Best and Worst Film Adaptations

Best and Worst Film Adaptations:

  There are plenty of books that have been made into films. Many of them are very good, but there are some that are just completely rotten. Whether it's the book or the movie that is bad, there are plenty.

• Fight Club: The book came out in 1996, about three years before the 1999 film was released. This is one of the best print to screen adaptations I've seen. The book followed a stange story line: starting at the end, jumping to the beginning, then returning to the end again. The movie followed this same story line, but without being more confusing than the plot makes it.
• The Hunger Games: This book became a best seller soon after being released, and only grew in publicity as each book came out. When the movie was released, it gained even more notice. This is a great adaptation because of the fact that the movie follows the story line pretty closely. It was an excellently written book, and a perfectly executed movie.
• My Sister's Keeper: Standing alone, the book and the movie are good. But when you compare them to each other, they lose some merit. The book was an easy read, and it was written very beautifully. The movie was well casted, and greatly made. But there was one major flaw in this adaptation: they changed the ending. I'm not going to ruin it for any of you who haven't read, but they gave the movie a completely different ending than the book. That's one element that makes for a bad adaptation.
• American Psycho: This story has a very interesting plot, making it a very good movie and what you would think to be a very good read. I have no issues with the adaptation of this book into a movie. They executed it perfectly, down to the main character's manic and slightly obsessive-compulsive behavior. The real issue I have with this story is the book itself. For being a psychological thriller, it was a very dull read. Due to the narrator's deranged behavior, he describes many things in excruciating detail. An example would be that whenever he met a new character, he would describe, in horrifying detail, exactly what they had on. If said character was wearing a suit, the narrator would go into detail about not only the pattern and color of the suit, but also about the designer and superfluous details like that. It was a great movie, and a really clever plot line, but a very dull read.