They say the movie is always better than the movie, and they are mostly right. Indeed, the number of movies that match their source material, let alone surpass it, is rare. Most of the time, the best adaptations offer something new and provide a fresh take on the book, becoming worthy of standing side by side with their literary counterpart.
Then there are those adaptations that are painfully, ridiculously, and embarrassingly bad. These movies fail miserably at recapturing what made their book counterparts popular to begin with, with the major themes getting lost in translation. They are mediocre as movies but outright terrible as adaptations, to the point where the authors themselves have sometimes denounced them.
10. Firestarter (2022)
In all honesty, Stephen King adaptations are more often bad than not. The It movies are the exception, as most King adaptations are either utter failures or successes at the expense of diverting entirely from the source material; 2022’s Firestarter is the former. Based on King’s eponymous book, the film follows a young girl with pyrokinetic powers who becomes the target of a dangerous organization seeking to weaponize her.
Firestarter had already received a movie adaptation in 1984 starring Drew Barrymore. That film was already pretty bad, but the 2022 version makes it seem like a masterpiece. This modern retelling of Firestarter is embarrassingly bad, lacking even the so-bad-it’s-good element that makes most King adaptations enjoyable. Instead, it’s bland, dumb, loud, and cheap, with a lazy screenplay and mediocre performances from everyone in the cast.
9. The Divergent Series (2014-2016)
Following the success of The Hunger Games, every studio wanted its own dystopian franchise. Lionsgate, the studio behind Katniss Everdeen herself, seemed to score the ultimate prize in the form of Divergent, a teen dystopia sci-fi story and the seemingly natural heir of the Hunger Games. Shailene Woodley led the series as Tris Prior, a poor man’s Katniss, with the story set in a ruined Chicago where everyone belongs to certain factions, depending on their personality traits.
The failure of the Divergent Series is infamous, with each movie becoming progressively worse. It didn’t even receive an ending, as the third entry, Allegiant, was such a flop that Lionsgate canceled plans for a fourth theatrical film and tried to pivot to a made-for-TV movie that would lead to a spinoff series. When it became clear that neither the actors nor the audience wanted that, the studio fully scrapped the idea and left the series unfinished. The writing was always on the wall for this franchise because, in all honesty, the books are just not that good; the movies never had a chance.
8. Dune (1984)
What can be said about David Lynch’s Dune that hasn’t already been said? The director’s first and only venture into mainstream, big-budget cinema remains a notorious Hollywood tale of the wrong director meeting the wrong material. The result is a bizarre and borderline puzzling movie that feels completely detached from the source material despite everyone’s best intentions.
To be fair, adapting Frank Herbert’s unyielding, confrontational novel would be a daunting cast for anyone. In hindsight, Lynch’s odd, distinctive, and equally unapproachable style might not have been the best approach for such a story. If anything, Lynch’s Dune is interesting and with far more flair than one would expect from a sci-fi opera. It’s a terrible adaptation of the novel, but as its own thing, Lynch’s Dune is at least intriguing. Fans of the novel should probably stick to Denis Villeneuve’s two-part adaptation, though.
7. The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
In 1990, a movie based on a bestselling novel directed by Brian De Palma and starring Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, and Melanie Griffith seemed like a surefire recipe for success. So what the hell happened? Well, this is another case of the wrong talent meeting the wrong material.
The book is a remarkably dark and satirical take on New York high society that wasn’t afraid to aim for its cynical, exploitative, and bigoted nature. However, the movie is a toned-down, lousy, and far less clever attempt at humanizing the characters to be less confrontational than their literary counterparts.
Thus, The Bonfire of the Vanities is a clumsy, baffling, and utterly miserable adaptation that is painfully unfunny and mind-numbingly stupid. The film has also become a prime example of miscasting, with each of its three stars being ridiculously wrong for the characters they’re supposed to be playing.
6. North (1994)
Rob Reiner is behind some of the most delightful classics in Hollywood history. From The Princess Bride to When Harry Met Sally…, Reiner has crafted many certified hits, including courtroom dramas, fantasy epics, and some of the most romantic movies ever. However, his 1994 comedy-drama adventure North is a true abomination and a strong contender for the worst film of the 90s.
Based on the 1984 novel North: The Tale of a 9-Year-Old Boy Who Becomes a Free Agent and Travels the World in Search of the Perfect Parents, Reiner’s movie follows the titular character, a neglected child who legally separates from his parents and goes on a globetrotting search for the perfect mom and dad. The plot is whimsical enough, but the execution is lacking in originality, charm, and emotional intelligence. At least North gave us some of Siskel and Ebert’s funniest quotes, the latter of whom claimed he “hated, hated, hated, hated, hated” it.
