Sunday, July 6, 2008

movie pet peeves

I'm currently re-reading Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams. Its the second book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. A movie was made of "Hitchhiker" so you might be familiar with that. Not much to say about that, except that they might be the funniest books I've ever read.

But it leads me to one of my pet peeves about movies - books that are made into movies. As a general rule, the book is better than the movie. Even with some of the better adaptations (like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter) I always love books better than the movies that are made from them. Don't get me wrong because I love the HP and LOTR movies, but in general, I don't like the whole turning-books-into-movies thing. I've never seen a film adaptation film of a John Grisham book that was as awesome as the book. The movies weren't terrible, its just that John Grisham is such a brilliant author and its hard to translate that brilliance to the screen. Seriously, The Firm is one of my favorite all time books, but I could not sit through more than half an hour of it because it paled in comparison to the book. And there are some movies I refuse to watch because the books are so amazing and to watch the movie would spoil the book. Interview with a Vampire is one example. For me to not watch that is saying a lot, because I love vampire movies. And even though Stephen King is one of my favorite authors, films made from his books and stories generally don't compare to how good the books are.

This leads me to even another movie pet peeve: Sequels. I hate them. I'm not talking about Star Wars, LOTR, or Harry Potter, because they are serials. Each was intended at their conception to be a series (thus the term serial). But what I hate are those terrible Hollywood part 2's and 3's and 10's that never live up to the original movie's glory. And since many of the movies being made into sequels aren't that great to begin with, that just means that the sequel is going to be painful. So in general, sequels are never a good idea.

Here are a few categories of sequels that I thought of:
Horror/ Thriller movie sequels: Jaws, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Saw, etc.
Comedy sequels: Weekend at Bernie's 2, Nutty Professor 2, Big Mama's House 2, Police Academy: Infinity
Action movie sequels: Speed 2, The Transporter 2. This category also includes the sub-category of The desperate aging Hollywood star sequels: Live Free or Die Harder-er with Bruce Willis, or Sylvester Stallone in Rocky/ Rambo 19: Cold Cocked

My last movie pet peeve deals with the worst kinds of movies made - movie adaptations of old TV shows. Seriously, the Brady Bunch movie (and don't forget the Very Brady Sequel)? The Brady Bunch was never that good anyway. And The Dukes of Hazard movie? Yawn... Although, I'd personally love for somebody to make a movie out of The A-Team. That's one that I would see.

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