KB, Agreed, although I credit Cage with doing all that was required of him in Adaptation (at least up until the last half-hour, which wasn’t his fault anyway).
P.S. And I guess one has to concede that as the nephew of Franicis Ford Coppola and son of August, he must have plenty of Italian genes somewhere. Just nowhere that can convince an audience that he actually is Italian. 
What is the point of him? Anything like Con-Air?
The remake of the Time Machine. A completely wasted opportunity made all the worse by the fact that H.G. Wells’ great-grandson Simon Wells co-produced it. What on earth was Jeremy Irons’ Uber-Morlock all about? It just turned the film into yet another witless Hollywood special effects parade with a cartoon villain at the end. George Pal’s first version was much, much better.
I’m even a Nick Cage fan. Loved him in Raising Arizona and Honeymoon in Vegas. Very good in Guarding Tess and The Grifters. Clearly I should skip this one if I want to continue to be a fan.
Katherine
I recommend you make your own assessment. I suspect there was a degree of chauvinism in the British reception: favourite Brit novel, Brit production company, Brit director with good Brit track record, all rendered sub-prime because of failings of big Hollywood star who - it was speculated, I’ve no idea if it was true - was “only” required to participate by the Hollywood money. But even so, it was wrong for him, and he was all wrong for the movie.
H
I know a lot of people loved the movie, but The English Patient was so much more stunning as a book.
I’m sure, like most readers, we approach a movie with trepidation, but a low water mark was reached when one of Lawrence Block’s Burglar books was made into a movie with Whoopi Goldberg as Bernie Rhodenbarr.
It’s something akin to casting Gwyneth Paltrow as Mohammed Ali.
I love those Bernie Rhodenbarr books. Whoopi Goldberg! What were they thinking?
The Bourne Triliogy
(The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatium).
Two scenes in the first movie followed the books. From then on out the only thing they shared with the books were some of the character names.
The story, the plots, the characters, the roles, and even the scenes were nothing like the books at all. The final outcomes and even the character deaths were completely different.
The movies were so loosely based on the books they just used the main idea and character names and rewrote the hole story from scratch.
Boo
(The Books were so much better)
!! Now hang on a minute, if that were true, everybody would have hated Bridget Jones’ Diary, too, given that it was a favourite British book etc etc and they brought in a big Hollywood start to play the role of Jones. But Renee Zellweger - who up until then had annoyed the heck out of me (her entire acting repertoire in that abysmal “Show me the money” film with Tom Cruise consisted of tilting her head and furrowing her brow) - was (apologies for the long and nested parentheses a moment ago) fantastic in it. It has nothing to do with “British chauvinism”. To cast Nic Cage as Corelli and Penelope Cruz (brilliant in some other things - though mainly her Spanish films) as Pelagia was just a joke. Cage was too old, bald and lacking in the particular type of charisma required for the role, and Cruz was too stick-thin (and it also seems silly having a Spanish actress speaking English pretending to be Greek, but that sort of thing is par for the course).
In cases such as this, I always think of the superb Comic Strip production, Strike!, a mockumentary about the making of a Hollywood film about the eighties’ miners’ strikes across Britain. Arthur Scargill is played by Al Pacino and renamed “Arthur Scarface”, the UK is shown as cobbled streets and buck-toothed idiots, and the whole thing ends with a motorbike chase to the houses of parliament. Brilliant.
What about Gwynneth Paltrow as Emma, too? Everybody liked that (Hollywood actress, British beloved book). I even enjoyed Spielberg’s War of the Worlds despite the fact that it relocated everything to the US etc. Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet? Superb. Etc, etc. See, we’re not chauvinists. We’re just discerning.
Thank God somebody is!
In the late 70s whilst working night shift, there were always hundreds of books lying around, or available for borrowing. I picked up one and didnt stop until Id finished. It was the most gripping and scariest piece of writing I`d ever read…and still is.
