I’ve started reading Jumper by NameDoesNotMatter. I would like to formally apologise about all the harsh things I’ve ever spoken about that film.
Fine, the cast is unlikeable and the action scenes are just fisticuffs in the air, but my god, in comparison to the teenage dreck that is the book, it’s a masterpiece. At least they tried to build a credible back story for the main character.
In the book, he literally thinks everyone is out to sexually assault him (and somehow they seem to), he solves his problems by throwing money at it, instead of any actual creativity, and the author desperately tries to portray him as a mature-for-his-age adult, despite the fact that his first reaction to anything is crying followed by petty revenge.
I’m just flicking through the pages, pausing at any plot bits, and then flicking on.
Hey now, I read Jumper as a teenager and it was one of my favorite books… Admittedly, adult me has never gone back and read it so maybe you’re right, but I have read the sequels and I thought they were okay. The fourth one has Danny and Millie’s daughter teleporting into Low Earth Orbit and using a bunch of real life space and satellite communications technology, which was cool because I consult in that industry and so it was like “Hey! I know what she’s doing and that would work!” or even “I have a client who’s working on something just like that!”
It doesn’t fit the prompt because they’re actually both really good, but the movie Contact is better than the book. Carl Sagan wrote in a very rambley, wordy way (kinda like how he talked). He spends like two and a half pages describing Palmer Joss’s tattoos or Ellie Arroway’s hair. So much of the stuff in it is so cool, but it’s very hard to read. I’ve tried three or four times in my life, and I’ve ended up skipping around and just reading random parts of the story.
I can see that. Maybe as a teen I would have clicked with the style more. As an adult it just feels like I’m reading a twilight fanfic.
Never read Contact. Maybe it’s time!
I could not disagree more about Contact. I read the book first. I found it to be an incredibly realistic depiction of what contact with alien life might look like. The clashing of world powers, science, and religion are central themes. The movie slimmed down the story as you would expect, but they completely changed the message at the end. The book ends with Ellie finding actual evidence for some divine being which eliminates her conflict with faith. The world governments had already been forced to cooperate much more. Now with the final conflict resolved, it’s implied that humanity can move forward in a more unified direction. The movie has her just believe in God, more or less. The Christians were right…
I’m guessing someone with enough familiarity could say this about one of the John Green books’ movie adaptations, but I haven’t seen any (?) of the movies and haven’t read the books since I was a teen so
The Mission, though I haven’t seen the movie yet.
The film’s problem was casting Brad Pitt as Durden and changing the ending so that he’s successful. The movie made him attractice and charismatic. The book makes it clear the narrator is completely unhinged and fixated on his hatred of women and femininity.
The book is very clearly a story about straight men not being ok. “straight guys would rather punch each other naked Ina basement instead of go to therapy.” The movie doesn’t translate that well, so it reads more like a criticism of 90s work culture. Which is fair, but it often misses what Palahniuk intended.
To also be fair though Palahniuk seems to like the movie, but really despises young straight men admiring Durden as some antihero. He elaborates that feeling in the comic sequels.
Ya the movie bangs
There is a Fight Club 2 in the form of a graphic novel. I normally don’t believe a shitty sequel can ruin my opinion of a movie I enjoy, but this one really put that to the test, boy howdy.
Even Chuck Palahniuk agrees.
Now that I see the movie, especially when I sat down with Jim Uhls and record a commentary track for the DVD, I was sort of embarrassed of the book, because the movie had streamlined the plot and made it so much more effective and made connections that I had never thought to make.
Source: https://www.dvdtalk.com/interviews/chuck_palahniuk.html
Chuck Palahniuk
Not that im aware of, he wrote the fight club book and then sold the rights too it, this is him criticising David Finchers adaption and saying the Chinese censor of it is actually closer to the orginal book lol.
Haven’t read the book, but watched a guy discuss the differences between The Devil Wears Prada and the movie.
His contention was that there were absolutely no redeeming traits about Miranda in the book and she had somehow failed upwards with no true talent. Andy the protagonist spends the whole time rebelling against the magazine and its people.
In the movie we see Miranda to be a horrid person but we see that overlays a keen eye and talent that has led her to the top. Moreover, Andy spends effort to fit in with the magazine people and she evolves as a character.
That’s a good example. A filmmaker saw a 2D character and added a layer to save the story
The name of the rose. The movies…fine, I guess. The books at least 300 pages too long and frequently segues into long-winded discussion of the political minutiae of the warring monastic orders during the reign of Pope John XXII.
