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Discussion: Fantasy Books Adapted Into Films

M.A.C.O.

M.A.C.O.

Commodore
Commodore
Even since 2001, with the success of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter at the box office, there have been a dozen or so other adaptations of fantasy books turned into movies. However, not all have been met with success and acclaim. Hollywood never did find the next Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, but they didn't stop trying. Feeling a bit burned out by superhero properties, I decided to revisit and visit these titles. I'd like to discuss what we liked about these adaptations, why some succeeded and others failed.

Middle-Earth:
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

Harry Potter:
Sorcerer's Stone
Chamber of Secrets
Prisoner of Azkaban
Goblet of Fire
Order of the Phoenix
The Half-Blood Prince
Deathly Hallows Part 1&2

Chronicles of Narnia:
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Disney Live Action and Remakes:
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Oz The Great And Powerful
Cinderella
Maleficent
Prince of Persia - A game series that was adapted by Disney and intended to be the next POTC for them.

Not a book series, but a big fantasy giant none the less.
Pirates of the Caribbean:
Curse of the Black Pearl
Dead Man's Chest
At World's End
On Stranger Tides
Dead Men Tell No Tales *To debut in 2017

Inheritance:
Eragon

Lemony Snicket:
A Series of Unfortunate Events

His Dark Materials:
The Golden Compass

Percy Jackson & The Olympians:
The Lightning Thief
Sea of Monsters

Universal Studios:
The Wolfman
Dracula Untold
Snow White and the Huntsman and The Huntsman Winter's War
The Mummy *Reboot in 2017

The Twilight Saga:
Twilight
New Moon
Eclipse
Breaking Dawn 1 and 2

Not a film series, but a swords and sorcery, fantasy epic worthy of recognition.
A Song of Fire and Ice:
HBO's Game of Thrones

I'm probably forgetting some, so feel free to add them. With all the adaptations of the fantasy genre, I'm surprised no studio picked up The Chronicles of Prydain for a Hollywood makeover.
 
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I loved the Harry Potter movies mainly because I think the casting was superb. All the characters were exactly how I pictured them in the books. The sets were mesmerizing as well.
 
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M.A.C.O. said:
I'm probably forgetting some, so feel free to add them. With all the adaptations of the fantasy genre, I'm surprised no studio picked up The Chronicles of Prydain for a Hollywood makeover.
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Prydian was picked up by Disney earlier this year for a full live-film adaptation. Which will be their second attempt after parts of the first two books were used to make their animated feature The Black Cauldron in 1985.

http://variety.com/2016/film/news/chronicles-of-prydain-movie-disney-1201733058/

You are right, even after all their trying, Hollywood never quite found another successful multi-film saga after LOTR/HOB or Potter. But with the interest having shifted from big to smaller screen thanks to Game of Thrones, I expect to see many more coming out in that format, especially with the success of GoT along side Outlander on STARZ, The Shanarra Chronicles on MTV, The Magicians on SyFy.

I mean, with the widow of Robert Jordan publicising in May this year that a new production company has got the rights to The Wheel of Time series, I can foresee a lot of the currently untouched fantasy sagas heading towards lavish TV productions. Though in the case of WoT they are either going to have it on the air for 20 years, or butcher it senseless to make it manageable for an audience.

Given the production values that HBO, STARZ, Netflix, Amazon etc can bring these days, I'd in fact much prefer to see larger, more expansive works adapted by them than by the film production companies. Creators seemingly are given greater liberty to be both faithful AND adapt to the faster paced visual medium. The format also allows for greater audience satisfaction in this longer format as many of the recent film adaptations have been regretfully stretched and bloated for no reason other than profit.

If companies like HBO can turn people onto fantasy with the likes of GoT, then perhaps they can do the same for Science Fiction (I'm looking at YOU Westworld) and then, some day, hopefully soon, someone will start tackling and realising those wonderful SciFi novels/series that film makers have been hemming and hawing about for decades.

