Hollywood adapting books into movies has been a thing since the beginning of feature films as a medium, with adaptations of classic literature among the first to make it to the big screen. It’s a tactic that continues to this day, not only because it’s easy to grab a story that already has fans, but the hard part of the narrative framework is already there. Some of the best and most iconic movies of all-time are adaptations of novels, too, including some that fans may not be aware of, like Die Hard. The real trouble with bringing books to life as films, though, is the fidelity.
It’s a pretty common refrain to criticize a movie adaptation of a book with the summation, “the book was better.” Though that may be true for a lot of cases, especially when the differences between the film and source material could be its own book, it’s not that uncommon for a movie adaptation of a book to change a lot of details but still be something really great. In fact, based on the list we have here, it’s almost worth changing major elements of a book for the film because it could mean you’re creating a classic.
10) Frankenstein (1931)
James Whale’s 1931 adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel may be one of the most famous, but it’s far from perfect in the way it brings the source material to life. Large swaths of Shelley’s book are thrown out completely, in part because it was adapted from a stage adaptation of the novel, including elements like the entire structure of the story and Victor’s journey. The biggest difference, of course, is the ending, with the Frankenstein movie ending with a triumphant final moment as the Baron is married to his bride and the monster has been defeated. A true Hollywood ending compared to the conclusion in the book, which sees Victor dying in the Arctic still in pursuit of the creature. Whale would adapt some of the missing elements for the sequel, Bride of Frankenstein, delivering a one-two punch of some of the best horror movies of the era (and…ever).
9) I Am Legend
The 2007 movie starring Will Smith is one of the most iconic movies of the star’s blockbuster career, in part because it’s a thoroughly entertaining movie but largely because Smith puts the entire weight of the film on his shoulders. I Am Legend not only works because of his performance, but his performance IS the movie. That said, as an adaptation of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel of the same name, it misses the point entirely.
Setting aside changes to the story like being in New York rather than Los Angeles, Neville himself being a scientist rather than an everyman, and the monsters being generic ghouls rather than straight-up vampires, I Am Legend removes the entire meaning of the title itself. In the books, Neville is captured by the vampires and realizes that in his years of slaying them to stay alive, he has become their boogeyman; he has become legend. The movie, however, changes it so that he becomes “legend” to the surviving humans through his perseverance and work to create a cure. What!?
8) I, Robot
We’ll stop picking on Smith after this, but three years before he starred in a botched adaptation of I Am Legend, he starred in another one. Taking its name from Isaac Asimov’s 1950 short-story collection, the I, Robot movie does take Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics from the stories and puts them at the center of its story, which is largely original and not actually rooted in any of the prose found in the collection. I, Robot also includes several characters featured in the collection, like Bridget Moynahan’s Dr. Susan Calvin and James Cromwell’s Dr. Alfred Lanning, but Will Smith’s Detective Del Spooner is totally original, like the larger plot of the entire film. Despite these stark differences, I, Robot is still a total thrill ride, and a meme machine by modern standards.
7) Jaws
One of the most iconic “totally different from the book” examples for years, it’s worth pointing out just how different they really are. Most of what is excised from the Jaws novel for the film are a slew of subplots, which would slow down the film and its pace, including Ellen Brody having an affair with Matt Hooper and the Mayor of Amity being in bed with the Mafia. There are also character fates, such as Hooper, who dies at the end of the novel, and Quint, who merely drowns in the source material. Even the shark has a different end, simply dying from exhaustion and its wounds, rather than the explosive finale of the film. In any event, Jaws may not be the best adaptation of its source material, but it might very well be the best movie on this list.
6) Jurassic Park
One of Spielberg’s other most iconic movies, and in the running for his best, also takes major liberties from the source material. In Michael Crichton’s original novel, John Hammond is a smarmy and arrogant businessman, not the jovial version played by David Attenborough in the film (he also dies in the novel). The same can be said about Dr. Ian Malcolm, with Goldblum’s portrayal taking on the “rock star” persona we know, which stands in stark contrast to the analytical mind found in the book (he ALSO dies in the book). There are other small changes, like the ages of the two kids, Tim and Lex, being swapped, but also major sequences left out, like the Rex attacking on a river and even a Pteranodon chase. Most importantly, though, the novel is very violent and gory, which is mostly absent from the movie entirely. You also don’t need us to remind you that Jurassic Park is great, either.
