Worst2First: My Top Ten Worst Novel-to-Film Adaptations

Worst2First:
My Top Ten Worst Novel-to-Film Adaptations

There's always been a debate about whether or not novel-to-film adaptations are necessary, with the majority believing that the novel is always better than the film. While there's been some epic films based off novels (you can find my personal list here), there's been many others who lost the translation from novel to screen, resulting in utterly terrible outings that either deviated totally away from the source material or didn't do it nowhere near justice. I'll be ranking my personal worst novel-to-film adaptations, but only from novels that are actually amazing to read, so you won't find "Fifty Shades of Grey," "After," or "Twilight" on this list because both the novels and films are ghastly.

So here are my personal top ten worst novel-to-film adaptations, worst (or in this case least worst) to first (in this case, most worst)...

**THERE WILL BE NO SPOILERS**

#10

The Lovely Bones
Based on the Novel The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

When you get the pedigree of Peter Jackson and company behind the camera and stars like Saorise Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon and Stanley Tucci (who earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance), you'd be surprised to find "The Lovely Bones" on this list, and while it's at the bottom (meaning it's the least of the worst), it's still not as great as the novel source told. The story of a girl murdered whose ghost resides somewhere in-between worlds, Jackson unleashed all his CGI magic to make it as wondrous and ethereal as possible, but the tone of the film shifts from hopeful to hopeless, as Ronan's Susie witnesses her family's grief as well as her killer's ability to seemingly get away with it. Thankfully both the film and the novel have the same premise and the movie doesn't stray too far from the source material, but it's still a bit too preachy and heavy-handed for most audiences.

#9

A Wrinkle in Time
Based on the Novel A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

There are some novels that would absolutely never work on the big screen, and Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time is one of them. It was attempted back in 2003, with abysmal results, but acclaimed director Ava DuVernay attempted to remake it in 2018 with all the state-of-the art computer generated wizardry at her disposal, and the final product is basically as if you sucked up all the CGI and vomited them on screen, assaulting the senses with brilliant visuals and costumes but lacking the novel's endearing qualities in favor of said flashy effects. Both novel and film centers on a young girl who tries to find her father that's trapped somewhere in time, aided by three astral travelers (played by Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kahling), and again while the film boasts spectacular effects, it lacks the heart the novel possesses.

#8

The Island of Dr. Moreau
Based on the Novel The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells

H.G. Wells is one of the most respected and intellectual novelist of all time, providing timeless tales such as The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, along with The Island of Dr. Moreau. In the novel (as well as the film), an island is discovered to be housing a madman named Dr. Moreau who has been conducting experiments to turn people into human-animal hybrids. This is the third attempt to turn the 1896 novel into a film, and it's easily the most memorable for being an absolute train wreck. The film's behind-the-scenes antics showed in the final product, as the original director (Richard Stanley) was removed and replaced by John Frankenheimer in the first week of filming. Marlon Brando's daughter committed suicide and he was reclusive and didn't want to learn his lines, so they were fed to him through an earpiece or ad libbed, and Val Kilmer was served divorce papers on set, resulting in him being incredibly angry and not very nice to work with. The issues behind the scenes even resulted in a documentary called "Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau."

#7

John Carter
Based on the Novel A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Edgar Rice Burroughs was a prolific fantasy adventure writer, giving birth to Tarzan among others, and producing timeless works like The Land That Time Forgot and A Princess of Mars, which "John Carter" is based. Taylor Kitsch tried really hard in the early 2010s to become the next action superstar, but Kitsch could never find his niche and he never came off as a charming, charismatic lead, which was one of the major flaws with "John Carter." Again, the translation from novel to screen got lost along the way, resulting in a bloated (it was the most expensive movie ever made) film overstuffed with effects but lacking a cohesive storyline and character development.

#6

The Golden Compass
Based on the Novel Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman

As the "Harry Potter" franchise broke box office records, Hollywood searched diligently for the next big young adult novel-to-film franchise, and hoped they struck gold with "The Golden Compass," the first of a planned series of films based off Phillip Pullman's critically acclaimed work Northern Lights (the first of his His Dark Materials trilogy). The studio pumped in an insurmountable amount of money to make it a success, and while it did gross over $200 million dollars, not even that substantial sum could warrant the film franchise from continuing. The adventures of young Lyra Belacqua as she embarks on her journey to stop the evil Magisterium would live on in the novels, but never see the big screen again, which is for the best because the film deviated from its source material in substantial and numerous ways, most notably diluting Pullman's deeply anti-religious aspects of the original novel.

