(no subject)

[jack]

Inspired by: http://www.livejournal.com/users/edith_the_hutt/

We need some sort of scale of "sticking to the original plot."

-10 = Starship Troopers, which I'm informed by 90% of the people who watched it that it directly opposes the main message of the book. (FTR: The other 10% disagree strongly in various ways, and may well be right, but I couldn't think of a better example.)

-9 to -1 = Other travesties, directors spectactularly missing the point, butcherings, tacked on happy endings, and things which are worse than nothing.

0 = Films that have the same name as a book but nothing else in common

1 to 9 = Good adaptions, eg. Jackson's LOTR, films better than the original book despite liberties, eg. 39 Steps, nice tries that somehow fell short, direct lifting, eg. Dune, which filmed everything in the book and then cut out half of it to make it fit.

10 = A perfect and good adaption. Any ideas?

12 = HHGTTG since Douglas Adams converted the thing himself, and actually added new good bits with every format, keeping exactly the same spirit, but more so :)

Do I need more axes[*] here?

[*] As in 'more than one axis' not 'more than one axe'. Isn't langauge grand?

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Where does Blade Runner fit in - jettisons most of the original plot (and the name...) but hangs onto ideas.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

This is where the axes come in. CHEEEARGE! AGH! Er, I mean axes.

I used to disapprove, but now I tend to approve. I think my maturity can be measured as a rotating vecotr on "preserves ideas" vs "preserves details" cartesian plane...

[senji.livejournal.com]

Starship Troopers: which of the two competing interpretations of the book are you refering to? (I haven't seen the film).

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I haven't read the book.

[saraphale.livejournal.com]

The film was a bit of a waste, because even if they wanted to mess around with the message and plot, there was just so much cool stuff in the book they could have used to make a mindless CGI-heavy action flick, and yet they ditched all of that, too. I wanted to see people being shot out of the starship in individual pods with credibility-straining amounts of firepower.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

BUT BUT BUT the film was Great! OK, so it had nothing to do with the book and it was great for totally different reasons, but it was hilarious. Um.

(Haven't read any of his books in, er, a while, but did read lots and lots about 7 or 8 years ago)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I picked it because people who've seen both often feel very strongly. The vibe I was referring to was that the book portrayed the society as a basically good thing, and the film portrayed the same sort of society as bad, simultaneously, as saraphale points out, doing a really crap job of being a good mindless action flick.

But I've seen people interpret it otherhow, and can't compare the film to the book.

[saraphale.livejournal.com]

That scale seems to go: Nothing in common, and really bad; nothing in common; not necessarily anything in common, but quite good; good and everything in common. It seems there are already overlapping axes of accuracy and quality.

For (A,Q), HHGTTG would be (10,10), Starship Troopers (for me, at least) would be (0,5). I can't think of any examples where the film was accurate but crap.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly.

I think what I was missing is that for a good book conveying the ideas is NORMALLY done best by conveying the details, but conveying the ideas is the important thing, so a really good director could do it without the other.

But I'm not sure how this translates into maths. I think there must be A=accuracy and X="x factor" with Quality being a function of both, such that for no X, Q goes 0 to 10 as A goes 0 to inf (so it's limited), but for given A, X going 0 to 10 takes Q from something to 10.

Umm, somthing with logs in, then.

[filecoreinuse.livejournal.com]

-12 - I, Robot?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I liked I, Robot.

I know we've had this argument before. I thought it followed the themes well, (indeed, exploring the themes Asimov was moving towards in his later works) and wasn't based on any story, just in Asimov's universe, so the accuracy scale is a bit undefined. But I remember everyone else had some good refutations to my points, though not what they were.

[filecoreinuse.livejournal.com]

But we are talking about the 'stick to original plot scale'.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Well, it scored three out of three: it used all three of the laws of robotics. What other plot did it miss? :0

[atreic.livejournal.com]

We've had this argument before! I'm on Rich's side...

[naath.livejournal.com]

They do Susan wrong.

I think that Minority report was worse - they totally flipped the ending.

Oh a and you need to separate out the good *film* part vs the good adaption...

[chess]

Minority Report was a good film with a good story. It just happened to have very little to do with this other story called Minority Report except the one concept of precognitives meaning murderers were stopped from murdering people.

I, Robot was a good film with a story I didn't like because I didn't agree with it. It was good and emotive and had no logical consistancy.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Pretend I pressed shift and typed :) not :0

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Can I nominate the film of Dune for making NO SENSE AT ALL? So much of it was cut that the rest of it was just pointless. I'm sure I really liked the book when I read it about 13 years ago, but I can't remember enough of it, and have seen the travesty that is the film too recently to remember it properly

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula should probably both be in the running - I'd nominate the former for doing exactly what the book says on the tin (but I felt Dracula didn't live up to the spirit of the book), and even having the bit where the monster meets the family in the woods! My only criticism is that it didn't dwell on the bit where the monster learns to speak, which is totally my favourite bit in the book.