If there is one thing that people can expect when a movie arrives based on a book, it is that readers will almost always say it is not as good as the book. No matter how great the movie may be, the people who loved the books will still find something to complain about. Additionally, there are other movies that simply just fall short, and fans of the books will argue that the differences are the reason why.
However, there are also movies that come out that are nothing like the books and ones that change things so dramatically that it is a different story entirely. These movies are based on the books in the name alone and often anger book readers and authors alike, wondering why they even used the book's title for the movie.
Lawnmower Man (1992)
Easily, the best description of a movie that has nothing to do with the story on which it was based is Lawnmower Man. The movie has no similarities to the Stephen King story and the author was successfully able to get his name taken off the movie adaptation's story credits.
The story was about a man who hires a lawnmowing company and a man shows up, strips naked, and goes through the lawn, chewing up the grass and anything else that gets in his way. The movie was about an artificial AI that attempts to take over the world. Using the story's name made no sense.
Adaptation (2002)
Adaptation went through a strange journey from the start of its production to the final product. The movie was supposed to adapt the Susan Orlean novel, The Orchid Thief. What resulted was a script by Charlie Kaufman and a movie directed by Spike Jonze that chose not to adapt the book at all.
Instead, the movie was about a screenwriter who wanted to adapt the book and hit a brick wall. Nicolas Cage starred as both Charlie Kaufman and his twin brother, while also bringing in Meryl Streep to play Susan Orlean as they tried to make the book into a movie.
Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971)
Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory remains a beloved classic movie with Gene Wilder starring as the titular character as he invites a group of kids into his chocolate candy company and then proves that only one of the kids deserves to follow in his footsteps.
The movie though is nothing like the book. The difference is so great that author Roald Dahl hated the movie for years before reluctantly accepting it for what it was in later years. The movie took the focus off the child Charlie, put too much focus on Willy Wonka, and changed the ending.
Forrest Gump (1994)
When it comes to the Academy Award-winning movie Forrest Gump, the movie was drastically different from the book. The movie took Forrest and showed him racing through different parts of history and used CGI to put him in scenes involving legendary characters. However, the Forrest Gump book was much more preposterous.
Forrest in the book was gruff and violent at times and nowhere near as loveable as he was in the movie. He also doesn't meet Bubba in the military, doesn't start the shrimp company in the same way, goes into outer space, and never ends up with Jenny.
I Am Legend (2007)
I Am Legend was originally a novella by Richard Matheson about a man who was one of the survivors of a world where vampires had taken control and wiped out most of humanity. The movie was about the same idea, but the two told very different stories.
In the movie, Will Smith starred as Robert Neville, a virologist who was trying to find a cure to save the world and spent much of the movie slaughtering vampires where they slept. He was a hero in this movie, trying to find a cure. In the book, it was completely different, as he was a killer and the vampires lived in fear of him - the new monster.
World War Z (2013)
World War Z was a zombie movie starring Brad Pitt as a U.N. investigator trying to find the cause of the apocalypse so a cure can be developed. The second half of the movie has him trying to find his family and get them to safety, with the story becoming a chaotic zombie action movie.
The book by Max Brooks is nothing like the World War Z movie in any way outside of people trying to figure out how the apocalypse started. There is no hero racing to find a cure and save his family. Instead, it takes the form of a series of journal entries with different people explaining what happened where they lived to piece the puzzle together.
Fever Pitch (2005)
The movie Fever Pitch is a Farrelly Brothers romantic comedy with Jimmy Fallon in one of his only major movie roles as he falls in love with Drew Barrymore. The movie was mostly known for filming scenes during the Boston Red Sox's long-awaited and historic World Series Championship series.
The movie is about the romantic comedy storyline, and that is not what the book is about at all. Instead, Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby is an autobiographical essay about the author's relationship with the Arsenal soccer team and its race to a championship.
The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
In 2002, Matt Damon starred as Jason Bourne in the movie The Bourne Identity. This movie helped change the way spy movies were made, specifically the James Bond franchise, as Jason was more violent and the action more realistic. The movie was based on the novel by Robert Ludlum.
The sequel, The Bourne Supremacy, was named after another Ludlum Bourne novel but was not based on the book at all. In the book, Bourne had his memory back but was pulled back into action. The movie, instead, continued the amnesia storyline and conspiracy with Operation Treadstone.
There Will Be Blood (2007)
There Will be Blood was an Oscar-nominated movie by Paul Thomas Anderson about an oilman who arrives in a town, sucks it dry, and then moves on, the town dead in his wake. The entire idea of the movie is that Daniel Plainview is a vampire who sucks the oil/blood from a town until its heart stops beating.
What is interesting is that the movie was based on the Upton Sinclair novel Oil!. The novel focuses on the father-son relationship that was only lightly touched upon in the movie, as the son realizes his dad's methods are not ethical while also taking into account the political nature of the era.
The Shining (1980)
Stephen King has many movies made based on his novels and short stories, and more of them are bad than good. However, the one adaptation that many movie fans consider the best is The Shining by Stanley Kubrick. This is also the movie that King hated the most.
The book was a haunted hotel story with the Overlook Hotel driving a man to attempt to kill his wife and son, and it was made clear this was the hotel's doing all along. However, the movie made it about a man who was already struggling and the hotel only influenced him, which King felt betrayed the entire basis of his story.