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Film Disappointing movie adaptations

Dragon

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  • So sometimes when I finish a very cool novel I tend to think... I wonder what an adaptation of this would be like? Only to realize that it became a film and... it wasn't so pleasant.

    But I'll turn it to you - what are some disappointing movie adaptations from novels or any of the sort that you've watched?
     
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    I liked The Outsiders as a book, but as a movie it has little appeal to me.
     

    RadEmpoleon

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  • I read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children a bit before the movie was announced. I was surprised it was getting a movie, since it seemed like it was a relatively new series. I went to see it with a friend and we were both disappointed... the entire second half of the movie didn't even happen in the book. And of course there had to be an underwater scene where the main character's love interest was wearing white...
     
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  • As much as I love the Harry Potter movies... my answer is the Harry Potter movies. 😆 The books, especially starting with Goblet, are just too long and fleshed out to be made into 2 1/2 - 3 hour movies. I hope someday they make an animated series because I think you could do the books more justice this way and not have the actors age strangely. Cutting out extra Quidditch matches, Peeves entirely, and a lot of Woods lines, just to name a few things would be so nice to see in a TV show. I'm not really into anime but an anime adaptation could work as well, I think.
     
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    The Harry Potter movies were actually a bit disappointing yeah. They left out many details I'd rather kept in. Peeves!

    But the worst, is, of course, The Last Airbender. So sad that it was just a stiff weird performance, and greatly shortened too, compared to the epic show. I had high hopes for the live action tv show instead, but apparently the original writers have pulled out since they disagree on the spin the showmakers are giving it... 😭
     

    Dragon

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  • So the first thing that comes to mind is Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief. It was really cool, reading it as a novel but the movie felt... really cheesy and basically kinda ruined the plot by ignoring certain key points from the novel.

    Aaaand then there's Eragon. The plot was completely altered, and any magic of the world in the novels was deserted, leaving only the shell of what could have been an incredibly successful franchise remained.
     

    pkmin3033

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    Surprised nobody has mentioned The Hobbit trilogy yet. Jesus Christ, it's one book and it got THREE movies. Compared to one movie per book for The Lord of the Rings which, asides from some weird crossover of events between the latter two movies and dreadful treatment of Saruman and Eowyn, weren't too bad. But The Hobbit trilogy...that went on and on and ON. It was like watching an anime filler arc movie compilation. I can't remember the last time I've been so bored watching films. Also, that they called the final film "The Battle of the Five Armies" and not "There and Back Again" was just plain stupid. Sorry, but there it is.

    I'm going to echo sentiments about the Harry Potter series here too, particularly the last two - for all of the events that were actually in the book across those two films, you'd have a single two-hour film. And Michael Gambon is by far the worst actor they could have picked to replace Richard Harris as Dumbledore...the man clearly has no idea what the word "calmly" means. I will admit that part of this is bias because none of the characters looked or sounded the way I had imagined them to, and that's a hard thing to deal with as a kid, but they just missed out too many things from the books to be what I would call faithful adaptations.

    Ghibli's adaptation of Tales from Earthsea is about as far removed from the source material as it is possible to get, too. It was an OK movie, but the books were significantly better so I'd say it's disappointing that it kinda just flung them aside in that regard.

    Same goes for Disney's The Black Cauldron. As a kid that movie had the second most terrifying antagonist in an animated movie I'd seen - The Horned King being beaten by a mile by Watership Down's General Woundwort - but when I read the books that inspired it as a teenager, I was left very puzzled as to what the hell Disney were thinking.

    I've mentioned these elsewhere, but DC's animated adaptations of The Death of Superman and The Killing Joke left a lot to be desired. Both of them suffered from the same issue, too: padding. The Killing Joke got the worst of it, as they decided to add in a Batman/Batgirl romance subplot where she gets so frustrated with her inability to remain emotionally detached she decides to make love to her mentor on a rooftop - yes, really - but neither made the transition from printed media to animation as well as they should have. Especially since they somehow roped Mark Hamill in to reprise his role as the Joker. In one of the most iconic Batman comics of all time. It's a "how the fuck did you mess that up?!" sort of thing.

    Anyone seen The Golden Compass? If you have, I don't need to go into any further detail. If you haven't, be grateful that I'm going to spare you by not going into further detail.

    Also - remember it was a manga first, so this counts - anyone ever seen Dragonball Evolution? If you thought The Last Airbender was bad, let me tell you, things can get worse. Much worse.

    ...also I'm just going to throw this out there, but every MCU movie counts as this too, because there isn't a single original idea in the entire franchise.
     

    Sydian

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  • not that i like harry potter anymore but prisoner of azkaban was always my favorite book and least favorite of the movies. they fucked that one up bad. i know the director changed, this was the first hp film with the new actor for dumbledore (who i just. don't think works here at all), there's this weird??? jokey haha lightheartedness to the film that i just do not like. i didn't like it as a kid, i do not like it now. then quidditch was a huge deal in the book iirc and it doesn't come up at all in the movie and harry gets the firebolt at the very end??? also that ending shot........literally wtf what going on when they made that film. you can argue a case for the others i guess but this one sticks out to me the most. it's bad.
     
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    not that i like harry potter anymore but prisoner of azkaban was always my favorite book and least favorite of the movies. they fucked that one up bad. i know the director changed, this was the first hp film with the new actor for dumbledore (who i just. don't think works here at all), there's this weird??? jokey haha lightheartedness to the film that i just do not like. i didn't like it as a kid, i do not like it now. then quidditch was a huge deal in the book iirc and it doesn't come up at all in the movie and harry gets the firebolt at the very end??? also that ending shot........literally wtf what going on when they made that film. you can argue a case for the others i guess but this one sticks out to me the most. it's bad.
    omg i feel this, same! the lack of quidditch and the weird new look of Hogwarts was the biggest betrayal imo 😭
     
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