Books Being Turned Into Movies

If the filmmakers do a bad job of it, I usually tend to explode.

Here are my opinions on a few books that have been turned into movies:

The Lord of the Rings trilogy

These ones were surprisingly good. The people who made them didn't change too much, and I suppose what they did change was OK. I do understand that you simply can not make a series like Lord of the Rings into a series of movies without changing some things. I will give the whole thing a 4 out of 5.

The Hobbit soon-to-be trilogy

An Unexpected Journey was good, aside from the fact that they added a character who wasn't supposed to still be alive at that time. (That would be Azog, the orc dude.) It gets a 3.5.

The Desolation of Smaug was a lot worse. For one, Legolas shouldn't have been there. And then the whole romance thing with that elf lady and the dwarf... Just thinking about it makes me puff up indignantly. It was so ridiculous and un-Tolkien that I wish I could write to whoever thought of making it up. I doubt they'd care, though. They're too preoccupied with all the riches that unsuspecting Hobbit fans have paid to see the movie, only to be disappointed. The Desolation of Smaug gets a 2.

Unfortunately, because of The Desolation of Smaug, I don't have high hopes for whichever Hobbit movie comes next. The fact that I don't know what it's called is bad news. What's really sad is that An Unexpected Journey was actually pretty good.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

I haven't seen any of these yet, so I can't rate them personally, but everyone I've talked to says they're horrible. I tried to be open-minded until my brother looked up what all the characters looked like. I couldn't recognize any of them. That was absolutely terrible! My hopes are completely dashed and now the only reason why I want to see any of these is so that I can laugh at them.

The Hunger Games

Aside from The Princess Bride, this has got to be the best book-into-movie adaption I have ever seen. Yes, they messed up the Mutts and some other stuff, but the other details made up for it. They captured the overall feel I got when I read the book perfectly. That is pretty darn amazing. To get the best out of The Hunger Games, I would advise that someone read the book first, then see the movie. They both build on each other in a really cool way, so you get a lot of details from seeing the movie that you don't get when you only read the book. The Hunger Games actually gets an 4.5.

The Princess Bride

OK, here is the best movie-into-book adaption. Actually, that's not exactly true. The movie is better than the book, in my opinion. That's unheard of! How extraordinary! But it's true. The book was OK, but it couldn't quite beat its own movie. I find that incredibly amusing. The movie gets a 3.5 because I didn't like the romance.

The Harry Potter series

It was all or nothing for Harry Potter. Certain things they did amazingly, like Snape, but other things they completely bombed, like Winky. Winky was very important, but she wasn't in the movie. I scoff at that. The filmmakers also changed a lot of similar stuff, so other things were nothing like how I imagined them to be, which I found sad. Still, I suppose they did the best they could. By the way, I have only seen the movies up to The Order of the Phoenix, so my ratings aren't entirely complete. Overall I'll give this series a 3.5.