Books Versus Movies

I was on Facebook and there was a link to this piece titled Ten Appalling Films That Were Adapted from Great Books. It's on The Literacy Site, and while I'll link to the article and include the video, I"ll also list the books in case you don't want to sit through an almost eleven minute video (the video is over a year old, so apologies if you've seen it before).

Here's the list:

Gulliver's Travels

The Time Traveler's Wife

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

The Bonfire of the Vanities

The Scarlet Letter

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Eragon

The Cat in the Hat 

The Golden Compass

Dune

And honorable mention was given to:

The Da Vinci Code

All the King's Men

The Lovely Bones

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Congo

And...in the comments, a number of people mentioned:

The Clan of the Cave Bear

The Lightning Thief

Inkheart

Ella Enchanted

and many others.

I haven't read all of those books (although I've read many) and I haven't see all the movies. Furthermore, I'm not going to comment about which movies didn't live up to my expectations, which books were better, which movies were better or even which books I'd like to see made into movies. What I find most interesting is how strongly people feel about this topic. If you read the comments that accompany the article, people feel very strongly about which of their favorite stories fell flat (or worse) when brought to the big screen.

More importantly, I found reading the comments a great source of future reading material. Lots of books I've read, but also lots I haven't gotten around to. With people feeling so strongly about their choices, I'm planning to pick up a few of these books. I might even watch some of the movies I haven't seen, at least for comparison's sake. 

Do you have any movies (or television shows) that disappointed once they were translated into another venue?

Have a great day!

Myrna