Greetings, reader!
My friend Inari recently suggested this: a list of the worst book-to-film adaptations, and for next week, a list of the best ones. Here are some of the groundrules for how this double list works:
1. These are ranked based on how good they are as adaptations, and not as overall movies. Of course, this is often a gray area - being a good adaptation is about more than 100-percent plot loyalty, so next week's list of the best ones does feature some films where quite a lot has been changed - as long as the changes are well-reasoned and in the spirit of the book. Similarly, today's list has some instances where the film is actually very good overall, but still a poor adaptation.
2. It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: I've had to have read the book in order for the movie to qualify. There are many great films that I've seen that I know to be based on a book, and with many of them I've heard that they're loyal to the source material - but I can't be the judge of that unless the book is familiar to me.
3. Movies based on plays do generally qualify, especially if it's an older play so that they're clearly adapting the text, much like you'd do with a book adaptation, and not a whole stage production. Musicals are a gray area, but I ended up excluding them, because movies based on Broadway musicals etc. are never just adaptations of the text but also of the visual side of the stage production. Movies like 2012's Les Miserables, that are based on stage musicals that are based on books, were a grey area, but I ended up excluding them as well.
4. There are plenty of great TV shows based on books, but I decided to limit these lists to movies. Maybe I'll make a separate list of the worst and best book-to-television adaptations some day!
5. When a whole movie series is based on a book or a series of books, it can qualify as the whole series or as individual part depending on how my opinion of the adaptations fits these lists. Essentially, if the movie series is consistently good or bad as an adaptation, it will be counted as a whole for one of the lists, but if the series contains a film that is particularly well-adapted and one that is particularly ill-adapted, both individuals can qualify for their respective lists.
6. As is tradition with my lists, I attempted to look at these adaptations from every possible viewpoint, with each adaptation's specific ranking containing a sum of the good and bad parts. For example, the Hobbit trilogy won't be on either list, because there are elements that are so well-adapted that it didn't quite warrant a placement on today's list, but there are also elements so overkill that it didn't make it to next week's one either.
7. And finally, I limited these lists to adaptations that are at least somewhat conventional: for example, 10 Things I Hate About You is in many ways one of the coolest and most genius book adaptations out there, but it's so unconventional (because that's the point) that it's pretty impossible to compare to other, more conventional adaptations for the purposes of this list.
Without further ado, these are the worst book-to-movie adaptations I've seen!
Here are my honorable mentions: Romeo + Juliet (1996), Skavabölen Pojat (2009), Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010), Pet Sematary (2019), The Call of the Wild (2020).
10. Frankenstein (1931)
This one is interesting, because it's a damn good movie - but, inescapably, a poor adaptation. If you look back at #1 at the 'rules' of the list, Frankenstein is quite a perfect example - every once in a while, a filmmaker will make a movie adaptation, totally disregard several key elements of the book and thus create what should be a recipe for chaos - and somehow nail the end product regardless.
As a fan of horror cinema, I respect the film for being a groundbreaking work with a vibe of its own, but as an even bigger fan of Mary Shelley's iconic novel, I can't help but be a little pissed about how most of the characters, motifs and key events in the book are either nonexistent, heavily changed or squandered in their potential. It's a classic of horror cinema, but it's definitely not the loyal adaptation that Mary Shelley's masterpiece deserved.
9. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)
The Narnia films are interesting, because the first one (spoiler alert!) might be seen on next week's list, yet this instalment of the same series is here. As a whole, the Narnia films are semi-average as book-to-film adaptations: they get many things right, but there's always a little something missing. Not enough to make them bad, but certainly enough that they don't reach the sacred hall of rare-but-real cases where the movie adaptations stands tall right next to the source material. There's no way around it - C.S. Lewis' Narnia books are in a league of their own, and the films are clearly inferior.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is still a contender for next week's list, although it won't be in the very highest tiers: despite its flaws, it gets so many things right that it's an overwhelmingly good adaptation if not a great one. However, by The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the franchise had gone further and further into the Hollywood cliché of "okay, do we really care about anything other than making money here?". The change isn't drastic, as it can be still recognized to be the same franchise, but the quality of adaptation is inherently worse. The plot takes some wild-ass liberties from the book, and the not the kind that are worth defending: many of the book's creative and interesting plotlines are abandoned in lieu of telling a much more generic and mediocre fantasy story that the film's writers pulled out of their asses. Some of the book's good parts can be enjoyed in the movie as well...but not enough.
