4d ago

What's the worst change made in a movie adaptation of a book?

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I want to take this opportunity to remind the audience that 2005's Sahara starring Matthew McConaughey exists. The second of two utter failures to adapt a Clive Cussler novel to the big screen.
It wasn't a good movie because of the studio and because of legal clashes with Cussler. I think you could have gotten it done.
Plot wise, I think making Dirk obsessed with the ironclad from the beginning was an unwise choice. They both made that a bigger factor in the overall plot, and yet diminished the whole point of it by removing its Very Important Passenger. They put so much shit in the runtime about the ironclad that the actual main plots of the gold mine and the waste disposal plant had to be pared down.
Also, casting. I actually think the movie is very well cast, McConaughey and Cruz were good, William Macy was an excellent Sandecker, Rainn Wilson was pretty good as Rudy Gunn, Lambert Wilson was the objectively correct choice for Massarde, and Steve Zahn was utterly incorrect for Al Giordino. I was about to say at least they didn't get Seth Rogan or Jack Black but Jack Black might actually have worked.
- This movie was the last hurrah for old school adventure movies like The Mummy, I wish it got popular enough to get good sequels
  
  I wish it was good enough for sequels. There were so many books that this could have turned into a franchise with James Bond proportions.
  I know the books aren’t exactly high brow literature but they’re fun, and they establish a great buddy-buddy universe very similar to the real world. The move was not that
- Remind?
  I wasn't even aware that this movie existed until this very second. I'm looking at the trailer right now, it's impressive this never even made a blip in my radar, I was into this genre of adventure movies in my teens.
  
  It's...okay. Cussler himself hated it.
  
  He agreed to a film adaptation of Raise the Titanic in 1980 and hated it so much he refused to allow any other adaptations of his work for the next 25 years, only to get burned again when he finally relented.
- I liked that movie. I also watched it while I was on a plane from Cleveland to Hawaii with nothing to do though so maybe it was like a stockholm syndrome thing.
  
  Taken on its own merit, the movie is fine I suppose as a dumb summer action flick. I actually really like Penelepe Cruz in this. If you're a fan of the book it's based on, this movie disappointed you. The movie does a mediocre job of summarizing a representative sample of the book's plot and goings on. To be fair, the book has a complicated and multi-threaded plot which might survive intact as a miniseries but not in a single film.
  Going back and watching it now...I've gotten out of movies. Hollywood has lost my attention at some point in the last ten years, and watching Sahara today reminds me of the time I used to like movies.

317 comments