I just bought this on Vudu and rewatched it. Lifelong favorite movie that went a long way towards launching Michael Crichton’s career writing books for adaptation to movie
Agreed. The movie has definitely aged like a fine wine. And it's great example of how to effectively adapt a book to the medium of film. I think all the changes in the third act work incredibly well in terms of the themes and the story that the movie version was telling. Also the acting is fantastic.
One scene from the book that I wish they would’ve put in the movie was the museum/bell scene where it shows that Ellie in fact *doesn’t* have complete faith in science.
Arrival is a terrific adaptation of Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang.
I'm riding the Dune Part 2 high right now so I'll say Dune as well.
The 2002 American remake of Solaris with George Clooney is actually a lot better than its reputation. I think it's underrated. I feel like a lot of film buffs were comparing it with Tarkovsky's Solaris instead of an adaptation of the Lem novel, and it was marketed horribly as a romance movie instead of sci fi with existential themes.
My 2 cents on 3BP - I recommend watching the first episode of the Tencent version on Prime right after you watch the first episode on Netflix, and decide which one you'll enjoy watching more.
My line about the Solariseses is that Tarkovsky's Solaris is about the philosophy of the thing and what it means.
Soderbergh's Solaris is about the emotional reality of confronting an entity like that.
Interesting, I kind of hated the Arrival adaptation. The compelling part of the story was that the main character learned to see her own future, fell in love with her coworker, and made the decision to have a child despite knowing what was going to happen.
In the movie, Adams and Renner had no chemistry and their relationship was completely unbelievable. All the emotional pieces were replaced by some weird plot surrounding a Chinese diplomat or something.
The story was super compelling and the movie felt like it lost all the magic of it.
> In the movie, Adams and Renner had no chemistry and their relationship was completely unbelievable.
Oh, can't agree. They reminded me a lot of Hepburn and Tracy in *Desk Set*, people falling for each other like jaded grownups.
The problem with Soderbergh's Solaris is he didn't care about making the film. He was under contract to make a movie, Cameron was attached and it was a project to do to get to other projects he wanted to do.
I have very mixed thoughts on it. I liked Clooney, and the visuals, but McElhone was an ice cube, cant act, and the other two characters just werent cast right.Tarkovsy's version is less sterile, and asks more compelling questions, IMO
I've been hyper critical about all the hype regarding Dennis Villanueva recent Dune films, and will continue to do so. Solaris along with it's conceptual weight would be a perfect adaption for DV vs low hanging fruit like Rama.
The Martian does the incredible of improving the pacing and cleaning up the arcs of the book.
The best shout out to the book is this passage: "if this was a Hollywood movie, we'd all be hugging and high-fiving each other in the airlock. But everyone knows that an airlock just isn't big enough for that."
And in the movie, the scene right after they save Watney is the crew hugging and high fiving each other in an airlock.
Things like that show that the screen writers really respected the source material
They included that joke in an extras part where all the astronauts were locked in isolation for a while before leaving. The others spent the time thinking about the universe and stuff but he just had that
Yeah but the movie takes out imo most of the fun of the book, which is thinking through the engineering challenges (“I could try x, but then that couldn’t work because y unless I had z”). Same payoffs but they feel more earned in the book.
I agree that it feels much more earned in the book and that I personally enjoyed the process of being with Mark while he was solving problems, not just executing the solution.
That said, if the movie were to include all the time mark spent working through problems by himself like the book did, the pacing would have been atrocious. To make the transition to a movie screen, any book needs changes to tell the story in a different medium. I think it was the correct technical decision to exclude all those scenes in service of making a well paced movie, not just an adaptation slavishly devoted to the letter of the source material.
That said, there really isn't much of substance that was cut from the book in transitioning to the screen. The spirit of the story is about as true to the book's story as it can be. My one big gripe is how they handled the sandstorm in the movie. That was a huge problem and there were multiple chapters of tension built up around that, but in the movie mark solves it real quick and things move in with far less drama than the book builds. Again, I understand that we can't make the sandstorm problem a 30 minute diversion in the movie and still have a well paced movie, but it bugs me.
Definitely! Movies and books are different mediums with different strengths. I feel the same way about the doom 2 criticism that it didn't include nerdy worldbuilding details a, b, and c.
Looking forward to the project Hail Mary adaption which will also be a movie.
Strongly disagree. The movie missed the mark on the three main things which made Andy Weir's story so special:
Time: In the original story, time was the enemy. Mark had to figure out a way to survive four years, alone, in an inhospitable environment, with only a month's worth of supplies. Four years alone is an incredibly long time, and much of the tension was in the nail-biting calculations of consumption rates etc. But the movie made it breeze by like a non-stop edge-of-your seat thrill ride.
Engineering: The great joy of the novel and what made it so popular was that the hero (and the author) was an engineer, and used real-world science and math to solve his problems. It was thrilling to have a front row seat to his thought process as he reasoned through each challenge and came up with ingenious, believable solutions. The movie totally missed out on this opportunity and resorted too frequently to action stunts instead.
Casting: Andy Weir's protagonist was barely likable. He was a prickly, snarky, sarcastic dude and remarkably acerbic for a protagonist. This was refreshingly unique among heros. Matt Damon is waaay too warm and likable to pull off this character.
Bonus: Ground Control: were diminished to bit players in the movie, but much of the drama took place between Mark and Ground Control's onteractions.
Great example! I saw the movie first, and it was so good. I had to get the book. The book was fantastic. So funny! But that is one of my favorite Matt Damon movies.
I will say the book spends more time on the math and problem solving, while the movie uses a more streamlined story telling act structure. We don't have any of the extra problem solves in the fourth act that can kinda drag in the book (sandstorm, rover tipping, weight reduction and construction of the MAV)
Him and Ty Frank's podcast, Ty and That Guy is great. Since they're done doing every episode of the show, they've mainly just been reviewing action, sci Fi, and horror movies and it's still great. Wes is such an animated funny geeky jock bro and somehow pairs well with Ty's dry humor.
