Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Blogging Challenge: Books Into Film

As you probably already know, I'm participating in the Weekly Blogging Challenge over at Long and Short Reviews. This week's challenge is "Books I love that became movies or TV Shows".

This one is tricky, because the very first one that comes to mind is a book that I loved in my youth, but find highly problematic now:

Starship Troopers (Robert Heinlein) was made into a fairly terrible movie -- deliberately, I think, as a rebuke to the book. My thoughts on the book itself are... complicated. If you just read it as a military adventure, then it works pretty well - solid opening, great prose, plenty of action -- except that Heinlein's welded on a bit too much of his political views to dismiss them as mere flavor in the setting for the adventure. It's more the reverse: the adventure story is basically a vehicle for those views, and the views themselves are... based on some very questionable premises.

I have somewhat similar feelings about the Jurassic Park books - I enjoyed the first books, and the first movie, but -- unusually -- for the sequel I actually felt that the movie was far better than the book. Like, that almost never happens to me, but here we are.

Do comic books count? Because those have been the source of an awful lot of movies that I've enjoyed, and/or had issues with, and/or been deeply disappointed by. But if I was going to pick a comic-book-based movie that I really, really adore, it's Blade. Why? It's the way they handled his superhero origin: it's not the first third of the film, it's three lines exposition worked into a fairly natural bit of dialogue. ("Blade's mother was attacked by a vampire. She died but he lived. He's got all of their strengths, none of their weaknesses.") By contrast, I'm pretty sure I've seen Peter Parker get bitten by a radioactive spider in film six different times now. For the love of God, in this one case, please tell -- don't show.

I feel compelled to mention Harry Potter again, because of course I do. Those are awesome, as either books or movies.

Neil Gaiman's Stardust is a good read and a fun movie as well.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and its sequels have been made into at least one movie, but honestly the old BBC TV series version came much closer to doing them justice. Still: completely awesome.

But if you really want the One True King of Books That Were Made Into movies?

I'd have to go with The Princess Bride.

18 comments:

  1. Yes, The Princess Bride made a wonderful film.

    I must admit to enjoying Starship Troopers as a film. I'll go hide in the corner now. LOL.

    My post.

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    1. It's enjoyable, it's just... the book is incredibly earnest (Heinlein does avuncular very, very well) about How Things Work and How We Should Make Things Work, and the movie pretty much throws all that out the window in an explosion of cheese. It's perfectly enjoyable, it just doesn't make any effort to capture the tone of Very Serious Ideas that the book is built around.

      It probably also bears noting that Heinlein was apparently a bit of an ass.

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  2. Starship Troopers was so much cheese ... oy. I haven't read the book, so can't comment on that, but I remember leaving the theater and wondering just what the heck I'd watched, lol.

    The Princess Bride ... can we just take a moment of silence to express our awe at its greatness? .... ....

    Possibly my favorite movie ever. Truly, truly a masterpiece.

    My post is here if you'd like to visit: http://www.mariannearkins.com/wednesday-weekly-blogging-challenge-books-i-love-that-became-films-or-tv-shows/

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  3. I absolutely love the movie of The Princess Bride. It absolutely tops my list of favorite movies. I have, however, never read the book. This must be rectified.

    And, thanks for coming by ... I absolutely agree with you re: the age of LoTR... I can hardly believe it!!

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    1. The book is very much like the movie, only more so.

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  4. Well, you thought of some I would have never thought of too. Everyone seemed to really be thinking this one through this week. Good post.

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    1. As usual, I love the sheer variety of everybody's responses. Of course there's some overlap, but there are so many great books that people came up with that I would never have thought of.

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  5. I never knew Blade was a book. Huh.

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  6. I had no idea the Princess Bride was a book. I didn't. I'm on the hunt for it now. Good list.

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  7. The book Princess Bride was an eye opener. That's where it dawned on me the story was about economics. The movie catches the essence without some of the darker issues. On the DVD commentary of Starship Troopers the director answers the question about how normal the setting was. The answer is yes, the world works if you're killing bugs.

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    1. I'll have to look that up; I'd be interested hearing in the director's thoughts.

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  8. I've read Starship Troopers - definitely a very different animal from the film.

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