Buffy ,'The Killer In Me'
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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.
Blade Runner, although the original is a short story and very different.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a novel, and different, sure, but plenty of elements translate across.
As for the title:
The title comes from Alan E. Nourse, who wrote a story called "The Bladerunner". William S. Burroughs took the book and wrote "Bladerunner (A Movie)" in 1979. Rights to the title only ("in perpetuity") were sold to Ridley Scott. Similarities between Nourse's "The Bladerunner" and Scott's BR are in name only. Nourse's title refers to people who deliver medical instruments to outlaw doctors who can't obtain them legally. [Source: Locus, September 1992: p. 76.] Scott thought the title made a good codename for Deckard.
We are truly a culture of pathetic recycling.
Have we ever not been? How many King Arthurs or Brer Rabbit/Anansis are out there?
To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the best example in the world of great book--->great movie, Ginger.
Princess Bride was a wonderful adaptation of book to movie, especially in how they replaced the author's snarky commentary with the framing device of Peter Falk reading to his grandson. (Favorite Falk line? "Yes. You're very smart. Now shut up (or is it "be quiet?".")