27 Movies That Utterly Butchered The Book They Were Based On
Recently, Reddit user u/theyusedthelamppost asked r/Movies, "What movies badly butchered a great book?" and the comments got VERY heated. Here are some of the examples people are most angry about!
1.Artemis Fowl
"What Disney did was a fucking monstrosity."
"These books involve the character of a dwarf who digs tunnels by literally eating dirt and shitting it out. You cannot — you should not — try to turn this into a live-action movie."
"Aertemis's first introduction in the book had him going 'fucking sunlight.' Not in quite those words, but it's pretty much 'he's not an outdoor guy' and the movie has him...surfing. And activity that usually involves a degree of sunlight...Most of the time I don't think they read the book, but they usually at least make someone go read it. Maybe an intern or an assistant. I don't even think they did that."
"They dropped butlers name like 10 minutes in and my girlfriend started crying so I turned it off. Fucking ridiculous, LOL. I get changing stuff for screen pacing versus book pacing, but where's the point in ruining a reveal that doesn't happen for several books just to change a guy's name?"
2.The Hobbit
![<div><p>"I'm gonna go ahead and say it, as much as it pains me to...<i>The Hobbit.</i> The <i>worst</i> part, to me, is that they tried so hard, and there are elements that, if you isolate them out from the rest of the films, you'd have a pretty damn good movie, or even a pair of movies — <b>but they didn't</b>. They chose to go [with] three films, which added <i>way</i> too much filler, and absolutely ruined what could have been two really solid movies."</p><p>—<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=74679X1524629&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzfeed.com%2Fhannahmarder%2Fmovies-that-butchered-the-book-they-were-based-on&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fmovies%2Fcomments%2Fzqgysk%2Fcomment%2Fj0y2788%2F%3Futm_source%3Dreddit%26utm_medium%3Dweb2x%26context%3D3&xcust=6899397%7CBF-VERIZON&xs=1" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:u/arlondiluthel;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas" class="link ">u/arlondiluthel</a></p></div><span> Mark Pokorny/Warner Bros. Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection</span>](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/xJI.5L0APqFwknv5krFt5A--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTU5NA--/https://media.zenfs.com/en/buzzfeed_articles_778/d98eb94fd2ac568c7cb2ded6f2c0419b)
"I'm gonna go ahead and say it, as much as it pains me to...The Hobbit. The worst part, to me, is that they tried so hard, and there are elements that, if you isolate them out from the rest of the films, you'd have a pretty damn good movie, or even a pair of movies — but they didn't. They chose to go [with] three films, which added way too much filler, and absolutely ruined what could have been two really solid movies."
3.Queen of the Damned
"It took two books smashed them into one movie and failed with both of them. That being said, it's a decent vampire movie if you forget everything or know nothing about the books. It's just a God awful Queen of the Damned movie."
"Queen of the Damned is a solid example of a studio jamming as much IP as they can into the juicer."
4.The Dark Tower
"I saw the movie and it was like they took pieces from all the books and threw them into a AI generator and said okay, make this one movie. God awful. Someone should be ashamed of themselves."
"This needs to be the top answer, only for having probably the largest gap between quality of the book and quality of the movie.
Like, my favorite books of all time, super smart stories by a master storyteller at the peak of his powers, to a dogshit leather-bound action movie of the style popular in the early '00s. It would have fit right along with Underworld and Resident Evil. Absolute, goddamn shame."
5.The Golden Compass
"As a child, I really enjoyed all of His Dark Materials. I was really psyched when The Golden Compass was going to be a movie. Holy shit, it was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. And not in a ha-ha-funny kind of worst movie, like The Room, but just bad."
"Which is a shame, because it had some perfect casting choices, like Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter and Sam Elliot as Lee Scoresby."
"Also Eva Green, Ian McKellen, Daniel Craig, Ian McShane, Christopher Lee, Kathy Bates!!! The movie was just lousy with acting talent. Short of something like Movie 43, I think Golden Compass is the best cast work of garbage I’ve ever seen. What a colossal loss of potential."
