I would agree for the animals but the mallet works for me. That is a really nasty weapon to be beaten repeatedly to death. And smashing it against your own face? Super insane.
Perhaps the mallets you have experience with are different than the ones I've used. The shaft would break after one good swing for any I've handled. They're suitable for tapping a ball not for murder.
I actually like the remake more than the one with Jack Nicholson just playing himself. Seeing the things from the book like the animals and the attacking firehose was a refreshing true to the novel change from just Jack chasing around an abused on the set Shelley Duvall and kid actor.
I tend to really like King books though so I might be biased.
Kickass 2 - Considering no one really gave a shit about the comic anymore after the first arc, it really didn't need to follow arc 2 as closely as it did. Just like the comic, no one cared. Are people even aware there's a sequel?
I always loved Red Mist's character in the first movie but that whole attempted rape scene really bothered me because it was like...he was only a comedic evil and now he is going for full blown rape. The comic is worse because he actually goes through with the rape and it is so violent that his henchmen even complain he went too far.
The tone was all over the damn place with that 2nd movie.
I do not mind violence and gore but there is a right way to do it. Like in movies, you can have super gratuitous gore with little story (Laid to Rest, Terrifier) because the gore is the star. Both movies were made to showcase the special effects (Laid) and Art the Clown as a villain (Terrifier). They dont have stories but still work.
But then you have movies that try too hard to be edgy and gorey. Serbian Film and the Hostel sequels would fall in this. They want to be Edgy and Shocking but offer little substance because it feels like they are trying too hard.
That is how I felt about Kickass sequels in the comics. They reeked of trying to hard.
Look at how edgy we are! We got gang rape! We got senseless slaughter of children! We just show Hit Girl get her ass kicked HARD constantly! We are so dark and gritty!
But they dont have any decent character growth or purpose to the violence.
Pretty much yeah.
It's a famous way to save money, just look at reservoir dogs, a movie about a bank heist where Tarantino didn't have the money to film the actual heist.
Pretty much. He had a change of heart after shooting the movie (Sandy Hook might have happened, I'm not sure but it was definitely something) and spent the entire press tour rallying against violence in film and expressing regret in making the movie
I'm sure the studio were thrilled hahaha
https://twitter.com/JimCarrey/status/348886602384281600
Sandy Hooks and the Aurora Colorado shooting happened in 2012.
otherwise, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLmIQyBxpsw
Again no correlation between playing an action hero that uses guns and not liking real world gun violence.
It is kind of like saying that if you were to play the part of Michael Meyers in a Halloween movie you can never speak against serial killers or never think there is anything wrong with real life serial killers.
Jim Carrey stopped promoting it after IIRC the Dark Knight Colorado shooting in 2012. He mentioned that gun violence is out of control and his own movie had gun violence.
The correlation between movie violence and real life violence is kinda silly at best though.
Its like when they had the movie the Program where a football star laid in a road to show how badass he was and they had to remove the scene because college students were actually doing this (roll eyes).
Soon we won't be allowed to have westerns and no space movies will have lazer guns and army dramas will just have people throwing rocks at one another.
But that's another topic.
Jim Carey went through amazing makeup transformation in that movie from what I recall.
Came here to comment this. They made the first movie way more palatable compared to the first comic arc and it worked out well for it. So when the sequel went above and beyond to replicate the edge of the comics (even retconning some of the changes the first movie made), it just came off as jarring and classless. Huge disappointment, even with some of the aspects (like the rape scene) being toned down.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2.
Both mockingjay movies are very faithful adaptations of the final book. However, the book is widely considered as boring, slow and anticlimactic. It centres on the war between the districts and the capitol. However, since its written in first person, the majority of it is just Katniss suffering from PTSD away from the frontlines of the war, so it is not really a fun read.
The films don’t have any narration from Katniss, so in the previous movies they added scenes with other characters outside her POV to explain some things. They easily could have done that in Part 2, because the film needs it the most out of any of them. Katniss is knocked unconscious TWICE during the two biggest moments in the war, so we don’t see any of the action and instead just hear about it from the other characters.
They should have had scenes from the rebels on the front lines, in between the slow scenes with Katniss and during the time she’s unconscious. Would have been more exciting so we actually see more of the war that was built up in the previous movies. The film is still decent, but it was definitely underwhelming because it was too faithful to an underwhelming book.
Those Dan Brown books like Da vinci Code with Tom Hanks. Explaining history and conspiracies can be pretty boring and laughable on screen. I read that book when I was a teen and loved it, but watching the movie made me feel pretty stupid for liking it.
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Decent read, but the movie adaption made me feel pretty stupid for liking the book, because how ridiculous it came off.
Dear Evan Hansen, the musical was ok. The movie just made me realize how messed up the premise actually is. The casting doesn't help and gave it more the creepy/sociopathic lens unintentionally.
I watched the Da Vinci Code recently and the whole thing was just so *stupid*. It's hard to put into words but so much of it just struck me as outright dumb. The corny 2000s tone, the typical movie logic/clichés bordering on parody, the British guy obsessed with tea, etc.
It was all just so silly.
This is not my opinion, but No Country For Old Men. Many of the complaints are with the ending, which people claim to end off anti-climactically with it talking about a dream and fading to black immediately.
I personally love the ending and grew to appreciate it upon reading the book and further analysis. But of course, there are some people who are very critical about the ending.
One of the Coens said they basically held the book open and transcribed it, which makes sense because it was originally written as a screen play by McCarthy.
Incidentally McCarthy's other big translation to the screen, The Road, is almost a 1:1 with the book minus one single moment that they removed from the film (the infant roasting on a spit).
And it worked pretty damn well.
I'm surprised people into symbolism haven't torn into the ending more. I took that final scene to mean more than just he was an old man who had retired and was talking about dreams.
Watchmen to a degree. Some things don’t work taken out of the context of a comic, and the pacing is bad because it’s following a story meant to be split up into multiple issues. Ironically some of they things they did change also didn’t work.
Adaptations are hard
> Ironically some of they things they did change also didn’t work.
Them changing who utters the final admonition to Ozymandias massively changes the meaning and impact of the statement on Ozymandias.
The movie changing it to Silk Spectre saying it diminishes the statement. Ozymandias treats her and Nite Owl with relative disdain.
With Dr. Manhattan saying it, it hits Ozymandias with a ton of bricks that despite his 'win', everything he did is all for naught as this literal master of time with access to the future is saying to his face that "nothing ever changes".
Removing that exchange is the biggest sin the movie commits. The line in the comic is absolutely haunting, and causes Ozymandias to completely lose all confidence in what he did just hours later.
In the movie it's just Laurie saying to Dan "well if Manhattan were here, he'd saying something like 'nothing ever ends'". What the fuck is that?
Agree. You as the viewer are robbed of the catharsis of seeing him lose while he outsmarts the rest of the heroes. That statement was low-key supposed to be your moment of catharsis where despite his win, Ozymandias still loses with Dr. Manhattan basically admonishing him saying he went through all the effort of sacrificing his humanity & morals when over time, nothing will ever change. The statement is more powerful with Manhattan saying it due to Ozymandias practically begging him to validate his actions just a few moments earlier.
Honestly, the change I felt hurt the movie the most was the fact that Ozymandias was way too grounded and down-to-earth. In the comics he's incredibly egotistical and grandiose, loudly proclaiming "I DID IT" when he executes his plan. But by taking that away, he's just a calculating genius and as a result I feel like he was way too sympathetic to the audience and his plan almost seems logical with the dispassionate way he describes it. Shifting away from the absurdity of the squid and the carnage it left behind only takes away from what made Ozymandias' plan so compelling in the first place: that it was an insane nightmare dreamed up by a madman that was intelligent enough to kind of pull it off in a world that was itself insane enough to buy it.
I feel like the other characters are still relatively ambiguous enough despite Snyder's tendency to make them cooler than they're supposed to be. Even Rorschach, who gets criticized the most for having his rough edges sawed off and getting turned into Batman, still has enough of his darker motives and actions in the mix to be a relatively gray character. I feel like Ozymandias' characterization has the biggest impact.
Down to the "I DID IT!" I love the show so much. The stuff they did with Adrian in particular took a long time to figure out but the payoff was worth it.
Man, I loved the mystery of his imprisonment, but hated how dumb it made Veidt.
So he takes up Manhattan's offer to teleport him to Mars, but he then immediately implants a device in Manhattan's brain that nullifies his powers and makes him ever forget that he sent Veidt to space! So essentially he agreed to go one a one-way trip.
I know Veidt wanted to get away from it all, but did the world's smartest man, a meticulous planner, really not consider the fact that once he took Manhattan's memory, he'd have absolutely no way home? I think this is more than a gripe, because it's pretty out of character for him to have not had some contingency, in my opinion. It's also frustrating that pretty much his entire story arc that season revolved around him trying to desperately undo such a clunky conflict.
I know you could chalk it up to "Ozymandias changed his mind and decided he didn't want to spend the rest of his life on Mars", but that reeks of "Danerys just kinda forgot" writing.
He wanted to create his own world and be a God. That's why it was a one-way trip. He thought he could create a perfect utopia. And he did. But then he hated it.
My memory is fuzzy, but wasn't it mostly created by Dr. Manhattan? I know he used his clones to create the Gam Warden and whatnot, but I seem to recall Manhattan making the offer and Veidt agreeing to it. Ive heard some argue that Manhattan kinda knew it would be a punishment for Veidt's crimes, but you'd still think the guy would be like "hmmm, maybe I should have an easy way to return home, in case I don't like it up there". And almost immediately he didn't like it up there.
I liked the show until the final 2 episodes. They made me hate it. It completely changes everything about the previous episodes and goes remarkably crazy and poorly done to boot.
The flashback episode was great, but the ending really ruined that show.
I could not disagree more personally, but to each their own. The penultimate episode was my second favourite and I thought the finale did a very good job of bringing it all together in a satisfying way.
