Why do they do this?

R

requiem_for_a_starfury

So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/537767.html

http://community.livejournal.com/authorblog/5880.html#cutid1

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper were probably my favorite books as a lad. I stumbled on the movie poster by accident and thought great, time to borrow my cousin's kids. Then I spotted the above links and thought shit!

I understand that film adaptations are hard to keep faithful, minor characters are merged, sequences that can be described with a few lines in a book might need achingly long visuals or alternately pages of action might play out in a few seconds on film and require filler material. But so many changes? Like something else that needs not naming, why bother buying the rights if you are just going to rewrite everything?

Is there anything that the entertainment media machine won't chop up to make a quick buck?
 
Is there anything that the entertainment media machine won't chop up to make a quick buck?
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Actually, no. And why should they when they have this huge audience made up of ignorant, lazy, semi-illiterate sheep that will put up with all the trash that they are being fed and more often cheer and praise such 'masterpieces'. Take "Dune" for example: that book, in fact the whole series was never meant to be made into a movie yet they did and missed no opportunity to slaughter the story. Sad but true...
 
I quite liked Dune, but it's been so long since I saw the movie or read the book that I can't comment on it. Sliver though, with Sharon Stone, great book terrible movie. Made worse by them totally rewriting the ending.
 
Not all book to film adaptations are bad. Take your example, Dune. While they changed a lot, and it's not entirely faithful, I still very much enjoyed the older film adaptation. The newer, Sci-fi channel Dune that stayed more faithful to the book actually wasn't as good, I didn't think. 'Course, I saw the original film long before I actually read the book, so maybe that taints my thinking.

It's quite obvious that adaptations between media are going to require changes, because certain things just don't translate well if done literally. I'm not excusing bad book-to-movie films, and most of them are bad. But just because they change things (which they pretty much have to) doesn't make it bad by default. Depends on what they change, and how it's all done.
 
(Minor spoilers may lie within)

Therein lies the rub, though... when you start knocking out elements of a novel, it's all too easy to get rid of the subtly sustaining elements even if you're being meticulously careful. That kind of thing is extremely daunting, not to mention more hard work than a lot of people know how to take on, so a great deal of screenwriters just opt for the slash and burn treatment.

The Dark is Rising looks like it's going to be a prime example of this. Dune was another (Sorry, Kyuu)... Yet another is The Golden Compass, originally known as Northern Lights, the adaptation of which is set to release in December. Maybe I just lack directorial vision, but I think that completely removing or de-emphasizing every plot element having to do with the Church or religion was kind of an interesting way to go considering that the next two books in the trilogy are inextricably plotted around a WAR AGAINST GOD.

Even Lord of the Rings didn't managed to make it through entirely unscathed, though Jackson was, THANK GOD, enough of a true fan and upheld high enough production values that the source still managed to shine through. General rule of thumb for these sorts of things: it's tough to sell complexity, subtlety, and thought-provoking content to a mass market, so most writers/directors, unless they've got a towering appreciation for whatever they're adapting and a set of cojones to match, simply don't try.

I know that it's easy enough to stand up and soapbox from the safety of obscurity, but as someone who writes, I often find myself perplexed and a bit disgusted that so many authors are willing to just stand back and count their big brown sacks of cash while the studios give their work The Business.

Edit after Martinez's Post: Realized I missed a chance to blame the screenwriters again.
 
While they changed a lot, and it's not entirely faithful, I still very much enjoyed the older film adaptation.
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The thing about Dune is that it has a lot of interior monologue in it which would be near to impossible to translate into the movie; that I can understand and while I'm not entirely happy about it I'll let it slide.
Then they chop up all the intricate political plots being hatched by all the factions stripping the story of all it's subtleties and fragrance, I'll just shrug that off seeing how the masses are sheep who could not understand all that nor do they want to.
But the last straw was the suit, the distilsuit. In the book it is clearly stated that the suit is meant to insulate the wearer from the elements, like sand storms, recycle all the moisture the body releases (sweat, urine, feces and anything that contains watter) and prevent moisture. It had a mask of some sort that did that (insulate the head seeing how a lot of moisture gets out that way, heat too). Also there are a couple of examples of people dieing out in the desert just because they didn't adjust their suit properly or because they opened the mask and kept it that way for far too long and lost just enough humidity so that they couldn't reach safety. And what do I see in the movie? A suit that looked like Batman's suit save for the hood and cape. No insulation for the head. No robe over it to protect the actual suit from the sand storms. It pretty much looked like a surfer suit. Wearing that in the desert you would have died in hours, a day tops. That I can't forgive so as far as I'm concerned that movie should burn in The Glow along with the director and the screenwriters too!
, so most directors, unless they've got a towering appreciation for whatever they're adapting and a set of cojones to match, simply don't try.
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Hmm.. Tarantino might have the cojones but would he ever make such a film? If he did I'm sure it would be a good one.
 
The suit didn't bother me, they leave the head uncovered so you can see the actor act. One of the reasons they are so quick to lose their helmets/gas masks in virtually any production even if it's safer to keep them on. But from what I remember of Dune they kept the essence intact.

You can modernise stories, transport them to new settings but still keep true to a novel. But all these little changes, you have to wonder why bother?
 
Re: (Minor spoilers may lie within)

Yamu said:
...
The Dark is Rising looks like it's going to be a prime example of this. Dune was another (Sorry, Kyuu)... Yet another is The Golden Compass, originally known as Northern Lights, the adaptation of which is set to release in December. Maybe I just lack directorial vision, but I think that completely removing or de-emphasizing every plot element having to do with the Church or religion was kind of an interesting way to go considering that the next two books in the trilogy are inextricably plotted around a WAR AGAINST GOD.
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We don't have enough wars against God/s anymore. The last time I remember somebody fighting God was in The Authority a while back. Hell, they can't even get away with fighting Jesus nowadays.

I blame the Christian right for this, even though they are usually the thing I blame most for anything.
 
The thing that bothered me the most in the Dune movie was the voice box destructo-ray thingie. Seriously, what the hell? Was hand to hand Fremen combat not good enough for the movie or what?
 
True, I never understood where they pulled the whole voice-operated blaster thingermajig from. Fremen were supposed to be just be awesome at hand-to-hand, and that never really came out in the movie I don't think.
 
Shaddam Corrino IV said:
I only sent in five troop carriers with a light attack force to pick up prisoners for questioning. We barely got away with three prisoners and one carrier. Mind you, Baron, my Sardaukar were almost overwhelmed by a force composed mostly of women, children, and old men.
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As much as Wikipedia lacks, this topic is actually covered quite properly.
 
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