#5

Artemis Fowl
Based on the Novel Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer

The Irish author Eoin Colfer described his Artemis Fowl series as "'Die Hard' with fairies," but the film adaptation is missing both the action and magic that the pages deliver. Directed by famed Shakespearean actor and acclaimed director Kenneth Branagh, you'd expect the film to follow closely to the novel source material, but it deviates in a wide amount of ways, and it's also downright dull, boring, and lack of any cohesive storyline or characterization. What was supposed to be a franchise starter was a franchise ender before it even began, as no one cared about the young upstart Artemis Fowl who went in search of his missing father and coming into contact with dwarfs and fairies that are about as magical as pulling a dead rabbit out of a hat.

#4

Eragon
Based on the Novel Eragon by Christopher Paolini

Hot off the heels of the success of films like "Harry Potter" and "The Lord of the Rings," the beloved classic novel series The Inheritance Cycle was planned to be made into three feature-length films, the first being Eragon. Yet after the film's abysmal release and reception (it was the tenth worst reviewed film in 2006 by Rotten Tomatoes), plans for the back-to-back shooting of the second and third films were immediately scrapped. Apart from wandering miles away from the source material, the film itself was filled with terrible characterizations, lame effects, and a story that included elements that were done much better with better franchises.

#3

The Divergent Series: Allegiant
Based on the Novel Allegiant by Veronica Roth

Coming off the high that "The Hunger Games" provided, once again Hollywood tried to dip their pens in the young adult dystopian future novel-to-film subgenre with meddling success. One of those small successes was the first "Divergent" film, which made Shailene Woodley a household name yet always remained in the shadow of "The Hunger Games." The second film - "Insurgent" - fared even less better, but there was still two more books to be made into films. "Allegiant" was the third, but it was so terribly received that plans for the final film were permanently scrapped, even though there was talks of making the fourth book into a television miniseries, the actors smartly decided to not do it. While this novel was supposed to be split into two films, one was enough for audiences, who found the characters even less likable than before, the effects somehow cheapened, and an overall story that lost the magic from the pages they were based on.

#2

The Dark Tower
Based on the Novel The Dark Tower by Stephen King

Stephen King has had some very great success stories with the film adaptations of his works ("It," "Misery") but also some very big duds ("Dreamcatcher," "Maximum Overdrive"). "The Dark Tower" fails on every end to live up to King's epic saga - a series of novels that could've been made into countless movies. Instead, Hollywood cared so little about the material and just wanted to cash in on King's name that they turned his novel series into one film that clocks in at under two hours. To include so much information and material into such a short timeframe is like trying to fit all of Texas into Rhode Island. The story suffers immensely, and it just boils down to a kid and a former Gunslinger who tries to stop the Man in Black from taking over the world - stop me if you've heard this before. Not even Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey could save this unmitigated mess.

#1

The Hobbit Franchise
Based on the Novel The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" movie adaptations by the great J.R.R. Tolkien have been hailed as masterworks of their craft, films that are some of the best pieces of cinema in recent decades. So when Peter Jackson announced he would be doing a film based on the beloved "Hobbit" prequel to the "LOTR," everyone was excited - until he decided to turn the two films planned into three, elongating an already short novel (shorter than any of the Lord of the Rings novels) into three films, stretching the source novel incredibly thin. The films were visionary marvels, as you'd expect, but the heart and soul of the book was lost in translation, and Jackson's antics behind the scenes only served to exasperate audiences. The great Ian McKellen almost gave up acting because he was depressed because he was acting to a green screen instead of fellow actors. Jackson shoe-horned in the return of Legolas (and Orlando Bloom), a character not in The Hobbit in order to draw back in female viewers. He hired Evangeline Lilly to play a fellow elf (also not in The Hobbit), and she only agreed if there would be no love triangle - and Jackson wrote one in anyway. By elongating the source material, padding it with his own concepts, and his scrupulous dealings behind the scenes, Peter Jackson destroyed any good will that audiences had toward him for bringing "The Lord of the Rings" to life.