Any time you go to a movie that’s based on a novel, you’re bound to hear some fat guy who wants to look smart proclaiming that “the book was better.” Usually he’s right, of course. But since everyone already knows that the book is almost always better, the only reason this guy loudly says that as he’s leaving the theater is so everyone who overhears can realize what a genius he is because he knows how to read. It’s annoying habit, and I promise I’ll stop doing it just as soon as I stop wanting to look like an awesome genius.

So yes, when a movie is adapted from a pre-existing novel, the novel is almost always the superior telling of the story. That’s not to say, however, that there haven’t been many great films based on great books. But one of the motion picture industry’s unique powers is to take a really fantastic book and turn it into a movie that profoundly sucks. Let’s look at a few of those.

GREAT BOOK: The War of the Worlds (1898)
SHITTY MOVIE: War of the Worlds (2005)
Directed by Steven Spielberg, who was apparently desperate to remind people that not every movie he makes is good, 2005’s War of the Worlds took everything that was awesome and thought-provoking in H.G. Wells’ 1898 novel and made it loud and stupid. Starring, against all reason, Tom Cruise, the film chronicles an invasion from outer space in such a clunky, by the numbers way that the material actually seems derivative of Independence Day despite the truth being just the opposite. Add the brain-shatteringly stupid notion that the aliens’ tripods were already hidden underground on Earth, and you’ve got yourself one painfully offensive movie. Oh, and Spielberg? We get it, divorce makes you said. Give it a fucking rest already.

And speaking of sucky adaptations of the work of H.G. Wells…

GREAT BOOK: The Time Machine (1895)
SHITTY MOVIE: The Time Machine (2002)
From nonstop ridiculous love stories to stupid talking computers to hilariously laughable Morlocks, everything about this movie blows ass. Let’s never speak of it again.

GREAT BOOK: ‘Salem’s Lot (1975)
SHITTY MOVIE: Salem’s Lot (1979)
I know this movie has its adherents, and all I can say to those people is that they are wrong, wrong, wrong. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who enjoys the works of Stephen King more than I do, and ‘Salem’s Lot is my favorite of all his novels. But this movie, despite being helmed by Tobe Hooper, is as enjoyable as being bitten repeatedly about the face and neck by several species of venomous serpents. It pokes and plods along for three hours, taking forever to get anywhere and not doing much of anything when it finally does. A version exists that’s cut down to 112 minutes, and that eases the pacing trouble some but not enough. And no amount of editing changes the fact that the big bad vampire is not only totally different from the way he’s described in the book but a lot less scary as well. In the movie, it’s as though his helper is running the show and the vampire’s just a lackey, rather than the other way round. About the only thing I can say for this is that it’s not as bad as 1987’s A Return to Salem’s Lot, which has nothing to do with anything and is so intensely imbecilic that watching it can actually cause portions of your brain to spontaneously ignite and burn away.

GREAT BOOK: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
SHITTY MOVIE: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2004)
An absolute masterpiece of comic writing was turned into a meandering, unfocused and ugly movie that didn’t have any laughs in it. This is a problem. When someone reads Douglas Adams’ novel, they say, “Oh man, that book was funny, har har!” To take source material like that and make a movie that isn’t funny at all seems to me to be a serious misstep. The movie was made all the more disappointing because fans of the novel had been waiting so very, very long for a proper feature film version of the story, and this half-assed effort is all we got. Pah!

GREAT BOOK: Great Expectations (1861)
SHITTY MOVIE: Great Expectations (1998)
Here’s my advice: Don’t modernize Dickens. When you take most of his stories out of the safety zone of a place far away and a time long ago, they start to fall apart. We’ll buy the insane coincidences and ludicrous plot points when they’re tucked away in quaint old Victorian England; when you try and put the events of the plot in 20th century Florida, we’re less willing to accept the older mode of storytelling. Oh, plus there’s the fact that this screenplay is just terrible. Whatever essence the Dickens novel has that’s kept it in high school curricula more than 140 years on is absent in the screenwriting here. Even actors like Anne Bancroft and Robert De Niro can’t save this barrel of crap, so for your own sanity stay away from it.

Related posts:

• I Hope Books Still Exist
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas