this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
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I've started reading Jumper by NameDoesNotMatter. I would like to formally apologise about all the harsh things I've ever spoken about that film.

Fine, the cast is unlikeable and the action scenes are just fisticuffs in the air, but my god, in comparison to the teenage dreck that is the book, it's a masterpiece. At least they tried to build a credible back story for the main character.

In the book, he literally thinks everyone is out to sexually assault him (and somehow they seem to), he solves his problems by throwing money at it, instead of any actual creativity, and the author desperately tries to portray him as a mature-for-his-age adult, despite the fact that his first reaction to anything is crying followed by petty revenge.

I'm just flicking through the pages, pausing at any plot bits, and then flicking on.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 7 months ago (2 children)

50 Shades of Grey.

The film is silly and mediocre but the book is next level terrible.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

I've never consumed either media of that story. But I thoroughly enjoyed Dan Olson's take.

https://youtu.be/qzk9N7dJBec

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

Yep. This is probably the best take of showing how the movie's writing process changed the writing for the better, then the books' author put a stop to that.

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[–] SacralPlexus 46 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

This may be unpopular but I was deeply disappointed in Shawshank Redemption when I read it. The movie is top tier.

Edit: In retrospect this doesn’t really answer your question as you asked about bad movies with a worse book and Shawshank is definitely not a bad film.

[–] KnitWit 18 points 7 months ago

Movie is definitely top tier, I also love the novella. Different Seasons is what I point to when people dismiss stephen king. Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me, and (while not on the level as the other two) Apt Pupil all in the same collection. But to each their own; pretty sure the final story is trash though haha.

[–] deweydecibel 7 points 7 months ago

The story was a novella King wrote in the early 80s for a short story collection, and it was his first real attempt at writing genres outside of horror. He's gotten better at that over the years.

Even so, I wouldn't say it's bad, just that the movie blows it out of the water.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 7 months ago (20 children)

Starship Troopers was a far different story in each medium, but I think the movie is much more worthy of your time

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (1 children)

would you like to know more?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The movie is great but I'm curious as to why you think its better than the book?

[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago

I think the story and messaging of the movie is just amazing. We get to see the decline of Rico into a fascist mouthpiece, the casual disregard for human life and the way society warps us all. What starts out as perceived funny-ha-ha jokes in the opening act (the kid saying "I'll serve too") is retroactively depressing by the end of the film where Herr Commisar NPH shows how trivial the whole war is.

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[–] Donjuanme 29 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Ready player one, though to be fair I didn't finish either version. I feel like percentage-wise I made it further through the movie, but only because the movie is less than 2 hours long. I made it to the 2nd chapter of the 2nd part and couldn't take the masturbatory prose any more. There's no self insertion on one side of the scale, Mary sue-ing in the middle, and ready player one sits on the far side of the scale.

[–] deweydecibel 19 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

I was going to say, Ready Player One is not a great movie, but it does at least have Spielberg at the helm, and while late-career Spielberg is a shadow of his former self, the movie is directed competently and interesting enough visually.

Not least of all because you can actually see and enjoy all the various IP in action, rather than just have them name dropped like in the book. When there's a sea of interesting or recognizable things on screen, that does a lot to help distract from how terrible the plot is.

But even at its worst, the movie is a tolerable popcorn flick. Turn your brain off and enjoy some pop culture references, then forget it all an hour later.

Because the book is just terrible. It's an absolute slog, a lot of the dialogue is embarrassing, the prose is uninspired, it's overloaded with explanations of UIs and unnecessary, long winded ramblings about the various pop culture references. The movie at least has the benefit of just putting a thing on the screen, the book has to describe all of this shit, and it's tediously done.

Which is to say nothing of just how terrible the plot is in general but more than enough people have gone off about that.

Twilight for nerdy boys is the best description I've ever heard of it, but at least Twilight isn't as gratuitously masturbatory.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

The movie is so much better than the book because it drops a lot of cringe that the book has.

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[–] Shialac 7 points 7 months ago

I read the whole book twice. Its bad. The first time was fun because I was just looking for the pop-culture references, but thats the only kinda good thing the book has. The second time I focused more on the story and the characters and its just bad. There are no likeable characters, but you are supposed to like the main protagonist who is an antisocial creep. The setting makes no sense and the plot is just there to move to another place to show off more references stacked onto each other

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Fight Club, book is decent but the film seems a more complete package.

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[–] Hugin 20 points 7 months ago (4 children)

It's tv series not a movie but The Three Body Problem. The ideas are poorly thought out ass pulls to setup the weirdly specific situations the wittier wants.

At least the show makes the characters more interesting.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I haven't tried to watch Three Body Problem, because I disliked the book so much. I'm not surprised it's better, but I still probably won't watch it.

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[–] infotainment 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Agreed, most of the characters in the book are so flat, and only do things because the plot needed them to do that thing.

The Netflix series managed to make the character’s motivations seem more believable which I appreciated.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I quite enjoyed the books. Would I then enjoy the show?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I loved the books and found the netflix series to be a pretty enjoyable westernization of them.

There were a few changes/choices that were a bit strange or missed the point, but overall it's worth watching

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[–] fr4nk_j4eger 7 points 7 months ago

I really had a hard time with the chinese names, especially the ones that sounded similar.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (6 children)

The lord of the rings!

I love reading....I read a lot. But Tolkien's style just never worked for me, the movies were great.

