Books and Comics to movies. What should they do?

Thirith on 17/3/2014 at 12:39

Quote Posted by Gryzemuis

How about we leave the books the books.
And film companies write new stories and original scripts for movies ?

I don't think I could name a single film where the film added something to the book.
Can you ?

I can, yes. Several, in fact, because they did their own thing. Say, the two film versions of Solaris. Wes Anderson's The Fantastic Mr Fox. The Ian McKellen version of Richard III. The Coens' No Country for Old Men. The Hannibal TV series. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Rashomon. Short Cuts. The Ice Storm. The Talented Mr Ripley. A Clockwork Orange. Shall I go on?

I would agree that a lot of adaptations are uninteresting, but that's because they're done in blatantly commercial ways and lack any creativity. This doesn't mean that adaptation in itself is pointless, though. Is a film such as Star Wars, which borrows a hell of a lot from Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress and steals most of its iconography from WW2 aerial combat films and Leni Riefenstahl, pointless because it lacks originality?

It probably helps that I am likely to have a completely different view of originality from yours - I think that barely any stories can be original, because everything's influenced by everything else. Go back to Shakespeare, Chaucer, and even further, and people are already doing riffs on adaptations on stories they borrowed or stole somewhere else. Everything's made up from fragments of other things. I'm sure that many of the things most people see as original aren't particularly, and that they're just not aware of the inspirations.

Volitions Advocate on 17/3/2014 at 12:42

Two Examples:

2001: A Space Odyssee. As far as I know Kubrick worked with Clarke on that one, and both consider film and book compliment each other. I'm sure I read that somewhere.

Also Chuck Palahaniuk's Fight Club. Just my personal opinion, the book and the movie together paint a much larger picture than the book or the movie alone.

My vote would be God Emperor of Dune. and the rest of the series. Without taking any cues from the Lynch film OR the Miniseries.

God Emperor would not be a fast moving movie, and lots of people wouldn't be interested, but it's a political romp with a bit of action here and there and a ton of controversy. Plus alien and creature effects could be pretty damn cool as well as some awesome sci-fi style special effects. It would be dialogue heavy.... "slow" to the impatient, but would be a good bridge between what the non-readers saw in the earlier attempts at the movies, and the story and rich characters that follow in the final books of the series. Make Anthony Hopkins Moneo, Chris Evans could be Duncan Idaho (I'm sure there's a better choice than this but its all I can come up with right now), maybe Rhona Mitra for Siona and somebody elegant but not hollywood sexualized to play Hwi. Directed by almost anybody other than The Brothers Strauss, Uwe Boll, or Paul Anderson.

I also wish somebody would make a Tom Clancy movie and actually follow the novels. But that wont happen anymore now that Jack Ryan is basically Jason Bourne.

Matthew on 17/3/2014 at 19:13

To be fair, The Hunt For Red October was pretty faithful to the book until the ending, and even then it just rejigged how the escape was pulled off.

ZylonBane on 17/3/2014 at 20:00

Quote Posted by Gryzemuis

I don't think I could name a single film where the film added something to the book.

Jaws
Psycho
The Thing
2001: A Space Odyssey
A Clockwork Orange
The Wizard of Oz
Planet of the Apes
Blade Runner
Forrest Gump
The Graduate
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Silence of the Lambs
The Princess Bride

catbarf on 17/3/2014 at 21:11

I think The Thing was more paranoid, dark, and oppressive in atmosphere than the novella Who Goes There? could ever hope to be. Film is a very visual medium, there are definitely stories that can be made better in adaptation, even if it's in very different ways. Blade Runner I think is a good example, it's not the same as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep but it's a solid film in its own right.

I too would like to see a Boneshaker movie. I remember initially rolling my eyes at how many steampunk cliches it drew on (zombies, airships, doomsday machines, and so on) but the result was something greater than the sum of its parts.

Renault on 18/3/2014 at 15:45

Granted, my knowledge of the genre is pretty limited, but I don't normally thinking of zombies and steampunk together. Am I wrong on that?

ZylonBane on 18/3/2014 at 16:19

In steampunk they would normally be scientifically reanimated dead, not supernatural creatures. I haven't read Boneshaker so I have no idea how they explain their "zombies".

catbarf on 18/3/2014 at 17:34

Quote Posted by Brethren

Granted, my knowledge of the genre is pretty limited, but I don't normally thinking of zombies and steampunk together. Am I wrong on that?

Eh, fair enough, it's not exactly a staple part of the genre but I have seen it used a fair bit. What I was really getting at is that I was entertained by Boneshaker despite it very firmly adhering to a genre that I've come to otherwise dislike.