Hugo - Seldon, here we come
 
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Hugo Rune said:
Prydian was picked up by Disney earlier this year for a full live-film adaptation. Which will be their second attempt after parts of the first two books were used to make their animated feature The Black Cauldron in 1985.

http://variety.com/2016/film/news/chronicles-of-prydain-movie-disney-1201733058/

You are right, even after all their trying, Hollywood never quite found another successful multi-film saga after LOTR/HOB or Potter. But with the interest having shifted from big to smaller screen thanks to Game of Thrones, I expect to see many more coming out in that format, especially with the success of GoT along side Outlander on STARZ, The Shanarra Chronicles on MTV, The Magicians on SciFy.

I mean, with the widow of Robert Jordan publicising in May this year that a new production company has got the rights to The Wheel of Time series, I can foresee a lot of the currently untouched fantasy sagas heading towards lavish TV productions. Though in the case of WoT they are either going to have it on the air for 20 years, or butcher it senseless to make it manageable for an audience.

Given the production values that HBO, STARZ, Netflix, Amazon etc can bring these days, I'd in fact much prefer to see larger, more expansive works adapted by them than by the film production companies. Creators seemingly are given greater liberty to be both faithful AND adapt to the faster paced visual medium. The format also allows for greater audience satisfaction in this longer format as many of the recent film adaptations have been regretfully stretched and bloated for no reason other than profit.

If companies like HBO can turn people onto fantasy with the likes of GoT, then perhaps they can do the same for Science Fiction (I'm looking at YOU Westworld) and then, some day, hopefully soon, someone will start tackling and realising those wonderful SciFi novels/series that film makers have been hemming and hawing about for decades.

Hugo - Seldon, here we come
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Thanks for the info. I hadn't heard of Disney picking of Prydain. Haha, brilliant.

Also, thanks for reminding me about GOT and other tv series of that nature. I had it on my mind but it must have slipped after I did the Disney movies.
 
I think the LOTR Trilogy and the Harry Potter movies are the best. That said, the HP film series wasn't flawless. Goblet of Fire just feels off, and its hard to explain. It just didn't feel like it was adapted well. Also, Half Blood Prince really sucked. It added pointless stuff that didn't help the story, changed things that really didn't need to be changed and was just mediocre as an adaptation of a good book. Besides that, though, I think the HP movies did a pretty good job, and outside of the two exceptions I can't see anyone adapting them better, especially when it comes to things like casting.

The Hobbit movies are really mediocre. I think Peter Jackson is overrated as a director, and he's become a worse director since he finished the original LoTR trilogy. He makes really long, drawn out stuff that isn't very entertaining, and that is The Hobbit movies. Plus, adapting a small book into three movies by adding the most boring, poorly written, pointless padding/"story" additions didn't go well with Jackson's current mediocre style. That combined to just make a mess of a movie trilogy that is easily two hours too long.
 
I admit to being less than enthusiastic about Deathy Hallows. The epic Hogwarts battle didn't feel very epic, especially the exchange between Harry and Voldemort.

But the stuff with Snape's memories of Lily, and the "19 Years Later" kind of made up for it.
 
I love the HP and LOTR movies. They are great movies that do a good job adapting their source material. I did enjoy The Hobbit movies too, but they are so expanded and different from the book, that I they are barely even adaptations.
I really need to do a HP rewatch, I haven't watched them in ages, and I barely remember the last four.
 
I just finished watching the last of the Narnia movies last night, and I have been scratching my head wondering why those movies didn't perform better. They came out at the right time, on years and months that wouldn't see them in competition with Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, and yet Prince Caspian and and Voyage of Dawn Treader didn't perform close to the level as Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Considering the LOTR books weren't in the public conscious the same way the Harry Potter books were, I don't think unfamiliarity was the problem entirely for the Narnia films. Maybe the books were just to hard to adapt to screen.
 
I only watched Harry Potter and Naria movies but did not read the books. The first Harry Potter movie instilled in me a sense of wonder, magic and mystery. I left the Chamber of Secrets curious about the world and wanted to find out more.

In contrast, I thought The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was beautifully done and had a nice story. I left the movie feeling satisfied, satiated and complete. I did not feel there was a need to continue Narnia's story. I was also not aware the movie was only the first of a series.
 
kirk55555 said:
I think the LOTR Trilogy and the Harry Potter movies are the best. That said, the HP film series wasn't flawless. Goblet of Fire just feels off, and its hard to explain. It just didn't feel like it was adapted well. Also, Half Blood Prince really sucked. It added pointless stuff that didn't help the story, changed things that really didn't need to be changed and was just mediocre as an adaptation of a good book. Besides that, though, I think the HP movies did a pretty good job, and outside of the two exceptions I can't see anyone adapting them better, especially when it comes to things like casting.