6.I Am Legend
![<div><p>"Fantastic twist ending just completely removed and ignored, and the smart vampires turned into mute dumb zombies. Will never not be pissed at this movie."</p><p>—<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=74679X1524629&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzfeed.com%2Fhannahmarder%2Fmovies-that-butchered-the-book-they-were-based-on&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fmovies%2Fcomments%2Fzqgysk%2Fcomment%2Fj0y2f6c%2F%3Futm_source%3Dreddit%26utm_medium%3Dweb2x%26context%3D3&xcust=6899397%7CBF-VERIZON&xs=1" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:u/JonesyOnReddit;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas" class="link ">u/JonesyOnReddit</a></p><p>"The 'monsters' in the book were literally people. They spoke English, could clearly communicate, [and could] even impersonate regular humans. Not at all the most mindless creatures from the movie."</p><p>—<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=74679X1524629&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzfeed.com%2Fhannahmarder%2Fmovies-that-butchered-the-book-they-were-based-on&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fmovies%2Fcomments%2Fzqgysk%2Fcomment%2Fj0ypfkj%2F%3Futm_source%3Dreddit%26utm_medium%3Dweb2x%26context%3D3&xcust=6899397%7CBF-VERIZON&xs=1" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:u/Dayofsloths;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas" class="link ">u/Dayofsloths</a></p></div><span> Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection</span>](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/lcj_JU8a5XhjPoo0TJtG.w--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTQwNA--/https://media.zenfs.com/en/buzzfeed_articles_778/80a94429b2e5bf4d234f5289275c10f1)
"Fantastic twist ending just completely removed and ignored, and the smart vampires turned into mute dumb zombies. Will never not be pissed at this movie."
"The 'monsters' in the book were literally people. They spoke English, could clearly communicate, [and could] even impersonate regular humans. Not at all the most mindless creatures from the movie."
7.Ender's Game
"The lack of emotion in the movie upset me."
"That movie butchered two books, not just one. On the station, it should have been a buddy film that merged Ender's Game with Ender's Shadow. Also, the complete elimination of the Demosthenes and Locke subplot eliminated so much of what made the book interesting. I had been hopeful early with the casting because I thought it would be solid. While I wasn’t sold on Harrison Ford being Graff, I was excited to see Asa Butterfield as Ender because of Hugo, and I was confident in Hailee Steinfeld because of True Grit."
"Waited my whole life for that movie and then we got a crappy smashed together action flick peppered with key lines from the book and none of the feeling. Probably no other movie has made me so mad from beginning to end."
8.The Lost World: Jurassic Park
"The Lost World was the first Crichton book I read (I’d have been around 13 or 14 at the time) and I was immensely disappointed by the movie. The only thing I thought they got right was casting Julianne Moore. Going back and watching it as an adult, it’s still pretty awful. There’s a full uneven bars gymnastics routine that ends with kicking a velociraptor in the face."
9.World War Z
Suggested by u/Runktar
"Agreed. The book is phenomenal. All the different places that the plague breaks out. The different points of views when talking about what happened when all these cities got overrun by zombies. The struggle to fight back and regain control of the world. All of this is lost with the movie. It’s completely different. I wish someone would remake it the author’s original vision."
10.Jumper
"I enjoyed the movie for what it was, but in adapting it to film, they seemed to completely miss the point of the story, which was that it was about parental abuse, and a character who needed to escape so desperately that he could literally 'jump' away. It was a book for young adults for that reason. But along came Hollywood that said, 'Oooh, "jumping," that's cool! Let's do that!' But that's what happens when superhero writers (David S. Goyer) rewrite your young adult dramatic book. That said, Steven Gould approved of the changes (*cough* money talks *cough*), so there you go."
"They turned the series into something child friendly and removed all the best elements from the book."
11.A Wrinkle in Time
"Please take my word for it if you haven’t seen it. It is an abomination. Imagine whatever you love about the book being stomped, shat upon, then stomped again by a bunch of otherwise talented actors."
12.Ella Enchanted
Suggested by u/Bellanarislavellan
"It was my favorite book growing up, and I was absolutely gutted to see that monstrosity on screen instead."
