Ask Lemmy

I wouldn't call it a bad change, quite the opposite but when I read Fight Club, I was amazed how faithful the film was to the book. There are just two major changes I can remember.

In the book, Tyler Durden meets the narrator on a (nude?) beach where Tyler is erecting driftwood into the sand so that the shadow looks like a hand. (It's been a very long time since I read it, I think that's right.)

Secondly, the narrator struggles all through the story to remember the correct formula for the home made explosive. If he doesn't know, then Tyler doesn't know. Which means the explosives at the end don't go off. The buildings stay standing.

I was surprised when I read heart of darkness, that, for me at least, the final gut-punch of the tale isn't a dying man thinking of the horror he had wrought and seen, but the protagonist getting back to the man's wife and lying to her, telling her his last thoughts were of her. It isnt something that would have worked for Apocalypse Now, but I didn't expect such a short novel to hide a completely different ending mood. I still think about it, years later.

Not a movie, but I don't know what they were thinking with that 'adaptation' of Pratchett's Night Watch books with 'The Watch'. It was wrong on every level. That said, taken on it's own merits, the production design was kind of awesome, and the guy playing Vimes was great.

Matilda. They made them y*nks 🤢🤮

I want to take this opportunity to remind the audience that 2005's Sahara starring Matthew McConaughey exists. The second of two utter failures to adapt a Clive Cussler novel to the big screen.

It wasn't a good movie because of the studio and because of legal clashes with Cussler. I think you could have gotten it done.

Plot wise, I think making Dirk obsessed with the ironclad from the beginning was an unwise choice. They both made that a bigger factor in the overall plot, and yet diminished the whole point of it by removing its Very Important Passenger. They put so much shit in the runtime about the ironclad that the actual main plots of the gold mine and the waste disposal plant had to be pared down.

Also, casting. I actually think the movie is very well cast, McConaughey and Cruz were good, William Macy was an excellent Sandecker, Rainn Wilson was pretty good as Rudy Gunn, Lambert Wilson was the objectively correct choice for Massarde, and Steve Zahn was utterly incorrect for Al Giordino. I was about to say at least they didn't get Seth Rogan or Jack Black but Jack Black might actually have worked.

The Dark Tower by Stephen King. It was the book in name alone.