The primary one that comes to mind was this year's 'Endless Love'.
I read the book a long time ago, it was about a psychotic teenager who develops an obsession with an underage girl which eventually erupts in intentionally setting her house on fire, accidentally killing her dad and getting confined to a psychiatric hospital. So what does the 2014 adaptation do? It removed the whole "crazed stalker" element entirely and made it a conventional romance whose primary conflict is that the girl's father doesn't approve of their coupling. It pissed me off beyond belief. That's like remaking Stephen King's 'Misery' into a romantic comedy with no broken bones.
Provided, it was also adapted into a movie in 1981, where they kept the "crazed stalker" angle but unfortunately tried to portray it as romantic and ended up making it creepy. It was a crappy adaptation, but at least it WAS an adaptation.
YippySkippy wrote:
All of them. Books are better than movies. Movies have no means to convey internal dialogue, and time restraints force directors to compress and simplify plotlines.
Disagree. Sometimes conciseness can be an improvement. Stephen King's work comes to mind a lot: he comes up with great ideas but he executes them poorly. Most film adaptations of his I've seen are better than his books because they excise a lot of unnecessary filler and sub-plots, and in some cases, a lot of stupidity. 'The Shining' is infinitely better without the sentient topiary monsters, while 'The Langoliers' is infinitely worse for including the flying meatball monsters.