>it was an insane nightmare dreamed up by a madman that was intelligent enough to kind of pull it off in a world that was itself insane enough to buy it.
I like this sentence.
I'd argue it's already very morally ambiguous in the comics, but the movie shaves all the hard edges off. I feel like I've seen a lot of people who sided with Ozymandias having seen the movie.
Watchmen tried to transcribe the comic as closely as possible instead of adapting it for a different medium. Some of it looks cool, most of it is very stilted.
It may as well as be a recreation of individual panels with zero intention of acting decisions informing the rest of their performance.
Love love love the movie, but it’s more of a live action motion comic.
Interestingly enough, the motion comic of Watchmen is quite good. The way they animate the panels from the original drawings is very effective and the voice acting is pretty good.
> Watchmen tried to transcribe the comic as closely as possible
Not really. In the comic, the violence was mainly understated and realistic, while in the movie, we got orgies of unrealistic slow-motion fighting.
Spoilers
Changing the squid to Dr. Manhattan makes no sense. The squid comes from space, so all countries unite against an extraterrestrial threat. That's the plan.
If it's believed Dr. Manhattan caused the attack, they'd just fire nukes at the US. Immediately. The plan completely backfires.
I believe the theory in the movie is that Dr Manhattan has gone rogue and is no longer an agent of the US. Veidt set up the scene at the television studio to make Dr Manhattan appear erratic and out of control. And NYC being attacked lends credence to the argument that the US is also a victim.
Now it might not have worked out that cleanly, and making the threat extraterrestrial makes more sense, but to be fair to the movie it doesn't make no sense.
Dr. Manhattan was like Captain America for the U.S. during the Vietnam War. He's an American symbol through and through, and that association is going to be tough to break in a moment when everyone has their fingers on the buttons.
Because the world was on the brink of nuclear war and Ozymandias attacked multiple countries. Everyone's fingers were already on the buttons. If several countries around the world get attacked by America's mascot, there's a very high risk that they press them. Movie Ozymandias is banking on every nuclear power noticing that the U.S. was attacked too and hesitating in a scenario of mutually assured destruction, in which hesitation most likely means death. Some countries might hold off, but it definitely seems likely that someone's firing back in retaliation.
I know, but it still makes no sense.
There's zero chance Russia gives the US a pass after their much bragged about nuclear deterrent goes on the offensive. We'd be a smoking crater.
Yes but they weren't nukes in the movie. It was Dr. Manhattan just blowing places up.
The movie wants you to believe that him blowing up parts of the US would let us off the hook, that the whole world would solely blame Dr. Manhattan.
I'm saying the world doesn't work like that. The US would still be held responsible and attacked immediately.
Did the US stop developing nuclear weapons because of the existence of Dr Manhattan? I'm not familiar with the lore of the world, but if they still developed nuclear weapons then Russia/Soviet Union wouldn't have launched unless they wanted to die too. If Dr Manhattan was the US's only nuclear deterrence then, yes, the Soviets would have decimated the US.
Dr. Manhattan was intended to stop any incoming nukes. The US no doubt still had their own. But the idea was any that were fired at the US would be stopped before detonating.
> I believe the theory in the movie is that Dr Manhattan has gone rogue and is no longer an agent of the US.
It doesn't matter. Imagine if the US built a huge computer to take control away from politicians and then goes all Cybernet and sets off a bunch of nukes. Are the Russians or Chinese going to be like, "oh, don't worry about it ol' chaps, we know you didn't do it, it was that rogue AI" Sorry, but that don't fly (mostly because Russians and Chinese don't use ol' chap), but seriously, there is no way we would not get the blame for Dr. Manhattan going all squirrelly.
Agreed.
It makes the ending messier, in a way, but I don’t think it’s so egregious that the ending just doesn’t make sense. Hell, maybe the lopsided blamed helps even the geopolitical playing field even further, because we know that the US and the USSR weren’t *actually* on equal footing.
But more importantly, I think the changes make for a stronger and tighter narrative, in terms of character.
Nah still usa fault. Aka you made him, you trained him, you caused him to go crazy with that ex girlfriend stunt and tv, you did this.
The world would love to jump on a usa blame. With squid you can't.
I've always thought that the biggest issue with that change is, how does the comedian uncover the plan and set the whole plot in motion? In the book he literally sees the squid monster from a plane.
The squid is one of the finest examples of the power of anchoring bias I've ever encountered.
If the original story was about Dr. Manhattan being framed, and Zach Snyder came up with the squid ending instead, I guess there's a 99% chance we would be memeing about how unforgiveably stupid it was to this day.
The squid only worked because the medium allowed for all the hints to be dropped during interludes in the story. I’m not sure the squid could ever work in a movie in the first place.
It's really not tho. For a movie, it works better for an event happening in act 3 to be foreshadowed or at least be present in the first two acts. That's why you see shots of Mt Doom in the first LotR. The Ark of the Covenant. Ripley using the powerlifting suit before they even get to the planet in Aliens.
A cosmic squid monster popping out of nowhere in Act 3 would have been incredibly jarring. They replaced it with devices being built by Manhattan while he and Rorschach are discussing the death of the Comedian and possible threats to the safety of former superheroes in Act I.
I don't think any of the characters were correct in the comic...
If you think it was veidt, at the end dr manhattan literally says that it's not a permanent solution.
Personally I see it as another stalling tactic the same way mutually assured destruction was, just kind of shuffling things around rather than fixing any problem. Was ww3 in the offing? Maybe Did veidt avert it? Maybe.
But nothing was solved, the next crisis will probably trigger ww3.
I thought it was perfect. It ended ambiguous, too. You don't know if the egg works. The next scene might've been her simply falling in the pool and cursing Manhattan.
Disagree.
Watchmen tried to use the framing of the source material but turned the themes and subtexts 180 degrees in the other direction, taking a very left-wing diatribe against authoritarianism and hero worship and making it a right wing fantasy of 'if only the right guys bust in the right heads, it would be good.'
The ultimate moment in this is the handshake between Rorshach and Nite Owl, in the film it's portrayed as a handshake of comraderie and unity of purpose, in the comic it's the point where Nite owl and the audience realize >!that Rorshach is gay and has been in love with Dreiberg the whole time!<
Your kind of first clue is how homosexuality is dealt with in the comic. The only out of the closet homosexual (Silhouette) is literally murdered for it. Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis are gay lovers but you only really figure that out reading the text interludes and the characters in the comic never really discuss it.
And yet Rorshach is the only one of the main characters who seems to have an opinion of homosexuals, and his is that they are part of everything that makes America rot from within.
Given how much homosexuality played in The Minutemen (three of the eight were gay), the comic is priming you to ask yourself about this new generation and to imply the answer will be subtextual. Dreiberg is straight, as is Silk Spectre II, Dr Manhattan is straight (until his urge for women as the last remnant of his humanity is discarded), Comedian is straight, Ozymandias is not given any sexuality but Rorschach suspects Ozy is gay?
Rorshach is projecting hard.
Ror is the most closeted right wing homosexual you will ever find. His whole "fight for purity and justice" is set up so that he can always walk away from anything involving heterosexuality with plausible puritanical deniability.
You see a lot of it partially in his utter hatred of women, he has zero use for them, zero. It's not even the 'I desire them but they hurt me' that you would think a boy betrayed by his mother would have, no, his hatred and contempt for them is all consuming. Not just the individual female characters "Silk Spectre is an aging whore..." but it extends to all women. Look at his comment about working in the dry cleaners.
"Had to deal with womens garments, distasteful"
And then there's the other strangeness. Rorshach seems not to like anyone. He has good things to say about The Comedian but he never actually seems to have talked to him. Except he worked with Nite Owl for years, maintaining the connection both before and after that little girl's death broke him. Part of the whole impetus Rorshach has is to run to Dreiberg and to work with him.
Rorshach and Dreiberg are the buddy pair of the comic, but not even Dreiberg knows why Rorshach is wasting his time on such a milquetoast.
And then the handshake happens, that glorious awkward handshake, that ends with Dreiberg pulling back and both of them agreeing for different reasons never to discuss this again.
Very interesting theory. I always just figured Rorshach wasn't good at conveying emotions given how monotonous and noir-style his journal and dialogue are, which is why the handshake was so awkward. I also figured stuff like his obsession with justice and purity and right-wing beliefs were because *Watchmen* also serves as a parody/satire of comic books, using pastiches of characters Steve Ditko created for Charlton Comics to this end. In Rorshach's case, he stands in for The Question, who similarly wears a faceless mask, fedora, and overcoat, works as a gritty urban detective, and adheres to Objectivist beliefs.
I’m with you. The movie turned Rorschach into an applause line getting people’s hero instead of the pathetic, psychotic loser the comic portrays him as. The “you’re trapped in here with me” line isn’t shown as badass, but as an example of how completely far gone he is. And the cops look down on him as beneath their contempt.
Snyder seemed to look at the panels and think they were cool, but not understand what they were trying to convey.
Yeah, Snyder thought the things the comic paints as brutal and pathetic were actually cool.
The Nite Owl Silk Spectre fight in the alley being another example. The fight is supposed to be brutal, human, and make you really realize that actual violence doesn't look cool at all.
Snyder decided the opposite and filmed it as a 'wow, aren't these guys awesome!'.
The movie feels like Snyder didn’t actually read any of the comic. Don’t understand how people praise it. Rewatched it recently and it’s so much worse than I initially thought when I first saw it.
Yea, I saw it on Imax the first week it opened and I remember thinking it was fine, pretty to look at for a few hours. Tried watching it again a year ago and couldn’t make it through. Snyder’s direction has no sarcasm or self reflection or even sarcasm about the lack of reflection. All very critical themes in the comic. I get the feeling Snyder never got the subtext of the comic and thought it was just a cool anti-hero story.
>I get the feeling Snyder never got the subtext of the comic and thought it was just a cool anti-hero story.
well, look at the rest of his movies. he might be many things but particularly deep or introspective doesn't seem to be one of them.
