Erik Berman <AkodoBob at sbcglobal.net> writes: > On Sunday, December 15, 2002, at 11:48 PM, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: > > > Do you really *want* it to happen? Movies made from good books are > > essentially always pale reflections of the original *at best* -- often > > they're abominations. Original movies, or movies from shorter > > originals, are much more interesting. > > > I'm not sure if some of the books I'll name count as "good Books" but > I've found a few. > > "The Running Man" (admittedly almost a completely different plot-line > after conversion) Never heard of it. > "Dune" (it's old, it's long, but it has Patrick Stewart, Sting, and a > host of excellent actors) I thought the movie was a total and utter abomination. > "Total Recall" (awesome movie) I think I saw that, but I don't think I read the book. > "Fellowship of the Rings" (call it what you will, but I can't say that > it is a pale reflection of the novel) Pretty good, but greatly simplified and flattened from the novel. > "Payback" (never finished it the book but I still think it counts, and > Mel Gibson is the Man in it) > as well as a slew of other good movies that I know are from Books, > though I haven't read them to confirm the movies quality. Never saw or read. > "Jurassic Park" Never saw or read. > "Silence of the Lambs" Movie was about as good as you could make of that book, but again it was compressed, simplified, an dumbed-down to fit in the confines of a movie. > Most of the Bond movies Travesties of the books. > and so on. On the other hand, I actually have watched the movie of _The Princess Bride_ more often than I've read the book. I dunno, I don't *like* the dark side of that book very much, and they ripped it out for the movie. Then again the author was primarily a screen-writer, and he got to do the screenplay of his book, so that story got favorable terms not offered to most other stories. > The book to movie conversion does tend to produce flops and > travesties. But with careful casting (not necessarily big names, just > good actors), and a good conversion of the story line, Jhereg could > easily be made into an awesome movie. The general problem is that a novel is simply too big a story to make into a movie. It doesn't fit. The specific problem is that so much of what goes on in the Vlad books is internal. That's hard to handle in a movie. -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net / http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/ John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net Dragaera mailing lists, see http://dragaera.info