The Godfather
Crash
The Dead Zone
High and Low
Touch of Evil
Goodfellas
Damnation
Pontypool
Spider
GoodFellas defnitely does…although as much as I like Casino, the opposite it true…that book is actually BETTER
Yeah The Godfather was the first that came to mind. No Country For Old Men perhaps? I haven’t read the book but when the movie came out I remember a lot of people saying it was one of Cormac’s weaker books.
Peter Brooks’ “Lord of the Flies” always flies to mind.
Dr. Strangelove
Dr. Strangelove
Kubrick seems to be good at this…
Is 2001 based on the book or did the book come after or were the both done at the same time? I know it wasn’t a direct “based on” situation…
They were made at the same time. I don’t know about the release dates but I know Kubrick and Clarke worked on the story and then Kubrick made a film and Clarke made a book.
Hmmm…
While I’ll never dis Stanley K., and while I’ll always argue that The Shining stands on its own as a superb film, if you’re going to judge it on its adaptation quality I’m not so sure it makes the grade. Of course this depends upon exactly how you’re defining the criteria for judgement, but the screenplay leaves out tons of stuff from the book (some of it due to the lack of technology in 1980 to do the visual effects justice).
The Exorcist, on the other hand, goes page-for-page, line-for-line with its book. The one thing the book achieves, however, is that it explains that everything that is happening to the little girl is somewhere recorded in the annals of science and medicine — it is left to the reader whether or not it is supernatural/demonic possession actually happening.
Adaptations are tough in that the essence, the inner-dialogues and emotions, usually never translate,or, at least not well. I’ve discussed this about the several variations and attempts at filming The Great Gatsby over the years — no matter how hard they try, and try they have, the magic of the book never transfers. Ironically, it seems to be the pulpier fictions — the Godfather s and the Jaws ’ and several of the Noirs — those works that have a basic thematic structure onto which a visual one can be applied, that seem to transfer best.
i havent read solaris but the author didnt like the movie so he probably sucks
As an adaptation, The Shining is not very accurate. However, it stands alone as just a great film despite the many differences from the original novel. I did like the ending of the film better than the novel (where topiaries come to life … leave it to Stephen King to ruin an ending). The only flaw I see with the film (albeit a very minor flaw) is that Jack Nicholson is not the best actor to play the character of Jack Torrence – at least the way the novel depicts him, he has too much of that unhinged look anyway so it’s no surprise when he starts acting crazy. Also, his transition from ordinary husband (granted, with tendencies toward violence) to homicidal killer is so sudden, it could’ve been more gradual.
Nevertheless, it’s a great film and an above-average novel, but they’re not synonymous. The film is only very loosely based on the novel.
Deeply personal books transformed in deeply personal films:
CRASH – Ballard
THE GREEN ROOM – H. James
THERE WILL BE BLOOD – U. Sinclair
Conventional books transformed in highly visual expierience:
All KUBRICK adaptations
I always though that The Silence of the Lambs was a great adptation… one that suck in my mind more than the book did.
The Shining works for me as it twists the story around to a place that Kings work didn’t… (Cronenbergs “Naked Lunch” Also sticks in my mind as doing this fantasticaly well, although the film hasn’t aged well…)
Its a fine line between wanting a “faithful” adaptation and an “expansion” of a novel…
I think it depends on your love of the source…
Rosemary’s Baby is one of the most faithful novel-to-screen transitions, as is The Dead, John Huston’s last film based on Joyce’s short story of the same name that brings his Dubliners collection to a close.
There Will Be Blood is nothing like Oil! which is very loose matter for reference. Crash is a great adaptation, and the one that immediately springs to mind when i think of successful adaptations. Saying that, Adaptation by Spike Jonze is one of the most interesting takes on a book.
Yeah, Kubrick was the master of adapting a novel to film. He had no qualms with straying from the source material, ie Strangelove. His strength was in finding the spine, the underlying theme of a novel and bringing that to the screen.
The Shining, Strangelove, and Barry Lyndon are perfect examples. Kubrick found visual elements that conveyed what the author had said with words. With Barry Lyndon and Shining, he ditched many of the subplots and characters (and hundreds of pages of written material) to create a streamlined narrative that would work in the motion picture medium but that told essentially the same tale.
Take those long, creepy, steadicam shots of Danny on the big-wheel. They made up for the hundreds of pages King wrote in describing the fear and isolation of being stranded at the Overlook. Or the image of Grady’s daughters asking Danny to play with them. Simple shots that say so much.
King complained that the casting of Nicholson was a bad choice because the audience would know right away that Torrence was a mad man. Kubrick was wise in hiring Nicholson. Audiences knew what they were getting into. Nicholson was playing an archetype.
The suspense from the Shining was created by the atmosphere, the visuals, and from Kubrick playing with our expectations. I love how bright and well-lit the Shining is. Kubrick didn’t fall into the cliche of old haunted house movies with everything being dark and gloomy. Sure, we knew Nicholson was crazy from the start but who would expect that the bright, well-lit, clean and elegant Overlook Hotel would end up being so damned creepy.
Almost anything in the Merchant-Ivory canon.
The Apu Trilogy by Ray.
