Examples of 'Faithful to Source Material' and Reboots in Film (Games, Books)

[Kyphael]

The biggest problem for me with the TV version is that Jack Torrance is played by the guy who played Brian on Wings, and I can't see him as anyone but that character. Just like Scott Bakula - he'll always be Sam Beckett from Quantum Leap to me.

From what I remember, "The Mist" was done pretty faithfully to the book - except for that ending.

Yeah, The Mist was pretty good, the surprise ending notwithstanding. Some of his simpler stories like Silver Bullet, Cujo and likely even Carrie which was what put him on the map are pretty simple to adapt. It's his more ambitious works like Shining and It that required some tweaking to make it appropriate for general audiences.

[schwarzkopf]

The hair scene was in the movie.

Indeed, never said it wasn't.

[eschatological]

It's because King is great at writing novels and far less so at writing movies or TV series. They are very different and what works on page quite often doesn't work on screen. Of course King still wants to try and make it as close to his original when adapting something so that's why the majority of good movies based on stuff he has written, he had nothing to do with the screenplay where as the ones he did adapt himself usually turn out pretty poor.

Both The Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption are fairly faithful adaptations (besides Red in Shawshank being turned into a black man portrayed by Morgan Freeman). Those are both novellas, though. His short stories (and simpler novels, like Cujo, Carrie, with simple, strong motifs) make pretty good movies. Apt Pupil comes to mind as well. Under the Dome wasn't a faithful adaptation, but again, a shorter novella. The Mist, same story, a short story found in a collection.

The problem with King's works is that they're fairly layered even in 300 pages. You need like a 100 page story from him to get a good movie.

[StillMcfuu]

Yeah, The Mist was pretty good, the surprise ending notwithstanding. Some of his simpler stories like Silver Bullet, Cujo and likely even Carrie which was what put him on the map are pretty simple to adapt. It's his more ambitious works like Shining and It that required some tweaking to make it appropriate for general audiences.

Well let's keep it real. King movies such as Cujo, Green Mile, Shawshank, Carrie, Christine are pretty simple adoptions. The issue is King's other books are borderline bat shit crazy and not suited for movie screens, hence they get parred down versions that make sense and aren't filled with psychics, dead lights, giant turtles, dimension hoping men in black, etc...

I still think Cujo is probably his creepiest horror, because it feels real. Way underrated movie. Christine and Carrie border into the crazy, but they are easier to understand, haunted car, troubled girl. But the shining book has some craziness in it with the psychics and dr sleep plays on that, but the shining movie cuts down on the crazy, and thats why it's masterful. King is great at writing stories, but the ridiculousness needs to get removed from them for screen.

[Nasuuna]

all this talk I've seen about dredd 2012 made me want to watch it again

[Egomaniac]

300 is almost too faithful to the graphic novel's depiction...it's almost shot for shot.

The Watchmen movie (not the HBO series) follows the comic very closely... right up until the 3rd act where it takes a really big departure from the source material...but it still ends up resolving pretty much the same way. The HBO series uses the end of the graphic novel as it's starting point rather than the movie... which may be slightly confusing at first to people who have only seen the movie.

Sin City is also a very faithful adaptation not just to the content...but also to the overall aesthetic of the graphic novels.

[Verdugo]

From what I remember, "The Mist" was done pretty faithfully to the book - except for that ending.

I think King actualy prefered that ending, saying he wished he thought of that first.

[Dhrizzle]

Best example in my opinion is how Stallone butchered Judge Dredd while the 2012 Dredd played by Karl Urban was absolutely fantastic and true to 2000 AD.

I strongly disagree here, in 2000AD Mega-City One and its citizens were as much characters as the judges themselves. Dredd 2012 was a good film but the setting was drab, at least the Stallone film nailed the aesthetic.

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The Narnia films completely missed the point of the books in an attempt to be Disney's version of Peter Jackson's LotR films (which weren't that faithful to their respective source material anyway).

The David Lynch Dune movie is about as faithful to the source material as you're going to get. The problem with Dune is that it is very difficult to translate into film or TV. There is a lot of dialogue and describing the culture and history of the universe and philosophical talk. The first 1/3rd of the book is mostly dialogue. Nothing really happens until like page 200. And then there is more dialogue with a little bit of stuff happening here and there. And then stuff happens in the last 100 pages. I don't expect the new Dune movie to fare any better (if anything, I expect it to be worse. The only reason why Hollywood is remaking Dune is because it's more popular than new sci-fi. They've already proven with the casting calls that they don't respect the source material).

Again...what?! The Lynch film took so many liberties it could have been a different franchise with minimal changes. The Sci-fi Channel mini-series did a much better job and I have some mixed hopes for the Villeneuve film.

[Skizzit]

Both The Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption are fairly faithful adaptations (besides Red in Shawshank being turned into a black man portrayed by Morgan Freeman). Those are both novellas, though. His short stories (and simpler novels, like Cujo, Carrie, with simple, strong motifs) make pretty good movies. Apt Pupil comes to mind as well. Under the Dome wasn't a faithful adaptation, but again, a shorter novella. The Mist, same story, a short story found in a collection.

The problem with King's works is that they're fairly layered even in 300 pages. You need like a 100 page story from him to get a good movie.

True. His stuff that is more grounded in reality like Shawshank and Green Mile are easier to adapt. The Netflix adaptation of Gerald's Game is a solid adaptation as well. A pretty impressive feat considering for years it was thought to be "unfilmable" since 90% of the story takes place in the main characters head. It's a great example of the differences between novels and movies.

