seems to hate Sansa the most. Her father is killed, her family is broken apart, she's held captive by her father's killers. The rest of her family is missing, dies or is reported to have died. She's abused by her fiance, before getting cast aside and betrothed to a series of men, each worse than the last. Sansa has to deal with way too much, and all because of a mistake she made as a child and the machinations of others.



Winston, Nineteen Eighty-four

Winston lives in a dystopia, and he seems to be aware of it. Yet, despite his family all disappearing, having thoughts counter to what the Party tells him is true, and living in an actual dystopia, he's surprisingly optimistic. He believes one day, the Party and Big Brother will be overthrown and something better will replace it. And in return for hoping there will be a better world, Winston is tortured, forced to betray his lover and then released, knowing soon, the Party will kill him.



Primrose Everdeen, The Hunger Games

I know Katniss seems like a more likely choice, but hear me out. Prim's name gets called at the Reaping, and Katniss volunteers. Some would say that makes Prim lucky, but now she needs to worry about her sister possibly dying in her place. Then, her sister becomes a symbol for the revolution, leading to an attack on, and the destruction of, District 12 which means Prim is forced out of the only home she's ever known. Thrust into the rebellion without much of a choice, Prim becomes a nurse and while helping the injured during the final assault on the Capitol, she's killed in an explosion. Katniss had some bad luck, but she played more of an active part in her fate than Prim did.



The Baudelaire Children, A Series of Unfortunate Events

Violet, Klaus and Sunny go from one terrible situation to another, chased all the while by Count Olaf, in the series. Their parents die in a fire, they are sent to live with Olaf, but even after they get away from him, he continues to pursue them. From one bad living situation to another, these kids can't seem to catch a break.



Arthur Dent, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Arthur Dent just wanted to prevent his house from getting bulldozed. Instead, the entire planet Earth gets destroyed, leaving him as one of the last humans in the universe. He then spends several years flying around the universe, never fully understanding what's going on or why his planet was destroyed. Other characters I mention had bad luck, but they didn't lose their whole planet in the process.