Ask Lemmy

TV adaptation of Wheel of Time was just fucking awful. Like every stupid character change and story change was done literally as stupidly as possible and seemingly with a view to ruin the actual story as it was written.

I genuinely think the showrunners hadn't read the series to the end by most of the changes they made and canned it when they caught up and realised how much they had fucked the story that was still to come.

So many stupid changes made for no conceivable reason. Not little things to make a character easier to write for TV or more relatable, but sweeping giant story changes that make great chunks of the original canon impossible.

I genuinely implore anyone who even got the slightest amount of joy out of the show to read the books. Learn the original and really very good story, and experience Jordan's writing, rather than Judkins' made-up-as-they-went-along shit erroneously accepted as passable work.

Wanted. It's a completely different story, in the movie it's about a loser guy discovering destiny murders that are ordered to kill people by a Loom. The comic is about a loser guy discovering a secret society of super-villans because he also has a superpower.

But I would also like to present a counter-example. Watchmen, the ending is different from the comic to the movie, and I much prefer the movie ending. In the comic the plan by the villain is to make an alien-like monster appear out of thin air, because this will make humankind unite, in the movie his plan is to blow out the major cities in the world and make it look like Dr. Manhattan did it because then humanity will unite both out of fear and trying to stop Dr. Manhattan from doing it again. I never questioned the comic, but after watching the movie I got the nagging thought of "why would an alien appearing unite mankind? They don't know if the alien destroying stuff was purposeful, them thinking Dr. Manhattan did it is better because they know it was intentional and done by someone who knows who they are"

The Dark Tower. Everything. An 8 book series smashed into 1 terrible movie. Who ever green lit that should be fired.

I wouldn't call it a bad change, quite the opposite but when I read Fight Club, I was amazed how faithful the film was to the book. There are just two major changes I can remember.

In the book, Tyler Durden meets the narrator on a (nude?) beach where Tyler is erecting driftwood into the sand so that the shadow looks like a hand. (It's been a very long time since I read it, I think that's right.)

Secondly, the narrator struggles all through the story to remember the correct formula for the home made explosive. If he doesn't know, then Tyler doesn't know. Which means the explosives at the end don't go off. The buildings stay standing.

The color from outer space.

It wasn’t glowing purple. It was closer to a dull grey.

I’ll give them a pass because it’s hard to film lovecraft books. How do you film a new color no one has seen before? Or monster that drives you crazy just to loook at?

The Navidson Record

Everything in WWZ

The Dark Tower by Stephen King. It was the book in name alone.

Not a movie, but I don't know what they were thinking with that 'adaptation' of Pratchett's Night Watch books with 'The Watch'. It was wrong on every level. That said, taken on it's own merits, the production design was kind of awesome, and the guy playing Vimes was great.

I want to take this opportunity to remind the audience that 2005's Sahara starring Matthew McConaughey exists. The second of two utter failures to adapt a Clive Cussler novel to the big screen.

It wasn't a good movie because of the studio and because of legal clashes with Cussler. I think you could have gotten it done.

Plot wise, I think making Dirk obsessed with the ironclad from the beginning was an unwise choice. They both made that a bigger factor in the overall plot, and yet diminished the whole point of it by removing its Very Important Passenger. They put so much shit in the runtime about the ironclad that the actual main plots of the gold mine and the waste disposal plant had to be pared down.

Also, casting. I actually think the movie is very well cast, McConaughey and Cruz were good, William Macy was an excellent Sandecker, Rainn Wilson was pretty good as Rudy Gunn, Lambert Wilson was the objectively correct choice for Massarde, and Steve Zahn was utterly incorrect for Al Giordino. I was about to say at least they didn't get Seth Rogan or Jack Black but Jack Black might actually have worked.