8. The Shining (1980)
Now this case here is much like Frankenstein, but even weirder. The Shining is probably my favorite horror movie of all time, yet I'm still adamant about it belonging in today's list. I could write an essay about this whole thing, but I'll try to make it short here.
Stephen King's The Shining is a masterpiece of horror literature. Stanley Kubrick's The Shining takes the characters, setting, some of the ideas and some of the plot points from the book while overlooking (pun intended) a vast majority of the themes and plot events, and just makes his own thing with it - and it became a very different sort of masterpiece. I love the film, yet I completely understand why King himself hated it - not only is it very different from the book, but it wildly disregards many of its core themes, moments of character development, deep takeaways, and even the conclusion. It's like if the hot dog had been invented by a guy who was trying to make a hamburger and really f**ked up, or if a football player accidentally hit the ball and scored a goal when they were trying to kick the referee in the face.
7. Gulliver's Travels (2010)
And here we have the more basic sort of bad adaptation. A classic children's book is adapted onto the big screen for a lazy, generic cash grab of a film starring Jack Black. For all intents and purposes, it's less a Gulliver's Travels movie and more a Jack Black comedy that uses the place and character names from Gulliver's Travels as the things happening around the Jack Black humor. The film is funny enough when viewed once, but the magic and whimsy of the book is most definitely missing.
6. Sherlock Holmes (2009) and Sherlock Holmes: a Game of Shadows (2011)
Yeah, I never cared for the Sherlock Holmes films starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law - not as overall cinema, but also not as adaptations. They're not the "filmmaker's own artistic vision gets in the way of being a loyal adaptation" genre of bad adaptations like The Shining, nor are they the "a good adaptation is attempted but the end result is cruddy and lazy" type like The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Rather, it's a very specific subgenre of bad adaptations that really gets my goat: ones where the filmmaker treats the source material as a mere vibe, an aesthetic that you can cash in on, while making a shallow cash grab of a film that wildly disregards the themes of the source material.
Nothing in these films suggests that Guy Ritchie was one bit passionate about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novels, and that's really the worst sin you can commit when adapting a book; that's why all the best adaptations are ones where the filmmaker's genuine passion for the source material can be felt. The atmosphere in these films is very "Hey, look, it's SHERLOCK HOLMES, a sexy intellectual property that we can make a movie about, look at us, it's a SHERLOCK HOLMES movie, he's a smart genius detective et cetera!", while completely missing the mark on what the Holmes books are supposed to say or feel like.
5. Dune (1984)
First of all, I love this movie - but, like, in the same way that I love the Cheesy Gordita Crunch from Taco Bell. It's a glorious mess. As much of a cult classic (emphasis on "cult") as David Lynch's Dune is, it cannot be argued that as an adaptation, it's a wild miss that doesn't amount to even a fragment of what Frank Herbert's masterpiece of a book deserved.
From the clunky dialogue to the zany editing choices, from the style being a clash between over-artistic vision and not-artistic-enough studio-driven mediocrity to the inexplicable casting choices, from the hysterical visuals to the Toto soundtrack - every little element guarantees that you will have fun when watching this film, but for all the wrong reasons. I'm still glad that Lynch's Dune exists, especially since it made Villeneuve's against-all-odds fantastic adaptation decades later into an even greater payoff (just wait and see how highly it ranks on next week's list of the best book-to-movie adaptations).
4. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010)
I have a complicated relationship with this one: as proved by its #1 placement on my blog post about my biggest guilty pleasure movies a few years ago, I can't help but love this film despite its many, many flaws. I completely understand why most people, and especially most people who had read the books, simply hate this movie. For whatever reason, something in the chaotic and cliché mess of an atmosphere really got to me, making the film into a personally nostalgic cult-classic with immense re-watch value for me.
