Currently reading The Stand for the first time. So far, so good, great book, weird pacing, typical Stephen King stuff. I had watched the old made for tv miniseries from the 90s i think and i liked it, some of the imagery comes back to me reading through but the book is vastly superior so far. But the question here is, seriously, what is the point in making subpar, incomplete, movies or shows based on books that have so much more potential on the page?
Obviously the answer will be money but maybe someone can tell it to me with enough gusto that I’ll understand it fully and finally.
I recall many aspects of books that don’t ever even get attempted to be shown in their film counterparts, Tom Bombadil, the raptor den in Jurassic Park, and much more I’m sure that will light into my mind as soon as i post this.
I get this isn’t your literal question, but nobody (or almost nobody) sets out to make a bad movie, whether original or an adaptation. To answer your more specific question, it comes down to essentiality or practicality: Tom Bombadil—as many Lord of the Rings readers will tell you—is hardly germane to the plot of the book (I find he kills the story just as it—finally—gets going), and easily removable from a film adaptation, where length is key; as to Jurassic Parks’s raptor pen, that will have been as a result of special effects technology coming up against the budget, where the nascent CGI technology and practical effects of the time would have been far too expensive to justify a scene which is, as we see, largely inessential to the plot.