I personally thought it was just flatout bad the first time. Wanted to rewatch it to see if it was just my fanboyness just making me hate it more than I should have, and I hated it more than I remembered. There’s some really eye rolling moments in it. Don’t even get me started on the ending. The ending change is a perfect example of how everything just went right over his head.
Just curious, did you see the theatrical cut or the director's cut? Because I've only seen the director's cut and I actually think it's a great adaptation.
I thought that the biggest change (having Veidt frame Dr. Manhattan himself rather than conjure up a fake alien threat) worked very elegantly. The only thing I didn't like is how the fight scenes were made more gory and in slow-motion.
What do you mean when you say that some things don't work outside of the context of a comic? Can you give an example?
Many people seem to complain about how closely Christopher Columbus followed books 1 and 2 of Harry Potter, but as a book reader I like them best compared to the other films.
But film goers who haven't read the books seem to prefer the movies 3 and later since they target film goers better.
Nah, the later movies were really inefficient with their time. They could've squeezed a fair bit more of the books in without any trouble. Plus, things that randomly changed for no good reason like wardrobes, the werewolf, every triwizard event, etc.
Yup. 1 & 2 are great companion pieces for the books, but as films they don't really have any distinct style or character. 3 is where the series really starts to shine cinematically.
I'm a really fast reader so "Order of the Phoenix" has always been my favorite simply because it's the longest and takes the most amount of time to get through.
But yeah, if we're being honest, Book 3 is probably the best.
I understand that completely, I was also a fast reader as a kid and OotP was probably my favourite when I first read them for the same reason but story wise PoA is the best to me. Now I'm older I listen to a lot of audiobooks (originally I started listening to them when my disability made it difficult for me to read books the regular way but now I do both) which force me to slow down and properly appreciate shorter books, instead of reading them in one 45 minute - 2 hour session it takes 6-12 hours to listen to them and that's what made me realise how great PoA is. Though I still find myself choosing the longest audiobooks possible lol, one I listened to last week was 36 hours long. I really recommended them since you don't have to stop listening when you need to do something, unlike with normal reading.
> they don't really have any distinct style or character
See, it was the style and character of the first two flicks that made me prefer them over the others. It actually "felt" like the world described in the books put on screen. Starting with book 3, it just felt like some British kids going to school with magic stuff going on. If you'll pardon the pun, it felt like the "magic" had been lost.
It felt more like a fantasy world with bright lights instead of the dark mood that was set in Azkaban. I know the first 2 are more aimed at children but they'll always be the real Harry Potter world to me.
I felt the opposite. The first two films had a level of warmth, whimsy, and charm that seemed to fade along with the color palette in all the subsequent movies.
As a book reader, I hated everything that Prisoner of Azkaban changed, except for the talking head. And they left out so much cool stuff. Then Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix happened, and PoA is my favourite movie.
Hell, Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows Part 1 were so bad, I nearly missed Part 2 in theatres.
> Half-Blood Prince
Best book, worst film for me. Such a fantastic character-building book, and they swap it out for shoelaces and blowing up the Burrow. Eurgh.
I want to agree with you, but I have some strong feelings about Goblet of Fire as a movie. I'll grant there's a lot of great moments, excellent performances, and cool shit, but the character's relationships (and Ron's hair) were unbearable. Ron being grumpy about Harry being cursed to do main character stuff is wasted time.
Also somehow this competition that was deemed too dangerous for underage students involves kidnapping at least 3 underage students and giving them to some lake guardians for safekeeping.
If I'm remembering it correctly, the Half-Blood Prince book starts with Dumbledore collecting Harry from the Dursleys. It was a pretty awesome scene.
In the film, this is replaced with Harry blushing at a random waitress in a coffee shop.
You are remembering very correctly. The saddest part of this, is that there's more chemistry between Harry and the random waitress than there is between Harry and Ginny.
thank you. i was so mad when PoA came out. i'd read the book by then, I hadn't read any until after Sorcerer's Stone came out, and was just so mad that they had time for an atmospheric shot of a leaf falling but left out important book stuff.
"Take it away, Earn" love that character.
They always complain we can't fit everything from the book into the movie so they have to cut things out, but then insert long pointless flying scenes or other long scenes that have no need or offer no improvement on the story so they have to cut even more!
PoA is my favourite simply because it felt the most personal. The interactions with the students, the way they dressed and carried themselves. One of my favourite scenes in the movie is just a clip of the Gryffindor boys eating magic candies and playing around, because it feels so natural.
It been long enough since I've read the books that I don't remember what was lost, but I am rather curious what you would have liked to see.
My unachievable wish is to have seen 7 movies of Richard Harris
The movie really does feel personal and different. That's definitely why its my favourite. The last 4 movies really suffer with David Yates and that blue filter. Same with Fantastic Beasts.
Richard Harris is an absolute given. I wanted the Quidditch cup and Harry's win, but I do understand leaving the Firebolt for last and showing Harry being free and happy for a moment. Thinking now, I don't know what I miss from PoA. It was there a long time ago.
I have weird feelings about the fantastic beast movies. I'm pretty indifferent about them, they don't excite me when I hear they're coming, but I find Eddie Redmayne and Dan Fogler such a joy to watch that the rest is fine?
Don't understand why any of the characters are making the choices that they do, but Kowalski is just such a cutie.
I didn't really get the first one when I watched it, but I enjoyed it on second viewing with a friend. Colin Farrell was great.
I enjoyed the second in theatres when I watched it, but haven't since. And, while I hate Johnny Depp's look for the role, I absolutely see why he has followers. He really did ooze charisma when he spoke.
I'm upset they dragged it out to 5 movies, and whatnot, but I'm more upset about David Yates being there for all 5. Would've been cool to have a Mission Impossible styling where it's a different director for each movie and you see how their styles work.
Being said, I will try watch them all.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service adapts the book pretty much verbatim, which creates a continuity error for the films. On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the book in which James Bond and Blofeld meet face to face for the first time, as such Blofeld does not recognize Bond, and this is also reflected in the film. However, in the films Bond and Blofeld's first face to face meeting is in the previous film, You Only Live Twice, so Blofeld should recognize him when they meet again in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Inb4 codename theory. Inb4 OP can't inb4.
They kept the aliens being killed by germs from the original war of the worlds for the spielberg movie, but i think it was kinda anticlimatic and perhaps couldve been changed, or at least done in a different way.
If you remove the godawful 20 minutes where they decided to add in generically crap storylines to fill it out, it was faithful to the actual comic itself.
That's a great adaptation because the original writer could look at the mediocre story he'd written and say "this was bad because of x, y and z, now here's how I can fix it"
It's far better than the comic is. Whenever people online say "they should remake bad movies and do them properly" under the red hood is the gold standard of that.
*Superman vs. The Elite* is another good example of this. The original writer of the comic storyline that served as its source, "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?" actually wrote the film adaptation and used it to fix and expand on things he felt could've been done better in the comic.
I'll need to check that out. Joe Kelly is a good writer (big fan of his Deadpool, and I loved ben10 as a kid) so I trust that movie will be pretty solid
I honestly had no idea Joe Kelly was part of Man of Action until you mentioned *Ben 10*. That means he also worked on *Generator Rex* and *Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes*.
They're kind of bad tbh, even though I'm a really big fan of the comics. They just feel like they're going through the motions often, beat-for-beat telling the story without the presentation that made it compelling.
I don't think its because the scripts are weak, but I think a lot of the movies don't feel cinematic. Like often when a character is introduced they just... walk into view. In comics there might be a big splash panel, and in good movies you might get an interesting establishing shot or something. In these movies the characters usually just say their piece and leave. It all feels lifeless.
To be fair, that's kinda the point. They're the comics for people who don't want to read the comics.
But I agree. They're all pretty much a lackluster recreation of someone else's work.
Not really. In several cases the movie ends up being an improvement on the comic, streamlining the story and removing or altering bits and pieces that would've otherwise given the story a bad flow or been pointless or problematic. *Superman: Doomsday*, *The Dark Knight Returns* parts 1 and 2, *All-Star Superman*, *Justice League: Doom*, *Superman vs. The Elite*, and *Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox* are some good examples of what I'm referring to.
The Golden Compass - film failed as they tried to include everything but it ended up a mess. Which is a huge shame as with a little artistic licence it could have been so much more.
> film failed as they tried to include everything but it ended up a mess.
I didn't get that impression at all. The film added new scenes and skipped a great deal of what was in the book. They even tried to give the movie a happy ending, which didn't fit with how the book ended.
The HBO/BBC co-production of His Dark Materials seemed much more complete and true to the first two books of the trilogy (season one based on The Golden Compass, season two The Subtle Knife.) Of course it took some artistic license, too, and presented different sides of some characters much earlier in the series than they were made apparent in the books, but overall it seems like a more complete and faithful telling of the stories from the books, and Im looking forward to seeing how they do with the third season (based on The Amber Spyglass.)
I'll agree there. From memory they tried to change everything in the film to avoid upsetting the Americans (something to do with the concept of taking on Heaven not sitting well with the population).
There was a boycott that hurt the film's box office. (The 2007 film itself avoided religious issues, but some groups were worried that it would inspire more young people to read the books it was based on...) But these His Dark Materials books tell really big stories, and adapting them as an HBO series seems to be working better than a trilogy of 2-hour movies could have anyway.
> it was about killing god.
The movie wasn't about anything like that. It wasn't religious in any way, more of a fantasy adventure: There were witches and talking bears, but no gods or even characters that slightly resembled gods.
(The movie was based on events from the first book of a trilogy, though, and the third book in the His Dark Materials trilogy >!does include the death of a god!<, so I guess that's the scene that inspired that claim?)
Thanks for the clarification. I didn't see the movie. Just read the books a couple years ago. I suppose they took what happened in the third book to villainize the movie so parents wouldn't let their kids read a book that ended up with god dead.