The Hobbit movies are really mediocre. I think Peter Jackson is overrated as a director, and he's become a worse director since he finished the original LoTR trilogy. He makes really long, drawn out stuff that isn't very entertaining, and that is The Hobbit movies. Plus, adapting a small book into three movies by adding the most boring, poorly written, pointless padding/"story" additions didn't go well with Jackson's current mediocre style. That combined to just make a mess of a movie trilogy that is easily two hours too long.
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I feel you on The Half-Blood Prince movie. That is the one I feel played the loosest with the book material. It seemed more interested in playing with the ships of HP, since all the actors were of age to fraternize with each other that way. Trade off though, the Order of the Phoenix film trimmed a lot of the fat from the book. The film hits the main story point and is one of the shortest movies of the series. Talk about lean.

The Hobbit movies reek of greed. Idk, either from WB or Jackson. Looking up the info for the extended editions vs theatrical, Jackson really overindulged himself.
 
M.A.C.O. said:
I just finished watching the last of the Narnia movies last night, and I have been scratching my head wondering why those movies didn't perform better. They came out at the right time, on years and months that wouldn't see them in competition with Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, and yet Prince Caspian and and Voyage of Dawn Treader didn't perform close to the level as Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Considering the LOTR books weren't in the public conscious the same way the Harry Potter books were, I don't think unfamiliarity was the problem entirely for the Narnia films. Maybe the books were just to hard to adapt to screen.
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Voyage of the Dawn Treader did well enough that they're apparently doing The Silver Chair and perhaps the remaining 3 books in the series. Apparently, the books correlate with the 7 classical heavenly bodies; a "fact" which was discovered well after C S Lewis died and so can't be corroborated :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/rel...s-based-upon-the-stars-says-new-research.html

https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2013/05/27/poem-the-planets/
 
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Asbo Zaprudder said:
Voyage of the Dawn Treader did well enough that they're apparently doing The Silver Chair and perhaps the remaining 3 books in the series. Apparently, the books correlate with the 7 classical heavenly bodies; a "fact" which was discovered well after C S Lewis died and so can't be corroborated :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/rel...s-based-upon-the-stars-says-new-research.html

https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2013/05/27/poem-the-planets/
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They've been saying they're going to do the rest of the Narnia books for years though. VOTDT came out in 2010, and here we are 6 years later and still no progress. I doubt there is much a demand to see the rest of the Narnia books adapted anyway. Silver Chair, Horse and His Boy, The Last Battle and Magician's Nephew have never had the popularity that the LWW, PC and VOTDT have.

Maybe, if they macheted Magician's Nephew the same way they did The Hobbit, then yeah. I could see a Narnia resurgence. Either that or a full reboot.
 
You also forgot Inkheart, Earthsea, Tales of Earthsea, The Last Airbender, The Secret World of Arrietty, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Stardust, and The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising. There was also the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans and its sequel Wrath of the Titans. And Disney's live-action version of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which is probably the single most underrated movie in this thread.

The fantasy book series I would most like to see adapted for the screen is Jim Butcher's Codex Alera. Structurally, I prefer movies over TV shows when adapting novels but there's so much world-building to it & so many characters to follow that it might be better to do it as a 6 season TV series with 6 or 7 hour-long episodes per season. Although, I suppose part of the reason why they're able to do A Game of Thrones on a TV budget is because there seems to be very little magic or special effects on the show. It seems like it's mostly a dingy, muddy medieval period drama that just happens to have a few dragons in it. Codex Alera would probably be more expensive what with all of the Furies running around everywhere.

I'd also like to see 1-off movie adaptations of American Gods & Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.

kirk55555 said:
Goblet of Fire just feels off, and its hard to explain. It just didn't feel like it was adapted well. Also, Half Blood Prince really sucked.
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Let me guess: HP book fan?

