Top 10 Most Disappointing Movies Adapted from Books

Some books are pretty awesome. Some are better than the movie themselves even if the movie was good like 'The Jungle Book'. However, some books lead way to movie franchises. However, some other ones can fail and fall flat on their face. These books deserve another outing but these movies were disappointing, or just not good enough. Overall, some of these need a remake. Dearly and badly. Heck, some of these are and I cannot wait for them and hopefully they get these books justice. However, for now instead of seeing the movie, just read the book.
The Top Ten
1 Dune

Dune is one of my favourite books. I love it to death and I love pretty much everything in the book. The movie was directed by my favourite director ever, David Lynch, who I also see as one of the most underrated. It deserved to be near the Top of my most popular lists: "Top 10 Most Disappointing Movies By Good Directors', and at the top 'Top 10 Bad Movies That Deserve to Get Remade', because not only was it disappointing, but this movie I found absolutely dreadful to sit through. The special effects were terrible. I could have found better off a bad YouTube green screen effect. The movie did not make any sense at all. Dune (the book), I actually like more than Star Wars as a whole, and to see adapted like this did not make me happy. I tried to give it a chance, but I found out the movie was going to be dreadful by the four minute mark. Yeah I hate this movie. It is a such a mess of a movie. Makes Venom look put together pretty well. It has no structure, has bad and pointless ...more

Someone I know put it this way: Dune failed because it tried way too hard on condensing things.
Really puts it on par with The Last Airbender in that sense.

Wow long paragraph

2 The Dark Tower

Many favourite people have their favourite Stephen King novel. Whether it be It, Misery, or The Shining, I personally adore the Dark Tower the most. Idris Elba is a great actor; I personally think he should be next James Bond after Daniel Craig. However, his talent was wasted in the most disappointing movie of 2017, 'The Dark Tower'. It is almost not trying to like the phenomenal book, but more like 'The Neverending Story', a good film but for a King film that is like Barney the Dinosaur presenting The Emmys. All scenes are stripped except for essential exposition and there is no tissue between events, making the film worse as a result of this. The villain is bland; and it is a shame with the villain from the book being one of my favourite King villains. The action scenes are not great to say the least and could be done better in my opinion. The fight themselves are shot badly and in a bad style. One fight should have been a lot longer than it actually was. The film needed more time ...more

3 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

This was a graphic novel. It technically counts. I do not think Connery liked Indiana Jones as he rejected Gandalf, maybe for this. These are some of the most famous fictional characters yet the movie wastes them. Think about if the Avengers just sat down not even talking to each other with barely any interaction. Yeah it is a absolutely awful piece of garbage. The film drowns itself when the Team actually does something. This is a serious flaw with the movie. The film has an action sequence; but a plothole is formed in this section. The film does not seem to now what Venice is, and thinks that the audience would not either. Whoever made decision deserves to be fired. People do not seem to notice that half of Venice has disappeared. Part of the villains plan? We don't know, it's like they saw it a billion times before, half of Venice being destroyed. Perfectly normal in their eyes. None of the characters are good. Not one of these iconic characters are actually given a good ...more

4 War of the Worlds

While the 1953 version of the H.G. Wells novel had flaws, I still liked the movie overall. However, the Spielberg version which could have been great and a good Spielberg movie turned out to be one of Spielberg's weaker products. The movie does not even feel like Spielberg movie; it lacks all of the energy of his other products like 'Close Encounters: Of The Third Kind' or 'E.T. the Extra Terrestrial'. Spielberg has also proven to be good with Science Fiction Movies. Along with the mentioned Close Encounters and E.T., he also directed movies 'Minority Report' or 'Jurassic Park'. The aliens have been preparing to invade Earth for a pretty long time. And I mean a long time. However, they have no motivation? Is it funny? Do they do it because they are on drugs? Could be either really. Compared to the other Spielberg Science Fiction products, this is just terrible. And the movie is still bad in my opinion as well. The invasion just is boring. They say they want to harvest humans. Why? ...more

I entirely agree! This movie was AMAZING!

5 The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass is a great book series. The film was pretty poor however. The trailer made the excitement more common as it looked like another 'Lord of the Rings' franchise could have be on its way. Haha nope. Total failure of a franchise and it needs a remake. Jackson had put care while Weitz did a graceless plod. It is faithful to the book, but does not catch the feeling of it. Every memorable event in the book is just transformed into hasty exposition, and the film tells you "This is important" and is extremely common and extremely annoying. The cast goes to waste, and these are good actors and actresses. The film has a whole lot of unnecessary cameos as well. The CGI is pretty decent, and probably the best thing about the movie. The dialogue is pretty bad as well. There is a big lack of atmosphere in the film, and in the book it did rival fantasy setting like Narnia and Middle Earth. The amazing ending from the book is ruined in the movie, and the ending itself in the movie ...more

It's like in the UK calling the first Harry Potter film "Sorcerers Stone" The Golden Compass is the American name. Oh well when the BBC series comes it will be The Northern Lights