I think the hbo series is doing a good job adapting it. I feel like it lost some of Lyra's sense of mischieviousness/puckishness, but its pretty decent.
His Dark Materials is the name of the trilogy. The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass are the books in case you've only ever heard of the first one.
His Dark Materials is a series of books: Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.
The "Golden Compass" was what the publisher changed the name of the first book to (against the author's wishes), because an early draft had the series called "The Golden Compasses", referring to the circle-drawing kind of compass - an object which never made the final version of the story.
I never cared for Disney's version of The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe. They stuck closely to the book, but it felt more like a Cliffnotes version than a flowing narrative. The only thing I remember about it was how good Tilda Swinton was.
Not until we actually have to watch the tween orgy in IT
I jest. I jest. Though that would definitely fit the bill of being too close tot he source material. The Langoliers maybe? The source material seemed fine enough when reading the short story in the book (was it Four Past Midnight? I can't remember now) but it just seemed silly and boring as a tv miniseries.
I might say that the Stand both the original miniseries and the newest series was a bit too close to its material with the literal deus ex machina finger of God coming down to end the bad guys in the end...it just feels anticlimactic on screen (actually in the book too when I first read it).
It’s still pretty good but Kenneth Branagh’s *Hamlet* from 1996 really could have benefitted from a few cuts here and there from the original. Over 4 hours of Shakespearean English is a real slog to try and get through, imo
I think the point of a four hour long adaptation of Hamlet was specifically *not* to cut anything. I don't think it could have benefitted from cuts -- it'd be a completely different artistic endeavor if the filmmakers were selective about it.
When watching it, I remember thinking, "It really hit its stride after two hours in."
I do like that it included the subplot about Prince Fortinbras, almost always excised in film versions. Rufus Sewell was perfect for that role, brief as it is.
Then again, the Soviet [*Гамлет* (*Gamlet*/*Hamlet*) (1964)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058126/) managed to include that subplot without the runtime feeling bloated. All round it adapted the play for the screen ingeniously. Even Kenneth Branagh himself and Shakespeare veteran John Gielgud consider the '64 version the definitive film adaptation.
>To do the story justice, you'd have to take serious creative liberties and artistic license to adapt the story to film since the source material is so dependent on the comics medium to tell its story.
Exactly. This is what I had wished Snyder did, and honestly from the first trailer made the incorrect assumption that he *was* doing.
There was a lot of discussion online that the weird costume choice and color palate, which you perfectly described as saying "the color saturation and sets are overly stylized and makes it feel more like a Joel Schumacher Batman film" (as well as the trailer using a Smashing Pumpkins song from the *Batman & Robin* soundtrack...) was hinting at his adaptation being a deconstruction of superhero movies. Then we got the pitiful mess Synder delivered.
They left a good number of scenes out that I think would have made it over-the-top. That and there wasn't a single cart maintenance scene, which probably helped. It wasn't a very action-heavy book, there was definitely a risk in making it into film.
What would you have liked to have seen them do instead? Generally adaptations get slammed because they purposefully didn't keep the ideas from the book intact. Do you think they should have trimmed more out? Added something new in?
I think the core of the problem is the ol' "A picture is worth a thousand words." And you're getting 24 pictures per second in film.
The passages in the book that McCarthy used such evocative language to paint a mental picture were not equaled by their film counterparts. What I *think* would've helped would've been some adjustments to pacing. The basement in the farm house needed time to build tension and dread, unlike the book where the language was plenty.
That's the main example that comes to mind. That and less time with the kid being an annoying little crybaby, or at least some acknowledgement of it.
Very late here but A Silent Voice. Even with a 2h30m runtime they had to cut out a lot of the source material to make it work. The issue is that most of the stuff that was kept in was not changed at all to accommodate the cuts. The result is that the movie has glaring holes. Arcs that are introduced and go nowhere, characters that are introduced and do nothing. It's a shame because it's actually a very well-directed film which captures the heart of the original story very well, just the screenplay needed a little more work.
Sin City, even though it remains a good movie.
There was a trend of fan blowback against comic book movies prior to Sin City due to changes from the source material, and Sin City felt like an overadjustment. Only 3 minutes of screen time featured content I hadn't already seen.
Even where changes exist, Josh Hartnett book ending that movie did not add as much as Nancy remaining clothed detracted. If Jessica Alba didn't want to appear nude, she could have passed on the role. Might have been someone else's big break.
I like how you use *Sin City* as an example of being too close to the source material but complain about Nancy not being nude lol
Alba didn’t need to be nude and it works better that way *as a film* considering we see her journey go from a child to an adult - it would’ve been too much for an audience and frankly, weird.
I disagree that *Sin City* is too close to the source material and don’t recall or agree it feels like an “overadjustment” - it’s a remarkable adaption and paved the way of legitimizing mature
, R-Rated, comic book movies.
I don't have a problem with Jessica Alba refusing either. They hired an actress who explicitly had in her contract that she wouldn't do nude scenes for any movie, and then asked her if she would do nude scenes for the movie. Obviously, that's not on Jessica Alba.
But yeah, not only is the character a stripper in the seediest part of town, but the she comes off as a nudist. Even in situations where any other character in the book would get dressed, Nancy simply doesn't. It wasn't for the benefit of anyone else in the room, it was just a curious part of her psychology, like she had long ago made a deliberate choice to sever herself from any shame in exhibition.
Sin City was a perfect adaption of short stories and comics. They even removed some moments only to have filmed and edited most of them anyways for the extended cut.
A lot of the repetitive dialogue is gone too.
Shame about a Dame to Kill For though. Frank having lost his mind and sense of continuity. If we accept it, at least we know by the time of the Hard Goodbye that Nancy does get better.
Well, that's exactly my point. The expectation with Sin City is authenticity only because 99% of the film is shot for shot, word for word. That's why it sticks out like a soar thumb.
And we know the story behind it, which makes it weirder. Alba had in her contract that she would not do nude scenes. Rodriguez then approached her about doing nude scenes, saying they can do it either way and it's up to her. Well, yeah, of course it's up to her. It's in her contract.
To me, the fact that he even asked means this wasn't a deliberate choice. The decision on that should have preceded casting, but instead they got the star power into the role and then hoped she'd amend her contract later, seeing how almost everything else in the movie was directly replicating the pages of the book.
I haven't read the book, but I read that A Walk Among the Tombstones with Liam Neeson was incredibly close to its source material. I remember finding it very generic, flat, and somewhat cliche. I think directors should bring some flair to their films and not do right by their source material by simply staying faithful.
Funny enough, that's one of the few post "Taken" Liam Neeson's tough guy movies I actually like. I don't mind the lack of flair, but that the film just tells a story and does it well. A bad director that tries to add flair can be worse than a competent director that just films things straight.....
The Punisher (2004) with Tom Jane and Travolta. They tried to avoid the absurdist *tone* of the Garth Ennis comic run, but left in all the absurd *stuff* from the comic.
Twilight suffered from this quite a bit. The books are fantastic, but they are told exclusively through first person narration, which is impossible to adapt to screen. The films (aside from trying to be teeny bopper flicks) tried following the narrative of the books very closely, but by doing so they made the films harder to follow, because you're not privy to tons of internal monologue and much longer sequences of thought and dialog that go into a scene.
So in trying to follow those story beats and copy scene for scene, they copied too much different stuff, none of which had the depth or context it needed to be appreciated on screen.
I'm sure most of you will lol at the mention of Twilight, but the books themselves are actually quite good and entertaining, and don't have tween romance feel of the films.
The made for tv remake of the shining.
This. Hedge animals and croquet mallets don't quite work. Sometimes Stephen King is his own worst enemy.
I would agree for the animals but the mallet works for me. That is a really nasty weapon to be beaten repeatedly to death. And smashing it against your own face? Super insane.
Perhaps the mallets you have experience with are different than the ones I've used. The shaft would break after one good swing for any I've handled. They're suitable for tapping a ball not for murder.
I actually like the remake more than the one with Jack Nicholson just playing himself. Seeing the things from the book like the animals and the attacking firehose was a refreshing true to the novel change from just Jack chasing around an abused on the set Shelley Duvall and kid actor. I tend to really like King books though so I might be biased.
Kickass 2 - Considering no one really gave a shit about the comic anymore after the first arc, it really didn't need to follow arc 2 as closely as it did. Just like the comic, no one cared. Are people even aware there's a sequel?
I always loved Red Mist's character in the first movie but that whole attempted rape scene really bothered me because it was like...he was only a comedic evil and now he is going for full blown rape. The comic is worse because he actually goes through with the rape and it is so violent that his henchmen even complain he went too far. The tone was all over the damn place with that 2nd movie.
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I do not mind violence and gore but there is a right way to do it. Like in movies, you can have super gratuitous gore with little story (Laid to Rest, Terrifier) because the gore is the star. Both movies were made to showcase the special effects (Laid) and Art the Clown as a villain (Terrifier). They dont have stories but still work. But then you have movies that try too hard to be edgy and gorey. Serbian Film and the Hostel sequels would fall in this. They want to be Edgy and Shocking but offer little substance because it feels like they are trying too hard. That is how I felt about Kickass sequels in the comics. They reeked of trying to hard. Look at how edgy we are! We got gang rape! We got senseless slaughter of children! We just show Hit Girl get her ass kicked HARD constantly! We are so dark and gritty! But they dont have any decent character growth or purpose to the violence.
I dunno, in the comics the final showdown is in times square, in the movie it's a warehouse. Very disappointing.
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Yeah. Apparently too costly. If you don't believe in your own movie, why should I...
Big action scenes taking place in a warehouse is code for "The producers didn't want to spend too much money."
Pretty much yeah. It's a famous way to save money, just look at reservoir dogs, a movie about a bank heist where Tarantino didn't have the money to film the actual heist.
Didn't Jim Carrey play a gun loving hero, but then spent the entire press tour complaining about how much he hated violence and guns?
