What are your favorite film adaptations of books?

Mine are the LOTR films (I'm counting them as 1, because it really is a unified work); Like Water for Chocolate, Sense and Sensibility (with Emma Thompson).



Very often film adaptations irritate me no end: If they wanted to film a story OTHER than the one in the book, why didn't they just write that? Why take the title and characters and ignore the story? But every once in a while I come across one that seems to, for me, anyway, capture the spirit of the book and keep to the storyline.|||Nothing is more irritating to me than to go see a movie of a book I鈥檝e loved only to find that they鈥檝e filmed some completely different story.



The best movies-from-books seem to be those where they鈥檝e been strict enough with themselves to chop out whole plot lines and characters in order to focus on the main story line and tell it in all the detail you鈥檝e treasured in the book. Adding new characters, turning bittersweet endings into happy ones, putting in scenes which were never a part of the story are so annoying....and it must drive the authors wild.



Some of my favorite film adaptations are:

LOTR--Yep, it鈥檚 all one, and a well-done one at that. Gone with the Wind. A masterwork. The Last Picture Show. Bogdanovich captures small-town Texas perfectly, and doesn鈥檛 try to resolve everything. Bridget Jones鈥?Diary. I couldn鈥檛 imagine how they would do it, but they did it well. The sequel was not even close, unfortunately. The Razor鈥檚 Edge (the Bill Murray version is my favorite). Another tough adaptation, since it鈥檚 so much character and so little real action, but I like what they did with it. All the President鈥檚 Men. It鈥檚 really not the book at all, it鈥檚 the story of how the book came to be written. That was a brilliant decision, and it worked so well. We all knew more about Watergate than we wanted to anyway, by the time the film came out. The Godfather, I and II. I like the way Godfather II became the back story and the "next" story. That was a great idea, and let them put back the flashback sequences from the book which we missed in the first movie. I loved the book "Memo by David O. Selznick," and the section on GWTW was fascinating because it covered (and re-covered, and over-covered, but that was Selznick鈥檚 style) the problems of getting an adaptation done at all. Before I read that I had never thought about how difficult it must be to hack out big chunks of the manuscript and still leave a story the book鈥檚 fans will like. Now we have the DVDs with audio commentary to tell us all about the trials and tribulations, and I love listening to those almost as much as I enjoy watching the movies.|||I think LOTR was about as faithful of an adaptation as they could make. Jackson didn't think he could make it better than Tolkien, so he just told Tolkien's story. It was much better than I had hoped for.



I also thin that Hunt for Red October was very well done. Not exactly like the book, but close enough to make me happy. Also the casting was perfect for the roles.



As far as choices that made me angry. The Bourne movies bear no resemblance to the books. They just took the name of the books and characters and told a TOTALLY different story. Why ruin a perfectly good story? They could have named those movies anything else and i would have enjoyed them. When they named them Bourne movies, it ruined them for me.



I was also upset by the newest of the clancy movies (the one with ben Affleck). First of all, how can you make Ben Affleck into Jack Ryan? Horrible casting!!! Sum of all fears was such a good book, they shouldn't have messed with them.|||I was sort of nervous when I heard that Lord of the Rings was being turned into films, but I really loved it. They did a great job of translating everything important in the book to the screen, without leaving out any vital plot lines (I did miss Tom Bombadil and Glorfindel, but I can see why they were left out). I loved Sense and Sensibility, too. It was done quite well. Another one I loved was Memoirs of a Geisha.|||I actually saw the film before I read the book, and this is one of those extremely rare cases that I prefer the film (I like them both though). I also thought they did a good job with Hunt for Red October, which was a difficult book to make into a film.



LOTR was a great adaptation as well. Herculean effort by Jackson to bring such a great version to the screen. I hear there's a Hobbit in the works too. :)|||I get irratated with film adaptations also. my faves are: Lonesome Dove, Dances With Wolves, Sense and Sensibility (also), BBC Pride and Prejudice (with Colin Firth ), Persuasion with Ciarin Hinds, and Anne of Green Gables was pretty good. Oh yeah, Jane Eyre with Ciarin Hinds was pretty good too.|||My all-time favorite is the combo of Godfather 1 and 2. They did such a great job with this it is better than the books and I have watched them several times.



They are what The Sopranos aspired to be.|||I agree - the best adaptation I've seen was Holes. But the worst was Ella Enchanted - the movie was good, but not in any way like the book - it was a stand-alone totally different thing!!|||Forrest Gump was a terrible book when I read it, then the movie came out and it was great. I didn't really like The Godfather book but the movies...are THE movies. I agree LOTR is where I like both.|||seven. Amazing book and fantastic film.


The green mile.|||To Kill a MockingBird


Charlie and the Chocolate Factory





My personal favorites|||Rocket Boys to October Sky. They're the same thing, just different names. It's a really sweet storyline|||"Fight Club" is my favorite.|||once were warriors|||same|||For sure the LOTR series. I mean, sure, some things were vastly changed, but the cinematography was gorgeous and for the most part it was true to the books, if not the spirit of them.





To a lesser degree, Harry Potter. Some of the movies were great, some were so-so.





Also:





The Last Unicorn. *Loved* that as a kid. Beautiful animation, kept pretty much to the book.





The Hobbit (cartoon), loved it as a kid, and while it was a bit different than the book, it got me interested in reading. :)





Excalibur, loved it as a kid watching it with my Dad, seemed to me that it tried to be true to the myths (even though some things were changed) but was also kind of gritty/real.





Pooh, I just realized that all my favorite books are fantasy and they're either too prohibitive to make a faithful adaptation, or they did and it totally sucked. (LOTR being the exception) :(








Also, my pet peeve has been with the movie adaptations of the Marvel franchise. Iron Man and Spider-Man movies being the exception, I have to say the X-Men movies totally sucked!! They totally ignored or mish-mashed stories and characters, or made them stupid. Gah! So frustrating!





Err.. and I guess for non-fantasy books adapted into movies: Henry V (with Kenneth Brannaugh), Othello (with Lawrence Fishburne), and The DaVinci Code. (can't think of anymore right now)