And now for something light

[rhu]

OK, let's get a good discussion going here. :-)

The other night, introverte and I were discussing film adapations of science fiction stories that originally appeared in print. We were unable to come up with a single example of a story that meets all these criteria:

• Science fiction (not fantasy) (excluding, for example, The Lord of the Rings and The Wizard of Oz)
• First appeared in print (excluding, for example, 2001: A Space Odyssey)
• Movie adaptation remains essentially faithful to the print story (excluding, for example, We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, I, Robot, etc.)
• Both the original print story and the movie adaptation are generally accepted as great (excluding, for example, well, most others).

The closest I could come up with was Farenheit 451 but I'm not sure the movie really qualifies as great. But I figure that if there exists a true example, you, gentle readers, will let me know.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Almost by definition, if someone were to bother to make a movie out of a science fiction book/story, wouldn't it need to be accepted as great? As a variation on a theme, can you think of any examples which meet your first three criteria, and only the movie is considered "great?"

To your four criteria:

A Clockwork Orange? I've never read the book, so can't comment on criterion 3, but it seems to meets the others.

How faithful was Jurassic Park to the book? I've actually both read the book and seen the movie, but that doesn't mean I remember how faithful it was.

Thoughts?

[abbasegal.livejournal.com]

Oops. That was mine. I forgot to log in...

[sdavido.livejournal.com]

While I have not read Jurrasic Park, I do remember an interview with a famous personage who was appearing in the film, bemoaning how his character within the film, as opposed to the original story, lives through the piece. He responded to a request for comments with something along the lines of "I was denied a death scene, but granted a sequal.'

I would say this would impact faithfulness to the book . . .

Oh yeah, and the ending is, as a result, completely different. The book has a number of humoungous explosions that apparently were filmed, but not used . . . I remember also some complaints from ecologically minded people and groups as the unused scenes were apparently filmed for real, and a quite a bit of native flora and fauna died as a result.