(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

[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)