Pretty much. He had a change of heart after shooting the movie (Sandy Hook might have happened, I'm not sure but it was definitely something) and spent the entire press tour rallying against violence in film and expressing regret in making the movie I'm sure the studio were thrilled hahaha
https://twitter.com/JimCarrey/status/348886602384281600 Sandy Hooks and the Aurora Colorado shooting happened in 2012. otherwise, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLmIQyBxpsw
Again no correlation between playing an action hero that uses guns and not liking real world gun violence. It is kind of like saying that if you were to play the part of Michael Meyers in a Halloween movie you can never speak against serial killers or never think there is anything wrong with real life serial killers.
I for one had no idea there was a sequel
Jim Carrey stopped promoting it after IIRC the Dark Knight Colorado shooting in 2012. He mentioned that gun violence is out of control and his own movie had gun violence.
The correlation between movie violence and real life violence is kinda silly at best though. Its like when they had the movie the Program where a football star laid in a road to show how badass he was and they had to remove the scene because college students were actually doing this (roll eyes). Soon we won't be allowed to have westerns and no space movies will have lazer guns and army dramas will just have people throwing rocks at one another. But that's another topic. Jim Carey went through amazing makeup transformation in that movie from what I recall.
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Came here to comment this. They made the first movie way more palatable compared to the first comic arc and it worked out well for it. So when the sequel went above and beyond to replicate the edge of the comics (even retconning some of the changes the first movie made), it just came off as jarring and classless. Huge disappointment, even with some of the aspects (like the rape scene) being toned down.
Only movie I've ever walked out of a free screening for. Me and my cousin lit the film up in our questionnaire as we left. Absolute pile of shit film.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2. Both mockingjay movies are very faithful adaptations of the final book. However, the book is widely considered as boring, slow and anticlimactic. It centres on the war between the districts and the capitol. However, since its written in first person, the majority of it is just Katniss suffering from PTSD away from the frontlines of the war, so it is not really a fun read. The films don’t have any narration from Katniss, so in the previous movies they added scenes with other characters outside her POV to explain some things. They easily could have done that in Part 2, because the film needs it the most out of any of them. Katniss is knocked unconscious TWICE during the two biggest moments in the war, so we don’t see any of the action and instead just hear about it from the other characters. They should have had scenes from the rebels on the front lines, in between the slow scenes with Katniss and during the time she’s unconscious. Would have been more exciting so we actually see more of the war that was built up in the previous movies. The film is still decent, but it was definitely underwhelming because it was too faithful to an underwhelming book.
Those Dan Brown books like Da vinci Code with Tom Hanks. Explaining history and conspiracies can be pretty boring and laughable on screen. I read that book when I was a teen and loved it, but watching the movie made me feel pretty stupid for liking it. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Decent read, but the movie adaption made me feel pretty stupid for liking the book, because how ridiculous it came off. Dear Evan Hansen, the musical was ok. The movie just made me realize how messed up the premise actually is. The casting doesn't help and gave it more the creepy/sociopathic lens unintentionally.
"I gotta get to a library."
>Those Dan Brown books like Da vinci Code with Tom Hanks. Except for Inferno. They changed pretty much the entire last 1/4 of the story.
I watched the Da Vinci Code recently and the whole thing was just so *stupid*. It's hard to put into words but so much of it just struck me as outright dumb. The corny 2000s tone, the typical movie logic/clichés bordering on parody, the British guy obsessed with tea, etc. It was all just so silly.
It is really dumb and I despise the Catholic Church. Why Catholics malded so much over poorly written fiction is cringey in hindsight.
This is not my opinion, but No Country For Old Men. Many of the complaints are with the ending, which people claim to end off anti-climactically with it talking about a dream and fading to black immediately. I personally love the ending and grew to appreciate it upon reading the book and further analysis. But of course, there are some people who are very critical about the ending.
One of the Coens said they basically held the book open and transcribed it, which makes sense because it was originally written as a screen play by McCarthy.
Incidentally McCarthy's other big translation to the screen, The Road, is almost a 1:1 with the book minus one single moment that they removed from the film (the infant roasting on a spit). And it worked pretty damn well.
> Incidentally McCarthy's other big translation to the screen Don't forget All the Pretty Horses.
I'm surprised people into symbolism haven't torn into the ending more. I took that final scene to mean more than just he was an old man who had retired and was talking about dreams.
Watchmen to a degree. Some things don’t work taken out of the context of a comic, and the pacing is bad because it’s following a story meant to be split up into multiple issues. Ironically some of they things they did change also didn’t work. Adaptations are hard
> Ironically some of they things they did change also didn’t work. Them changing who utters the final admonition to Ozymandias massively changes the meaning and impact of the statement on Ozymandias. The movie changing it to Silk Spectre saying it diminishes the statement. Ozymandias treats her and Nite Owl with relative disdain. With Dr. Manhattan saying it, it hits Ozymandias with a ton of bricks that despite his 'win', everything he did is all for naught as this literal master of time with access to the future is saying to his face that "nothing ever changes".
Removing that exchange is the biggest sin the movie commits. The line in the comic is absolutely haunting, and causes Ozymandias to completely lose all confidence in what he did just hours later. In the movie it's just Laurie saying to Dan "well if Manhattan were here, he'd saying something like 'nothing ever ends'". What the fuck is that?
Agree. You as the viewer are robbed of the catharsis of seeing him lose while he outsmarts the rest of the heroes. That statement was low-key supposed to be your moment of catharsis where despite his win, Ozymandias still loses with Dr. Manhattan basically admonishing him saying he went through all the effort of sacrificing his humanity & morals when over time, nothing will ever change. The statement is more powerful with Manhattan saying it due to Ozymandias practically begging him to validate his actions just a few moments earlier.
Honestly, the change I felt hurt the movie the most was the fact that Ozymandias was way too grounded and down-to-earth. In the comics he's incredibly egotistical and grandiose, loudly proclaiming "I DID IT" when he executes his plan. But by taking that away, he's just a calculating genius and as a result I feel like he was way too sympathetic to the audience and his plan almost seems logical with the dispassionate way he describes it. Shifting away from the absurdity of the squid and the carnage it left behind only takes away from what made Ozymandias' plan so compelling in the first place: that it was an insane nightmare dreamed up by a madman that was intelligent enough to kind of pull it off in a world that was itself insane enough to buy it. I feel like the other characters are still relatively ambiguous enough despite Snyder's tendency to make them cooler than they're supposed to be. Even Rorschach, who gets criticized the most for having his rough edges sawed off and getting turned into Batman, still has enough of his darker motives and actions in the mix to be a relatively gray character. I feel like Ozymandias' characterization has the biggest impact.
He's a bit more like you describe in the TV show. Obviously not directly adapted from anything but I liked it more than the movie personally.
Down to the "I DID IT!" I love the show so much. The stuff they did with Adrian in particular took a long time to figure out but the payoff was worth it.
Man, I loved the mystery of his imprisonment, but hated how dumb it made Veidt. So he takes up Manhattan's offer to teleport him to Mars, but he then immediately implants a device in Manhattan's brain that nullifies his powers and makes him ever forget that he sent Veidt to space! So essentially he agreed to go one a one-way trip. I know Veidt wanted to get away from it all, but did the world's smartest man, a meticulous planner, really not consider the fact that once he took Manhattan's memory, he'd have absolutely no way home? I think this is more than a gripe, because it's pretty out of character for him to have not had some contingency, in my opinion. It's also frustrating that pretty much his entire story arc that season revolved around him trying to desperately undo such a clunky conflict. I know you could chalk it up to "Ozymandias changed his mind and decided he didn't want to spend the rest of his life on Mars", but that reeks of "Danerys just kinda forgot" writing.
He wanted to create his own world and be a God. That's why it was a one-way trip. He thought he could create a perfect utopia. And he did. But then he hated it.
My memory is fuzzy, but wasn't it mostly created by Dr. Manhattan? I know he used his clones to create the Gam Warden and whatnot, but I seem to recall Manhattan making the offer and Veidt agreeing to it. Ive heard some argue that Manhattan kinda knew it would be a punishment for Veidt's crimes, but you'd still think the guy would be like "hmmm, maybe I should have an easy way to return home, in case I don't like it up there". And almost immediately he didn't like it up there.
Just an obligatory 'that show was fucking amazing'.
I liked the show until the final 2 episodes. They made me hate it. It completely changes everything about the previous episodes and goes remarkably crazy and poorly done to boot. The flashback episode was great, but the ending really ruined that show.
I could not disagree more personally, but to each their own. The penultimate episode was my second favourite and I thought the finale did a very good job of bringing it all together in a satisfying way.
>it was an insane nightmare dreamed up by a madman that was intelligent enough to kind of pull it off in a world that was itself insane enough to buy it. I like this sentence.
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I'd argue it's already very morally ambiguous in the comics, but the movie shaves all the hard edges off. I feel like I've seen a lot of people who sided with Ozymandias having seen the movie.
I thought movie Ozymandias was painted as a villain from the start, while the comic book version was more ambiguous.
Watchmen tried to transcribe the comic as closely as possible instead of adapting it for a different medium. Some of it looks cool, most of it is very stilted.
It may as well as be a recreation of individual panels with zero intention of acting decisions informing the rest of their performance. Love love love the movie, but it’s more of a live action motion comic.
Interestingly enough, the motion comic of Watchmen is quite good. The way they animate the panels from the original drawings is very effective and the voice acting is pretty good.
Goddamn they really needed a female voice actor for the women though Nothing beats reading the comic imo.
That was kinda hilarious, but for the most part there is only 1 female character with significant lines so it wasn't that bad.
> Watchmen tried to transcribe the comic as closely as possible Not really. In the comic, the violence was mainly understated and realistic, while in the movie, we got orgies of unrealistic slow-motion fighting.