When, a while latter, it was released as a movie, I felt as happy as a dog with two ding-a-lings, and as sick as a bear with a sore arse, when I realised it had done the rounds at the cinemas, and I`d missed it.
With the benefit of wisdom acquired over 63 years, it has just dawned on me that this post isnt realy what this thread is about, but... Eventually it was shown on TV. Now this is where I go of topic...[size=50]Im bad!!I know I am!! I cant help it, Im a congenital off-toppicker [/size] As a movie I found it, in every way just as rewarding an experience, as reading the book. However, I have since come to wonder, recently, whether or not the book was an adaptation of the story/screenplay by Dan OBannon, Ronald Shusssett and David Giler. The Book/Movie was Alien`.
I would seriously [size=50](nearly choked on that!!)[/size] appreciate the opinions of the more critically astute members of the crew, on this matter. `k you, 
Take care
Vic
Alien left a lot out that Giger had originally intended, especially about the two races that were at war and how the “alien” (genetic weapon) was released.
Only the briefest mention is shown in the movies on this (when you see the large alien sitting at the weapon in the first movie when they first discover the “eggs”
Since then HR has not only sued the Movie makers but is “mad as hell” with them because they now do not even mention nor give credit to HR as the original creator in any credits. They take full credit for work that was originally not of their creation…
wock
who`s HR
vic
Another thing that he really hated was that they used set design pieces originally intended to be the interior for a pyramid of sorts, as the interior of the alien spaceship. Consequently there are two distinct styles inside the spaceship which make no sense in relation to each other, one being very organic looking and the other technological. If I recall, this was done for budget and pacing reasons. They simply never got around to making the pyramid shrine at all, but had these expensive sets, and couldn’t afford to construct the sets for the spaceship interior, so used the pyramid interior designs instead.
Giger’s Alien, a combination art book of concept designs and movie production diary is an interesting read with beautifully reproduced plates of H.R. Giger’s original artwork. He goes into a lot of this artistic conflict that went on and how frustrating it can be to mix artistic vision with Hollywood. I can’t say I entirely agree with all of his points. For instance, I think the pacing of the movie would have been seriously disrupted if the pyramid excursion was left in and more of the backstory revealed. But can certainly sympathise with how frustrating it must have been to have gone through so much effort designing things that either never got used, or were used inappropriately.
I appreciate backstory, but in this case the complete mystery and chaotic violence that breaks out for no humanly discernible reason adds an enormous amount of tension and becomes an extreme human vs. nature; technology vs. evolution story.
In my opinion, all of the sequels can be (should be) completely ignored, but the original even with its flaws, remains one of the best examples of a well done science-fiction/horror tale.
In answer to Vic, Alien was an original script written for film, and the novels are all film to book adaptations.
[size=200]GASP[/size]
H.R. GIGER is the artist that created the alien, the face huggers, the chest burster, the environment, etc.
He is well known artist and some of his works like his furniture can be seen as “disturbing”, erotic, organic, and demonic by some critics. (see his dining room set picture below he designed and sells)
When you look at his work you will recognize the “alien environment” as seen quite often in ALIENS in the “hive”.
He is the one who gave “birth” to the whole concept and design of the ALIEN creature and the whole idea was originally based off his paintings and scupltures of the “ALIEN” creature
For more info on HR here is is website. He is very very good.
hrgiger.com/
Here is a link to look at some of his artwork which you should notice the style as very familiar.
images.google.com/images?client= … UTF-8&um=1
PS: He also did work on the SPECIES movie as well.
And here is a summary of stuff he has done
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.R._Giger
Amber
I found it ironic that in AVP (1) they introduced a “pyramid” structure but laid the tale that it was built by humans under the guidance of “Predators” as a place to do battle.
I wonder if they were trying to reintroduce the pyramid idea or just ran out of original ideas? 
I never saw that one, nor do I intend to! But it sounds like a bad adaptation of a bad adaptation of a bad adaptation of a good film.
