You only live once. True, but if you read books, you live a thousand others in a thousand other universes. Books are a different experience altogether. Nothing’s better, except when someone decides to put your imagination into a film.
But it can often be tricky. Sometimes movie adaptations are a work of art, sometimes they are not. On other days, the books are so bad that anyone who even put their thoughts behind making a movie out of it should be banned from existence.
1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
While the book was a work of genius, the movie; not so much. By the time the movie came out, the technology of the world had actually caught up to the storyline. And even though the movie did fairly well at the box office, avid readers found it to be a disappointment.
2. Stuart Little
E.B. White’s original work involved a little child, about 3 inches tall. The movie version, however, included a computer version of a talking mouse voiced by Michael J. Fox. The makers diluted the book so much that even the original message presented in the book got lost.
3. One Night At A Call Centre
WHY?! The only question that pops into my head when I watch some of Bollywood’s worst actors bullshitting their way into making a movie of Chetan Bhagat’s stupidest work yet.
4. I am Legend
While Will Smith’s portrayal as the last man on Earth moved many to their cores, the movie could hardly live up to the standards of the book. Richard Matheson’s critically acclaimed 1954 novel. With its poor CGI and ill-directed action sequences, the movie kinda blew the essence of the original novel.
5. The Golden Compass
The original book was the first of Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials series. However, Pullman’s heavy anti-religion stance was severely censored and the action sequences were beefed up because Warner Bros. wanted to create another successful franchise like the Harry Potter series.
6. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
After the moderate success of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & The Wardrobe, the filmmakers decided to fuck up C.W Lewis’ other works as well. Prince Caspian was boring to the core and killed whatever little magic was left after the first film.
7. The Hobbit
Following the massive success of the LOTR trilogy, Peter Jackson came up with The Hobbit trilogy. While the running time of the first three films was justified due to the massive universe J.R.R Tolkien had created, The Hobbit was but one tiny book and having a trilogy made out of it was a sheer waste of time.
8. Vampire Academy
While the book was an American bestseller, the movie failed miserably. Partly due to its terrible cast, mostly due to poor direction. The movie lost track of the plot way too soon and never recovered.
9. The Da Vinci Code
Although Paul Bettany as the psycho albino was the stuff of nightmares, the other actors in the movie looked confused themselves, including Tom Hanks. The film was boring and its vanilla-like flavour was nothing similar to that of the book.
10. The Percy Jackson Series
The film fucked up when they failed to make full use of Pierce Brosnan’s Chiron. Add to that, a badly acted Percy by an otherwise impressive Logan Lerman and the movie was bound to fail. Jake Abel’s Luke Castellan might have been the saving grace the film needed but poor direction made sure that wasn’t the case.
11. Eragon
The novel followed in the footsteps of Tolkien and managed to deliver a fascinating dragon battle. However, the movie just did not click, despite having an impressive cast. The film made way too many plot changes almost making it unrecognisable by book standards.
12. Half-Girlfriend
The book was so fuckall that the person who thought it would make a great movie should be incarcerated. Add to that the casting of Bollywood’ s garden variety nepotism in the form of Arjun Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor and we have a piece of shit that even the microbes under the Earth could not digest.
Oh, the horror!