[blip]

Hope my whole title got in there.

I love the works of William Gibson. So I was excited when I heard that one of his short stories, Johnny Mnemonic, had been made into a film. Of course, when I saw the film version of JM... well it looked cool occasionally and the script wasn't horrible (I heard that WG wrote it himself... if so then it isn't attrocious but I would have expected better) ... but in general it seriously sucked.

A year or so later, I was digging through a 99 cent store with some friends and I came across a strange beast indeed... a book adaptation of the film (not the short story) Johnny Mnemonic. It was done by an author I had never heard of and, well, it sucked. The original plotline of the short story was almost indecipherable.

To summarize:
JM (short-story... not WG's best but still good) -> JM (film... sucks) -> JM (novel... sucks and is kind of incomprehensible)

It left me wondering, though, is this a regular occurence? Are there any other book adaptations that have come about through such a convoluted path? Anyone else ever read the book based on the movie which was based on the book? For that matter... has the book ever been better than the original short story?

Or am I especially honored.

 

[blip]

Hmmm... I'll take that as a no. Come on... it can't be that unique... Or maybe it can.

 

[wallijonn]

"Carrie" was one work that did not follow the usual Stephen King formula. Compare the book to any of his previous works, like "The Shining". In the Stephen King formula, the reader is introduced to different facets of different characters, and all the facets are merged towards the climax, if not the very very last chapter in the book. In Carrie, the book, the book read as the movie was seen. This is more typical of today's comic books which follow the movie script.

And we all know what happens when games are based on movies, or movies are based on games. Probably the lone exception was Goldeneye. Nintendo, nor anyone else for that matter, can make a better game than Goldeneye.

If the book comes out before the movie, the movie states that the movie is "based" on the book. Seldom have I seen a book which states that it was "based" on the movie.

 

[fractus2]

One type of book I'll never pick up are the ones that come out after the movie and are based on the screenplay. A dead giveaway is if the cover art looks like the movie poster. Why would you read a book based on the movie? It escapes me. Guess ppl do because they continue to do this. Star Wars is an example that comes to mind.

 

[blessingx]

Guess I'm a little confused. Are we talking novelizations?

 

[fractus2]

Quote:

Originally posted by blessingx Guess I'm a little confused. Are we talking novelizations?

Not sure what they are called. But if you open them up they are based on the screenplay.

 

[blip]

Novelizations... Generally they suck. The only one that didn't was a novelization that Orson Scott Card did of the Abyss... much better than the movie actually. But that was because James Cameron liked the script so much that he wanted to see it turned into a real book so he gave Card as much time as he needed to finish it. (If memory serves it wasn't released until significantly after the movie was released.)

I picked up the JM one just because I couldn't believe it really existed... Actually I think it was vaguely better than the movie... vaguely.

 

[Riordan]

Quote:

Originally posted by wallijonn "Carrie" was one work that did not follow the usual Stephen King formula. Compare the book to any of his previous works, like "The Shining". In the Stephen King formula, the reader is introduced to different facets of different characters, and all the facets are merged towards the climax, if not the very very last chapter in the book. In Carrie, the book, the book read as the movie was seen. This is more typical of today's comic books which follow the movie script.

if i'm not mistaken, carrie was written years before the shining - it was definitely king's first published novel.

 

[Dusty Chalk]

I've heard of novelizations of movies, but not when there was an original novel upon which the movie was based. Weird.

I read Jaws 2. It was better than the movie, but then, the movie was just a sequel to the first one, not based on a novel or anything.