10 Movies That Missed the Point of Their Source Material

When adapting books and comics into movies, certain changes must be made to accommodate the new medium. While fans sometimes bristle at plotlines and characters being altered—or even cut out completely—there’s no way for adaptations to be entirely faithful. However, some film adaptations seem to entirely miss the point of their source material. That isn’t to say that they’re necessarily bad movies, just bad adaptations. Here are 10 such examples.

Related: The Ten Best Comic Book to Movie Adaptations

10 The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) follows the daydreaming titular character (played by Ben Stiller) as he goes on an adventurous journey around the world that breaks him out of his mundane life. It’s whimsical and aspirational—which is completely at odds with the tone and plot of James Thurber’s 1939 short story.

The original story takes place over just one day, with Walter daydreaming to escape his boredom while on a shopping trip with his wife. Not only does he never actually break out of the dullness of the everyday, but his final daydream is of his own death via firing squad. Rather than channeling Thurber’s satirical tone, Stiller plays it mostly earnest, spinning what feels like a feature-length “Just Do It” ad for restless middle-aged auds,” explains film critic Peter Debruge.

The 1947 film adaptation starring Danny Kaye is also far more feel-good than Thurber’s short story, with Walter getting to actually live an exciting life throughout the movie.^[1]

9 Blade Runner (1982)

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) is only a loose adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968). In the film, the bio-engineered replicants are near-indistinguishable from human beings, and the audience is led to feel sympathy for them. In the book, the replicants (called andys—short for androids) are cast as villains and are totally lacking in empathy, making them easy to distinguish from humans.

While Scott’s version of the story is about the lines between human and replicant becoming blurred, in Dick’s book, the focus is on humanity and the various ways in which people are trying to cope with their miserable reality—from a religion called Mercerism to looking after robotic animals because real animals are now rare and expensive commodities.^[2]

8 Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)—starring Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard—is a classic romantic comedy, but Truman Capote’s 1958 novella of the same name is distinctly lacking in romance between the two lead characters.

While both the book and the movie share themes of independence, connection, and authenticity, the addition of a romantic element completely changes the tone. In the novella, not only do Holly Golightly and the unnamed narrator—named Paul Varjak in the film—not engage in a romantic relationship, but it’s heavily implied that the narrator is gay. According to Holly, “If a man doesn’t like baseball, then he must like horses, and if he doesn’t like either of them, well, I’m in trouble anyway: he don’t like girls.” The narrator significantly has no interest in either baseball or horses.

The novella also ends on a rather somber note, with the complicated and enigmatic Holly disappearing from the narrator’s life. But the movie wraps up with a happily-ever-after kiss between Holly and Paul.^[3]

7 Less Than Zero (1987)

When Bret Easton Ellis saw the 1987 movie adaptation of his book Less Than Zero (1985), he recalls thinking, “That’s interesting. They didn’t use a single scene from the book in the movie. How did they do that?” Although he said the film was “visually ravishing,” he was disappointed that it “completely inverted the meaning of the book.”

In the book, when college student Clay returns to LA for winter break, he witnesses many horrific things—from a snuff film to a sex slave—and becomes disillusioned and detached from the drug and party lifestyle. Bleakness is the point, but the film offers a sanitized version of the story. “There has been a tremendous conservative change in young audiences since the book was written in 1984,” Scott Rudin, then vice president of production at 20th Century Fox, said by way of justification.

In the film, not only does Clay (Andrew McCarthy) not indulge in drugs like his friends, but Julian’s (Robert Downey Jr.) addiction destroys him, and Blair (Jami Gertz) flushes her cocaine down the sink. The book is far darker, with the characters never repenting their terrible choices and not suffering any serious consequences for their destructive and often illegal behavior.

In 2010, Ellis published a sequel to the story, Imperial Bedrooms, which included commentary on the film. “The movie was begging for our sympathy, whereas the book didn’t give a sh*t,” Clay says.^[4]

6 The Scarlet Letter (1995)

Set during the 17th century in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) follows the persecution of adulterer Hester Prynne. But while the book explores themes of sin, shame, and hypocrisy, the 1995 film adaptation—starring Demi Moore as Hester and Gary Oldman as Minister Arthur Dimmesdale—instead turns the story into a sultry tale of forbidden romance.

The book is focused on the disastrous fallout of Hester and Arthur’s relationship rather than on the relationship itself. In contrast, the film, in the words of film critic Roger Ebert, “imagines all of the events leading up to the adultery, photographed in the style of those Playboy’s Fantasies videos.” (LINK 9) The film essentially makes a case for sexual freedom rather than condemning pious cruelty.