5) Planet of the Apes (1968)
A forgotten piece of this major franchise is that it all started with a book, with the 1968 film based on a 1963 novel by French author Pierre Boulle. There are a handful of elements from Boulle’s original novel that are almost the same as the movie, such as how the three ape species are divided across the ape society; even the characters of Cornelius and Zira are present. That said, though, there are some big changes, like the ape society, which is almost a stone-age-like society, while the book shows the apes in a ’60s-adjacent society where the apes drive cars, smoke, and wear clothes. The apes even welcome the main character (notably not named Taylor in the book) into their society, a stark contrast to how he’s treated in the film.
Funny enough, though the ending in the Planet of the Apes movie was an original creation for the film (and is one of the best twist endings of all-time), the real ending of the book carries not one but two twists. The first is ironically similar to Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes, with the lead character returning to Earth and finding apes have taken over. The second twist in the ending, though, is the reveal that the framing device for the novel, a couple vacationing in space that found this manuscript in a bottle, reveals they’re apes themselves.
4) The Shining
Yet another notorious movie with major changes, so vast that Stephen King himself denounced it for years and even remade it, The Shining is one of the landmark adaptations that divides fans between “book lovers” and “film lovers.” Wholecloth sequences from King’s original book are taken out, like the haunted topiary animals and the actual ending with the explosion of the Overlook Hotel, but the biggest differences are in the characters themselves. Jack Torrance slowly succumbs to the influence of the evil of the Overlook, which isn’t in the film at all, while Wendy is also a strong and confident woman. There’s also the notion of how much the hauntings in the Overlook are real vs hallucinated in the film, a major departure. In any event, and with all due respect to Mr. King, Kubrick’s The Shining remains one of the great horror films.
3) The Spy Who Loved Me
Though Bond fans know that the first fourteen films in the series were direct adaptations of Ian Fleming’s novels, one of the very best movies in the entire franchise has nothing in common with its source material except for the title. In The Spy Who Loved Me book, Bond himself doesn’t appear until over two-thirds of the way through the story, which largely focuses on a Canadian woman named Viv who just happens to encounter Bond while caught in the middle of a mafia scheme in upstate New York. It’s as far away from Karl Stromberg’s World War III Ambitions and undersea utopia as one could possibly get. Beyond the title, there is one other similarity: the iconic henchman with steel teeth, named “Horror” in the novel and “Jaws” in the film. The Spy Who Loved Me is not only regarded as one of the best Bond movies, but revitalized the series to keep it going another decade.
2) The Wizard of Oz
Though one of the all-time great movies, The Wizard of Oz makes sweeping changes and major omissions from L. Frank Baum’s novel. Entire pieces of the land of Oz are removed, which means that full characters and plotlines are taken out. There’s also the fidelity of the adaptation, more so a sign of the limitations of practical filmmaking at the time, as almost none of the characters bear a resemblance to W. W. Denslow’s illustrations (the Tin Man and Wicked Witch of the West being the biggest).
All that said, the biggest difference is the ending: the moment in the film when the Wizard flies away, and Dorothy is told she had the power to return home the entire time via the ruby slippers (silver shoes in the book) does occur, but it’s not the end; there are still sixty pages left in the book. There’s also the matter of the film implying Dorothy’s trip to Oz was a hallucination or a dream induced by her head injury, which is absent entirely from the book. In the end, it doesn’t matter; the movie is still one of the best of all time, and the book is just as grand.
1) World War Z
Max Brooks (son of Mel) delivered what may well be the best zombie book of all time with the 2006 “Oral History of the Zombie War.” Told across multiple characters and countries, it fully documents the decades of the outbreak. The book goes into detail about major conflicts like the Battle of Yonkers and the zombie-killing tool called the “lobo,” plus little elements like what happened to North Korea amid the zombie apocalypse and how the astronauts aboard the International Space Station survived. If you watch the film, though, you’ll find none of these things. That said, the Brad Pitt-starring movie isn’t without its charms, delivering a zombie movie that really puts the scale of an outbreak of this scale on screen. Though Romero’s classic zombie movies may be better, the World War Z movie manages to make you really believe that the entire planet has been overrun by the dead.
