quote:

Originally posted by SpinZone:
The WWZ movie may be the biggest abomination of a book by a movie. Maybe Ready Player One comes close to it.
They changed so much in these 2 movies they were almost unrecognizable as the same story in the books.

You may be forgetting Rising Sun or Ender's Game.

Cloud atlas.
I think it might be one of the only movies I liked where they change the ending from the book - or at least made it such that I could make sense out of it.

quote:

Originally posted by Biker_dude:

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:
Going the other direction, I admit I am hoping that the last book in the Game of Thrones series (when/if it ever comes out) changes the ending from the show.

Also "as an aside" I read that the book "The Ghost And The Darkness" merely referred to Remington in passing with little or no fanfare.

Then, Michael Douglas' production company got the script to be made into a movie and Douglas wrote in a major character re Remington as a role for himself.

The book's author was livid and said Douglas ruined the story. Douglas' massive ego strikes again.

The Remington character was fabricated for the film, inspired partly by a real person who is barely mentioned in books on the subject. Douglas was a producer on the film and had the script re-written to make the amalgamation “Remington” role much bigger, took the role for himself, then forced edits to make his part bigger. He’s a tool, and the character very nearly ruined an otherwise good movie. I loved the story before the film was released, and I loved the film in spite of Michael Douglas.

The Return Of The King

No Scouring of the Shire...

In high school kids often chose to watch the movie rather than read the book. You looked pretty stupid whent the teacher called you out on it,

quote:

Originally posted by M'headSig:
The movie "Die Hard" is based on the novel "Nothing Lasts Forever." When the terrorist leader who is named Anton -- not Gruber -- falls from the building he takes Leland's daughter with him. Leland, himself, also doesn't survive the final shootout.

I thought Leland survived—he was being wheeled into the ambulance at the end. And, the terrorist is named Gruber: Anton Gruber. He's not named Hans.

This was all influenced by The Towering Inferno. Roderick Thorp saw that movie, and that night he had a nightmare about being chased through a burning skyscraper by bad guys. He woke up and wrote the follow-up to his The Detective novel.

John McTiernen didn't want to direct the Nothing Lasts Forever movie because it was too dark and cynical. They changed the dynamics to make it more crowd-pleasing, such as making the terrorists into bond thieves.

I liked those cynical aspects. For instance, the daughter dies because of the fancy watch she got, signifying her corporate greed is what got her killed, unlike the watch falling off in the movie. Also, at the end, Sgt. Powell throws the a-hole deputy police chief into the line of fire, killing the chief and shielding Leland from Karl's gunfire. Then he states, "Well, he died a hero." That's a hilariously twisted scene that wouldn't have flown if enacted by Reginald VelJohnson's character.

We Were Soldiers.

I thought it was an amazing war movie.

Then I read the book.

Mind, this is NOT fiction; this is based on real events in Vietnam.

In the movie, they charge the enemy, over-run the enemy stronghold, and win a resounding victory. Hurray for us, drinks all around.

IN REAL LIFE, they won the battle the first day, but while they were marching out at night for their exfiltration (to return to base), they are ambushed by the VC and almost wiped out.

The Americans came NOWHERE near the enemy base. It was NOT a resounding victory. It was extremely depressing, as our 'win' during the day was cancelled out by the VC win at night.

I was so disgusted with them that they would so blatantly peddle falsehoods and lies. Let the story be told AS IT HAPPENED or don't tell it at all.

been a bit since I read the book, but the ending of the Shining was different ,

the book did not have the hedge maze, it was a bunch of hedge bushes trimmed like animals or some such,

quote:

Originally posted by SpinZone:

quote:

Originally posted by SeaCliff:
Not an ending, but in the book World War Z the Zombies are Shamblers like The Walking Dead.
In the movie they are Scramblers like the mutants in I Am Legend. Very fast.

The WWZ movie may be the biggest abomination of a book by a movie.

Agreed.

Such an amazing book (and the full cast unabridged version of the audiobook is even better), utterly disgraced by such a terrible film.

World War Z is one of my favorite books of all time. It's more than just a "zombie novel". It's an anthology that uses the fiction of a zombie apocalypse to touch on all sorts of different topics, from military to psychology to economics to logistics to politics to philosophy to religion to human nature.

But the author could have easily substituted any widespread natural disaster or terrorist attack and ended up with a similar end result.

Last night, I came across my old copy of Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather which I purchased at the time I bought the movie on laserdisc. I skimmed through the end and started to remember the details in the book which never made it on screen. But the ending in the film did not include whole scenes from the book; the film ends with Michael telling his wife Kay that he had nothing to do with Carlo's death and she's relieved, but likely figures out he was lying when Neri closes the door on her while Clemenza and Rocco kiss Michael's hand in tribute. In the book, she not only knows the lie, but leaves Michael, but is talked out of it by Tom Hagan, who convinces her that killing Carlo was the right thing to do.

quote:

Originally posted by Hound Dog:
We Were Soldiers.

I thought it was an amazing war movie.

Then I read the book.

Mind, this is NOT fiction; this is based on real events in Vietnam.

In the movie, they charge the enemy, over-run the enemy stronghold, and win a resounding victory. Hurray for us, drinks all around.

IN REAL LIFE, they won the battle the first day, but while they were marching out at night for their exfiltration (to return to base), they are ambushed by the VC and almost wiped out.

The Americans came NOWHERE near the enemy base. It was NOT a resounding victory. It was extremely depressing, as our 'win' during the day was cancelled out by the VC win at night.

I was so disgusted with them that they would so blatantly peddle falsehoods and lies. Let the story be told AS IT HAPPENED or don't tell it at all.

If you're going to see a Mel Gibson movie to learn history you're gonna have a bad time. Good movies, bad history lessons.