"I saw it in theaters with friends and kid-me was shocked at how bad it really was. ... The evil uncle and his...snake? The...lawyer...elf. The dance scene was...there. The hall of mirrors??? God. The book was near and dear to my heart. I loved that she was good at languages because she just was, and how friggin stubborn she was! But yeeurgh."
"My sister and I love the book. I think the moment that killed me was the medieval fantasy shopping mall."
13.Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children
"I read it in middle school and It was my favorite book I had ever read. I waited years for the movie, and my God, Tim Burton butchered that book. That was the most forgettable and disappointing movie ever."
"This is my answer as well! I was so excited when it was announced that Burton was working on that project, but then the result was just...ugh. The only nice thing about it IMO was Eva Green, LOL."
14.Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
Suggested by u/JiggySockJob
"My oldest is 8, and that is her favorite book series. She watched the first one with me and the instant they showed he was Poseidon's son, she goes, 'Well if we know who his dad is now, it's no fun when he's supposed to get claimed!' When an 8-year-old is giving better studio notes, you know the movie is in trouble."
"The first one is the poster child for bad adaptations. Changed the plot all around, took everything fun out of it, and even left out the main villain — imagine filming the first Harry Potter movie without mentioning Lord Voldemort. I've always believed Chris Columbus made a detailed and accurate list of everything in the book that made it fun and entertaining and carefully omitted every single one of them from the movie. I never bothered to watch the second one."
15.Watchmen
Suggested by u/elerner
"I'm someone who liked the Watchmen film more than most people seem to, and while there are aspects of it that are done well, claiming that the whole film is a faithful adaptation is just dumb. The movie changes around everything that Ozymandias' scheme hinges on, for starters (also 'triggered it' — he goddamn 'triggered it,' they couldn't get one of the most iconic lines in the entire story right). I thought Rorschach was mostly pretty good, although they glossed over (and/or changed) a lot of the key trauma that made him who he is, and they Batman-ized his voice for some reason.
The biggest issue other than the Ozymandias rejiggering was just the weird-ass XTREME-ifying of everything, like the scene of them just straight-up murdering dudes and snapping limbs in the alley. Zack Snyder also just seemed to not understand how key the Black Freighter subplot was to the story, and also does not understand color palettes."
16.The Lovely Bones
"I am not exaggerating when I say that this film single-handedly killed all enthusiasm I had for Jackson as a filmmaker. The afterlife is a '90s music video, the dialogue and acting are uneven, and the fact that they disrupted the film (about a family dealing with the death of their teenage daughter) with a zany comedy scene — INCLUDING WACKY MUSIC AND AN OVERFLOWING WASHING MACHINE — just made me wonder if LOTR was some kind of fluke."
"When I heard Peter Jackson was directing, I had high hopes he'd capture the mood and then fix the plotline to make it more suspenseful. Instead, he destroyed the mood and over-emphasized everything about the plotline that made the book suck."
17.My Sister's Keeper
Suggested by u/planktivious
"I was just super pissed that they got rid of the twist ending. That’s what made the book so phenomenal. I remember finishing it and just sitting there in awed silence for a few minutes."
"The book’s ending made me sob. The movie’s ending made me angry."
18.Water for Elephants
"Water for Elephants is a fantastic book and absolutely worth reading. The movie adaptation had a great cast, but somehow managed to rip the soul out of the story. It makes the circus boring. Like, I didn't even know that was possible."
19.The Neverending Story
"The Neverending Story isn't too bad, but it does ditch almost the entirety of the book and just crudely rams a handful of plot elements together to make a movie, and skips from halfway through the book ('why is it so dark? in the beginning, it's always dark') straight to the ending. I would love to see the whole thing adapted as, say, a two season, 24-episode HBO miniseries with a big fat budget."
20.And Then There Were None
"The original And Then There Were None changes the ending into a a sanitized Hollywood version where the hot young girl and the hot young guy are innocent of any wrongdoing, and escape the island, which destroys the whole point of the book (which was to create a perfect crime with no survivors). It also weirdly injects a bunch of humor that’s totally out of place which ruins the tone, presumably because Barry Fitzgerald is in an important role."
21.Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire...
"Book four is so, so, so much more detailed than the movie and just truly fantastic."
