From books to the Big Screen ...

Mi-Marmotte

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19/04/2016
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Hi all,

Personnally, i globally liked the adaptation of the lord of the rings by Jackson. In fact, i think it is one of the best adaptation from a book so far. Fahrenheit 451 was good one too, but there were so many good books turned into horrible movies...
Take Ender's game by Orson Scott Card for instance. The movie completely missed the psychological side of the book as well as its main theme: children soldiers. All the movie shows is an angry kid who likes to bully aliens... And i won't talk about the shameless TV series made from the sword of truth...

Anyway back to the main topic, the Fondation cycle by Asimov would be cool but the Culture cycle by Ian Banks (a must read for any sf fan) would be awesome if well done.
 

RuMBot

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10/04/2016
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you know, i saw the shining with jack nicolson a couple times and with no comparion, it was good. but years later i bought the book by steven king and it blew the fucking nards off me! im going for surgery in a week.

but seriously, the book was amazing! it had this epic fight scene against the hedge animals. before finsihing the book i went out and bought the movie. after finishing the book (up there in best ever) i watched the movie.

pure tripe. aboslute let down. its like kubrick skimmed the book, casted jack and went to town. it barley resembled the book. tainted it for me.
 

feldon

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18/04/2016
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My favorite novels growing up were the LoTR trilogy and The Hobbit. I was giddy when I heard they were making movie. I liked the movies, but they should have said 'loosely based' on the book. (Insert nerd rant here).

Speaking on Stephen King novels coming to life, I am interested to see what they do with his masterpiece work "The Dark Tower" series. Great read if you haven't. First story in the series is a little slow, but short. Good luck not getting hooked after book two.
 

Motajuana

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05/04/2016
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I would love to see The Chronicles of Malus Darkblade as a movie. It is the only book I have ever read where the "hero" is as evil or even more so than the "bad guys". I remember at one point he (Malus) hangs his cousin by the wrists from the cieling and proceeds to flay the man. He keeps him alive and concious with healing magic (without actually healing the wounds themselves) through the entire experience. Why? His cousin had an annoying voice. One of the most interesting books I have ever come across.
 

Erathsmador

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19/04/2016
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89
I also like The Wheel of Time, but for small screen. Would be waaay too much for movies I think. And if you dont know, there was actually a pilot shot for it. It aired at like 3 am some years back. Disputes with Robert Jordan's wife has so far kept it from moving forward. The pilot is on the web somewhere. I would definitely like to see The Dresden Files return to tv, but for movies I have to go with the Mistborn novels by Brandon Sanderson. And don't forget, a Warcraft movie is coming in July. Hate the LOTR movies, read all those books 30 to 40 times hate what they did to them.
 

DavidBVal

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Erathsmador":3rx4lk9w said:
Hate the LOTR movies, read all those books 30 to 40 times hate what they did to them.

+1000

But hated more the Hobbit.
 

Erathsmador

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19/04/2016
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Yes, they ROYALLY screwed the pooch on The Hobbit. I suppose it would have been an amazing movie if i'd never read the books, they likely all would have, but I don't know anyone that is a Tolkien reader that liked any of the movie adaptations.
 

DavidBVal

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Erathsmador":3j6uv6bq said:
Yes, they ROYALLY screwed the pooch on The Hobbit. I suppose it would have been an amazing movie if i'd never read the books, they likely all would have, but I don't know anyone that is a Tolkien reader that liked any of the movie adaptations.

I think my dislike comes in part because it's a poor adaptation, but also from the fact it is a bad action/fantasy movie. 3 hours of jumping from overused jokes to chasing scenes to superhero/matrix fights. Not everything was terrible, of course. Boromir was a good character, even if changed. But there is no pacing, no subtetly anywhere, no feeling of danger in any of those weightless CGI battles.

Willow (1988), for instance, has a perfect pace, fun and interesting characters, and swordfights like the one with the "skull general" in which it really feels like two guys are trying to kill each other with sharp, heavy metal things.

Maybe it's a generational thing, but after the third impossible dodge, or after 10 minutes of avoiding death by 1 milimeter, my suspension of disbelief vanishes and I stop caring. Much like with the Star Wars prequels, (and leaving aside the script, just talking about action scenes here), I think CGI is a great tool, but it has done more harm than good to many movies.
 

forester

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28/06/2016
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1
When The Fellowship of the Ring was starting its pre release promotion, Burger King got into the action with kids meal toys featuring main characters in small plastic form with some light up rings, basiclly static 4 inch figures. These were available a couple weeks before the movie hit the theatres, so I went to see if I could get the whole set in one go.
The guy behind the counter was like sure, whatever, 50 cent a piece or something? As he was going through them to pick each individual out to make a set, I mentioned, for the sake of conversation as this was taking a while, that I was looking forward to the movies, having really enjoyed the books.
He stopped his labors and stated in a disinterested voice "God, the movie hasn't even come out yet and they already came out with a book?!".
All that could be done was to smile, take the loot, and walk away.
In retrospect the movies weren't all that and my main beef concerns the return to Shire at the end.

Anyway, Wheel of Time as a tv series due to massive content, definitely.

Since George RR Martin is currently in, his book Tuff Voyaging would be a good flick to see.

And Voyage of the Space Beagle by AE van Vogt would be nice.

And The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter would be epic.

Oh and the Quintara Marathon series by Jack L Chalker .

All said and done, books are better than movies beacuse the reader can pause to take it in and enjoy the experience most anywhere. But movies are a shared experience so there is that.
 

Teegs

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25/06/2016
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34
Michael Crichtons book "Eaters of the dead" in my opinion was fantastic. The movie "The 13th Warrior" is based off the book and they did a fantastic job. It's my favorite movie of all time. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it!
Might go watch it now as I play EK!
I love The story and characters. It's my favorite genre of pretty much anything. Medieval.
Can't beat it when it's got swords, bows, torches, epic battles and gore!
 

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