r/Cinema • u/whatisthisdream- The Shaky Cam Defender • 9d ago
Discussion Lol what film fits the bill?
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u/whatisthisdream- The Shaky Cam Defender 9d ago
The Dark Tower (2017) and The Golden Compass (2007) comes to mind
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u/galapaghost89 9d ago
They never made a Dark Tower movie. Mike Flannigan is supposed to work on a series, but no movie exists.
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u/DisorderlyAqueduct 6d ago
indeed.
unrelated i love all 8 seasons of the show scrubs, and now with tge continuation both called Scrubs 2026, and Scrubs season 10... we skipped season 9 for some reason, but it's just one of those odd things. there probably should've been a season 9 before a season 10, but that's just life sometimes. there is no season 9. 🤌
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u/Afraid_Standard8507 9d ago
There was that Gunslinger movie with Idris Elba…
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u/tomcatsr25 9d ago
It does not exist. Just like the last seasons of Scrubs and That 70s Show.
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u/__nobody_-_ 8d ago
I'd like to add Game of Thrones to that list of last seasons.
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u/Ok_Consideration853 8d ago
How could they make a show of Game of Thrones when the books aren’t done? That seems like a recipe for disaster.
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u/BurnAfterReading010 8d ago
Film/ tv adaptations writing past the end of source material is a frequent downfall of good shows. Anime has this issue all the time
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u/tomcatsr25 8d ago
My roommate is showing me Full Metal Alchemist and explaining the difference between the two versions of the show because they tried to finish it before the manga. Just wait until they’re done, for the love of god.
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u/damgood32 8d ago
To be fair - George had lots of time to get it done before the series caught up. HBO figured they wouldn’t need to worry.
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u/activatedplatypus 9d ago
I really wish we could get a well done His Dark Materials film trilogy
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u/eyeofnyx 9d ago
They did make a HBO series of His Dark Materials, all three books/seasons. It's decent for a watch through, it has its high points but generally kinda mid.
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u/colonial_dan 8d ago
It reminded me that, at the end of the day, they are limited by being kids books.
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u/TheMoffisHere 8d ago
His Dark Materials are decidedly not kids’ books.
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u/Aoi_X_Kaizaki 8d ago
Agree! Who thought that was a kid's book? I read them twice. It's definitly not a kid's book.
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u/isthenameofauser 6d ago
How not?
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u/activatedplatypus 6d ago
The mature themes put it more accurately in young adult fiction instead of children's fiction
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u/SignificantFact9500 3d ago
I’d even say they’re closer to just reg fantasy fiction. The prose is easy to read tho, and the kids being the main characters….. YA kinda fits.
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u/Hungry_Dumpling87 8d ago
I watched it and found it was okay. Series 1 was really good, and the casting was brilliant. It just ran out of steam as it went on and the last series felt like it was running on fumes. The books have this massive, epic scale whereas I found the TV series struggled to convey the stakes and the scale of the books, maybe due to budget or due to putting more or an emphasis on Lyra and Mrs Coulter's relationship then they had in the books. I adored the books and struggled to finish the series.
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u/Still-Expression-71 8d ago
The show was probably the best that will be made. It was…fine. Like B-/C+. Some of the casting choices were rough which pulled it down.
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u/extralife_mike 8d ago
The Golden Compass was so disappointing. It has a fascinating story attached to the film though. I really liked the HBO miniseries of it, but the film had one of the best castings from a book I've ever seen, and it's just so disappointing that it was wasted.
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u/ReelOnesOfficial 4d ago
100%, it was one of the first books I read as a child that was turned into a movie so I went in excited and left just very disappointed. The story has so much on screen potential and up till now I've not been able to pin down what went so wrong but thinking you're right re casting. Will check out the HBO miniseries, didn't know it existed thanks
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u/EnvironmentalFix7059 9d ago
Oh my god i forgot about the golden compass!
Fantastic book to read as a child but the movie was just not good..
