Did They Even Read the Book? 10 Adaptations That Missed the Point Entirely
Fitting the whole plot of the book in a two-hour movie is no simple task, and these 10 adaptations failed tremendously.
Somehow, they weren't even able to capture the general vibe of the book, focusing instead on something completely different.
We get it: to fit a book plot in a movie, you have to significantly mutilate it, either by cutting it into parts, as Peter Jackson did with The Hobbit (and even the trilogy couldn't fit everything that the tiny book was talking about because Jackson instead focused on expanding the lore instead of staying faithful to the book), or by cutting out things you deem unnecessary and trying to replicate at least the feel of the story.
Sometimes it works: there are great book-to-movie adaptations out there. But in these cases, the only thing that was left of a book is the title: the story has been chewed up and changed so greatly that it's unrecognizable for those who read the original.
I Am Legend is a good movie, but it's a bad book adaptation because it drifted way too far away from the story depicted by Richard Matheson. And it's not the only one which suffered like that.