Hi folks,
I just read Fight Club and it was an interesting experience. Without giving any spoilers, I would say that the first 90% of the movie was better than the book, but the end of the book was superb, and very different from the movie.
Does anyone have any suggestions for books that are also significantly different from adaptations? I don’t mean simply that the book is worth reading even if you’ve seen that adaptation, rather that it is very different.
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by conorable
10 Comments
World war z
*Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep* by Philip K. Dick is significantly different than *Blade Runner* (1982). I liked the movie better. Oh, and *Napoleon* the movie is different than David Chandler’s book *Napoleon.* Chandler relates that Napoleon’s biggest and greatest conquests were not Josephine in the bedroom.
Studio Ghibli have adapted a number of books and created films that are quite different from their source material, Tales from Earthsea and Howl’s Moving Castle both spring to mind.
Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes. The film is fiction, the book is non-fiction. They invented a story for the film version.
Q & A by Vikas Swarup was the basis for the movie Slumdog Millionaire, but the changes are significant.
The Beach by Alex Garland. Basically only the same till the waterfall scene, and then the film develops its own themes.
Any adaptation of Earthsea by LeGuin varies significantly from the books. And not in a good way.
The adaptation of *The Dark is Rising* is so bad we do not speak of it.
I liked the adaptation of *Stardust* better than the book, which is also very good so that’s saying a lot.
The Magicians by Lev Grossman. The books are pretty bleak (especially the first one) with an edge of humour here and there and the characters are not exactly likable. The TV show changed the plot and tone completely and is more of a dramedy with characters you’re meant to relate to. I like both versions but they might as well be different stories entirely lol
Ella Enchanted is wildly different in content and tone to the original book.
A Wrinkle in Time is also very different. Not bad, but different.
*I, Robot* (2004)
*Starship Troopers* (1997)
Both used title and some characters, but the scripts are inventions of the movie makers
A lot of adaptations do not follow the source material, but these two (and *World War Z* mentioned by others) diverge greatly.
*Julie & Julia* (2009) might be a candidate here only because it’s a movie based on a two memoirs. So much must’ve been cut that only highlights remain from the sources. That said, unlike the butcher jobs previously mentioned, it doesn’t matter if there’s a thin resemblance to the sources here because the movie is fantastic
Altered Carbon. No Poe in the book. Honestly, I enjoyed season 1 better than the book.
The book different and better: A Single Man.
Different and equally good: Stalker/Roadside Picnic; The Man Who Fell to Earth; Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence/The Seed and the Sower; Under the Skin.
Different and unfortunately worse: Children of Men; Broken.