[pwalker8]

Just watched "Ready, Player One". I enjoyed the movie, but it very, very different than the book. That got me thinking about all the different movies that have been made from books, how different they were, were the differences necessary and did they work. Looking at some of the better known film adaptions that worked.

I watched the Gregory Peck version of Moby Dick last week. That was fairly close to the basic plot line of the book, with differences basically being because of the change of media.

The Harry Potter series had some bigger changes, but at least stayed within shouting distance of the book plots. The biggest changes were removing certain characters and plot lines that turned out to be important in the books. Personally, I thought this caused issues in later movies and removed one of the most interesting and powerful under stories of the Harry Potter books, i.e. why Snape did what he did.

The LOTR series had even bigger changes, but the basic story line was still there. The Hobbit on the other hand was massively different with whole new story lines added. Personally I think that at least some of the changes to the LOTR series where unnecessary and took away from certain aspects of the books, especially in the Return of the King.

The Bond series is famous for only keeping the name of the title character and name of the book. This is one where I think the movies were better than the books.

What say you? What movie/book combos can you think of, were the changes needed, and where they for the better or worse?