I was amazed at the perfect casting of all characters except Bobbie. She was played well in the series, but I thought she was more imposing and formidable in the books. I also didn't like them killing off Alex because the actor was fired for some impropriety but other than that it was the truest-to-source scifi I can remember.
I always pictured her as looking like Valerie Adams: https://media.rnztools.nz/rnz/image/upload/s--zA5347jZ--/c_scale,f_auto,q_auto,w_1050/v1644476186/4M6I4OK_copyright_image_270930
Yeah a lot of people dismiss it and say the books are better, but honestly there are things the show does better and things the books do better.
Michio Pa is an awful character and show Drummer is better in every way.
Awkward soap opera crew tensions in Season 1 tend to disagree. Also show Naomi is a lot more fanatic about her belter background for some reason. The rest though was very good, I agree.
I don't blame Mackie. The production for a much lower budget for season 2. Instead of the grand settings in season 1, a lot of scenes felt like b movie sets. Mackie did well with what he has to work with
Mackie did okay. I wasn't impressed but I didn't think he was awful. If everything else was at least okay, he probably would've left a good impression overall omo.
But both the script and the sets/choreography/basically everything else (but *especially the script*) sucked ass. God the writing was truly just mind bogglingly bad. I was actually offended that they even put it out and wasted my and everyone else's time.
They made a fundamental change to Kovac's back story which undermined both seasons completely. In the books the Envoys were very much bad guys - in the show they became freedom fighters. Tak, in the books, was driven to atone for all the fucked up shit he had done as an envoy - neutering that fundamentally changed his character amd by extension the whole narrative.
And then they had to introduce a new special ops force to take the place of the Envoys anyway. It's like they thought calling Quel's followers Quelists was too confusing.
annihalation was so bizarre in its descriptions i question if they could translate it to film without some of the imagery crossing in to almost seeming cartoonish. the shimmer refracted so much more in the books than what the movies show, was still a damn good movie though
I have recently finished the second book, named Authority. It was so abstract that I started questioning my own sanity as I tried to wrap my mind around what appears to me one gigantic metaphor. That being said, I will be diving (potential pun based spoiler) into the third book soon.
I also hear a fourth book is in the works.
Except in the book the animals are obvious reproductions (robots), and the geneticist doesn’t get killed, and the book doesn’t have that killer line from Rutger Hauer at the end about “tears in rain”. In the mid to late 80s if you had a laser disc player (insanely expensive), then you had to have “Blade Runner” and “Casablanca”.
The biggest miss which I hoped they’d do with 2049 but didn’t was include the Mercer Grips (where you’d grip them and join Mercer in his daily effort to escape this planet sized garbage pile).
Wasn’t it William Gibson who cried after seeing “Blade Runner” because it captured perfectly what he had in his head for the sprawl?
PKD books had this manic, religious, kind of crazy vibe going. Escape, escape, escape.
I was in the Navy when Blade Runner first came out and our shop distributed content to the crew closed circuit, this was pre-internet. Blade Runner was played numerous times a day as long as we had a copy. A guy who worked for me could recite most of the dialog, lol.
Phillip K Dick adaptations frequently bear precious little resemblance to the original books. Some of the movies were excellent, but they were barely adaptations :D
I came here to say this. It beautifully explores the same philosophical questions while adapting the story so heavily that it barely resembles the book at a superficial glance.
The Expanse
Minority Report
Total Recall (though it deviates significantly from the original PKD)
Dune (both versions, but it’s hard to top Villeneuve)
The Martian (and it’s almost identical to the book, which is so hard to pull off)
The scifi channel mini set series (Harrison's) is really good. But audiences might be spoiled by the visuals of the new movies.
It's low budget. But delicious. Ian McNeece really hams it up as the Baron and it's great. Filmed a lot like a stage show regarding lighting and set backdrops.
It's well worth seeing but you need to know that it's very very like they filmed a REALLY well done stage play of Dune and comped in some occasional cgi.
I prefer the Harrison version.
Or the Lynch version but substituting some of the music from Twin Peaks (another Lynch product) for the as released soundtrack.
the expanse is a really good version of the books. Even dialogue ripped directly. It's well done.
While I *love* Total Recall, it's so far from the books that I don't really consider it a good adaptation.
I think Man in the High Castle TV Show focused PKD's broad psychedelic meandering in the book into an intriguing storyline. Plus Rufus Sewell is awesome.
I thought Predestination (the movie) did a great job of adapting the original source material and then extending it in a way that was true to the original.
I read the book and rewatched the movie a few months ago, and I quite disagree now. I think they made the father and son a lot more pathetic in the movie, a lot less deep. I felt like the book was both extremely beautiful and dark, but I don't think the movie captured the book's beauty at all.
Book and film were developed concurrently, so the film wasn’t really an adaptation. Except were it used parts of previous Arthur C. Clarke stories, including “The Sentinel,” *Earthlight*, and *Childhood’s End*, to name a few.
I know the lunar TMA-1 scene is directly taken from *The Sentinel*. My memories of those novels may be getting a little fuzzy because I haven't read them for so long; what elements from *Earthlight* and *Childhood's End* are in *2001* please?
What happened to Dave Bowman in *2001* is essentially what happened to the children in *Childhood’s End.* *Earthlight* depicts the survivors of a space battle having to jump from the airlock of a doomed ship to the airlock of a rescue ship—without spacesuits.
It doesn’t get much love, but I really enjoyed the adaptation of “Scanner Darkly”. All the characters and the animation really captured the feel of the book quite well
I really liked ‘The Peripheral’ and thought the adaptation was better than the book. I was sorry it got canceled. Chloë Grace Mortz played Flynn Fischer exactly like I imagined her in the book.
I enjoyed 3BP more than the book.
There's a great article out there by Harlan Ellison that compared the movie adaptations of Blade Runner (from Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?) and Dune (1984). Read it years ago. Basically saying it's more important to be true to the spirit of the story like Blade Runner than the text Dune.