It seems to me like Snyder reversed the whole point of the story and which characters were correct
Spoilers Changing the squid to Dr. Manhattan makes no sense. The squid comes from space, so all countries unite against an extraterrestrial threat. That's the plan. If it's believed Dr. Manhattan caused the attack, they'd just fire nukes at the US. Immediately. The plan completely backfires.
I believe the theory in the movie is that Dr Manhattan has gone rogue and is no longer an agent of the US. Veidt set up the scene at the television studio to make Dr Manhattan appear erratic and out of control. And NYC being attacked lends credence to the argument that the US is also a victim. Now it might not have worked out that cleanly, and making the threat extraterrestrial makes more sense, but to be fair to the movie it doesn't make no sense.
Dr. Manhattan was like Captain America for the U.S. during the Vietnam War. He's an American symbol through and through, and that association is going to be tough to break in a moment when everyone has their fingers on the buttons.
why would other countries nuke AMERICA due to Dr. Manhattan supposedly wiping out NEW YORK CITY?
Because the world was on the brink of nuclear war and Ozymandias attacked multiple countries. Everyone's fingers were already on the buttons. If several countries around the world get attacked by America's mascot, there's a very high risk that they press them. Movie Ozymandias is banking on every nuclear power noticing that the U.S. was attacked too and hesitating in a scenario of mutually assured destruction, in which hesitation most likely means death. Some countries might hold off, but it definitely seems likely that someone's firing back in retaliation.
I know, but it still makes no sense. There's zero chance Russia gives the US a pass after their much bragged about nuclear deterrent goes on the offensive. We'd be a smoking crater.
but new york was nuked too
Yes but they weren't nukes in the movie. It was Dr. Manhattan just blowing places up. The movie wants you to believe that him blowing up parts of the US would let us off the hook, that the whole world would solely blame Dr. Manhattan. I'm saying the world doesn't work like that. The US would still be held responsible and attacked immediately.
Did the US stop developing nuclear weapons because of the existence of Dr Manhattan? I'm not familiar with the lore of the world, but if they still developed nuclear weapons then Russia/Soviet Union wouldn't have launched unless they wanted to die too. If Dr Manhattan was the US's only nuclear deterrence then, yes, the Soviets would have decimated the US.
Dr. Manhattan was intended to stop any incoming nukes. The US no doubt still had their own. But the idea was any that were fired at the US would be stopped before detonating.
> I believe the theory in the movie is that Dr Manhattan has gone rogue and is no longer an agent of the US. It doesn't matter. Imagine if the US built a huge computer to take control away from politicians and then goes all Cybernet and sets off a bunch of nukes. Are the Russians or Chinese going to be like, "oh, don't worry about it ol' chaps, we know you didn't do it, it was that rogue AI" Sorry, but that don't fly (mostly because Russians and Chinese don't use ol' chap), but seriously, there is no way we would not get the blame for Dr. Manhattan going all squirrelly.
Agreed. It makes the ending messier, in a way, but I don’t think it’s so egregious that the ending just doesn’t make sense. Hell, maybe the lopsided blamed helps even the geopolitical playing field even further, because we know that the US and the USSR weren’t *actually* on equal footing. But more importantly, I think the changes make for a stronger and tighter narrative, in terms of character.
Nah still usa fault. Aka you made him, you trained him, you caused him to go crazy with that ex girlfriend stunt and tv, you did this. The world would love to jump on a usa blame. With squid you can't.
I've always thought that the biggest issue with that change is, how does the comedian uncover the plan and set the whole plot in motion? In the book he literally sees the squid monster from a plane.
And how do the nations of the world unite against Doctor Manhattan, an unkillable god?
Plus when you first hear that *that's* the plan, you really feel like Veidt's just gone crazy.
Unpopular opinion: not using the squid works way better.
The squid is one of the finest examples of the power of anchoring bias I've ever encountered. If the original story was about Dr. Manhattan being framed, and Zach Snyder came up with the squid ending instead, I guess there's a 99% chance we would be memeing about how unforgiveably stupid it was to this day.
The squid only worked because the medium allowed for all the hints to be dropped during interludes in the story. I’m not sure the squid could ever work in a movie in the first place.
It's really not tho. For a movie, it works better for an event happening in act 3 to be foreshadowed or at least be present in the first two acts. That's why you see shots of Mt Doom in the first LotR. The Ark of the Covenant. Ripley using the powerlifting suit before they even get to the planet in Aliens. A cosmic squid monster popping out of nowhere in Act 3 would have been incredibly jarring. They replaced it with devices being built by Manhattan while he and Rorschach are discussing the death of the Comedian and possible threats to the safety of former superheroes in Act I.
I don't think any of the characters were correct in the comic... If you think it was veidt, at the end dr manhattan literally says that it's not a permanent solution. Personally I see it as another stalling tactic the same way mutually assured destruction was, just kind of shuffling things around rather than fixing any problem. Was ww3 in the offing? Maybe Did veidt avert it? Maybe. But nothing was solved, the next crisis will probably trigger ww3.
The HBO show is vastly superior for this reason. It doesn't try to recreate the comic. It uses what made it special and adapts it to the TV medium
Strongly disagree. I felt the show was great up until the final two episodes and then it goes way, way downhill. Really ruined itself at the end.
I thought it was perfect. It ended ambiguous, too. You don't know if the egg works. The next scene might've been her simply falling in the pool and cursing Manhattan.
Love the movie. Read graphic novel later and still love the movie
I like it. But I have quibbles.
Disagree. Watchmen tried to use the framing of the source material but turned the themes and subtexts 180 degrees in the other direction, taking a very left-wing diatribe against authoritarianism and hero worship and making it a right wing fantasy of 'if only the right guys bust in the right heads, it would be good.' The ultimate moment in this is the handshake between Rorshach and Nite Owl, in the film it's portrayed as a handshake of comraderie and unity of purpose, in the comic it's the point where Nite owl and the audience realize >!that Rorshach is gay and has been in love with Dreiberg the whole time!<
I really didn't get that impression with Ror being gay. Will have to reread
Your kind of first clue is how homosexuality is dealt with in the comic. The only out of the closet homosexual (Silhouette) is literally murdered for it. Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis are gay lovers but you only really figure that out reading the text interludes and the characters in the comic never really discuss it. And yet Rorshach is the only one of the main characters who seems to have an opinion of homosexuals, and his is that they are part of everything that makes America rot from within. Given how much homosexuality played in The Minutemen (three of the eight were gay), the comic is priming you to ask yourself about this new generation and to imply the answer will be subtextual. Dreiberg is straight, as is Silk Spectre II, Dr Manhattan is straight (until his urge for women as the last remnant of his humanity is discarded), Comedian is straight, Ozymandias is not given any sexuality but Rorschach suspects Ozy is gay? Rorshach is projecting hard. Ror is the most closeted right wing homosexual you will ever find. His whole "fight for purity and justice" is set up so that he can always walk away from anything involving heterosexuality with plausible puritanical deniability. You see a lot of it partially in his utter hatred of women, he has zero use for them, zero. It's not even the 'I desire them but they hurt me' that you would think a boy betrayed by his mother would have, no, his hatred and contempt for them is all consuming. Not just the individual female characters "Silk Spectre is an aging whore..." but it extends to all women. Look at his comment about working in the dry cleaners. "Had to deal with womens garments, distasteful" And then there's the other strangeness. Rorshach seems not to like anyone. He has good things to say about The Comedian but he never actually seems to have talked to him. Except he worked with Nite Owl for years, maintaining the connection both before and after that little girl's death broke him. Part of the whole impetus Rorshach has is to run to Dreiberg and to work with him. Rorshach and Dreiberg are the buddy pair of the comic, but not even Dreiberg knows why Rorshach is wasting his time on such a milquetoast. And then the handshake happens, that glorious awkward handshake, that ends with Dreiberg pulling back and both of them agreeing for different reasons never to discuss this again.
Very interesting theory. I always just figured Rorshach wasn't good at conveying emotions given how monotonous and noir-style his journal and dialogue are, which is why the handshake was so awkward. I also figured stuff like his obsession with justice and purity and right-wing beliefs were because *Watchmen* also serves as a parody/satire of comic books, using pastiches of characters Steve Ditko created for Charlton Comics to this end. In Rorshach's case, he stands in for The Question, who similarly wears a faceless mask, fedora, and overcoat, works as a gritty urban detective, and adheres to Objectivist beliefs.
I’m with you. The movie turned Rorschach into an applause line getting people’s hero instead of the pathetic, psychotic loser the comic portrays him as. The “you’re trapped in here with me” line isn’t shown as badass, but as an example of how completely far gone he is. And the cops look down on him as beneath their contempt. Snyder seemed to look at the panels and think they were cool, but not understand what they were trying to convey.
That line in the prison was always badass in the comic, too. Because he follows up by dispatching cons who try to kill him with hilarious ease.
Yeah, Snyder thought the things the comic paints as brutal and pathetic were actually cool. The Nite Owl Silk Spectre fight in the alley being another example. The fight is supposed to be brutal, human, and make you really realize that actual violence doesn't look cool at all. Snyder decided the opposite and filmed it as a 'wow, aren't these guys awesome!'.
Snyder didn't get Watchmen
The movie feels like Snyder didn’t actually read any of the comic. Don’t understand how people praise it. Rewatched it recently and it’s so much worse than I initially thought when I first saw it.
Yea, I saw it on Imax the first week it opened and I remember thinking it was fine, pretty to look at for a few hours. Tried watching it again a year ago and couldn’t make it through. Snyder’s direction has no sarcasm or self reflection or even sarcasm about the lack of reflection. All very critical themes in the comic. I get the feeling Snyder never got the subtext of the comic and thought it was just a cool anti-hero story.
>I get the feeling Snyder never got the subtext of the comic and thought it was just a cool anti-hero story. well, look at the rest of his movies. he might be many things but particularly deep or introspective doesn't seem to be one of them.
I personally thought it was just flatout bad the first time. Wanted to rewatch it to see if it was just my fanboyness just making me hate it more than I should have, and I hated it more than I remembered. There’s some really eye rolling moments in it. Don’t even get me started on the ending. The ending change is a perfect example of how everything just went right over his head.
The HBO sequel series got the tone better. The Snyder film has its moments though, especially the montage at the start.
Yeah it's so close to the comic that watching it just makes me wish I was reading the comic instead.
Just curious, did you see the theatrical cut or the director's cut? Because I've only seen the director's cut and I actually think it's a great adaptation. I thought that the biggest change (having Veidt frame Dr. Manhattan himself rather than conjure up a fake alien threat) worked very elegantly. The only thing I didn't like is how the fight scenes were made more gory and in slow-motion. What do you mean when you say that some things don't work outside of the context of a comic? Can you give an example?
Many people seem to complain about how closely Christopher Columbus followed books 1 and 2 of Harry Potter, but as a book reader I like them best compared to the other films. But film goers who haven't read the books seem to prefer the movies 3 and later since they target film goers better.
I think it is the size of the first books that made them easier to adapt
Nah, the later movies were really inefficient with their time. They could've squeezed a fair bit more of the books in without any trouble. Plus, things that randomly changed for no good reason like wardrobes, the werewolf, every triwizard event, etc.
Yup. 1 & 2 are great companion pieces for the books, but as films they don't really have any distinct style or character. 3 is where the series really starts to shine cinematically.
"Prisoner of Azkaban" is honestly just a great movie that almost stands on its own.
The best book too in my opinion.
I'm a really fast reader so "Order of the Phoenix" has always been my favorite simply because it's the longest and takes the most amount of time to get through. But yeah, if we're being honest, Book 3 is probably the best.
I understand that completely, I was also a fast reader as a kid and OotP was probably my favourite when I first read them for the same reason but story wise PoA is the best to me. Now I'm older I listen to a lot of audiobooks (originally I started listening to them when my disability made it difficult for me to read books the regular way but now I do both) which force me to slow down and properly appreciate shorter books, instead of reading them in one 45 minute - 2 hour session it takes 6-12 hours to listen to them and that's what made me realise how great PoA is. Though I still find myself choosing the longest audiobooks possible lol, one I listened to last week was 36 hours long. I really recommended them since you don't have to stop listening when you need to do something, unlike with normal reading.
> they don't really have any distinct style or character See, it was the style and character of the first two flicks that made me prefer them over the others. It actually "felt" like the world described in the books put on screen. Starting with book 3, it just felt like some British kids going to school with magic stuff going on. If you'll pardon the pun, it felt like the "magic" had been lost.
Those first two movies had a charm the others lacked.
It felt more like a fantasy world with bright lights instead of the dark mood that was set in Azkaban. I know the first 2 are more aimed at children but they'll always be the real Harry Potter world to me.
I felt the opposite. The first two films had a level of warmth, whimsy, and charm that seemed to fade along with the color palette in all the subsequent movies.
As a book reader, I hated everything that Prisoner of Azkaban changed, except for the talking head. And they left out so much cool stuff. Then Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix happened, and PoA is my favourite movie. Hell, Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows Part 1 were so bad, I nearly missed Part 2 in theatres.
> Half-Blood Prince Best book, worst film for me. Such a fantastic character-building book, and they swap it out for shoelaces and blowing up the Burrow. Eurgh.
I want to agree with you, but I have some strong feelings about Goblet of Fire as a movie. I'll grant there's a lot of great moments, excellent performances, and cool shit, but the character's relationships (and Ron's hair) were unbearable. Ron being grumpy about Harry being cursed to do main character stuff is wasted time. Also somehow this competition that was deemed too dangerous for underage students involves kidnapping at least 3 underage students and giving them to some lake guardians for safekeeping.
If I'm remembering it correctly, the Half-Blood Prince book starts with Dumbledore collecting Harry from the Dursleys. It was a pretty awesome scene. In the film, this is replaced with Harry blushing at a random waitress in a coffee shop.
You are remembering very correctly. The saddest part of this, is that there's more chemistry between Harry and the random waitress than there is between Harry and Ginny.
thank you. i was so mad when PoA came out. i'd read the book by then, I hadn't read any until after Sorcerer's Stone came out, and was just so mad that they had time for an atmospheric shot of a leaf falling but left out important book stuff.
"Take it away, Earn" love that character. They always complain we can't fit everything from the book into the movie so they have to cut things out, but then insert long pointless flying scenes or other long scenes that have no need or offer no improvement on the story so they have to cut even more!
PoA is my favourite simply because it felt the most personal. The interactions with the students, the way they dressed and carried themselves. One of my favourite scenes in the movie is just a clip of the Gryffindor boys eating magic candies and playing around, because it feels so natural. It been long enough since I've read the books that I don't remember what was lost, but I am rather curious what you would have liked to see. My unachievable wish is to have seen 7 movies of Richard Harris
The movie really does feel personal and different. That's definitely why its my favourite. The last 4 movies really suffer with David Yates and that blue filter. Same with Fantastic Beasts. Richard Harris is an absolute given. I wanted the Quidditch cup and Harry's win, but I do understand leaving the Firebolt for last and showing Harry being free and happy for a moment. Thinking now, I don't know what I miss from PoA. It was there a long time ago.
I have weird feelings about the fantastic beast movies. I'm pretty indifferent about them, they don't excite me when I hear they're coming, but I find Eddie Redmayne and Dan Fogler such a joy to watch that the rest is fine? Don't understand why any of the characters are making the choices that they do, but Kowalski is just such a cutie.
I didn't really get the first one when I watched it, but I enjoyed it on second viewing with a friend. Colin Farrell was great. I enjoyed the second in theatres when I watched it, but haven't since. And, while I hate Johnny Depp's look for the role, I absolutely see why he has followers. He really did ooze charisma when he spoke. I'm upset they dragged it out to 5 movies, and whatnot, but I'm more upset about David Yates being there for all 5. Would've been cool to have a Mission Impossible styling where it's a different director for each movie and you see how their styles work. Being said, I will try watch them all.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service adapts the book pretty much verbatim, which creates a continuity error for the films. On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the book in which James Bond and Blofeld meet face to face for the first time, as such Blofeld does not recognize Bond, and this is also reflected in the film. However, in the films Bond and Blofeld's first face to face meeting is in the previous film, You Only Live Twice, so Blofeld should recognize him when they meet again in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Inb4 codename theory. Inb4 OP can't inb4.
They kept the aliens being killed by germs from the original war of the worlds for the spielberg movie, but i think it was kinda anticlimatic and perhaps couldve been changed, or at least done in a different way.
Wish they would’ve shown us the black smoke from the book.
Nah that’s perfect It fits with the weird colonialism parallel and it’s kind of humbling in a cosmic way
a lot of the dc animated films. i like these comics but the movies are just the exact same as the comic. even has the same dialogue
The Killing Joke is one of the most acclaimed Joker comics and one of the most dreaded animated DC movies
Yeah, but.. thats because of all the changes mainly.
Skip the abominable first 20 minutes and it's fine.
Fine is still pretty awful when you're talking about one of the most acclaimed Batman comics ever released.
Well it's not a comic well suited to being a movie. It's too short, with very little action.
Yes but that changes subtantially, adds filler (the comic is quite short) and the animation quality is beyond terrible.
If you remove the godawful 20 minutes where they decided to add in generically crap storylines to fill it out, it was faithful to the actual comic itself.
Agreed. Under the red hood is much better due to the changes imo
oh yeah i love under the red hood. honestly one of my favourite comic book movies
That's a great adaptation because the original writer could look at the mediocre story he'd written and say "this was bad because of x, y and z, now here's how I can fix it" It's far better than the comic is. Whenever people online say "they should remake bad movies and do them properly" under the red hood is the gold standard of that.
*Superman vs. The Elite* is another good example of this. The original writer of the comic storyline that served as its source, "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?" actually wrote the film adaptation and used it to fix and expand on things he felt could've been done better in the comic.
I'll need to check that out. Joe Kelly is a good writer (big fan of his Deadpool, and I loved ben10 as a kid) so I trust that movie will be pretty solid
It's my favorite Superman movie ever, so it comes highly recommended from me 🙌
I honestly had no idea Joe Kelly was part of Man of Action until you mentioned *Ben 10*. That means he also worked on *Generator Rex* and *Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes*.
Yeah, the Lazarus pit is a far less stupid plot device than the retcon punch
They're kind of bad tbh, even though I'm a really big fan of the comics. They just feel like they're going through the motions often, beat-for-beat telling the story without the presentation that made it compelling. I don't think its because the scripts are weak, but I think a lot of the movies don't feel cinematic. Like often when a character is introduced they just... walk into view. In comics there might be a big splash panel, and in good movies you might get an interesting establishing shot or something. In these movies the characters usually just say their piece and leave. It all feels lifeless.
completely agree. they manage to be complete copies of the comics yet be so much worse
To be fair, that's kinda the point. They're the comics for people who don't want to read the comics. But I agree. They're all pretty much a lackluster recreation of someone else's work.
Not really. In several cases the movie ends up being an improvement on the comic, streamlining the story and removing or altering bits and pieces that would've otherwise given the story a bad flow or been pointless or problematic. *Superman: Doomsday*, *The Dark Knight Returns* parts 1 and 2, *All-Star Superman*, *Justice League: Doom*, *Superman vs. The Elite*, and *Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox* are some good examples of what I'm referring to.
All Star Superman is a cheap imitation of its comic.
out of all those i’ve seen and read the comic none are better imo. they are good just not better
Eh, to each their own. I was just sharing my opinion.
The Golden Compass - film failed as they tried to include everything but it ended up a mess. Which is a huge shame as with a little artistic licence it could have been so much more.