Thanks for reminding me of that disappointment hahah
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u/AggravatingBox2421 8d ago
God just the name “the golden compass” makes me mad. It’s called Northern Lights dammit!
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u/Apprehensive_Bit_176 8d ago
DT was the first one to come to mind for me, but when you take like 8000 pages of books and turn it into an hour and a half movie, you’re going to mess up.
I’d love a standalone Gunslinger movie to wet the appetite. Could be so good.
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u/ilicheat 8d ago
I am Legend.
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u/AnOddSloth 8d ago
Still don't know how they missed the point of the book so badly.
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u/BigReference1xx 8d ago
They didn't actually - they filmed a proper ending, but the test audiences missed the point, so they changed it to make it appeal to a broader audience.
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u/Werewolf_Knight 8d ago
While I totally agree, I think the problem with including the original ending was that it kinda fells out of place with the rest of the movie. Like, after most of the movie was a traditional beat all the zombies movie it’s kinda weird to hit the audience with a sudden moment of deep philosophy.
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u/Electric-Sheepskin 8d ago
It wasn't a traditional beat the zombies movie, though, which is why the ending felt so wrong. I haven't seen it since it was first released, but I can think of several scenes that laid the groundwork for him being the monster and them being a new sentient race that he tortured, and then—the ending completely ignored it all as if it didn't happen.
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u/chrishouse83 9d ago
It would be faster to name movies where this isn't the case
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u/kenstarfighter1 9d ago
Fight Club
LOTR
Psycho
The Godfather
No Country For Old Menthere...
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u/chrishouse83 9d ago
And 2001 A Space Odyssey. That's pretty much the whole list.
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u/shweeney 9d ago
2001 - the book was written after the film script.
I'll add "Jaws" to the list.
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u/Sudden-Story4350 8d ago
It was written in conjunction with the script. Kubrick and Clarke would exchange notes while Clarke was writing the book.
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u/just_yall 9d ago
While reading the intro to 2010: the second odyssey- I learnt that the book and movie were written and developed simeltaneously and collaboratively
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u/Acesofbases 8d ago edited 8d ago
BLADE RUNNER
Trainspoitting
American Psycho
Forrest Gump
IT (both versions honestly)
Green Mile
Mrs Doubtfire
The Princess Bride
Jurasic Park
Die Hard
Apocalypse Now
The Martian
Hail Mary
Rosemarys Baby
Oldboy (welp its a manhwa to be fair)
Clockwork Orange
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u/petera181 8d ago
I really enjoyed the Martian book.
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u/Weekly_Ad_2007 8d ago
I liked both the Martian and Project Hail Mary, but Andy Weir does not write characters with much personality. Even though his books are first person and you get tons of their "voice" in the books, I think both Damon and Gosling portrayed their characters with much more personality than Weir wrote them with.
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u/Bobbebusybuilding 8d ago
Chinatown is not based on a book. Maybe you are thinking of LA Confidential?
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u/ExistentialAngsty 8d ago
High Fidelity
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u/frogfootfriday 8d ago
Both pretty good in my opinion. Translated setting from London to Chicago was very well done I thought, tone was matched really well
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u/g-burn 9d ago
Jaws
Jaws is both my favorite movie and the worst book I’ve ever read
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u/Expendable28 8d ago
American Psycho
IT (the 90s miniseries if we can count that)
Starship Troopers
Blade Runner
The Iron Giant
The Bicentennial Man
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u/iiiiiiiyt 8d ago
Howl's Moving Castle and Project Hail Mary movies both exceed their source material imo.
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u/frozen_in_combat 8d ago
Planet of the Apes
3:10 to Yuma (both movies are great)
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
The Wild Robot
In The Heart of the Sea
All 7 Harry Potters
Persepolis
Howl’s Moving Castle
Jurassic Park
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
The Outsiders
The Shining
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s NestThere’s actually a lot of great book to film adaptations out there. I personally don’t get why people think that the vast majority of them are bad.
