So we don't forget how grateful we must be to PJ...

[elwen]

kalquessa's entry here reminded me how much the Bourne movies piss me off. I still can't figure out how they managed to make a sequel when they practically dismantled the whole conspiracy in the first movie. And they took Ludlum's wonderfully apt titles and put them to movies where they don't make any sense. At least the Bourne Identity actually kind of followed the book. I read a review of the Bourne Supremacy; apparently they turned a book about an imposter assassin in Hong Kong into some crap about an oil tycoon in Russia. I'm pretty sure they're going to make a third movie, even though the Bourne Ultimatum is entirely about the final showdown between Jason Bourne and Carlos the Jackal, whom the movie people scrapped from the start. But oh wait, we don't care about canon, so it's okay.

I first got into Ludlum by reading an abridged version of the Apocalypse Watch in one of those Reader's Digest things. Soon after, I bought the full-length paperback, which I think is where I discovered that they were making a TV miniseries. I scoured the TV guide until I found when it would air, and I eagerly taped both segments. I was severely disappointed. There were more recognizable elements than in the Bourne Supremacy, but you can guess how faithful a movie is if they turned one of the primary good guys into a traitor.

So what I said just now about a Hyperion movie... it's probably best if I give up hope. Certainly it falls more in a category with Dune and Earthsea than it does with Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. Apparently it takes a lot of popularity before movie people trust the author's own sense of what's dramatic or of what makes a good story.

So as much as I complain about the LotR movies, I am also amazed and exceedingly thankful that there are extended segments I'm delighted to see on film, and I can mostly live with the changes and omissions -- yes, even Faramir in Two Towers and Scouring of the Shire -- and am actually willing to acknowledge them as adaptations of the book rather than travesties that bear the same names.

Are people who read books really that distinct from people who go to movies or watch TV? Maybe they are...

Comments

[meril.livejournal.com]

Much agreement. There are flaws in both the HP and the LotR movies, to be sure, but they're not completely changing the point of the books.

As for my own book-related trepidation, ADV is currently making an animated adaptation of David Weber's Mutineers' Moon, which will probably be out this fall (according to DW, not ADV; he's saying more than they are.) It's supposedly going to be a 26-episode series, which may prevent plot-compression, but considering how quiet ADV has been about it, I'm really fearing the results. The only hope I have about it is that the guys running ADV actually pursued rights because they were completely fanboying the heck out of the books, but realities on the ground may have changed their views.

[kalquessa.livejournal.com]

I think what makes the LOTR movies special is that the direction/production/adaption team had been a big fans of the cannon since their teen years. Someone like that isn't going to completely trash the original story. Unfortunately I don't expect Hollywood to make being a fan of the book a requirement for being involved in its translation to screen.