I've never read any of the Harry Potter books and I've found that my ranking of the films is almost totally opposite to how most book fans rank them. The Half-Blood Prince is my favorite, mostly because that's the one where Daniel Radcliffe finally learned how to act and it's got a lot of great comedy to it. The Goblet of Fire may not be any kind of cinematic masterpiece but it's a well-structured movie framed by the 3 challenges of the Tri-Wizard Tournament.

On the other hand, book fans seem to really like The Deathly Hallows, which I couldn't make heads or tails of because they seemed to give up trying to explain anything to the non-book fans. Similarly, while The Prisoner of Azkaban is dripping in style, the ending is pretty baffling unless you're already familiar with the backstory of Mooney, Wormtail, Padfoot, & Prongs. The book fans I've known have also seemed quite fond of The Order of the Phoenix, whereas I felt like it was just an interminable holding action, treading water until the final confrontation between Harry & Voldemort, which we had to wait another 3 films to actually see.

Don't get me wrong, I like quite a bit of the Harry Potter movies. I just feel like they don't always 100% hold up as movies. They often feel more like extended promos for the books.

As for the Middle Earth movies, The Lord of the Rings is a masterpiece. The Hobbit is a cash-grab. Which is a shame because there's a lot about The Hobbit that actually works quite well. I don't even mind them splitting it up into multiple movies, although I think they could have been shorter & I think 2 would have worked better than 3. An Unexpected Journey could have been great but it takes way too long to leave Bilbo's house and the Goblin King was just revolting. The Desolation of Smaug & The Battle of the Five Armies could have been condensed into a single film if they hadn't insisted on padding it with extra action sequences and all that stuff with Legolas & Tauriel.

But then, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Peter Jackson is a self-indulgent filmmaker. We already started to see him lose discipline with the multiple endings of The Return of the King. Then there was King Kong, which took 3 hours to tell a story that The Simpsons was able to do in less than 7 minutes. ("I wish we were going to Candy Apple Island." "Candy Apple Island? What do they got there?" "Apes. But they're not as big.") Bloating The Hobbit into 3 films was simply the next logical step.

M.A.C.O. said:
I just finished watching the last of the Narnia movies last night, and I have been scratching my head wondering why those movies didn't perform better.
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I didn't really care for the Narnia movies. The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe was too heavy-handed in its dumb Christian allegory for my taste. Prince Caspian was an improvement but not by much. These movies, while looking expensive, didn't capture the style of Peter Jackson's Middle Earth or have quite the same lived-in feel of the Harry Potter films. I never even bothered with Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

M.A.C.O. said:
I feel you on The Half-Blood Prince movie. That is the one I feel played the loosest with the book material. It seemed more interested in playing with the ships of HP, since all the actors were of age to fraternize with each other that way. Trade off though, the Order of the Phoenix film trimmed a lot of the fat from the book. The film hits the main story point and is one of the shortest movies of the series. Talk about lean.
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Discounting The Deathly Hallows because it's a 2-film thing, it's ironic that The Order of the Phoenix is the longest of the 1st 6 books but the shortest of the 1st 6 movies. Meanwhile, The Chamber of Secrets is the 2nd shortest book but the longest movie.

The way it was explained to me was that The Half-Blood Prince was the most difficult book in the series to adapt because it's got the least action and it mostly consists of a bunch of flashbacks detailing Voldemort's backstory.
 
I can remember a movie made of the first book of the Dragonlance trilogy. It was animated. I really wish that they would make a feature length film of it. The trilogy is a great story that I have read and re-read numerous times.
 
Also missing: the Cirque du Freak series, by Darren Shan. I have to say I wish that the second had done better box office, I liked it a lot.
 
While I think Game of Thrones is fantastic, I am more interested in SciFi books turned into movies or TV series. Is Syfy ever going to actually do the announced Ringworld miniseries?

Hugo Rune said:
If companies like HBO can turn people onto fantasy with the likes of GoT, then perhaps they can do the same for Science Fiction (I'm looking at YOU Westworld) and then, some day, hopefully soon, someone will start tackling and realising those wonderful SciFi novels/series that film makers have been hemming and hawing about for decades.

Hugo - Seldon, here we come
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It would be awesome if HBO gets to adapt the Robots or Foundation books.
 
Would really love to see The Gentlemen Bastards series by Scott Lynch adapted into movies or miniseries. Great fantasy world with fun characters.
 
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