Posted on 08/31/2014 4:44:38 PM PDT by nickcarraway
‘The Giver’ to ‘The Great Gatsby’: How the movie adaptations stack up to the books that inspired them
During a panel moderated by The Washington Post’s film critic Anne Hornaday — Great Books to Great Movies on Saturday, Aug. 30 at 8 p.m. during the National Book Festival — authors E.L. Doctorow, Alice McDermott, Paul Auster and Lisa See, whose books were made into movies, will discuss and present in a multimedia exhibit clips from films based on their writing.
But what happens when really good books fail to live up to people’s expectations in really bad movie adaptations? Or, the other way around, when not-so-good literature becomes a box office smash? Here you have a few books-turned-movies that our critics reviewed. They shared their thoughts on when the movie adaptation worked and when it didn’t.
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“The Great Gatsby”: Awesome book, not-so-great movie
The plot: “Teens will be surprised at how the excesses of the Jazz Age echo the excesses of today. The international cast may speak in unplaceable accents, but they get the emotions right, amid lavish decor and with a soundtrack that mixes 1920s jazz with new works by Jay-Z and other Billboard-toppers. Narrator Nick Carraway tells the story from a sanitarium where he’s in treatment for alcoholism. Nick rents a cottage in the toniest part of Long Island to spend the summer studying bond trading in hopes of landing a Wall Street job. In the towering mansion next door lives Jay Gatsby, a charming mystery man who throws huge parties. Gatsby befriends Nick because he hopes to reconnect with Nick’s high-born cousin Daisy, a former love who’s now married to Tom Buchanan. The Buchanans live across the bay. Nick arranges a meeting with Daisy,” Horwitz reported.
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(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I saw the movie “Dune” back around 1986. I thought it was very good but was surprised how many people thought it was bad.
I got to noticing those who hated the movie had invariably read the book.
I hated Gatsby. The book bored me, and the movie was over-the-top.
By far the best literature to movie transition ever has to have been the short story “The Body” by Stephen King which translated onscreen to “Stand by Me”. Excellent literature, excellent movie both of which told the same coming of age story.
I enjoyed the book very much and I think the first movie version was true to the book. I haven’t seen the second movie version so I can’t comment on it.
We saw “The Giver” quite by accident. We both quite liked it. Among numerous question the move asked were freedom vs equality and it was as strong as Orwell or Bradbury. We were the oldest people there by 40 years. However, you could hear a pin drop, the audience was glued to the screen.
The Great Gadsby was an okay 20s 30s book but his potboiler Pat Hobby stories were more enjoyable. If depressing.
The Mist was well done also. Another King short story and probably my favorite one by King.
He probably means the Redford version. I’d love to see the Allan Ladd version.
I watched the movie Great Gatsby until rap music came on.
It lasted 5 seconds.
Read the Forrest Gump book after having seen the movie. The book wasn’t nearly as good. Kind of stupid, in fact.
There is an fan edit of ‘Dune’ by a guy named spicedriver that is exceptional. It follows the book while deemphasizing the sonic guns Lynch concocted.
http://www.fanedit.org/ifdb/412-dune-the-alternative-edition-redux
Well, I don’t know if it was the first version but it was the version that came out before the very latest, which I haven’t seen.
I never read the book, which is weird because I read a lot. It was assigned in High School but I only read the Cliffs notes and still got an “A”!
I've read The Scarlet Letter 4 times, and no movie adaptation could ever live up to the book. I tried watching one once and didn't make it all the way through.
The Harry Potter movies are pretty good,but like with most movie adaptations so many details are left out, due to time constraints, if you haven't read the books you can easily get lost.
I haven't read the Twilight series but all of the teenagers around me just love the movies with the “hot” vampire vs werewolf guys.
I haven’t read or seen the recent The Fault in Our Stars, but most teenagers I know preferred the book. The fact that they preferred reading was amazing in itself.
I read ‘The Giver” the year it came out, so it has been a long time ago and I don’t really remember a lot of details. It was a thought-provoking book; I remember that much.
The movie was very well done with great acting, and the theme of totally controlled non-biological families—a Marxist society, was good.
I will say the only two things that bothered me in the WHOLE film, was the picture (flashback) of Mandela-—the evil Communist—as if he were a Saint. AND the Vietnam War flashback-—their “picturing” of a “horrific war” scene was of Vietnam with a US soldier killing a young Vietnamese woman (of course)... It wasn’t of WWII and the US freeing countries in Europe or of WWII German atrosities, no, it was to denigrate OUR military, the most moral military in the history of wars. So typical of Leftists.
WORST movie adaptation EVER, “The Fountainhead”.
The more recent Atlas Shrugged trilogy is doing a good job but the cast changes and long production lags have weakened the impact.
Dune was a great book and a lousy movie.
Garp was ok as a movie but a far better read.
The only books I’ve read that did really well on film were the Clancy novels.
Even my kids know to read the book first! My son just asked me to read The Giver which moved him (as a teen) and disappointed him as a film. The Outsiders falls into this too. I wouldn’t know about much of the basis for recent Hollywood box office success but I would always seek out the book first.
Jaws.
Book was very good.
Movie was killer and better in nearly every way.
The genius there was understanding cinema is a completely different medium - and Benchley with Carl Gottlieb rewrote much of the book for the screeplay and trimmed much of the character fluff (such as Matt Hooper’s sex romp affair with Brody’s wife) to focus on the monster story.
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