300 is almost too faithful to the graphic novel's depiction...it's almost shot for shot.

The Watchmen movie (not the HBO series) follows the comic very closely... right up until the 3rd act where it takes a really big departure from the source material...but it still ends up resolving pretty much the same way. The HBO series uses the end of the graphic novel as it's starting point rather than the movie... which may be slightly confusing at first to people who have only seen the movie.

Sin City is also a very faithful adaptation not just to the content...but also to the overall aesthetic of the graphic novels.

The biggest problem with the Watchmen movie is Snyder clearly did not understand the comic. Sure, he got all the events correct but completely missed the meaning. He took a story condemning it's characters for being shitty people and instead made it about showing how cool it's characters were.

[Egomaniac]

The biggest problem with the Watchmen movie is Snyder clearly did not understand the comic. Sure, he got all the events correct but completely missed the meaning. He took a story condemning it's characters for being shitty people and instead made it about showing how cool it's characters were.

I completely agree. I just rewatched it a few weeks ago and I was kinda amazed how closely he followed the story without actually capturing any of the meaning. Right up until the final twist it's an almost perfect recreation of the events... but it's a soulless simulacrum. He turned a story that deconstructs the superhero genre into a straight up superhero movie.

[druchii5]

I completely agree. I just rewatched it a few weeks ago and I was kinda amazed how closely he followed the story without actually capturing any of the meaning. Right up until the final twist it's an almost perfect recreation of the events... but it's a soulless simulacrum. He turned a story that deconstructs the superhero genre into a straight up superhero movie.

While I agree with this, I do think Rorschach was pretty awesome in the film.

[Ivanstone]

While I agree with this, I do think Rorschach was pretty awesome in the film.

This further highlights a big problem with the movie. Jackie Earl Haley was fantastic. Jeffrey Dean Morgan was pretty decent. Everyone else? Not so much. If you’re going to adapt something into a movie you should at least be able to coax good performances out of the actors.

[eschatological]

While I agree with this, I do think Rorschach was pretty awesome in the film.

They still misinterpreted Rorschach though. Snyder is a weird-ass libertarian, he took a psychotic sociopath whose paranoid delusions just happened to be right this one time, and turned him into a legit "fuck the system" anti-hero, acting out of some misunderstood, malaligned magnanimity.

Rorschach is not supposed to be sympathetic......he's just supposed to be right. As far as "superhero deconstructions" go, he's supposed to be the deconstruction of the anti-hero.

[druchii5]

Oh yeah I totally get it, and agree. I just thought the actor did a great job as a standalone performance.

[PACOX]

So this prompted me to Google search Judge Dredd and I had no idea it originated as a comic book series. I remember watching the movie when I was a kid (and in random occasions growing up) but never saw the remake. Damn cool.

See the remake. It's a cinematic crime that it went relatively unnoticed because it is a great movie.

[Shadowferal]

Captain America: Civil War of course adapted the Marvel comic book arc of the same name, minus the titular hero.

Pfft...a buthered adaptation that had little logic going for it. And they even had a novelization that differed from both the comic and the mcu...where Spiderman was the one that took out Iron Man...Stark called Parker one of the big powerhouses of the world.

[Woadnson]

Alan Moore adaptions always suffer, so it's a big compromise for me to say From Hell is probably the best example. Tonally, narratively, aesthetically, it hits a lot of the marks. On the downside, it splits the main protagonist into two separate characters (Coltrane and Depp, so you at least double the quality performances), and it can't really delve into the sprawling conspiracy threads of the story... I mean it's a movie, not a season for TV, there just isn't room.

As a longtime 2000AD reader, the ideal Dredd movie would have been everything except the story and Stallone from the '95 Dredd movie, with Urban from the 2012 movie. They really tried to get Megacity 1 to look and feel right in '95, and it's replete with easter eggs. The story unfortunately turns into something of a theme park ride, trying to cram in too much background lore and IP whilst neglecting a meaningful story. '12 Dredd is punchy and fun, but has a narrow focus that in turn doesn't really deliver much in the way of a story... but Dredd has plenty of strips that behave in the same way, so it still fits.

Shameless (at least the pilot episode) is probably the only thing I can think of that stuck to the original script so much, it included a joke that wouldn't translate to an American audience. William H. Macy may have got to adlib some of his "to the audience" ranting, but that's the only place it diverges, IIRC.

[Moi2003]

What do think about 'The Meg' (Megalodon shark movie) I think they came close to what it was about.

[Jastall]

As long as it captured the essence of the source material and the characters, I'm fine with adaptations. MCU has been great (for the most part) despite the vast differences from the comics.

Indeed. I feel the same way about, for example, the LOTR films; yeah, there's a laundry list of differences, but the characters feel the same (except for Denethor, that man was done dirty and no mistake) and the transition was so seamless I see most of the actors as their characters when I read the books now. Similarly for Dredd, it wasn't a copy paste of an existing story, just a new one that respected the original's themes and characters. 1 to 1 doesn't make for a great adaptation in many cases, albeit it did kinda work for 300 and Sin City.

[Stormcall]

Sorry for the kind of confusing title, but what I mean is:


What are examples of fiction (video games, books, comics) that were adapted to film but not necessarily true to the source material? And a follow-up question: which ones had remakes/reboots that were closer to the source material the first movie initially was adapted from?

John Carpenter's The Thing(1982) is much closer to the original story "Who Goes There?" than The Thing From Another World(1951).