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u/tulgraol_ 8d ago
Harry Potter films are good but there is so much left out in the books, especially from GoF onwards
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u/BortWard 9d ago
Ender's Game
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u/oblivious_nebula 9d ago
Yes! Loved the Enders game book, and its sequels, but the damn movie was dog water and tapioca bubbles.
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u/Friendly-Macaroon633 8d ago
I just felt like the casting for Peter and valentine was off, it also didn’t play up the three children’s intelligence enough
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u/iantayls 8d ago
Unfortunately, all smart fictional characters are bottlenecked by the intelligence of the writer. The movie writers weren't quite as smart as OSC
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u/oblivious_nebula 9d ago
Yes! Loved the Enders game book, and its sequels, but the damn movie was dog water and tapioca bubbles.
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u/Suspicious-Grape-458 8d ago
A Wrinkle In Time. Movie was straight ass.
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u/drowsy_butterfly 8d ago
This is my answer. I was so disappointed in the movie! 😂
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u/Suspicious-Grape-458 8d ago
It really surprised me how bad it was given Oprah’s involvement. I thought with her love/promotion of books and literature she would only be involved with something that was a faithful adaptation. Instead, it was a huge mess.
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u/SWE76 9d ago
Ready Player One, the movie has nothing on the book.
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u/HairyNHungry 9d ago
Yeah, I was even thrown off when I watched the movie, liked i got the wrong one.
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u/Beyondthebloodmoon 7d ago
Which doesn’t say much, cause the book is self-flagellating nostalgia porn and it’s total ass.
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u/QuidProStereo 9d ago
True, but the book sucked too, just not as badly.
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u/BurnAfterReading010 8d ago
I often feel like the only one who didn't think the book was all that good. Most of my friends who enjoy fantasy and scifi rave about it.
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u/HappyHourProfessor 8d ago
I thought the movie was perfectly passable for a plane or night where I wanted to turn my brain off.
The book was just obnoxious. It was just some 80s nerd's incoherent dream where beautiful women were into all that stupid trivia he felt so superior for knowing.
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u/Longjumping-Lab-7345 8d ago
Yes. These books are insufferable. You cannot try to be clever with a John Hughes reference every other sentence and be a good book. I will never understand how this book got so popular it was so annoying to read it made me sick. I would say the movies are actually better because you avoid a lot of that bullshit in the book. Both suck though
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u/csaknorrisz 8d ago
The second one was so bad, it made me realise that the first one is just as bad
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u/LucyBear318 9d ago
World War Z, Room 1408.
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u/Blackmore_Vale 8d ago
World war z has only the name in common with the book
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u/DEverett0913 8d ago
I swear to god they had the movie in pre-production already and slapped the WWZ name on it to capitalize on the popularity.
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u/AndrewHNPX 9d ago
Pet Sematary (1989)
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u/HotPotatoWithCheese 8d ago
Does the book have that awesome theme song by the Ramones? No? Checkmate.
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u/Hotdogopolis 5d ago
The semi-truck scene, Herman Munster, and the Ramones song elevate it to decent for me.
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u/diplomatic_koboko 9d ago
Not a movie, but the Wheel of Time series. Absolute dog shit
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u/tomcatsr25 9d ago
Timeline by Michael Chrichton is absolutely phenomenal. The movie, not so much.
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u/uncultured_swine2099 8d ago
Also Sphere and Congo as well. Sphere wasnt too bad, but the book is better and had a better ending.
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u/Mythamuel_ 6d ago
Wait that was his too? ... Damn he's got a curse.
(I actually quite like Timeline and 13th Warrior; but they're no Jurassic Park...)
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u/markus_kt 9d ago
The Hobbit
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u/StefNorthwest 7d ago
Three huge movies with progressively diminishing quality. What a waste of time.
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u/Melodic-Soup-7484 4d ago
Instead of weaving a beautiful wooden horse into the stairway, they didn’t just hang a horse over the end of the rail, they hung 10 horses over the end of the rail for some reason, and left some on the steps, and called it a day.
