As a writer and a movie lover this is a very irritating thing to see to be honest. It’s troublesome for most movie fans that are excited to see their favorite books making the transition from the page to the big screen. The expectations of a book adaptation are so high that even the smallest difference seems to irk the diehard fans, though the more egregious “mistakes” that are made by the director are those that cut away from the source material and completely disregard what it does to the story. In other words, directors do their own thing and put their own spin on a story that’s loved and admired by so many and expect nothing to happen. In effect they kind of kill the interest that a lot of fans have in the story as a result. Those who don’t read the books might still be amazed and impressed, but it’s essentially a slap in the face to those that have followed the stories for years.
Here are some of the worst screen adaptations of your favorite stories.
5. The Dark Tower
Oh yes I did. The movie was faithful to a few concepts such as how awesome the gunslinger is and how reprehensible the man in black is. They even had the famous line “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” Apart from that, the movie felt like it was ripped up by a toddler and pieced back together with no real idea of what was supposed to happen or what was going on at all. The seven-book series by Stephen King deserved a LOT more.
4. The Hunger Games
A great many things went wrong with The Hunger Games in transition. Not only did the movie omit a large number of important scenes but one scene in particular, the mutated creatures that come rushing after the remaining tributes thanks to Seneca, are in the book creatures that have been spliced together from former tributes. Maybe there were some parts that were considered too dark for the movie.
3. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Peter Jackson took a LOT of liberties with this trilogy. For one, Arwen didn’t rescue Frodo in the book and her part was relatively small. Also, Frodo would have been about 50 by the time he was heading out on his adventure. The inaccuracies of this story vs. the movie were largely unnoticed thanks to the overwhelming popularity of the trilogy.
2. The Hobbit
Tauriel didn’t exist in Tolkien’s literature and Legolas never once showed up in The Hobbit. Apart from that, the barrel ride was quite calm in comparison without the need to fight their way down the river. Also, Smaug did not so much interact with the dwarves or Bilbo since he found their ponies and assumed where they had come from. The dwarves also never split up and reached the Lonely Mountain together.
1. The Running Man
Here’s an example of a movie that took little to nothing from the original story but still assumed the title. The original story wasn’t built up like a gladiator pit and didn’t feature a female companion or two others that were fellow prisoners. Also, the main character was a scrawny individual trying to raise money to pay for his daughter’ medicine. This isn’t just flying wide of the mark, it’s ignoring it completely.
The glaring differences between what the director wanted and what the fans wanted to see have been so easily noticed that there have been only a few times in which the inaccuracies didn’t matter. When the director goes so far off script as to make it an entirely different movie with bits and pieces thrown in for fun then it feels like a slight towards the fans.
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