Director Roland Joffe said that “the book is set in a time when the seeds were sown for the bigotry, sexism, and lack of tolerance we still battle today… yet it is often looked at merely as a tale of 19th-century moralizing, a treatise against adultery.” (LINK 10) But aside from Joffe getting the century wrong, the book is not a treatise against adultery but against hypocrisy—something that the film completely misses.^[5]

5 V for Vendetta (2005)

Comic book writer Alan Moore is known for usually not wanting to be associated with the Hollywood adaptations of his stories. Just before V for Vendetta (2005) hit the big screen, he told the New York Times, “I’ve read the screenplay. It’s rubbish.” While many people don’t agree with Moore that V for Vendetta is rubbish, it does undeniably go against the message of the comic book, which was published between 1982 and 1989.

Moore’s story is a morally complicated narrative about fascism versus anarchism, with V being a violent vigilante. The film dilutes this central conflict to instead create a clear-cut narrative about authoritarianism versus liberty, with V (played by Hugo Weaving) being a heroic character fighting for freedom. “Those words, ‘fascism’ and ‘anarchy,’ occur nowhere in the film,” Moore explains. “It’s been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country.”^[6]

4 Watchmen (2009)

Another Alan Moore comic book adaptation that missed the mark is Zack Snyder’s Watchmen (2009). The story was originally published between 1986 and 1987, and when examining the plot beats alone, the film is a fairly accurate adaptation; however, it critically misunderstands the comic’s message.

While the comic book offers a scathing critique of violence, the movie glamorizes the violent action scenes. “It’s not Fantastic Four, it’s got to be hard R, it’s got to challenge everyone’s ideas,” Snyder said. “When they say, ‘You should be less sexy and less violent,’ I say, ‘But that’s Watchmen.’” While it’s fair for the movie to include violence, shooting such scenes to look cool undermines one of the central messages of the comic. Snyder’s superheroes may be morally grey, but they’re still often presented as heroes. In contrast, the comic book characters are deeply dysfunctional regular people who should never have donned spandex.^[7]

3 Death Wish (1974)

Brian Garfield’s novel Death Wish (1972) sees Paul Benjamin become an unhinged vigilante after his wife is murdered and his daughter is left in a vegetative state. But the 1974 film adaptation—directed by Michael Winner and starring Charles Bronson—indulges in a revenge fantasy. While the book ultimately denounces Paul as a villain, the film embraces him as a hero.

“The point of the novel Death Wish is that vigilantism is an attractive fantasy, but it only makes things worse in reality,” Garfield explained in a 2008 interview. “By the end of the novel, the character (Paul) is gunning down unarmed teenagers because he doesn’t like their looks. The story is about an ordinary guy who descends into madness.”^[8]

2 I Am Legend (2007)

Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (1954) ends (spoiler alert) with Robert Neville realizing that his mass killing of vampires has led to him becoming a legendary monster to them, hence the book’s title and last line. Unfortunately, in the 2007 film adaptation, Will Smith’s version of Neville does not come to this realization. Instead, he’s described as a legend because he creates a cure and sacrifices himself to ensure that humanity will be saved.

The Omega Man (1971) similarly ends with humanity being saved by a cure, but it’s hardly an accurate adaptation throughout, with Matheson saying it “was so removed from my book that it didn’t even bother me!” While the 2007 adaptation is more faithful to the source material, the changes made still led to Matheson saying, “I don’t know why they keep buying my books. They might as well have written something entirely new.”

The 2007 adaptation did originally have an ending that was closer to the book, with Neville recognizing his cruelty towards the vampires (called Darkseekers in the film). Director Francis Lawrence preferred this darker ending where “the creatures you’ve been saying are the bad ones the whole time you learn actually have humanity and aren’t the bad ones—the hero’s the bad one.” However, this ending was tested twice, and audiences rejected it both times, which is why they shot a happier ending with Neville as the hero.^[9]

1 I, Robot (2004)

The 2004 film adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot (1950)—which stars Will Smith—has barely any similarities to the short story collection. The film wasn’t even originally conceived as an adaptation and came from an original script by Jeff Vintar. Called Hardwired, the story follows a human detective as he tries to solve a locked-room murder mystery where all of the suspects are robots.

After being trapped in development hell, 20th Century Fox saved the film, but they asked Vintar to make some I, Robot additions. “The feeling was, of course, that it would be very difficult to get a movie out of the I, Robot stories,” Vintar admitted. “They’re a very loose collection of stories.” In the end, only a few elements from the fix-up novel were added, including naming a character Susan Calvin and mentioning Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics.”

However, aside from the plot being entirely different, the movie also takes an opposite ideological stance. In 1978, Asimov explained that with I, Robot, he had “self-consciously combated the ‘Frankenstein complex’ and made of the robots the servants, friends, and allies of humanity.” By contrast, in the movie, the robots stage a murderous uprising against humanity.^[10]