[–] owenfromcanada 25 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I like Tolkien's style, but I get it. If you're not prepared to hear everything described in excruciating detail, maybe just stick with the Hobbit.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Jaws doesn't quite fit the prompt but although it's a good movie, the book is essentially a sub-par beach read. And there was no USS Indianapolis monologue in the book.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Harry Potter, the movies are at least wizards do wizard stuff even if the world is pretty boring to me. The books on the other hand, are just straight up strange and mean. Reading them as kid they just sucked, I have no clue why they are so popular outside of the movies.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Harry Potter has some issues, but for children's fiction it's better than a lot of series.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What do you mean by strange and mean?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

There’s a lot of moments where the characters will laugh at or make fun of someone for something to a degree I would never do irl, or the slave bit with hermione. The characters also just don’t evolve at all. Reading Harry Potter just gave me a fish out of water feeling, there were better magic books with characters that actually grew and changed.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I've started reading Jumper by NameDoesNotMatter. I would like to formally apologise about all the harsh things I've ever spoken about that film.

Fine, the cast is unlikeable and the action scenes are just fisticuffs in the air, but my god, in comparison to the teenage dreck that is the book, it's a masterpiece. At least they tried to build a credible back story for the main character.

In the book, he literally thinks everyone is out to sexually assault him (and somehow they seem to want to), he solves his problems by throwing money at it, instead of any actual creativity, and the author desperately tries to portray him as a mature-for-his-age adult, despite the fact that his first reaction to anything is crying followed by petty revenge.

I'm just flicking through the pages, pausing at any plot bits, and then flicking on.

[–] ours 13 points 7 months ago

Hunt for Red October. The book is great and for it's time had done amazing insight into modern naval warfare but the movie irons out a bunch of this which are a bit lame.

The Akula that kills itself with its own torpedo simply blows up because it abused its engine and another sunk when the titular sub rams into it.

The titular sub is later returned to the USSR.

The movie changes those and a few other things for a more exciting and satisfying outcome.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Hey now, I read Jumper as a teenager and it was one of my favorite books... Admittedly, adult me has never gone back and read it so maybe you're right, but I have read the sequels and I thought they were okay. The fourth one has Danny and Millie's daughter teleporting into Low Earth Orbit and using a bunch of real life space and satellite communications technology, which was cool because I consult in that industry and so it was like "Hey! I know what she's doing and that would work!" or even "I have a client who's working on something just like that!"


It doesn't fit the prompt because they're actually both really good, but the movie Contact is better than the book. Carl Sagan wrote in a very rambley, wordy way (kinda like how he talked). He spends like two and a half pages describing Palmer Joss's tattoos or Ellie Arroway's hair. So much of the stuff in it is so cool, but it's very hard to read. I've tried three or four times in my life, and I've ended up skipping around and just reading random parts of the story.

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[–] kylie_kraft 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

the Sookie Stackhouse novels vs. True Blood. the show got dumb but the books go off in so many more ridiculous directions. I quit watching the show after 3 seasons because the repetitive sex/violence juxtaposition got to be boring, but I still have to recognize that the show writers at least had restraint. also, Charlaine Harris writes like my foot

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[–] llamapocalypse 11 points 7 months ago (9 children)

I don't know about worse, but the Eragon books and movie are equally terrible.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm not gonna go claiming that the Eragon books deserve a prize, but I loved them as a kid, and comparing them as equals to that movie is bordering on insanity.

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[–] TheMinions 10 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Eragon was my first foray into proper swords and sorcery fantasy after Harry Potter.

Are the books really that bad in your opinion? By no means do they reinvent the wheel, but I enjoyed the magic system and enjoyed the aspect of Dragon + Rider and that relationship we see between the two.

I haven’t read much other Fantasy besides LotR and Stormlight Archive, but I enjoy the Inheritance Cycle.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

Stuart Little was the weirdest book you could possibly read, the movie managed to make it actually make sense while both were meh.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (4 children)

I'm gonna mention "How to train your dragon". I actually preferred the books, but they are very different and I know many people who much prefer the movie.

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[–] PP_BOY_ 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Jaws comes to mind, but I wouldn't call it a bad book, per your OP, its just that the film is a really good film. Books that are already bad don't really get film adaptions.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

The classic would be fight club, I think even the author has said they enjoyed some of the symbolism that was added.

[–] spittingimage 9 points 7 months ago

Babylon AD (the book is called Babylon Babies). I thought it was bad editing that made the end of the movie confusing. No. Turns out they took the actual ending of the book, toned it the fuck down and filmed it.

Not sure they could have filmed the part where the hyper-evolved babies take their comatose mother's consciousness, stuff it in an experimental space station and launch it towards the galaxy at 10% of light speed.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Howl's Moving Castle. Not that I didn't enjoy the book, I just preferred the movie more.

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[–] Species8472 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The Da Vinci Code. The film and book were both utter, contemptible garbage.

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[–] BottleOfAlkahest 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The name of the rose. The movies...fine, I guess. The books at least 300 pages too long and frequently segues into long-winded discussion of the political minutiae of the warring monastic orders during the reign of Pope John XXII.

If you want to read about the time period you'll be annoyed by the murder mystery shoehorned into your dry long winded historical fiction. If you wanted a murder mystery set in a historical setting then you'll be annoyed by the history lesson being shoved down your throat like a dehydrated fig newton.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

I really liked the book. I thought it was clever to use the murder mystery to explore the world of the abbey. The minutiae was the point of the book for me.

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