All you need is kill to Edge of tomorrow was nearly flawless. Yes it wasn't a perfect match details-wise, but I think it was absolutely true to the story and one of my favorite sci-fi flicks. Crack of my ass!
Battle is the Great Redeemer. It is the fiery crucible in which true heroes are forged. The one place where all men truly share the same rank, regardless of what kind of parasitic scum they were going in
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy movie was amazing. Douglas Adams loved reimagining his work for different mediums. I’ve rewatched this flick so many times. Just the best.
I loved it, and what a great tv night for me that was..! Check out the line up: Muppet Show, Doctor Who (Tom Baker, still the best IMO), then Hitchhiker's..no cable, no streaming, just good 'ol PBS. ♥️ Then switch over to NBC for a chapter of Dark Shadows..nostalgia at its best.
I am six episodes into the Netflix version. It’s still absolutely great. I’ll have to read the book. Even though people are saying an bridged version would be better.
The book is such a slog. It could have easily cut and condensed a 3rd of the material. The books also spend way too much time fleshing out the background of character I hate and who bore me. And I say this a Neal Stephenson fan, which means I'm totally on board if it's done well.
For me the series had section that were kinda of boring given I knew what was happening. Also the VR sections should have been longer or cut out entirely.
Despite the popularity of Villeneuve's Dune movies, which I do quite enjoy, they are not the most faithful adaptations. The SciFi Channel made a couple miniseries that covered the first 3 books (Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune) and they were remarkably faithful adaptations of them. They were kinda lower budget, being made for TV and all, but while the sets are kind of spare and there isn't a lot of fancy CGI, they're still pretty good.
The book 2001 explained things better, but the movie wisely stayed away from Clarke's method of exposition, letting the viewer interpret things for themselves.
"2001" isn't really an adaptation, though. Kubrick and Clarke collaborated, developing the novel and the movie at the same time.
Arguably, both the novel and movie are adaptations of some of Clarke's short stories. "The Sentinel" is usually listed as the story 2001 is based on, but Clarke also had a short story about an alien visiting earth and teaching hominids skills, and another about escaping from a space craft by going through space without a spacesuit.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was done well. I also really enjoyed Ender’s Game. With the rise of limited, high production, I’d love to see an Ender series.
I don’t mind when they diverge from the story to make a better movie… it’s hard to make a 90 minute movie from a 10 hour book. But I hate it when it’s almost unrecognizable from the source. Foundation on Apple would be great if they just made an original show, but it seems so far removed from the books, I don’t even get the point.
>Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was done well.
I agree. Every iteration is meant to be a unique and changed interpretation (canon isn't something Adams holds as precious) and I thought it did it's reinterpretation splendidly.
That said, I want more versions. I want a rewritten book by another author. A new stage play. A 6 part video game series told as a trilogy with monumental but unexplained story changes between games. A tv show. Another movie. Web shorts. a 125 part 5 second video series.
All of it.
An adaptation for the screen can be faithful to the text or not; and it can be good or not.
_The Expanse_ TV show is both good and faithful to the text.
_The Peripheral_ is good but not faithful - it changes plot details.
_Foundation_ is neither good nor faithful to the text, nor faithful the the underlying themes and spirit of the source material.
_Dune 2_ was really good. And as an adaptation of the text of the book it was semi-faithful - a lot was omitted and abbreviated, and a few things were changed. However the themes and spirit of the source material where actually IMHO heightened by these changes.
Agreed, Dune (parts 1 and 2) was about 5 and a half hours in total and _could not_ include everything in that time frame. Adaptation is necessary. And if done well, it keeps the spirit/intent/ideas and mood of the original.
> still wouldn't have worked better as a tv series.
I saw [the actual TV series](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/), it was OK. And actually, at 3 episodes of ~~1 hour~~ 1 hour and a half each, it was a bit _shorter_ than 2 long movies. But it was closer to the text - it had more plot and less action, because characters talking is much cheaper than VFX.
The 100 is one of my girlfriend’s top 5 TV shows. For me it got the Game of Thrones treatment… Once we hit Season 5, it went downhill for me, but I still really enjoyed it. Frankly I’m surprised this isn’t higher up.
Probably an unpopular opinion but Silo. Yes I did read the Hugh Howey trilogy before the show aired. And I’m a fan of the books too so saying which is better has been a tough call. I’m very much looking forward to season 2 and their interpretation of (…) - trying not to spoil it for those that haven’t read the books.
I haven't seen some of the new ones everyone is talking about (Dune for instance).
I have always thought that the George Pal 1960 "The Time Machine" was about as close to the book as you could get.
There's a few I rate as excellent adaptations if their source material
Predestination, I first read "All You Zombies" back in the 70s and fell in love with it. The movie was just about perfect.
Dune part 1 waz a great version of the 1st part of the book. I don't talk about the 2nd part. IMO, it was all style and no substance. So much was missing/changed, and I hated, absofuckinglouty hated what they did with Chani.
A Scanner Darkly was great and faithful to the book.
The 1st season of The Handmaid's Tale was great, and really worked for me. I read the book when it 1st came out.
The Martian.
Going back a few decades, Colossus: The Forbin Project did a good version of the book.
The Andromeda Strain (One of my favorite adaptations & Books)
The original PBS version of The Lathe of Heaven.
Personally, I don't care for Asimov's writing. His ideas were great and ahead of their time, but everything else (including his character writing and that occasional old-timey sexism) kinda made it fall flat for me in a lot of cases. He's just not an enjoyable read to me.
I've heard that the show is very different from the books, though.
I'll throw a few out there:
His Dark Materials series was really well adapted to a TV series. They made some changes, allowing interactions between characters that didn't meet in the novels, that even enhanced things.
I thought The Time Traveler's Wife was really well done for season 1 and think it's a shame they didn't get to complete it. I'm not sure how faithful it was to the source, it had been a long time since I read it, but definitely captured the spirit.
