List your worst film adaptations.

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The 1995 adaptation of A Little Princess. Yeah, even though it has my favorite war in it; it was not needed, and in the original story, she didn't go to NY; it was London. It's also one of my supporters favorite films.

The Di Laurentis version of Dune. It was an abomination.

ruveyn

Red Dragon. Watch Manhunter instead, for a better rendition.

The Thing. Also Sphere

That loathsome should-have-been-abortion, The Lawn Mower Man. I've read the short story by Stephen King, and I can tell you right now, it didn't have a Goddamn thing to do with a ret*d guy who mows lawns, who has his intelligence boosted by computer technology. In fact, the absolute only thing the movie had to do with the short story was it's name. Even now, I wish I could scratch out that section of my brain wherein resides the memory of ever seeing that movie.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

ANYTHING made by Disney...

And as much as I love this film, How to Train your Dragon was inaccurate as all hell

dune......new earth. the strongest sandstorm ever experienced by man uncovers an ancient city in northern mali, a desert seldom crossed by humans. it is unlike any ruins uncovered previously. scientists of all the known branches converge to explore and learn from the well preserved texts and artwork.

new lifeforms are discovered with seemingly alien properties. create a substance impossible to recreate with earth sciences. spice, as it is called, has qualities that make it a priceless commodity. all the major players want this 'spice' for themselves and embark on a devastating world war . out of the ruins of the war comes a young man who has been transformed by ingesting 'spice' and leads the human remnants to create a 'new earth'.

But which source would you say the Hitchhiker's movie was adapted from?

It began life as one of a series of radio plays penned by Adams, each of which was to end with the destruction of Earth; he found later that he wanted to follow the tale of Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect after the story "ended". He started work on the novel, interrupted it to do the radio plays, adapted the radio plays into recordings with some differences in the plotline (for instance, in the recordings when they were escaping Hotblack Desiato's stuntship, they used pods; the one Zaphod and Trillian got into was actually an alien being, which ate them), finished the novel, then the second novel, then did the second series of radio plays, then...

No two stories were alike, a fact in which Adams reportedly took great pride. He never let anything go unused, either - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, for example, began life as a script for Doctor Who.

The worst film "adaptation" (which gets the quotes because they only decided they were "adapting" the novel when someone pointed out how similar parts of the script were to the novel), for my money, would be Starship Troopers. Paul Verhoeven wanted to make a semi-satirical Nazis In Space movie, and in the process crapped all over Heinlein's meditation on honor, duty, courage, and how a man should relate to his country. If he'd just stuck with his original story, Bug War, it could have been good - Robocop did a great job of satirizing corporate culture - but instead, he had to pretend to adapt a Hugo- and Nebula-Award-winning novel. Feh, I say, feh!

The Day the Earth Stood Still with Keanu Reeves. I read the short story Farewell to the Master by Harry Bates and it was much better.

to WEDGE.....surely you have seen the original 50's movie with michael rennie as klaatu. gort was way cool. if you haven't seen it , well, you must pick it up and watch it.......right now. not close to being accurate to bates short story, but terrific in it's own right. the reeves movie was just terrible---what an awful screenplay.

Eragon after reading it I saw it having a lot of potential.

Does "The Last Airbender" count?
It was really terrible, but even worse for people who had seen the cartoon.

The Talented Mr. Ripley, made by people who clearly read the book but apparently didn't understand a word of it. The 1960 version, Purple Noon, is infinitely better.