6 Congo

Now, Michael Crichton is one of the best authors ever. Two years earlier 'Jurassic Park' was released and every single person loved the movie. So it makes sense to do another one right? Yes it does. However, while the book succeeded and was definitely on the level of the book of Jurassic Park, the movie was a terrible piece of garbage. The book deserved to be more than a B movie. It did not get the justice it deserved and the book deserves to be read and celebrated. The acting was horrible to sit through. Every single person was absolutely atrocious. As most people in this movie are atrocious actors. Except for Tim Curry. Tim Curry was good as Tim Curry is the god of all men. The plot was confusing. It made absolutely zero sense what so ever. The scientific jumbo was extremely wheeled out in the movie. The movie also has lots of exposition which gets tiring, and they tell you several times. The dialogue was stupid. And I mean stupid. Some of these lines are very annoying. And most of ...more

7 Sphere

Another classic Michael Crichton novel being adapted. And this one actually having some skilled actors, as the movie is made up of a cast including Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L Jackson, Sharon Stone. Each of them are the saving grace of the film as they actually care. The justice the book got was being worse than 'The Abyss' and when you compare the scenes in both of the movies, you can pretty easily tell that 'The Abyss' had more suspense, and Sphere just did it poorly. They build up to the plot pretty well, I was looking forward to it. However, there is an issue with the plot itself. As it reveals, it is boring. It doesn't keep my attention what so ever. The movie is rushed. Every single movie deserves time so it remains a better film as a result. The ideas are not really talked about, and if some of them were, I probably would have not thought Sphere as a bad film. But however it is pretty clearly a bad movie. The spacecraft which leaped off the pages of the book. Compared to other ...more

8 A Wrinkle in Time

'A Wrinkle in Time' was a box office bomb. A big one. It did terribly at the box office. The book was pretty great and could be adapted but with massive care. Huge, huge care. The movie can admire at just how clever it is. The film does not start well. The first 20 minutes or so are pretty awful. This film pretty much stayed that way. AvaDuVernay directed the film, and this is a great director. She can do great stuff as shown with 'Selma'. Now, the elephant in the room is the blackwashing. To me, I just feel like they could have got a better cast. The IT does not get its full justice it was from the book. Now provided, while the movie does have some wonderous and great scenes that are on par with other phenomenal fantasy movies like 'Lord of the Rings' and 'The Neverending Story. However, both those movies also had the phenomenal characters, great visuals and good worldbuilding. And the setting is disappointing. Now, I am going to compare to Fantastic Beasts in that both had ...more

9 The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code was pretty cinematic and had good linear storytelling. Much better than this rubbish. Ron Howard is a good director, but sometimes he does pretty bad movies. This is a good example of that. The book is pretty easy to adapt into a movie if you do it well; but in this case, comes so wide off the mark am I pretty sure Howard did not actually read the book, but just asked people some important events and the names of the characters. This movie has exposition. And exposition. It is like they thought the only thing in the original book was exposition. There is no character in this film whatsoever. Barely any action scenes, and when we do get them they are bad usually. The way the film executes its storytelling through puzzles and clues when it should have been character desires. The lack of engagement from Hanks and Tautou is pretty surprising and has an effect on their acting skills in the movie and both are pretty bad in this movie. This should be a fun movie; but it was ...more

10 Eragon
The Contenders
11 The Black Cauldron

The movie is not the disappointing Disney and Pixar movie. I was wrong about that. I was completely right that the film sucks. The characters suck. Really suck. We have Taran. His character is all talk, and do nothing. And he talks. Oh he talks, he never shuts up. Grugi. (I think that's his name) has the most annoying voice in the film and somehow Taran still manages to be more annoying than him. The princess in this film who has absolutely zero need to be a princess, (we don't even get to see her kingdom). Actually, why doesn't the princess run away tell her father about the Horned King, and he might actually get over and done with. So these heroes are not using logic very well. The Horned King is nicely animated. However, the animation is pretty bland. It's low on the list because Disney was not doing well, and had to back on track. The movie sucks. It's annoying. The dialogue by these extremely poorly written characters is very annoying. The Horned King can join others as one of ...more

In case someone out there hasn't seen the movie, don't! Skip this movie, play the video game version instead

12 Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
13 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

The worst Harry Potter in my opinion, but the part of the books that this movie took place on was one of my favorite parts.

Like oh my god this was terrible

14 Holes
15 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Look, in and of itself the film is entertaining. It's a more than decent stab at adapting the novel. But it's my favourite novel of all-time, and the story just doesn't work as well on screen as it does on the printed page. I came away amused but disappointed.

This movie takes everything clever and funny in Douglas Adams' novel and turns it into another cliché Hollywood movie that never lands any of its jokes. The effects are well done but that's about it, everything else from the acting to the writing can be thrown to the wayside and forgotten.

16 Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Events
17 The Phantom of the Opera (2004)

Made a great horror novel into another cheesy insipid love story. Watch the 1925 Universal movie instead: much better adaptation.

18 Hoot
19 Alice in Wonderland (2010)

ANOTHER case where the movie fails to adapt the book correctly. Probably the worst movie based off a GOOD book. (There are worse book-based movies, but given that Battlefield Earth and Twilight aren't good books in the first place...)

20 Beautiful Creatures
21 Catch-22

Parts of the movie and some of the characters are outstanding, but it doesn't convey the essence of the book as a cohesive entity.

22 Twilight

How is this not number one?

23 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone Harry James Potter is the title character of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. The majority of the books' plot covers seven years in the life of the orphan Potter, who, on his eleventh birthday, learns he is a wizard.
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