If you want to read about the time period you’ll be annoyed by the murder mystery shoehorned into your dry long winded historical fiction. If you wanted a murder mystery set in a historical setting then you’ll be annoyed by the history lesson being shoved down your throat like a dehydrated fig newton.
I really liked the book. I thought it was clever to use the murder mystery to explore the world of the abbey. The minutiae was the point of the book for me.
I think you could make a credible argument that some of the Harry Potter books are worse than the movies. The best example that comes to mind is making fun of Hermione for wanting to free slaves, and the other characters claiming being slaves is in their nature or something. If you had only watched the movies instead, you’d get to see the slaves are miserable, most of the good team characters don’t own slaves, and Harry Potter tricks a slave owner into freeing their slave.
In the later books Harry gets a slave and doesn’t free him but its ok because the slave is rude.
Jk rolling made some really strange decisions. Some of it really makes you wonder if maybe she was being a little too honest or just too unaware to see the implications.
and Harry Potter tricks a slave owner into freeing their slave.
That happens in the books too. He only does it because the slave owner is a mean slave owner, though, not because slavery is wrong.
The thing is that Rowling hadn’t really thought it through yet. Having the hero save a slave is pretty clearly heroic and good, and it’s a nice way to wrap up the Dobby story arc, but then the fans were all like “wait WHAT!? there’s slaves under Hogwarts!?” and she was forced to think it through, and it turns out JK’s pretty awful so the result of her thinking it through was to make it worse.
I know that I was almost an adult when Harry Potter came out, but I really tried to get into them as everyone else loved them, but the writing was flat af.
Battlefield Earth. The movie is awful but it’s a much smaller time commitment than the book.
its twilight fanfiction
I’ve never consumed either media of that story. But I thoroughly enjoyed Dan Olson’s take.
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Yep. This is probably the best take of showing how the movie’s writing process changed the writing for the better, then the books’ author put a stop to that.
Just so you know, everything in that link after ?si= is purely tracking information so Google can know who you send links to, and when they open them.
Thanks, forgot to delete that.
My partner hateread Where The Crawdads Sing, but we haven’t seen the film, so probably that.
I haven’t read the book but enjoyed the movie. 🤷
I found the movie a bit sappy. A weaker version of To Kill a Mockingbird. What I couldn’t get over was the nonsensical geography and impossibly frequent bus service.
Stuart Little was the weirdest book you could possibly read, the movie managed to make it actually make sense while both were meh.
My spouse says “Stardust” the book is nowhere near as good as “Stardust” the movie. We both love the movie, but it’s surprising the book wasn’t nearly as good.
It’s tv series not a movie but The Three Body Problem. The ideas are poorly thought out ass pulls to setup the weirdly specific situations the wittier wants.
At least the show makes the characters more interesting.
I really had a hard time with the chinese names, especially the ones that sounded similar.
Agreed, most of the characters in the book are so flat, and only do things because the plot needed them to do that thing.
The Netflix series managed to make the character’s motivations seem more believable which I appreciated.
Funny, I didn’t mind that the characters’ motivations were written differently. Much more about their pasts and their circumstances than their outward emotional states, their irrational fears or momentary actions, and their short-term gains. It more all about the situation, the collective motivations, and the achievable ends.
I liked reading a Chinese sci-fi novel. It was alien twice.
I haven’t tried to watch Three Body Problem, because I disliked the book so much. I’m not surprised it’s better, but I still probably won’t watch it.
its relieving to hear others didn’t like the book because everytime it gets brought up you usually see nothing but gushing praise bordering on fanaticism. I liked the concepts behind them but really didn’t enjoy reading them at all
I quite enjoyed the books. Would I then enjoy the show?
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I loved the books and found the netflix series to be a pretty enjoyable westernization of them.
There were a few changes/choices that were a bit strange or missed the point, but overall it’s worth watching
The lord of the rings!
I love reading…I read a lot. But Tolkien’s style just never worked for me, the movies were great.
I liked most of the books, but I hate the long songs. Maybe this is a hot take but authors should not put in songs longer than a few lines.
I always skip a song that is more than a few (max 5) lines long
Yeah no I hate songs in books. Most of the time it’s pretty hard to figure out what the actual tune of the song is supposed to be sung like, unless the author’s pretty good at it, and most aren’t.
I remember hearing that tolkien when reading the songs aloud never sang them, so noone really knows what they should sound like
I like Tolkien’s style, but I get it. If you’re not prepared to hear everything described in excruciating detail, maybe just stick with the Hobbit.
The Hobbit was pretty good. It’s been a long time since I read it.
