Corwin

You're missing the point.

If I make a movie called Starship Troopers, one would expect that the result will be me telling Heinlein's story. One would NOT expect that the result will be me taking the skeletal framework of Heinlein's story, bastardizing it, introducing (and glorifying) elements that are not only not part of the original, but are in many cases exactly what the original was intended to argue AGAINST.

The society in the movie was brutal, repressive, sadistic and cruel.... essentially the exact polar OPPOSITE of what the society in the book had worked damned hard to avoid being, and had largely succeeded at.

But if the movie had been called 'Space Nazis' nobody would have gone to see it. So the producer used someone else's name recognition to make money.

GreggLD1

I don't mind if they change a book, just as long as the changes are good and make sense.

For example, the changes to "Fellowship of the Ring" were good and made sense. The changes to "The Two Towers" were mostly unnecessary and wasted a lot of time that could have been better spent on character development.

A few GOOD book adaptations:

Jaws
The Godfather
The Exorcist
Misery (although the movie didn't come close to capturing the nail-biting suspense of the book)

Gregg

Zar

This sounds like a great idea to me.

Zar

You'll still have to decide whether the film stands alone as being worthwhile, whatever the reasons were for "changing" it from the book. I'm sure there are times when certain aspects of a story are changed in order to meet some market need, but even this is not always necessarily a bad thing.

I think it is valid to say that there are aspects of a book you found daring or interesting, and that the film had nothing comparable to offer. It is possible to make a bad film from a good book. I'm not denying this.

I'm just denying that a criterion of a good movie is strict adherence to is source material by some kind of necessity.

Zar

Here here! I love that line.