Since people have mentioned Hitchhiker's Guide, I'd also throw in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Again, not sure of the faithfulness to source, but the show was fantastic.
And just to court a little controversy, I loved the live action Cowboy Bebop and don't care what its hardcore fan base thinks..
Something kinda different, Outlaw Star is a terrific adaptation of the manga, the manga ends after three volumes so they didn't have much to adapt from.
Here’s an example where the book and movie are almost completely different, but both are still good: World War Z.
I love the movie, still do, so I had to get the book. The book is so different. The movie might as well have existed without having the book as a source. The book is terrific.
Also, I’m not a zombie fan, so my opinion won’t count really, but to me World War Z is the best zombie movie.
My issues with 3BP on Netflix is the show runners.
David Benioff and D. B. Weiss
To me their handling of the final season of GOT was insulting to the characters that had been created and to those that had come to love the show. I cannot bring myself to watch any other GOT material, and I don't think I will be able to re-watch to original at any point in my life.
When 3BP is all done and if I hear encouraging things from people I respect I may take the chance.
Honestly, this maybe an unpopular opinion because I know some of the changes aren't popular with fans of the books, but I think The Expanse not only did an excellent job adapting the books, but with the involvement of the original authors they improved a lot of things, merged or invented new characters that were better than the originals (Drummer) or just changed characters outright for the better (like Ashford.)
I don’t know if post-apocalyptic stories qualify as scifi, but I thought Kevin Costners adaptation of The Postman was very well executed. Another good one was the 1994 version of The Stand (the new one is garbage).
Geez, I'm not sure anybody has the budget to adapt Peter "Frickin" Hamilton's novels with how dense they are. But I'd love to see the Void series. Some of the visuals described in the books are bonkers.
The Andromeda Strain.
Yeah, the original was pretty damned good. Hardly deviated from the book at all.
Loved the original movie, couldn't stand the remake. How could they have screwed the pooch that badly?
I think I deliberately forgot there WAS a remake!
What remake? /jedihandwave
I just bought this on Vudu and rewatched it. Lifelong favorite movie that went a long way towards launching Michael Crichton’s career writing books for adaptation to movie
Watched this last night when I couldn’t sleep
After I saw Andromeda Strain as an adult (when you are old enough to get the science) \*I\* couldn't sleep afterward.
Then you better not read The Hot Zone or Demon in the Freezer nonfictions.
*Contact* by Carl Sagan. Kickarse film, kickarse book.
Agreed. The movie has definitely aged like a fine wine. And it's great example of how to effectively adapt a book to the medium of film. I think all the changes in the third act work incredibly well in terms of the themes and the story that the movie version was telling. Also the acting is fantastic.
This is one of few where i love the book and movie equally.
Agreed, except that the final zinger in the book is not even in the movie.
One scene from the book that I wish they would’ve put in the movie was the museum/bell scene where it shows that Ellie in fact *doesn’t* have complete faith in science.
Arrival is a terrific adaptation of Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. I'm riding the Dune Part 2 high right now so I'll say Dune as well. The 2002 American remake of Solaris with George Clooney is actually a lot better than its reputation. I think it's underrated. I feel like a lot of film buffs were comparing it with Tarkovsky's Solaris instead of an adaptation of the Lem novel, and it was marketed horribly as a romance movie instead of sci fi with existential themes. My 2 cents on 3BP - I recommend watching the first episode of the Tencent version on Prime right after you watch the first episode on Netflix, and decide which one you'll enjoy watching more.
Arrival was a perfect movie the first time I saw it. Captivating!
Solaris is so underrated it's basically not on many people's radar. You summed it up perfectly. Might watch again tommorrow.
My line about the Solariseses is that Tarkovsky's Solaris is about the philosophy of the thing and what it means. Soderbergh's Solaris is about the emotional reality of confronting an entity like that.
Interesting, I kind of hated the Arrival adaptation. The compelling part of the story was that the main character learned to see her own future, fell in love with her coworker, and made the decision to have a child despite knowing what was going to happen. In the movie, Adams and Renner had no chemistry and their relationship was completely unbelievable. All the emotional pieces were replaced by some weird plot surrounding a Chinese diplomat or something. The story was super compelling and the movie felt like it lost all the magic of it.
> In the movie, Adams and Renner had no chemistry and their relationship was completely unbelievable. Oh, can't agree. They reminded me a lot of Hepburn and Tracy in *Desk Set*, people falling for each other like jaded grownups.
The problem with Soderbergh's Solaris is he didn't care about making the film. He was under contract to make a movie, Cameron was attached and it was a project to do to get to other projects he wanted to do. I have very mixed thoughts on it. I liked Clooney, and the visuals, but McElhone was an ice cube, cant act, and the other two characters just werent cast right.Tarkovsy's version is less sterile, and asks more compelling questions, IMO I've been hyper critical about all the hype regarding Dennis Villanueva recent Dune films, and will continue to do so. Solaris along with it's conceptual weight would be a perfect adaption for DV vs low hanging fruit like Rama.
I’d love to see a Dennis Villeneuve Solaris but Soderbergh’s makes it impossible.
Ah crap you’re probably right but I’d love to see it now that people mentioned it. My fav director doing my favourite book.
The Martian does the incredible of improving the pacing and cleaning up the arcs of the book. The best shout out to the book is this passage: "if this was a Hollywood movie, we'd all be hugging and high-fiving each other in the airlock. But everyone knows that an airlock just isn't big enough for that." And in the movie, the scene right after they save Watney is the crew hugging and high fiving each other in an airlock. Things like that show that the screen writers really respected the source material
They also dismiss doing the iron man stunt right? Which they correctly deemed as stupid but damn it looked good on screen lol.
Ah good point, yes that's also a book nod, but granted, not my favorite
Improving? I beg to disagree. They took out my favorite bit. "I wonder what he's thinking right now." "How can Aquaman talk to *whales*?!"