"They cast David Tennant as Barry Crouch, Jr. and he had like three lines. Missed his motive rant from the book."
"Why would you CAST A SHAKESPEARE PERFORMER and not give him a monologue???? Over a decade and I’m still seething."
"I have very vivid memories of watching this in the theater for my birthday and wondering if the movie had glitched/skipped forward after Fudge did his little light thing at the World Cup. Little did I know it was just a hint at what the rest of the movie would be like. What a total disappointment."
22....and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
"All the interesting Voldemort backstory was cut for more teenage romance melodrama."
"The Voldy flashbacks should've been the absolute highest priority. They should've kept ALL of them."
"They basically took everything that made HBP my least favorite Harry Potter book, amped it up, and downgraded the parts of the book I actually liked."
23.Sahara
"Just so SO much got cut for run time alone, and I 100% saw why Clive Cussler hated movie adaptations of his books. To date it's only the second after Raise the Titanic, for that very reason. I feel like the whole series of his books would be better adapted to a TV show series just to get all the details and back story."
24.Annihilation
Suggested by Keith_daywalker
"[Annihilation] completely leaves out huge plot points, namely a particular 'crawler' and upside down tower. It gives names to the characters. It makes it more action oriented. I really like the movie for different reasons, but it is a very loose adaptation. I wouldn't say butchered, as that implies a level of incompetence, but the feeling of the book and the movie are very different."
"I’ve been reading the book the last couple days having seen the movie first, and yeah, it’s wild how much of the book is spent talking about the tower and the crawler when they just trashed that part for the movie. Also, the group of scientists having names and being friendly in the movie just misses the sense of uncertainty and clinical detachment the unnamed characters all had in the book."
25.Eragon
Suggested by u/lucerndia
"This was one of my biggest disappointments as a teen. I knew when it got a PG rating it was going to be bad."
"I really loved those books, even after I watched the movie. After reading them, I gave the movie another watch to see if I could appreciate it, [but the] movie was even worse when I knew what it could have been."
26.Red Sparrow
![<div><p>"[A] very poor adaption of [a] book I quite enjoyed, despite the fairly impressive cast."</p><p>—<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=74679X1524629&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzfeed.com%2Fhannahmarder%2Fmovies-that-butchered-the-book-they-were-based-on&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fmovies%2Fcomments%2Fzqgysk%2Fcomment%2Fj0y661t%2F%3Futm_source%3Dreddit%26utm_medium%3Dweb2x%26context%3D3&xcust=6899397%7CBF-VERIZON&xs=1" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:u/Keith_daywalker;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas" class="link ">u/Keith_daywalker</a></p><p>"I love J.Law, but she was not the right choice for that role. But also, there was much more wrong with the entire movie than just her performance. So disappointing since Jason Matthew’s book is great!"</p><p>—<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=74679X1524629&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzfeed.com%2Fhannahmarder%2Fmovies-that-butchered-the-book-they-were-based-on&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fmovies%2Fcomments%2Fzqgysk%2Fcomment%2Fj0z8aop%2F%3Futm_source%3Dreddit%26utm_medium%3Dweb2x%26context%3D3&xcust=6899397%7CBF-VERIZON&xs=1" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:u/AgalychnisCallidryas;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas" class="link ">u/AgalychnisCallidryas</a></p></div><span> Murray Close / 20th Century Fox / courtesy Everett Collection</span>](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/q2TjvITmUXSB.sAcemf69Q--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTY0MQ--/https://media.zenfs.com/en/buzzfeed_articles_778/3995270e20a7467e910881c8c88d334b)
"[A] very poor adaption of [a] book I quite enjoyed, despite the fairly impressive cast."
"I love J.Law, but she was not the right choice for that role. But also, there was much more wrong with the entire movie than just her performance. So disappointing since Jason Matthew’s book is great!"
27.And finally, "All of the Bourne films after the first one."
"First movie followed the book reasonably. Second and third...well...the titles were the same as the books and they had Jason Bourne as the main character, but that was about it."
"I didn't buy Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. I couldn't sit through the first movie so I never watched the others."
What do you think is the worst book-to-film adaptation of all time? Let us know in the comments below!
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