That being said, I won't consider for one second that it would be a good or even okay adaptation.
The film plays fast-and-loose with the plot turns, characters, and whole vibe of the source material, making for an end product that goes differently and just feels different. So many key parts of Rick Riordan's fantastic book are totally absent, or then just changed to a point of no recognition. For me personally, this is actually quite a similar viewing experience to David Lynch's Dune - it's fun on some twisted level, but it's miles and miles away from being the adaptation that the book deserved.
3. Alice in Wonderland (2010)
This one infuriates me, because this bait-and-switch movie really has you in the first half. When getting into Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, the whimsical locations look much like they do in Lewis Carroll's book, as do the zany characters. With artistic set design and fantastic casting, Burton tricks you into believing that you're watching a good adaptation. And then some of the most frustrating bullshit in cinematic history happens.
One thing that really pisses me off is filmmakers who adapt a story without understanding what the goddamn point of the story was. That shows a lack of understanding, or even worse, a lack of respect for the work that they're adapting, which is pretty goddamn unforgivable especially when touching a particularly respected work. And with Alice in Wonderland, for me and tons of people like me, the very best thing about the book has always been the sheer randomness of the plot - it's a borderline revolutionary story because it challenged the classic Aristotlean plot structure followed by 99% of storytellers. There's no clear ramp-up or endgame or common thread - a bunch of random shit just sort of happens and then it ends. That has always been what made the book off-putting for certain people, but that's also what makes fans of the book (y'know, the people WHO YOU SHOULD BE MAKING ADAPTATIONS FOR, TIM) love it so dearly.
And that's where the 2010 film goes so very, very, painfully wrong. Instead of continuing in the fun, random-encounters-driven plot of the source material, Burton panders to the kind of people who never would've liked the book in the first place, and delivers a horribly contrived, cliché-riddled final act with some fucking high-fantasy bullshit about Alice being the goddamn chosen one so she has to fight a fucking dragon in single combat. The final half an hour feels like Tim Burton showing the middle finger to Lewis Carroll's legacy, making it clear how he was the wrong person to make this film and has no respect and/or understanding for the original work.
2. Eragon (2006)
Jesus, what a mess. Christopher Paolini's Eragon novel may not have been a masterpiece, but it's certainly a decent fantasy adventure with a vibe of its own. And then there's the movie adaptation, where they took the character and location names from the book and tried to do The Lord of the Rings with them for 1 hour and 44 minutes.
Every single change from the source material (and believe, there are many) is clearly done with the exact same motivation: "the LOTR trilogy made tons of money, so maybe if we try to blatantly copy everything from there instead of adapting the book we're supposed to be adapting, we'll also make money!" Fucking idiots.
1. Noah (2014)
The book being adapted here is many things: many have called it the Good Book, or even the "Greatest story ever told" (by people who clearly haven't read The Lord of the Rings), while others view it as a strange cult classic (again, emphasis on "cult"). I pride myself in having read the Bible from cover to cover, motivated by historical intrigue and morbid curiosity - and I can say without the shadow of a doubt that Darren Aronofsky's Noah is the worst book-to-movie adaptation I've ever seen.
No matter what your views on Christianity or organized religion in general are, it's hard to argue that the story of Noah is an intriguing one. It's also a short one, so much so that the perfect big-screen adaptation would have to be a TV special or a short film. In order to make that story into an over-2-hour-movie (WHICH NO ONE FUCKING ASKED FOR, DARREN), one would have to really use their imaginations to stretch it out. And when the writers in question don't exactly have the best imaginations, you end up with a ridiculous mess involving made-up characters, contrived action sequences and goddamn rock monsters (I pardon my language, but I promise that it's nothing compared to the profound blasphemy that is this movie).
There have been many interpretations of the Bible across human history, and if I were to rank the very worst ones, this joke of a movie would be a solid #3, only barely losing out to the Crusades and the U.S. right-wing evangelical movement.
Thank you for reading! Tune in next week for the better side of the same coin, as I rank the very best book-to-movie adaptations of all time.
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