They got the character wrong....*whine*

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Jurassic Park the Movie: John Hammond is a nice, old Santa Claus-esque man.

Jurassic Park the Book: John Hammond is an absolute money grubbing bastard. Gets eaten by dinosaurs.

Not to mention the fact that in the book, Muldoon, the badass Australian hunter guy, survives. If there was one guy who you'd think would have the skill set to survive in that situation it would be him. In the movie he gets taken out like a punk.

To be fair, it did give us one of the greatest movie lines of all time.

Also, while I love the book and consider it much better than the movie, at least his on screen death in the movie was better than his offscreen death in the books; he's mentioned in The Lost World as having died of a heart attack, if I remember correctly. That's one of two changes from book to movie that sort of made sense. The other one is not having Malcolm die at the end, since it wound up being retconned on the first page of the second book anyway.

Edit: Then again, getting eaten by a raptor is a lot less cool than literally blowing up several of them with a rocket launcher. I think it's time to re-read those books again.

 

[Angryman101]

snip

You're right to not read the books until you finish the series. I read up to book 4 before this second season started, and I could think of nothing but criticism and comparisons to the awesome books while, when it first came out, I was just amazed at the first season's quality.
If you love a book series, it's always going to be different from on-screen material because there are things tv programs have to do that books don't and things prose can do but on-screen action can't.

 

[theravensclaw]

EVERY SINGLE STEPHEN KING ADAPTATION TO FILM! Seriously I just want one that is done right for once. Okay the Mist was close but seriously thats about it. everything else has been chewed up and spat out onto film. I dread what is going to happen to the Dark Tower Books.

 

[Sandernista]

I don't want to point out all the wrongs and errors in each scene and characteristics that protagonists may have that were simply not evident in the novels.

I just want to point out that the television series is now it's own beast. While similar to the books it's completely taken it's own path and good on it. It's doing an amazing job of it and I love it.

In fact I will probably prefer the TV show if it keeps going at this pace it'll finish a decade before the books.

OT: This really isn't much of a problem for me as I really think of the source material and the adaptation as different properties.

That said, The Last Airbender, and Eragon[footnote]These are the ones who really jump to mind[/footnote] really pissed me off.

 

[TheMann]

Jurassic Park the Movie: John Hammond is a nice, old Santa Claus-esque man.

Jurassic Park the Book: John Hammond is an absolute money grubbing bastard. Gets eaten by dinosaurs.

Not to mention the fact that in the book, Muldoon, the badass Australian hunter guy, survives. If there was one guy who you'd think would have the skill set to survive in that situation it would be him. In the movie he gets taken out like a punk.

To be fair, it did give us one of the greatest movie lines of all time.

Yeah, can't argue with that. It really wasn't a bad movie at all, a lot of things just got rearranged to fit the running time and get it a lower MPAA rating as if the film followed the book exactly it would have be rated 'R' for sure. I read the book when it first got published. A few years later when I heard a movie was being made I thought, "Oh man, this is going to be gruesome." Nope, not really.

Also, while I love the book and consider it much better than the movie, at least his on screen death in the movie was better than his offscreen death in the books; he's mentioned in The Lost World as having died of a heart attack, if I remember correctly.

Really? I never read The Lost World. That's pretty lame.

 

[Freaky Lou]

Every named cast member in Fantastic Four.
I've never seen a more fundamental misunderstanding of a franchise in my entire life.

I mean, yeah Batman & Robin is 120 minutes of total horse shit but it's at least evocative of the Adam West era Batman.

I'd agree with the exception of Johnny Storm, who I thought came off perfectly in the movie. That is much more of a testament to Chris Evans' acting than good writing, though, because his script was still terrible; he just nailed Johnny Storm's attitude and bearing.

 

[sarahvait]

Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes. I adore both classic adaptions (the BBC Granada series with Jeremy Brett) and modern retellings (BBC Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch) of the Sherlock stories. And I really love RDJ's work.

But his version of Sherlock just...isn't Sherlock for me. I actually talked about this is a previous thread:




What really gets me most of all is that RDJ created a really interesting character. If they had presented the movies as a brand new detective IP, I would have thought that it was a really cool new detective character, one to join the ranks with Sherlock Holmes and the like. Or maybe presented RDJ's character as a descendant of Sherlock Holmes, a grizzled world weary man trying to live in the shadow of his famous ancestor and ultimately prove his own mettle.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Really? I never read The Lost World. That's pretty lame.

Yeah. There's a scene where they're talking about the former employees of the park, and how most of the survivors didn't last long even after getting out of there. It's been years since I read the book, but I think it had something to do with either why the main characters couldn't just contact one of them, or why the antagonists had little to worry about from InGen with their evil plot. It's a really good book, despite that and the retcon. I really do need to read those books again.

 

[mrhappy1489]

I remember reading it somewhere, that Michael Gambon wanted to bring a completely different character to the table in memory of Richard Harris. Rather than simply emulating him, he retired his version of Dumbeldore in favour of a new version he could call his own. This is what changed my perspective a little bit on his version of Dumbeldore, because you can see him trying to work within the parameters of the original novel, but also attempting to allow Richard Harris's character the due respect it deserved.

Well, I never minded Michael Gambon's Dumbledore, I just thought he... wasn't quite as good, but I suppose that makes sense and I can respect it.

With reference to LOTR, I was a little peeved (having read the books after) that they left out the character of Erkinbrand (I think that's how you spell it), so they could get rid of Eomer for most of the movie and Aragorn look even more badass. It was frustrating because I really liked Karl Urban's Eomer and would have liked to have seen plenty more of him. Also Faramir, definitely faramir, the bastard deviates so much, I'm surprised they didn't just rename him.

And I really need to read the trilogy again (I was crazy young when I read them the first time) but yeah, Faramir was about the biggest thing that my eleven year old brain recognized as being massively different when I saw the movies, apart from the things that were simply omitted entirely. He wasn't supposed to bring them to Osgiliath, dammit!

Dude, he wasn't even suppose to be tempted by the ring. He was basically meant to say when he saw the ring (paraphrasing a bit), "Wow, that shit ain't gonna help no Gondor, get your ass to Mordor quick smart, for I am not tempted." Once again, this was another character being altered to make Aragorn appear holier than thou. Basically movie Aragorn is the paragon of the world and the most incorruptible person to exist. I love the movies and they are my personal favourites, but it is frustrating that Mr. Jackson thought that Aragorn needed to be this Unattainable good guy, while everyone else was just at the mercy of the ring and weak willed.