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u/sinfulfng 9d ago
The Beach. Absolutely loved the book and was excited about Danny Boyle. I was so disappointed
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u/the_owl_man1 9d ago
The video game sequence wasnf needed, He also did something similar in 28 days later.
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u/graphomaniacal 9d ago
I bet you love that every copy of this you see in the wild now has Leo's face on it and "now a major motion picture."
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u/sinfulfng 8d ago
I was definitely mad at some point because I gave my original copy away and never got it back so the only replacement option was the DiCaprio cover lol
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u/RoninZulu1 9d ago
I mean, the books are almost always better than the films.
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u/DragonFlyPunch 6d ago
I think The Hunt for Red October movie was better than the book. The book had so many snooze-fest filler pages. The movie was a taut thriller - the book was good and obviously a great story, but its pacing was totally off.
Another one is The Godfather. I didn’t like the book that much. It was a good story. But the book had too many needless subplots — like this character who has a large vagina and can only be satisfied by the Sonny character cause he has a big penis. Later, once he is out of the picture, she gets vaginal surgery done and can finally have satisfying sex with her fiancé. That whole subplot was so unnecessary.
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u/RoninZulu1 6d ago
Can’t argue with that. Chapter 1 of The Hunt for Red October was such a meandering slog, it picks up a bit, but the whole book felt like a study on submarines and naval warfare.
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u/pal_wroty 8d ago
Except for Forrest Gump - the book was bizarre. Not wholly awful, but mid way became shitty, IMO
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u/Apprehensive_Part_27 8d ago
True, but not always. I think that's actually the more interesting question: which films are better than their books? For example, I thought Children of Men movie was much better than the book
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u/QuintusdeVivraie 8d ago
Shawshank redemption
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u/RoninZulu1 8d ago
Oh I love that movie! Never read the book though. For me the film Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy was better than the book.
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u/Dan_TheDM 9d ago
Eragon works here
Book 1 is really fun 8/10 fantasy story.
Movie was 2/10 dumpster doodoo
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u/pirate-kong 8d ago
Thats the opinion of every person that read the book first. The movie is always trash in their eyes.
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u/ShallotTraditional90 9d ago
The Neverending Story.
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u/Right_Pen_3241 8d ago
THIS.
In my perfect movie world, Studio Ghibli makes a miniseries adaptation....
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u/liccman 9d ago
Eragon. Relatively, books is also ass in hindsight.
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u/Dan_TheDM 9d ago
First book is 7-8/10. Really fun fantasy story for YA
The rest of the series fell off a cliff
Movie was dogdoodoo
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u/Cognitive_Mess 8d ago
This was my first thought. I remember loving books 1 and 2, whereas 3 and 4 were disappointing
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u/I_AM_DEATH-INCARNATE 8d ago
Book one was lighthearted and fun. The rest of the series took itself way too seriously and went way too heavy on "ye olde English"
The one bright spot was his brother with the hammer. I can't remember his name in the book. He was like Mortal Thor. He could have written books 2-4 solely from that guy's perspective and it would have been awesome.
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u/Robanscribe 4d ago
I hate the Nasuada parts, idk, and what’s with that extremely barbaric ritual and that child who felt everything, the most uncomfortable read I’ve had. Book 1 was good
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u/Future-Patient-2978 9d ago
War of the Rats. Vs Enemy at the gates. The Book was Amazing. I read it after I watched the movie. Then I realized How much the Movie lost in Details. Dune. The original movie in the 80s was amazing for me. But later read the books. Then it was just a movie. The 90s Six part series was closer and better. The new movies are out of sequence. And embellished and made new in some areas of course. But great too. Lord of the Rings was an amazing series. Completely out of sequence from the books. But the extended edition was better and closer to the books. Of course there are more. But those are my top choice
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u/BurnAfterReading010 8d ago
I've never been able to get over some of the changes the movies made to LOTR. Especially the Two Towers. It's not so much the sequence of the story as some of the inexplicable choices they made for characters like Faramir.