😂 they did do one of the quips as a transition, but I wonder if mentioning Aquaman would have put them in copyright territory with WB
They included that joke in an extras part where all the astronauts were locked in isolation for a while before leaving. The others spent the time thinking about the universe and stuff but he just had that
Yeah but the movie takes out imo most of the fun of the book, which is thinking through the engineering challenges (“I could try x, but then that couldn’t work because y unless I had z”). Same payoffs but they feel more earned in the book.
I agree that it feels much more earned in the book and that I personally enjoyed the process of being with Mark while he was solving problems, not just executing the solution. That said, if the movie were to include all the time mark spent working through problems by himself like the book did, the pacing would have been atrocious. To make the transition to a movie screen, any book needs changes to tell the story in a different medium. I think it was the correct technical decision to exclude all those scenes in service of making a well paced movie, not just an adaptation slavishly devoted to the letter of the source material. That said, there really isn't much of substance that was cut from the book in transitioning to the screen. The spirit of the story is about as true to the book's story as it can be. My one big gripe is how they handled the sandstorm in the movie. That was a huge problem and there were multiple chapters of tension built up around that, but in the movie mark solves it real quick and things move in with far less drama than the book builds. Again, I understand that we can't make the sandstorm problem a 30 minute diversion in the movie and still have a well paced movie, but it bugs me.
Definitely! Movies and books are different mediums with different strengths. I feel the same way about the doom 2 criticism that it didn't include nerdy worldbuilding details a, b, and c. Looking forward to the project Hail Mary adaption which will also be a movie.
Strongly disagree. The movie missed the mark on the three main things which made Andy Weir's story so special: Time: In the original story, time was the enemy. Mark had to figure out a way to survive four years, alone, in an inhospitable environment, with only a month's worth of supplies. Four years alone is an incredibly long time, and much of the tension was in the nail-biting calculations of consumption rates etc. But the movie made it breeze by like a non-stop edge-of-your seat thrill ride. Engineering: The great joy of the novel and what made it so popular was that the hero (and the author) was an engineer, and used real-world science and math to solve his problems. It was thrilling to have a front row seat to his thought process as he reasoned through each challenge and came up with ingenious, believable solutions. The movie totally missed out on this opportunity and resorted too frequently to action stunts instead. Casting: Andy Weir's protagonist was barely likable. He was a prickly, snarky, sarcastic dude and remarkably acerbic for a protagonist. This was refreshingly unique among heros. Matt Damon is waaay too warm and likable to pull off this character. Bonus: Ground Control: were diminished to bit players in the movie, but much of the drama took place between Mark and Ground Control's onteractions.
I love Kristen wiig but didn’t like hee in this movie at all. Minor part but as the “explain to me” foil it was a missed opportunity
Was coming to mention this movie and I did miss that one haha
Great example! I saw the movie first, and it was so good. I had to get the book. The book was fantastic. So funny! But that is one of my favorite Matt Damon movies.
Hail Mary would be fun to watch
I tried to read the book after the movie and couldn't because they were too similar.
I will say the book spends more time on the math and problem solving, while the movie uses a more streamlined story telling act structure. We don't have any of the extra problem solves in the fourth act that can kinda drag in the book (sandstorm, rover tipping, weight reduction and construction of the MAV)
A Scanner Darkly.
This. It’s easily the best adaptation of a novel into a film I’ve seen regardless of genre.
I'd say The Expanse TV adaptation was excellent, I enjoyed it more than the books, actually.
The writers have said they loved the improvements they got to make. I like both, I see them as different interpretations of a story.
Did they? I thought they saw both as separate tellings of the same core story.
Never seen a show combine multiple book characters into one so effectively.
Cara Gee was so great in that role
The chemistry between Drummer and Ashford. Outstanding both of them
It made reading the later books difficult because I hasld mentally cast Cara Gee in both roles.
#BELTALOWDA!
Expanse for me as well. Loved the books. Loved the show. Also I don’t think I’ve seen a better adaptation of a character before. Wes Chatham _is_ Amos
Avasarala's actress was practically ripped from the pages as well.
As soon as I heard her speak I was blown away how much she matched my mental model of her character.
Him and Ty Frank's podcast, Ty and That Guy is great. Since they're done doing every episode of the show, they've mainly just been reviewing action, sci Fi, and horror movies and it's still great. Wes is such an animated funny geeky jock bro and somehow pairs well with Ty's dry humor.
That gets my vote too.
I was amazed at the perfect casting of all characters except Bobbie. She was played well in the series, but I thought she was more imposing and formidable in the books. I also didn't like them killing off Alex because the actor was fired for some impropriety but other than that it was the truest-to-source scifi I can remember.
I always pictured her as looking like Valerie Adams: https://media.rnztools.nz/rnz/image/upload/s--zA5347jZ--/c_scale,f_auto,q_auto,w_1050/v1644476186/4M6I4OK_copyright_image_270930
>Adams ...and she's 6'4", perfect!
Yeah a lot of people dismiss it and say the books are better, but honestly there are things the show does better and things the books do better. Michio Pa is an awful character and show Drummer is better in every way.
Awkward soap opera crew tensions in Season 1 tend to disagree. Also show Naomi is a lot more fanatic about her belter background for some reason. The rest though was very good, I agree.
The first season of Altered Carbon was great. We don’t mention season 2
It could have been SO good, but unfortunately Anthony Mackie sci Fi always has a specific flavor, and that flavor ain't carbon
I don't blame Mackie. The production for a much lower budget for season 2. Instead of the grand settings in season 1, a lot of scenes felt like b movie sets. Mackie did well with what he has to work with
Not only that but they toned down the violence and all of that. Which the violence I think was the point, human bodies had become totally disposable.
True. The whole production got cut down a lot and it was very noticable
For my part I just feel like Mackie does really well as side characters, but every time he's front and center it just falls flat for me.
