Sennadar Forums

Been down with a bit of flu, so the last few days have been video days. Decided to borrow, from a good mate, the last few Harry Potter movies. To be honest they weren’t all that bad. The last one, to my pleasant surprise, was actually really good.Good ending as well. Haven’t read the books in years, so it was a good refresher.

Just curious,

How often does a movie made from a book actually closely match the book?

I can offhand remember 2 movies that I saw that were made from a book. In both cases I had read the book first, and the movies were major disappointments.

arargh

You need to watch the movie first then read the book. It just makes the book that much better.

Probably ruin the book.

I read. In both cases, I saw the movies years later, on TV.

arargh

Anyone seen and read the Bourne series?

I've seen the films but not got round to reading the books.
Really enjoyed the first three films, are the books or films better?

The first 3 movies are good, but stray off the path of the story critically in the second movie. I haven't seen 4 yet, but i'm looking forward to it. The books are excellent.

I saw the fourth film. I was not impressed. Now I've been given to understand that the only thing it has in common with the book (which I obviously haven't read) is the title. There is certainly no Bourne in it.

The general idea is present in book one, but there are major differences. The main thing is that The Bourne Identity is set somewhere in the 70's to 80's, with Bourne being a Vietnam Vet. The other big difference is that the main villein in the book series is Carlos the Jackal, with the entire Bourne/Treadstone group being a giant False Front. Before book one, Bourne didn't really kill many people, just took credit for other hits, especially Carlos'. In the movies, Treadstone was a kill squad targeting terrorists.

To be honest, movies very rarely ever do true justice to books. (That’s true most times about manga /anmie as well.) It’s hard indeed to transfer the sheer brilliance of story telling, from one medium to another. Its just one person’s vision of the story and it doesn’t always pan out in the exact same way.
For example’ I love’ Lord of the Rings’, have read it countless times, watched it countless times. Yet how can you even begin to compare Tolkien brilliancein the books , with its visual version, awesome as it is. You just cant, its chalk and cheese.

That said, in the case of Harry Potter, (with it being a hell of a long time, since I last read the series), I thought the last few movies captured the spirit of the books pretty well.
Bourne was something I read in my youth, and enjoyed the movies for what they

It is real hard to transfer a book to a movie. Last I heard, one book I really liked (do not remember which one) would take a 9 hour movie to do it justice. And it was not a long book either.

If they would have made LoTR true to the books, each book would end up 3-4 movies long with each movie being 3-4 hours long. Oh, and they'd be musicals.

I thought some of the closest I can remember were Dune (long version), Hunt for Red October and Starship Troopers. Patriot Games started off fairly close but the ending was so different it offended me (and from what I understand, Tom Clancy wasn't happy with it either). Jack Ryan's wrestling over revenge and anger vs. Law and Justice was a key defining point in the real nature of the character. The movie removed that and made it just another hero action movie. Of course, until I saw Regarding Henry, I could never imagine Harrison Ford playing Jack Ryan - especially having to follow Alec Baldwin who 'nailed' the character in HfRO.

Hunt for Red October was one of the two movies I was referring to in my comments. And I agree that Alec Baldwin 'nailed' the Jack Ryan character.

Up Periscope (1959) was the other movie. IIRC, in the book, the CO gets sucked overboard and the XO becomes the hero. In the movie, the CO was played by a 'name' star, so the poor XO got trashed.

arargh

I have to agree about the Hunt for Red October. It's one of the few books I've read that translated very, very well into the movie. Both Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin were just dead on portraying Captain Ramius and Jack Ryan. They did cut a few scenes out of the book, like the reactor meltdown on one of the Russian subs chasing Ramius, which would have been a pretty stark and awesome scene if they'd have included it.