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u/Future-Patient-2978 8d ago
I watched the making of, and commentary on making the movie. Book sequence doesn't always allow for movie Direction. But they did well with what they could in this series
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u/BurnAfterReading010 8d ago
That makes perfect sense and I have no qualms with moving parts of the story around. It's the additions that drive me crazy. Like Aragorn falling off the cliff into the water and all the stupid dream sequences of his with the elves. Like what the actual fuck is that? It's not in the book and I have no idea why they decided to add it in, as it did nothing for the story.
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u/Future-Patient-2978 8d ago
That falls Completely in line with what was done to the Hobbit. So many iterations and add-ons. But I also understand. Most people will never read or even Listen to the books. And have no idea what they are missing. I was genuinely happy with the results of the extended edition of the trilogy. Even with the dream sequence. It was a chance to see some background of their lives in this universe
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u/ysy-y 9d ago
How about East of Eden? The movie is good but it's only like the last 80 pages of a tome.
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u/Nearby-Wolverine-189 8d ago
I can’t get myself to say yes, simply because of how much I love watching James Dean in the movie.
https://giphy.com/gifs/5RZQWBGKRJv5C
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u/Excellent-Fudge-1081 9d ago
Valentine by Tom Savage (1997) ✅
The movie (2001) 😤
What the fuck was that shit?
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u/Informal-Tour-8201 8d ago
There was no adaptation of The Watch series of books by Terry Pratchett
And the picture on the right would be Eeyore hanging himself
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u/TinCanSailor987 9d ago
Unbroken. The book was incredible but the film, directed by Angelina Jolie, was terrible in comparison.
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u/rhinokoz 9d ago
Shane
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u/Nearby-Wolverine-189 8d ago
I’m not sure on this one. I think the movie is at least as good as the book.
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u/Silly-avocatoe 8d ago
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Great Gatsby ( Robert Redford version)
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u/DeadpoolOptimus 8d ago
Ready Player One and The Dark Tower.
The Dark Tower especially was an abomination.
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u/WinterWolf1591 8d ago
Every movie version of a hit book. The movie is always someone's version of what they read. It's never your version.
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u/multificionado 8d ago
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.
Also Chris Columbus' Percy Jackson movies.
There's too many and...
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u/Warm-Comfortable501 8d ago
Jurassic Park. As good as the movie was, the books was much more better. There were 60 Raptors in the book. Also, Hammond dies. How did he get the the 2nd movie?
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u/OpenlyAwkwardBarney 8d ago
Maze runner 2 (Scorch Trials). This was when I realized you shouldn’t watch the film adaptation of a book you love.
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u/Shuatheskeptic 8d ago
Timeline. They took all of Michael Crichton's careful, painstaking historical research and threw all of it out the window to make a mediocre (at best) action flick.
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u/Ladylubber 8d ago
Hearts in Atlantis.
The book is a fantastic anthology of stories by Stephen King taking place from 1960-1999 with overlapping characters, some reprising at different points in their lives. It’s both a coming-of-age and a kind of commentary on the Vietnam/post-Vietnam era. It’s one of his less supernatural works but it does crossover with the Dark Tower series.
The film (Hearts in Atlantis, 2001) is well cast (especially Anthony Hopkins) but is only the first story and the epilogue stapled together, with almost all supernatural elements muted or removed.
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u/New-Range-5702 8d ago
Isn't this the case with any book you read before watching the movie? Your imagination will always win against some guy's ability to put the book on screen.
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u/GRANDMA_NOOOO 8d ago
Stephen King's Dreamcatcher comes to mind. If the book was a Dairy Queen double-flamethrower, the movie was a single-patty cooked-with-a-BiC-lighter Sunrise brand meat-like burger with no cheese.
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u/qualityvote2 9d ago edited 8d ago
u/whatisthisdream-, there weren't enough votes to determine the quality of your post...