I'll see your faithful adaptation and raise you a farting topiary.
Abdullah Mansoor, writing recently at MovieWeb, came up with another list of things. The things of interest this time were underrated fantasy movies based on books, and the number chosen randomly was 16. Do you worry about what missed the list at 17? Why can't lists round up or down to the nearest ten? Do these authors use six different dice to develop topics and counts?
"Since a large number of fantasy movies are released every year, it is not possible to keep up with all the content. This is the reason why many great fantasy films have been forgotten over the years."
Would it be easier to "keep up" with good movies if there weren't so many stinkers in between? Are we still calling them movies? You called it content, so I'm unsure of the preferred term.
Return to Oz (1985) appeared at #12, and it's the first one on the list I've heard of. I suspect I'm outside the intended age of the list. Or the movies. Content. Whatever.
2002's Treasure Planet is now underrated. Good to know.
The reason for my interest in this list - The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018) - comes in at a respectable #4 on the list. Not bad. Yet there's this commentary:
The House with a Clock in Its Walls was successful commercially and critically. Nevertheless, it is still an underrated film that does not get enough credit for being a faithful adaptation of the novel. Jack Black has also become synonymous with another popular adaptation, Goosebumps, but he is certainly not appreciated enough for his role as the powerful warlock in The House with a Clock in Its Walls.
I’m curious: how many others considered the film “a faithful adaptation” of the book? And what's your definition of faithful adaptation, anyway?
1 comment:
I doubt that anyone had actually read the book and seen the movie would say the movie was a faithful adaptation of the book. There were a number of things changed or added to the movie, not to be found in the book. In some ways the characters were even changed so they were not the characters from the book. To me it seemed that the movie script writer wrote his own story and only returned to the book when his plot became too muddled to continue. John Bellairs did get credit for writing the original story, I do not think he would want credit for the movie script. I have seen some movies taken from books that either ignore the original author or gave him or her a small credit in the closing lines of credits. But then the author might not have wanted the movie associated with their name anyway.
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