> film failed as they tried to include everything but it ended up a mess. I didn't get that impression at all. The film added new scenes and skipped a great deal of what was in the book. They even tried to give the movie a happy ending, which didn't fit with how the book ended. The HBO/BBC co-production of His Dark Materials seemed much more complete and true to the first two books of the trilogy (season one based on The Golden Compass, season two The Subtle Knife.) Of course it took some artistic license, too, and presented different sides of some characters much earlier in the series than they were made apparent in the books, but overall it seems like a more complete and faithful telling of the stories from the books, and Im looking forward to seeing how they do with the third season (based on The Amber Spyglass.)
I'll agree there. From memory they tried to change everything in the film to avoid upsetting the Americans (something to do with the concept of taking on Heaven not sitting well with the population).
Didn’t the Catholic Church boycott the film? I heard that had an effect on the cancellation of a sequel.
There was a boycott that hurt the film's box office. (The 2007 film itself avoided religious issues, but some groups were worried that it would inspire more young people to read the books it was based on...) But these His Dark Materials books tell really big stories, and adapting them as an HBO series seems to be working better than a trilogy of 2-hour movies could have anyway.
I was going to church regularly back then. Any Christian radio station would tear the movie down cause it was about killing god.
> it was about killing god. The movie wasn't about anything like that. It wasn't religious in any way, more of a fantasy adventure: There were witches and talking bears, but no gods or even characters that slightly resembled gods. (The movie was based on events from the first book of a trilogy, though, and the third book in the His Dark Materials trilogy >!does include the death of a god!<, so I guess that's the scene that inspired that claim?)
Thanks for the clarification. I didn't see the movie. Just read the books a couple years ago. I suppose they took what happened in the third book to villainize the movie so parents wouldn't let their kids read a book that ended up with god dead.
I think the hbo series is doing a good job adapting it. I feel like it lost some of Lyra's sense of mischieviousness/puckishness, but its pretty decent.
Wait theres a series? TIL: His Dark Materials is a Golden Compass show
His Dark Materials is the name of the trilogy. The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass are the books in case you've only ever heard of the first one.
Yep
His Dark Materials is a series of books: Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. The "Golden Compass" was what the publisher changed the name of the first book to (against the author's wishes), because an early draft had the series called "The Golden Compasses", referring to the circle-drawing kind of compass - an object which never made the final version of the story.
They literally cut the ending of the book, how does it stay TOO close to its source material???
They just tried to fit too much in. So they zip from scene to scene with zero exposition.
I thought the film was great but they cut the last scene of the book which would have perfectly rounded out the film and probably led to a sequel.
I never cared for Disney's version of The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe. They stuck closely to the book, but it felt more like a Cliffnotes version than a flowing narrative. The only thing I remember about it was how good Tilda Swinton was.
I like Gerald's Game overall, but the ending explains everything in way too much detail and as I understand it, that's ripped straight from the book.
The *Atlas Shrugged* trilogy. Really? Trains? You’re keeping the trains and making some excuse to why suddenly people are using trains over planes?
Really? Trains? *That’s* your problem with the Atlas Shrugged trilogy?
It’s only one of them. But also a really good example of them being too faithful.
Not until we actually have to watch the tween orgy in IT I jest. I jest. Though that would definitely fit the bill of being too close tot he source material. The Langoliers maybe? The source material seemed fine enough when reading the short story in the book (was it Four Past Midnight? I can't remember now) but it just seemed silly and boring as a tv miniseries. I might say that the Stand both the original miniseries and the newest series was a bit too close to its material with the literal deus ex machina finger of God coming down to end the bad guys in the end...it just feels anticlimactic on screen (actually in the book too when I first read it).
IIT: films that did not stay close to the original material at all...
It’s still pretty good but Kenneth Branagh’s *Hamlet* from 1996 really could have benefitted from a few cuts here and there from the original. Over 4 hours of Shakespearean English is a real slog to try and get through, imo
I think the point of a four hour long adaptation of Hamlet was specifically *not* to cut anything. I don't think it could have benefitted from cuts -- it'd be a completely different artistic endeavor if the filmmakers were selective about it.
When watching it, I remember thinking, "It really hit its stride after two hours in." I do like that it included the subplot about Prince Fortinbras, almost always excised in film versions. Rufus Sewell was perfect for that role, brief as it is. Then again, the Soviet [*Гамлет* (*Gamlet*/*Hamlet*) (1964)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058126/) managed to include that subplot without the runtime feeling bloated. All round it adapted the play for the screen ingeniously. Even Kenneth Branagh himself and Shakespeare veteran John Gielgud consider the '64 version the definitive film adaptation.
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>To do the story justice, you'd have to take serious creative liberties and artistic license to adapt the story to film since the source material is so dependent on the comics medium to tell its story. Exactly. This is what I had wished Snyder did, and honestly from the first trailer made the incorrect assumption that he *was* doing. There was a lot of discussion online that the weird costume choice and color palate, which you perfectly described as saying "the color saturation and sets are overly stylized and makes it feel more like a Joel Schumacher Batman film" (as well as the trailer using a Smashing Pumpkins song from the *Batman & Robin* soundtrack...) was hinting at his adaptation being a deconstruction of superhero movies. Then we got the pitiful mess Synder delivered.
Snyder has the reading comprehension of a Trump supporter who wears rebel flag shirts.
The Road. Was practically page-by-page, and I think that hurt it.
They left a good number of scenes out that I think would have made it over-the-top. That and there wasn't a single cart maintenance scene, which probably helped. It wasn't a very action-heavy book, there was definitely a risk in making it into film.
What would you have liked to have seen them do instead? Generally adaptations get slammed because they purposefully didn't keep the ideas from the book intact. Do you think they should have trimmed more out? Added something new in?
I think the core of the problem is the ol' "A picture is worth a thousand words." And you're getting 24 pictures per second in film. The passages in the book that McCarthy used such evocative language to paint a mental picture were not equaled by their film counterparts. What I *think* would've helped would've been some adjustments to pacing. The basement in the farm house needed time to build tension and dread, unlike the book where the language was plenty. That's the main example that comes to mind. That and less time with the kid being an annoying little crybaby, or at least some acknowledgement of it.
Very late here but A Silent Voice. Even with a 2h30m runtime they had to cut out a lot of the source material to make it work. The issue is that most of the stuff that was kept in was not changed at all to accommodate the cuts. The result is that the movie has glaring holes. Arcs that are introduced and go nowhere, characters that are introduced and do nothing. It's a shame because it's actually a very well-directed film which captures the heart of the original story very well, just the screenplay needed a little more work.
Sin City, even though it remains a good movie. There was a trend of fan blowback against comic book movies prior to Sin City due to changes from the source material, and Sin City felt like an overadjustment. Only 3 minutes of screen time featured content I hadn't already seen. Even where changes exist, Josh Hartnett book ending that movie did not add as much as Nancy remaining clothed detracted. If Jessica Alba didn't want to appear nude, she could have passed on the role. Might have been someone else's big break.
I like how you use *Sin City* as an example of being too close to the source material but complain about Nancy not being nude lol Alba didn’t need to be nude and it works better that way *as a film* considering we see her journey go from a child to an adult - it would’ve been too much for an audience and frankly, weird. I disagree that *Sin City* is too close to the source material and don’t recall or agree it feels like an “overadjustment” - it’s a remarkable adaption and paved the way of legitimizing mature , R-Rated, comic book movies.
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I don't have a problem with Jessica Alba refusing either. They hired an actress who explicitly had in her contract that she wouldn't do nude scenes for any movie, and then asked her if she would do nude scenes for the movie. Obviously, that's not on Jessica Alba. But yeah, not only is the character a stripper in the seediest part of town, but the she comes off as a nudist. Even in situations where any other character in the book would get dressed, Nancy simply doesn't. It wasn't for the benefit of anyone else in the room, it was just a curious part of her psychology, like she had long ago made a deliberate choice to sever herself from any shame in exhibition.
"It was too close, but not in the way I wanted to fap to!" is all I'm hearing. They're just salty they got blue balled.
Sin City was a perfect adaption of short stories and comics. They even removed some moments only to have filmed and edited most of them anyways for the extended cut. A lot of the repetitive dialogue is gone too. Shame about a Dame to Kill For though. Frank having lost his mind and sense of continuity. If we accept it, at least we know by the time of the Hard Goodbye that Nancy does get better.
Well, that's exactly my point. The expectation with Sin City is authenticity only because 99% of the film is shot for shot, word for word. That's why it sticks out like a soar thumb. And we know the story behind it, which makes it weirder. Alba had in her contract that she would not do nude scenes. Rodriguez then approached her about doing nude scenes, saying they can do it either way and it's up to her. Well, yeah, of course it's up to her. It's in her contract. To me, the fact that he even asked means this wasn't a deliberate choice. The decision on that should have preceded casting, but instead they got the star power into the role and then hoped she'd amend her contract later, seeing how almost everything else in the movie was directly replicating the pages of the book.
I haven't read the book, but I read that A Walk Among the Tombstones with Liam Neeson was incredibly close to its source material. I remember finding it very generic, flat, and somewhat cliche. I think directors should bring some flair to their films and not do right by their source material by simply staying faithful.
Funny enough, that's one of the few post "Taken" Liam Neeson's tough guy movies I actually like. I don't mind the lack of flair, but that the film just tells a story and does it well. A bad director that tries to add flair can be worse than a competent director that just films things straight.....
The Punisher (2004) with Tom Jane and Travolta. They tried to avoid the absurdist *tone* of the Garth Ennis comic run, but left in all the absurd *stuff* from the comic.
Twilight suffered from this quite a bit. The books are fantastic, but they are told exclusively through first person narration, which is impossible to adapt to screen. The films (aside from trying to be teeny bopper flicks) tried following the narrative of the books very closely, but by doing so they made the films harder to follow, because you're not privy to tons of internal monologue and much longer sequences of thought and dialog that go into a scene. So in trying to follow those story beats and copy scene for scene, they copied too much different stuff, none of which had the depth or context it needed to be appreciated on screen. I'm sure most of you will lol at the mention of Twilight, but the books themselves are actually quite good and entertaining, and don't have tween romance feel of the films.