Lost Posts from "Best Adaptation" Thread

[Jnyusa]

Friends, yov saved the lost posts before they disappeared and has sent them to me in a text file. I don't know if this will work or not ... and I'm not sure quite how to set it up ... but I thought I would create a thread for the posts from each particular thread, in the forum where it belongs, and just past up the text of what people had posted. You can copy it and restore quote functions, etc., and repost it to the thread if you wish.

The posts will no longer be in order, but you can always put a little note at the top that it is reposted from previous, and add new quote functions if you think that will help, and we'll be able to figure out the sense of it. Jn
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Hunt for Red October was certainly an adaptation. What about it makes you believe that it should not be on that list? The list of adaptations? The
list that you suggest was made by people who don't understand the word
adaptation?

Quote:
For something to be a 'best' adaptation, my view is that there should first
be something singular about the source material, or something which makes it challenging to adapt. And the resulting movie must also be exceptionally
good in its own right.


Why? Why is it necessary that there be something "singular" about the source material? Why must it be challenging to adapt? Difficulty is not a
prerequisite for excellence.

The Godfather certainly belongs on the list of great adaptations, but that
does not mean that Hunt for Red October does not. "Hybrid" might be a better word to your thinking, but for the rest of us "adaptation" is a perfectly concise and well definded term for a movie based on a book.

Do I have a bee in my bonnet? No. But I dislike it when you sweepingly
insult the intelligence of an entire group of people simply because you
happen to disagree with their opinion. I simply challenged you on that.

Regarding the Kaufman movie, you are of course entitled to your opinion, but I would suggest that perhaps in this case its you who are not understanding. Kaufman was making an ironic statement with the conclusion. To quote one reviewer:

Quote:
Some critics have complained about the lunatic third act of Adaptation,
claiming it tramples on everything that comes before it. But that's both
short-sighted and, if you've paid attention to the movie, simply wrong. As
Orlean wrote in her book, adaptation is a process of survival, of learning
to adjust to the demands of the environment around you. It's what orchids do in the wild, and it's what Kaufman does in order to complete his screenplay: He betrays everything he swore he wouldn't do at the outset (''I don't want to ruin it by making it a Hollywood thing . . . I don't want to cram in sex or guns or car crashes or characters learning profound life lessons.'') in order to accomplish his job.

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yovargas

Jumping in to agree on how crazy brilliant Adaptation was. Particularly the genuis final act.

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Crucifer

I think that the adaption of Richard III with Ian McKellen should be up
there.

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solicitr


Quote:
One hesitates to use the word 'adaptation,' in the case of writers like
Clancy, though I suppose that technically it is the correct term since book
and film are two different media. 'Hybrid' would be a better word to my
thinking: strongly visual, simplistic plots with conjoined book and film
rights, written with the intention of maximizing sales in two markets
simultaneously ... like the full-length toy commercials that now pass for
children's programming.


Although this may be the case with later Clancy titles, it certainly wasn't
the case with Red October, his first, and a manuscript rejected by every
publishing house in the country until someone suggested the stuffy Naval
Institute Press- which got the first bestseller in its history.

I'm not sure that I would agree with the definition "successful adaptation = commercial success". I would argue for artistic success- was the result (a) a great movie and (b) a conversion of the source from one medium to another without becoming something different in the process: does the spirit and tone of the original come through? In this sense both GWTW and Godfather are rousing successes, and PJ's trilogy fails.

Hybrid: the most literal 'hybrid' I know of is 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the screenplay (by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke) and the book (by Clarke and Kubrick) were written simultaneously, an experiment in dual-medium creation.

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Pearly Di

Jnyusa wrote:
What was so great about Red October?


Sam Neill in a Soviet naval uniform.

solicitr wrote:
I'm not sure that I would agree with the definition "successful adaptation = commercial success". I would argue for artistic success- was the result (a) a great movie and (b) a conversion of the source from one medium to another without becoming something different in the process: does the spirit and tone of the original come through? In this sense both GWTW and Godfather are rousing successes, and PJ's trilogy fails.


I don't agree that "successful adaptation = commercial success" either.

But while I have my issues with PJ about some of the characterisations and story treatment in LOTR, I certainly don't see his films as a failure of
adaptation. The films portrayed some truly great iconic moments and also pleased a great many Tolkien fans, even if it didn't please all of them.

The vast majority of my Tolkien friends - and I have a lot of 'em - feel
that enough of Tolkien came through in the films to satisfy them.

So, yeah ... I define that as pretty successful.

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yovargas

Quote:
PJ's trilogy fails.


Surprise, surprise, I disagree.

The films managed to very succesfully capture what mattered most to me from its source material. Most of the stuff people tend to complain about are fairly trivial things when you look at the whole picture (and that includes many of my own complaints (though my complaints don't tend to match up with the typical complaints (I mean, really, who cares if Aragorn fell off the cliff!? Why does it matter?????????????????????) ()))).