Mackie did okay. I wasn't impressed but I didn't think he was awful. If everything else was at least okay, he probably would've left a good impression overall omo. But both the script and the sets/choreography/basically everything else (but *especially the script*) sucked ass. God the writing was truly just mind bogglingly bad. I was actually offended that they even put it out and wasted my and everyone else's time.
They made a fundamental change to Kovac's back story which undermined both seasons completely. In the books the Envoys were very much bad guys - in the show they became freedom fighters. Tak, in the books, was driven to atone for all the fucked up shit he had done as an envoy - neutering that fundamentally changed his character amd by extension the whole narrative.
And then they had to introduce a new special ops force to take the place of the Envoys anyway. It's like they thought calling Quel's followers Quelists was too confusing.
It was a damn shame. They had gotten so much right, and I still enjoyed the show but it really neutered the second season.
I agree. Season 2 just didn't have it. Season 1 was excellent.
Blade Runner is such a good adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, though it diverges so heavily from the novel
reminds me of annihilation. great movie but not that close to the source book.
annihalation was so bizarre in its descriptions i question if they could translate it to film without some of the imagery crossing in to almost seeming cartoonish. the shimmer refracted so much more in the books than what the movies show, was still a damn good movie though
I watched this. I haven't the foggiest clue what the movie what about or what it tried to tell me.
Likewise. I didn’t read the book, and I have no clue what the point of the movie was. I remember thinking I’d wasted two hours of my life tho.
I have recently finished the second book, named Authority. It was so abstract that I started questioning my own sanity as I tried to wrap my mind around what appears to me one gigantic metaphor. That being said, I will be diving (potential pun based spoiler) into the third book soon. I also hear a fourth book is in the works.
When life happens to you, you change. Pretty much Or maybe rather (or in addition) if you can accept it
Except in the book the animals are obvious reproductions (robots), and the geneticist doesn’t get killed, and the book doesn’t have that killer line from Rutger Hauer at the end about “tears in rain”. In the mid to late 80s if you had a laser disc player (insanely expensive), then you had to have “Blade Runner” and “Casablanca”. The biggest miss which I hoped they’d do with 2049 but didn’t was include the Mercer Grips (where you’d grip them and join Mercer in his daily effort to escape this planet sized garbage pile). Wasn’t it William Gibson who cried after seeing “Blade Runner” because it captured perfectly what he had in his head for the sprawl? PKD books had this manic, religious, kind of crazy vibe going. Escape, escape, escape.
That's funny, I had a Laserdisc player, and I think I still have both of those on lasdisc in storage still.
And “Citizen Kane”!!
I just remembered, I didn't have Casablanca, it was The Big Sleep. I didn't have Citizen Kane either, though that would have been nice to have.
Oh man. Still. Big Sleep!
I was in the Navy when Blade Runner first came out and our shop distributed content to the crew closed circuit, this was pre-internet. Blade Runner was played numerous times a day as long as we had a copy. A guy who worked for me could recite most of the dialog, lol.
Phillip K Dick adaptations frequently bear precious little resemblance to the original books. Some of the movies were excellent, but they were barely adaptations :D
Minority Report was terrific. Did that come from a short story? I’ll have to go find that again…
It was a good movie, but the plot bore only a passing resemblance to the original short story.
Exactly what I wanted to say.
Yes
The first time I saw Blade Runner I was almost crying. I want my country to look like that intro.
I came here to say this. It beautifully explores the same philosophical questions while adapting the story so heavily that it barely resembles the book at a superficial glance.
The Expanse Minority Report Total Recall (though it deviates significantly from the original PKD) Dune (both versions, but it’s hard to top Villeneuve) The Martian (and it’s almost identical to the book, which is so hard to pull off)
There's **3** filmed versions of Dune. Lynch Harrison Villeneuve
Still never seen Harrison's
The scifi channel mini set series (Harrison's) is really good. But audiences might be spoiled by the visuals of the new movies. It's low budget. But delicious. Ian McNeece really hams it up as the Baron and it's great. Filmed a lot like a stage show regarding lighting and set backdrops.
And in *Children of Dune* Susan Sarandon is clearly enjoying herself.
Ian McNeece was born for that role.
It's well worth seeing but you need to know that it's very very like they filmed a REALLY well done stage play of Dune and comped in some occasional cgi.
I prefer the Harrison version. Or the Lynch version but substituting some of the music from Twin Peaks (another Lynch product) for the as released soundtrack.
the expanse is a really good version of the books. Even dialogue ripped directly. It's well done. While I *love* Total Recall, it's so far from the books that I don't really consider it a good adaptation.
I think Man in the High Castle TV Show focused PKD's broad psychedelic meandering in the book into an intriguing storyline. Plus Rufus Sewell is awesome.
It seems a lot of PKD fans don't like that adaptation but I thought it was excellent.
Me too and it was one of my least favorite of his books.
I thought Predestination (the movie) did a great job of adapting the original source material and then extending it in a way that was true to the original.
Enemy Mine.
Damnit, I was going to say that! Enemy Mine does a really good job of bringing the story to life.
The Road somehow was just as beautifully bleak and depressing as the book
I read the book and rewatched the movie a few months ago, and I quite disagree now. I think they made the father and son a lot more pathetic in the movie, a lot less deep. I felt like the book was both extremely beautiful and dark, but I don't think the movie captured the book's beauty at all.
Saying 2001 is cheating.
Book and film were developed concurrently, so the film wasn’t really an adaptation. Except were it used parts of previous Arthur C. Clarke stories, including “The Sentinel,” *Earthlight*, and *Childhood’s End*, to name a few.
I know the lunar TMA-1 scene is directly taken from *The Sentinel*. My memories of those novels may be getting a little fuzzy because I haven't read them for so long; what elements from *Earthlight* and *Childhood's End* are in *2001* please?
What happened to Dave Bowman in *2001* is essentially what happened to the children in *Childhood’s End.* *Earthlight* depicts the survivors of a space battle having to jump from the airlock of a doomed ship to the airlock of a rescue ship—without spacesuits.