5. Eragon (2006)
In the mid-2000s, everyone wanted their own fantasy saga following the success of the Harry Potter movies. For a couple of years, it seemed like every fantasy movie under the sun received a big-screen adaptation; some, like Stardust and Narnia, were good, whereas others, like The Golden Compass and A Series of Unfortunate Events, were painfully mediocre. And then there’s Eragon.
Based on the eponymous novel, Eragon is the story of the titular character, who hatches an egg and seeks to restore the Dragon Riders’ status and overthrow his kingdom’s evil monarch. The story is formulaic, but there is enough meat in the book to make a decent movie out of it. Unfortunately, Eragon‘s live-action adaptation is lifeless and needlessly convoluted, with each actor looking dead behind the eyes while delivering expository lines that even the average A03 writer could improve on. Eragon has become a cautionary tale for book-to-movie adaptations, often ranking among the all-time worst fantasy movies.
4. Persuasion (2022)
Dakota Johnson is a good actress in the right role; Anne Elliot is certainly not the right role for her. Jane Austen’s quiet, introspective novel Persuasion received the Netflix treatment in 2022 with a terrible live-action adaptation that took everything that works about the novel and destroyed it in an attempt to make the story modern and quirky.
The thing is, Persuasion is not the type of story with which to mess. Anne Elliot is not Emma Woodhouse or Catherine Morland. She’s stoic, resigned, quiet, gentle, and often overlooked — so why on Earth is this movie making her break the fourth wall and speak like she’s Fleabag? Netflix has several good movies, but Persuasion isn’t one; everything that makes the novel special disappears in a messy and outright stupid adaptation that is as fake and forced as Johnson’s attempt at an English accent.
3. Artemis Fowl (2020)
Artemis Fowl is a curious movie. It’s a truly terrible film with few, if any, redeeming qualities, yet it’s also so forgettable that one might completely erase it from its mind before the credits have begun rolling. Based on the 2001 novel by Eoin Colfer, the film follows the titular character, who must venture into a mysterious world to rescue his father from an evil fairy.
Directed by Kenneth Branagh, Artemis Fowl is a tragedy of errors. It’s boring and unexpectedly confusing, brought down by confused acting, terrible visual effects, and a bizarre desire to go against the source material despite flaunting its most overt aspects. Artemis Fowl is a shameless attempt at kickstarting a franchise; it’s basically a stepping stone, a collection of events that supposedly lead to a whole without ever bothering to explain itself. At least we got to see Judi Dench in elf ears, which is an image I never thought I’d see.
2. The Scarlet Letter (1995)
In the hilarious and now-iconic teen comedy Easy A, two-time Oscar winner Emma Stone describes Demi Moore’s version of The Scarlet Letter as “where she talks in a fake British accent and takes a lot of baths.” Honestly, that’s a pretty perfect description of this aberration of a movie. Moore stars as Hester Prynne, with Gary Oldman as the minister and Robert Duvall as Hester’s husband.
The Scarlet Letter is laughably bad, largely because of Demi Moore’s terrible performance. In what is possibly the worst casting decision of the ’90s, Moore plays Hester as a hilariously out-of-place 20th-century woman in what is supposed to be puritanical Massachusetts, largely because Roland Joffé’s camera can’t seem to forget this is Demi Moore and not Hester Prynne. The worst part is you can clearly see Moore trying her best; alas, a laughably bad accent and the director’s insistence on framing her as a model and not a puritanical adulteress is the film’s undoing. Plus, the less said about the terrible ending, the better.
1. The Dark Tower (2017)
As previously stated, most adaptations of Stephen King’s novels are quite bad. However, none is worse than Nikolaj Arcel’s 2017 take on The Dark Tower. Idris Elba stars as Roland Deschain, a gunslinger tasked with protecting the mythical Dark Tower, which holds all realities within. Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey stars as his nemesis, The Man in Black.
The main problem with The Dark Tower is very easy to understand: It tried to include far too much in a single 95-minute (!) movie. However, The Dark Tower is probably King’s most daunting and unapproachable story, calling more for a TV show than a 95-minute (!!) movie. It’s expansive, complicated, and more than a bit pretentious, more suitable to an eight-season HBO serial than whatever it is that Arcel tried to do in just 95 minutes (!!!).
Elba and McConaughey are fine in the roles, but there’s a sense of dread in their performances as if they knew the kind of trainwreck they were making. The Dark Tower is simply terrible and a prime example of how some novels are perhaps best left on paper.
