Books We Wish Had Never Been Made into Movies

#1

Books We Wish Had Never Been Made into Movies

Here are seven books that we really wish had never been made into movies. Some of them were good books done badly on film; others were bad ideas that should have died before hitting the printing press.

How many times did you struggle through awful novels in high school or college, or just because you'd started the book and felt that you had to finish it? Jesus, the deadline for having the stupid text finish would be looming, your instructor's breathing down your neck and turning the pages makes you want to vomit.

Finally, you finish it, but two months later, the same awful story is glaring at you from a movie billboard. Or, worse still, you notice they've made a movie adaptation of a book you really liked. Trotting off to the theatre, you expect to be thrilled once more, only to find that they've royally screwed up the original story.

Here are some of the books we wish had never been turned into movies. They're in no particular order, so we added comments for elaboration's sake.

Da Vinci Code
(2006).
Bad book; boring movie. Also, art history and action-adventure are diametric opposites and create a void in the universe if mentioned together in the same sentence.
Expert quote:
"Frankly, it's a stinker." - Paul Arendt, BBC.

Bridges of Madison County
(1995)
The only good thing I can say about this movie is that the book was worse.
Expert quote:
"How to waste two fine actors in a piece of Hallmark wannabe crap." - Christopher Null, FilmCritic.com.

Alive
(1992)
Sick. Really, really sick.
Expert quote:
"The film pushes too hard and too far; it strives for the inspirational but falls well short of inspired." - Time Out Film.

Solaris
(2002)
The manual of how to ruin a fantastic book with a shithouse movie. Even if you'd read Stanislaw Lem's 1961 novel, you forgot the characters' names, the name of the film, the date you were born and which planet you live on when you watched this cluster-fuck of a movie. Steven Soderbergh just tried way too hard with this one. He needed to lay off the drugs that told him non-chronological narration and confusing the hell out of the audience was a good idea.
Expert quote:
"Solaris" is a shapeless inconsequential move relying on the viewer to do most of the work." - Tony Toscano, Talking Pictures.

Ella Enchanted
(2004)
I also wish the book had never been written.
Expert quote:
"Nothing un-beguiles a fairy tale more than forced whimsy and labored magic." - Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter.

Drive Me Crazy
(1999)
As one of the book's titles was "Girl Gives Birth to Own Prom Date", this one was doomed from conception to painful labor.
Expert quote:
"It's getting that I literally can't tell the teen movies apart any more." - Scott Weinberg, eFilmCritic.com

10 Things I Hate About You
(1999)
Incase you forgot, this movie was based on Shakespeare. Shakespeare. For the relationship between Tacoma high school politics and Shakespeare, see the description in The Da Vinci Code's entry.
Expert quote:
"An easily forgettable, sexually obsessed piece of film obviously tailored to the hormone driven youth of America." - Michael Elliott, Movie Parables

#2

All most all of the recent Stephen King books that I can remember too...His books are so awesome, the movies just always seem to be lacking something...

#3

Remakes appear to be the "IN" thing these days, so there's always hope for a redo.