Heh, trying to get us back on topic.
I thought
Hunt for Red October was a very GOOD adaptation of Tom Clancy’s Novel
but
The Sum of All Fears
was a drab and poor adaption of Tom Clancy’s novel…
In Which I Once Again Ramble At Potentially Thread-Killing Length:
• There’s a difference between bad adaptations and movies that aren’t really what you want them to be. The late Gene Siskel used to complain that his colleague Roger Ebert had a tendency to review “the film he wished it was” instead of the film it actually is. To that end: to say that Alien is a bad film because it abbreviated Geiger’s original vision is, in my opinion, a narrow view. Same with the Bourne pictures. They may not be the movie that Geiger and Ludlum fans wish they were, but they are awfully good movies, taken on their own terms. Further, I think one could make the argument that the films in question probably did more to enhance the popularity of both artists. To say, for example, that Geiger suffered because of the (first two) Alien films is, I think, a disingenuous point of view. Safe to say that pretty much everyone who knows and appreciates H.R. Geiger does so because of those movies. And if people discovered the masterful control of Mr. Ludlum because they like that cute Matt Damon, so be it. The world wins, in my opinion.
• Re the above: Someone once asked Stephen King about the near-universal crap that characterized the adaptations of his early work. The interviewer asked if all the bad movies didn’t somehow destroy his novels. He turned around to look at his bookshelf, where the first editions of his novels sat, and said something to the effect of, “Nope. They’re all still right there.” (He may have been citing Raymond Chandler, who might have been the first guy to point this out.) I’m just saying.
• I spent a long time agreeing with King that Kubrick’s “The Shining” was a bad adaptation – that Kubrick spent so much time trying to transcend the genre, he lost sight of what made the genre exciting. These days, oder and wiser, I can watch the film without literary preconception – and damn if the guy didn’t make an interesting picture. He did pretty much the same thing to “2001”, a very good but workmanlike novel that achieved some odd kind of greatness on film.
• Whoever cited “Russia House” as a bad adaptation, well done! I get bored just remembering that movie. It must have taken real work to make Le Carre dull.
• Lolita is a great example of the un-filmable novel. Film is just too literal a medium to capture all that’s great about that book. At some point, both adaptations boiled down to the catastrophically simplistic theme of “Hot Young Girl vs. Seedy Old Man”. Of the two iterations, I (obviously) admire Kubrick’s more, but still, they both kind of suck. As for Adrian Lynne’s version, Jesus. Frankly, I’d just as soon watch an 11 hour documentary of Jeremy Irons reading the book than sit through either 2 hr. film again.
• No Country For Old Men (mentioned upthread) is an interesting case. On first viewing, I thought that the last 45 minutes worked better as prose than as a motion picture. Proved what I always thought about adaptations – what was an amazing and philosophically rigorous denouement in prose seemed like a cop out in the movie. Second time I watched it, though, I understood that I was wrong.
Tired now.
Perhaps not surprising since, IMO, Red October was a far better book than Sum of All Fears.
Katherine
Agreed about The Russia House. I was also disappointed with the adaptation of The Constant Gardener. Perhaps later Le Carre is harder to adapt for the screen. Maybe his novels depend too much on the sweep of irony on the page for the screen always to bear the weight. I think occasionally too even Le Carre makes Le Carre dull, though I’m generally a huge fan.
The Sum of All Fears was on a main channel the other night, so I watched it partly because I couldn’t believe it is as boring as I remembered it from first time round. But it is.
It really shouldn’t be so. It should be the reality of the nuclear nightmare made flesh. But it deals with the subject in a hackneyed and unrealistic fashion (if you can have cliches and lack of realism together). That isn’t the case with Red October. And of course in that one Connery is strong.
Alien is a wonderful and quintessential horror movie, although I agree with vic-k that the novelisation does stand very well on its own. The second movie is essentially a war film (thanks, Robert McKee). The others - well, I don’t know what they are.