'Touched'
A place to talk about movies--Old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
I had a film professor tell me that there have never been any great movies based on great books. There are only great or good movies based on mediocre or bad books, mediocre or bad movies based on great or good books, or bad movies made out of bad books.
One of his prime examples was Gone with the Wind. Good movie/mediocre book.
Of course it is all terribly subjective but interesting to think about.
I had a film professor tell me that there have never been any great movies based on great books. There are only great or good movies based on mediocre or bad books, mediocre or bad movies based on great or good books, or bad movies made out of bad books.
Godfather is another. Part of that's just regression toward the mean though, right?
I had a film professor tell me that there have never been any great movies based on great books.
The Princess Bride. LotR.
great movies based on great books
Oh, that sounds like a challenge.
Blade Runner, although the original is a short story and very different.
Possession, based on A.S. Byatt's novel of the same name, although probably not enough people saw it to rule on "great".
Emma and Clueless.
PRINCESS BRIDE!!!!
Okay, I'm done.
No, I'm not.
LORD OF THE RINGS!!!!
For all values of great that correspond to "ita enjoyed a great deal."
Mel Brooks is working on a sequel to Spaceballs.
Will it be called Spaceballs II: The Search for More Money ?
I'm meh on this - I didn't think the original was all that great.
I really like it, though I saw it a couple years ago and realized it wasn't the best movie. Still very funny, with lots of great jokes. I don't want a sequel cause...why? Leave it alone. It's good. John Candy's dead.
One of his prime examples was Gone with the Wind. Good movie/mediocre book.
See also, THE GODFATHER.
Heh, inevitable x-post.
To Kill a Mockingbird. Great movie, great book.
And yes. Princess Bride. Also Fight Club, though YGMV. I'm just naming film adaptations that match or surpass the book.
I do have a pet theory that it's easier to make a good movie from a bad book. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and The Manchurian Candidate (1963) being prime examples. For one thing, they're bad novels, so the screenwriters can chuck large elements of the source in favor of something better.
Then again, overall, I think it's a crapshoot and a matter of the right kind of people meeting the right kind of project. There have certainly been plenty of lifeless, annoying adaptations of good books, but there are also plenty of lifeless, annoying adaptations of bad books.
I mean, Broadway has got an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical based on The Woman in White. We are truly a culture of pathetic recycling.