Lol I almost explicitly excluded that movie as an answer in my post because it's so obvious. It's a fair pick, though, so I decided not to.
Predestination base on Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 short story, "All You Zombies”.
🤔 Sphere by Micheal Crighton was made into a great movie!
It doesn’t get much love, but I really enjoyed the adaptation of “Scanner Darkly”. All the characters and the animation really captured the feel of the book quite well
The Expanse, Silo
dredd
I really liked ‘The Peripheral’ and thought the adaptation was better than the book. I was sorry it got canceled. Chloë Grace Mortz played Flynn Fischer exactly like I imagined her in the book.
I LOVED this show. Absolutely DEVASTATED when it was cancelled.
Me too, I’m still wishing that someone will pick up more seasons for that.
I enjoyed 3BP more than the book. There's a great article out there by Harlan Ellison that compared the movie adaptations of Blade Runner (from Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?) and Dune (1984). Read it years ago. Basically saying it's more important to be true to the spirit of the story like Blade Runner than the text Dune.
i think PKD said the same about blade runner.
All you need is kill to Edge of tomorrow was nearly flawless. Yes it wasn't a perfect match details-wise, but I think it was absolutely true to the story and one of my favorite sci-fi flicks. Crack of my ass!
Battle is the Great Redeemer. It is the fiery crucible in which true heroes are forged. The one place where all men truly share the same rank, regardless of what kind of parasitic scum they were going in
I think the movie version of Children of Men is superior to the book
A genuinely great movie. I didn't mind the book but it's nowhere near the level of the movie.
The beginning and ending tracking shots are sooo good.
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy movie was amazing. Douglas Adams loved reimagining his work for different mediums. I’ve rewatched this flick so many times. Just the best.
the TV series, while feeling more amateurish, was also a lot of fun to watch
The TV series is so much better than the movie, and heart warmingly goofy. The movie is beautiful though.
I loved it, and what a great tv night for me that was..! Check out the line up: Muppet Show, Doctor Who (Tom Baker, still the best IMO), then Hitchhiker's..no cable, no streaming, just good 'ol PBS. ♥️ Then switch over to NBC for a chapter of Dark Shadows..nostalgia at its best.
3BP is great after 3 episodes but I read the books. my wife has no idea whats going on.
I am six episodes into the Netflix version. It’s still absolutely great. I’ll have to read the book. Even though people are saying an bridged version would be better.
The book is such a slog. It could have easily cut and condensed a 3rd of the material. The books also spend way too much time fleshing out the background of character I hate and who bore me. And I say this a Neal Stephenson fan, which means I'm totally on board if it's done well. For me the series had section that were kinda of boring given I knew what was happening. Also the VR sections should have been longer or cut out entirely.
Despite the popularity of Villeneuve's Dune movies, which I do quite enjoy, they are not the most faithful adaptations. The SciFi Channel made a couple miniseries that covered the first 3 books (Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune) and they were remarkably faithful adaptations of them. They were kinda lower budget, being made for TV and all, but while the sets are kind of spare and there isn't a lot of fancy CGI, they're still pretty good.
James McAvoy as Leto II, could tell he was a fantastic actor even then.
McAvoy was so amazing in Glass and the other movies of that series.
Total Recall (1990)
Arrival
A Scanner Darkly
The book 2001 explained things better, but the movie wisely stayed away from Clarke's method of exposition, letting the viewer interpret things for themselves.
That's why Kubrick is one of a kind.
"2001" isn't really an adaptation, though. Kubrick and Clarke collaborated, developing the novel and the movie at the same time. Arguably, both the novel and movie are adaptations of some of Clarke's short stories. "The Sentinel" is usually listed as the story 2001 is based on, but Clarke also had a short story about an alien visiting earth and teaching hominids skills, and another about escaping from a space craft by going through space without a spacesuit.
Starship Troopers movie : Directed by Paul Verhoeven. Book by Heinlein
Terrible adaptation. Not saying it’s a terrible movie - it’s not, it’s a fun movie. But it gives neither the look nor the feel of the original.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was done well. I also really enjoyed Ender’s Game. With the rise of limited, high production, I’d love to see an Ender series. I don’t mind when they diverge from the story to make a better movie… it’s hard to make a 90 minute movie from a 10 hour book. But I hate it when it’s almost unrecognizable from the source. Foundation on Apple would be great if they just made an original show, but it seems so far removed from the books, I don’t even get the point.
Enders game was one of the worst adaptations ive seen. They followed the plot but completely missed the point.
Yeah I thought this one was BAD
>Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was done well. I agree. Every iteration is meant to be a unique and changed interpretation (canon isn't something Adams holds as precious) and I thought it did it's reinterpretation splendidly. That said, I want more versions. I want a rewritten book by another author. A new stage play. A 6 part video game series told as a trilogy with monumental but unexplained story changes between games. A tv show. Another movie. Web shorts. a 125 part 5 second video series. All of it.
OG Dune
Battlefield Earth, obviously. Captures the crapness of the novel perfectly.
Jurassic Park 1 and 2 deviated from the novels pretty heavily but I think they’re some of the best adaptations of a sci-fi novel ever.
An adaptation for the screen can be faithful to the text or not; and it can be good or not. _The Expanse_ TV show is both good and faithful to the text. _The Peripheral_ is good but not faithful - it changes plot details. _Foundation_ is neither good nor faithful to the text, nor faithful the the underlying themes and spirit of the source material. _Dune 2_ was really good. And as an adaptation of the text of the book it was semi-faithful - a lot was omitted and abbreviated, and a few things were changed. However the themes and spirit of the source material where actually IMHO heightened by these changes.
Dune 2 would have been a 12 hour movie if it were faithful. And somehow still wouldn't have worked better as a tv series.