And The Shining is a great adaptation. A Clockwork Orange ain’t too bad either. But both as stand alone films, not as faithful adaptations.
Also, The Lord of the Rings was pretty epic.
Also, No Country for Old Men.
i’d like to add the Graphic Novel A History of Violence to this list for one major reason: the book SUCKED and the film was awesome. they took a mediorce, dull, and overlong story full of ridiculous gore and typical comic-book characters, threw all that jazz to the side, but kept the main theme and opening scenerio to make a fantastic film with great performances, especially by Ed Harris, who plays one of my favorite screen villians in this film. had they stuck with the cheese-ball dialogue and solution of the Graphic Novel, the film would’ve sucked and i don’t think anyone attatched to it would’ve wanted the job. John Olson and David Cronenberg new what would be filmable and believable and threw the rest in the scrap-heap where it belonged. give this film props!
the adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery is incredible
Marq, let’s just go the full nine yards and say that Cronenberg can pretty much make anything better by adapting it.
“And The Shining is a great adaptation. A Clockwork Orange ain’t too bad either. But both as stand alone films, not as faithful adaptations.”
I’d say they’re faithful adaptations in that they stay true to the themes of their respective novels, if not their happy endings. I think when people are saying ‘faithful adaptation’ in this thread they’re not talking about adaptations at all, where things change to suit their environment (in this case, two completely distinct storytelling formats with their own advantages, disadvantages, and sets of conventions) — they’re talking about translations, where it’s just the same thing in a different language, so to speak.
‘Watchmen’ was a translation more than anything else, for example; aside from the ending and some omitted stuff along the way, it was as if they’d not bothered to write a shooting script or draw storyboards and were just working right from the graphic novel. And god, that movie was like an abortion of the imagination as a result. Long story short, considering novels and films are apples and oranges, I think that lack of faithfulness is precisely what makes them memorable and creative adaptations, rather than, you know, absolutely dull.
Yeah, I would disagree with saying that ‘Naked Lunch’ was a good adaptation either. I mean it’s a great film AND an amazing novel (if anyone on this forum hasn’t read the book by William S. Burroughs then shame on you, read it immediately, heh), but Cronenberg does a thing similar to Kubrick in his adaptations (like with History to Violence, I believe), which is to present the base material in a more simplified, minimalist way and then really focus on the more cinematic elements that the book(s) don’t really delve into. Like with Naked Lunch, the novel is such a mangled, complex matrix of psychological banter (I mean this in a good, entertaining way) and disjointed timelines that to precisely adapt the book to film would be impossible.
By the way, Cronenberg’s best book adaptation I believe is Dead Ringers (my favourite Cronenberg film), based on the novel Twins (I forget who it’s by). But the book isn’t that great. It’s well-written I guess you could say, but it gets lost in its own self-discovery that it just comes off as banal and over-emphatic. The film however has this great brooding atmosphere, almost like a horror film (I would consider it a horror film), and Jeremy Irons is fantastic as the TWO protagonists.
I would say that Lord of the Rings is probably the best book to film adaptation (at least that I can think of right off the top of my head). It does leave little things out like Tom Bombadil (sp?), etc., but that stuff isn’t essential to the plot, they’re not even sub-plots they’re basically just filler to add some humour and completist data.
Clockwork Orange is a great film, but a better book in my opinion. Again, Kubrick isn’t concerned with following Burgess’ novel exactly, but focuses more on the iconic imagery and overall aestetics that the plot sets up. However, the book is really really good, in fact I recommend reading the book as a supplement to the film (or vice versa) because there’s a lot of little nuances in the book that the film doesn’t fix on – but I don’t mean that the film isn’t good, it’s just such a great book that any visual embellishment is unnecessary.
1984 is also a decent adaptation starring the always amazing John Hurt (Elephant Man, the Naked Civil Servant, The Proposition, Alien, and a million more films). Again though, the book (by George Orwell) is so good that the film can’t really live up to it. Besides the film does meander in a few places perhaps going for some psychedelic free spirit theme, I don’t know. Anyway, it’s a pretty good film that mostly faithful to the novel.
To me great adaptations have to depart from their source material due to the vast difference between mediums. Cronenberg just knows his medium like the back of his hand and so consistently is able to take the heart of a book or graphic novel or article and turn it into something above and beyond what could reasonably expected. And that makes them great adaptations.
I agree wholeheartedly on both points. One example of a film being “too faithful” to its source material is the Soderberg’s (sp?) Kafka with Jeremy Irons. The film includes all these great references and compilations of characters from the Kafka stories, but it just fails miserably because it doesn’t focus on bringing all those things together and making a real film. Its more like some kind of weird biopic B-movie. Oh, and just to get this off my chest, I truly despise the colour transition near the last quarter of the film (when/if you see it you’ll know what I mean). It’s cheap and bourgeois and just … ah, I can’t even think of the words to describe this atrocity, heh.
Cronenberg is an old hand. Even with his earlier works, Rabid and Shivers (which are very rough, but have some great horror moments) you can see him getting a firm grip on developing his style. Great director.
No ountry for old men
Jim W
I have yet to see any other films that substantially improve on the book they’re based on with the exception of 2001 (another Kubrick film). I’m sure they’re out there.
What are some other amazing adaptations?