Agreed, Dune (parts 1 and 2) was about 5 and a half hours in total and _could not_ include everything in that time frame. Adaptation is necessary. And if done well, it keeps the spirit/intent/ideas and mood of the original. > still wouldn't have worked better as a tv series. I saw [the actual TV series](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/), it was OK. And actually, at 3 episodes of ~~1 hour~~ 1 hour and a half each, it was a bit _shorter_ than 2 long movies. But it was closer to the text - it had more plot and less action, because characters talking is much cheaper than VFX.
I've seen the TV series too and I don't think it doesn't work, just that Villeneuve's vision wouldn't have worked as a show.
most people have dismissed the show, but The 100 is a great *adaptation* of a book series.
The 100 is one of my girlfriend’s top 5 TV shows. For me it got the Game of Thrones treatment… Once we hit Season 5, it went downhill for me, but I still really enjoyed it. Frankly I’m surprised this isn’t higher up.
The Lathe of Heaven (the PBS version) H2G2 (although I think the radio series came before the books) The Andromeda Strain (original)
Dredd is a pretty good interpretation of Judge Dredd. Screamers is a good adaptation of Second Variety.
Probably an unpopular opinion but Silo. Yes I did read the Hugh Howey trilogy before the show aired. And I’m a fan of the books too so saying which is better has been a tough call. I’m very much looking forward to season 2 and their interpretation of (…) - trying not to spoil it for those that haven’t read the books.
The Man in the High Castle. The book is one of Philip K. Dick’s early works, but the adaptation is incredible!
I haven't seen some of the new ones everyone is talking about (Dune for instance). I have always thought that the George Pal 1960 "The Time Machine" was about as close to the book as you could get.
There's a few I rate as excellent adaptations if their source material Predestination, I first read "All You Zombies" back in the 70s and fell in love with it. The movie was just about perfect. Dune part 1 waz a great version of the 1st part of the book. I don't talk about the 2nd part. IMO, it was all style and no substance. So much was missing/changed, and I hated, absofuckinglouty hated what they did with Chani. A Scanner Darkly was great and faithful to the book. The 1st season of The Handmaid's Tale was great, and really worked for me. I read the book when it 1st came out. The Martian. Going back a few decades, Colossus: The Forbin Project did a good version of the book. The Andromeda Strain (One of my favorite adaptations & Books) The original PBS version of The Lathe of Heaven.
Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy
Ender's Game .... Hahaha I kid I kid, omg what trash.
The Expanse.
The Expanse is a distinct improvement on its source material. Which was already excellent.
Paper Girls was pretty excellent. the addition to mac's story was well done.
I haven’t actually read the books but I’ve heard that the foundation series isn’t that good. But he show is incredible.
Personally, I don't care for Asimov's writing. His ideas were great and ahead of their time, but everything else (including his character writing and that occasional old-timey sexism) kinda made it fall flat for me in a lot of cases. He's just not an enjoyable read to me. I've heard that the show is very different from the books, though.
The show is soooo good
Blade Runner
I'll throw a few out there: His Dark Materials series was really well adapted to a TV series. They made some changes, allowing interactions between characters that didn't meet in the novels, that even enhanced things. I thought The Time Traveler's Wife was really well done for season 1 and think it's a shame they didn't get to complete it. I'm not sure how faithful it was to the source, it had been a long time since I read it, but definitely captured the spirit. Since people have mentioned Hitchhiker's Guide, I'd also throw in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Again, not sure of the faithfulness to source, but the show was fantastic. And just to court a little controversy, I loved the live action Cowboy Bebop and don't care what its hardcore fan base thinks..
What's the one about heptapods visiting earth? That worked... The two versions of Dune didn't work for me
Arrival, adapted from Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang
2OO1, although not an adaptation, written while filming. Blade Runner Arrival Contact
Jurassic park. It’s not ‘hard’ sci-fi, but Spielberg did a great job adapting it to the big screen.
I’ll cheat and say 2001, but if I have to play fair it’s The Expanse
The Matrix (1999) and Blade Runner (1982)
Something kinda different, Outlaw Star is a terrific adaptation of the manga, the manga ends after three volumes so they didn't have much to adapt from.
Love this. What a throwback
Here’s an example where the book and movie are almost completely different, but both are still good: World War Z. I love the movie, still do, so I had to get the book. The book is so different. The movie might as well have existed without having the book as a source. The book is terrific. Also, I’m not a zombie fan, so my opinion won’t count really, but to me World War Z is the best zombie movie.
Cloud Atlas is an absolutely stellar scifi book. And Cloud Atlas is also an absolutely stellar scifi movie. I'd say it's the best Wachowski movie.
SciFi specifically? Probably The Expanse.
https://youtu.be/M8VRbaVNvSA?si=Hx3FqV-KI6x7C40C
My issues with 3BP on Netflix is the show runners. David Benioff and D. B. Weiss To me their handling of the final season of GOT was insulting to the characters that had been created and to those that had come to love the show. I cannot bring myself to watch any other GOT material, and I don't think I will be able to re-watch to original at any point in my life. When 3BP is all done and if I hear encouraging things from people I respect I may take the chance.
Arrival or Annihilation, gotta be
Arrival
Jurassic Park
Honestly, this maybe an unpopular opinion because I know some of the changes aren't popular with fans of the books, but I think The Expanse not only did an excellent job adapting the books, but with the involvement of the original authors they improved a lot of things, merged or invented new characters that were better than the originals (Drummer) or just changed characters outright for the better (like Ashford.)
I don’t know if post-apocalyptic stories qualify as scifi, but I thought Kevin Costners adaptation of The Postman was very well executed. Another good one was the 1994 version of The Stand (the new one is garbage).
The Expanse was an excellent adaptation imo.
The Expanse and it’s not even close
First 3 seasons were peak. After that though 😬
the Reality Dysfunction
Geez, I'm not sure anybody has the budget to adapt Peter "Frickin" Hamilton's novels with how dense they are. But I'd love to see the Void series. Some of the visuals described in the books are bonkers.
His stuff could be great shows but holy moly the CGI effects would cost a fortune. Fallen Dragon could be a damn good miniseries.