The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 enjoyed a blockbuster opening last weekend, but none of the sparkly vampire flicks in the series made the cut when we asked Wired readers to name their favorite movies based on books.
Maybe there just aren't enough Twi-hards among our snarky readers, who had plenty to say about other memorable book-to-screen crossovers. Most divisive: David Lynch's phantasmagoric 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi novel Dune.
Wired's readers didn't stop at that books-based experiment gone wrong (or right, depending on your position). Click through our gallery for other speculative-fiction movies that commenters couldn't help but dissect. (For the record? The only reason we passed on Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange in our original list, "Novel Approaches: 10 Books That Became Great Sci-Fi and Fantasy Films," was so the director didn't hog the spotlight with 2001: A Space Odyssey.)
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Dune
I love the Dune saga, and would kill for a good film adaptation. David Lynch has made some very interesting-looking movies, and I like a lot of them, but as a Dune fanboy, his film adaptation of the book is atrocious. —LHL2500
Which version have you seen? If you're talking about the original theatrical release, that was actually hated by Lynch himself, as the film company forced him to excise a lot of it to get within a specific running time. It's why he had his name withheld as director on it, and stuck the name "Alan Smithee" on instead, a tradition amongst directors who don't like the finished product. —Beeblebrox888
How can you miss David Lynch's Dune from Frank Herbert's classic? Although maligned by critics, IMO it ranks as one of the best sci-fi movies ever. —rpensotti
Lynch effectively invented the visuals associated with universe, even while deviating from the text's description significantly at times. I think that two consequent attempts of bringing Dune to the screen only highlight how much work was put into visuals. —LoudRambler
Worst ever? Dune. Great book, terrible movie. —Damian Brennan
A Clockwork Orange
Any list of best film adaptations of novels that includes 2001: A Space Odyssey (where the novel came after the movie) and has Starship Troopers but not A Clockwork Orange can't be taken seriously. —John Gaspar
To be honest, I'm kind of shocked that a Harry Potter film got on this list before A Clockwork Orange. —Jim Snider
Hell yeah! And all the more profound, in my opinion, because Burgess invented Nadsat as a language for the book, which was used in the film! —JP Marchant
War of the Worlds
One of my least-favorite book-based movies is War of the Worlds (all of them). Sadly, none of them have really captured what is a truly great novel in and of its own right. Both the '60s one and the newest one are pretty far off base. The only halfway faithful adaptation was done by The Asylum and was a low-budget, direct-to-video thing. It's not a bad movie except that the special effects are so laughable. It's a shame that the writer of the Asylum version couldn't get as big a budget as the Spielberg version. Then it would have been the best sci-fi movie of all time. —John Enfield
It's hard to get upbeat about a movie like that, especially after listening to Jeff Wayne's version narrated by Richard Burton. If you haven't listened to it, then get thee to a music store pronto, and shell out for it. It is worth it. —Beeblebrox888
I, Robot
The worst desecration of source material was Will Smith's I, Robot, supposedly based on the collection of short stories by Isaac Asimov. The entire reason Asimov wrote the Robot stories (collected as I, Robot and The Rest of the Robots) was to rebut what he called the Frankenstein Complex, the idea found in all fiction to that point that man would create robots and then the robots would turn on their creator. He believed robots were a tool like any other tool and we shouldn't fear robots turning on us.... In Asimov's world, robots were tools of positive, if misunderstood, good. So, what happened in the movie? Man creates robots who then turn on their creator. The movie was everything the author of the story thought was dreadful, stupid and silly. —MacAdvisor
Gotta agree. I'd add that, in I, Robot and the Elijah Bailey series of books, Asimov points out that, left to their own devices, with the Three Laws, robots are always looking at things with a benevolence never held by their human makers. The problems always come in when their human makers butt their oafish heads into the mix. The movie flips that on its head, and lambastes any points Asimov was trying to make. —Robert Hagaman
On the Beach
The author of this article should have a look at the book and the 2000 movie On the Beach. —pmarcantonio
Don't forget the original with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. They made it during the Cold War. —RobM111
Contact
Carl Sagan's Contact is one of my favorite books, and one of the books that I feel was best translated to the screen while staying true to the theme of the original. —DukeTG
The Illustrated Man
So The Illustrated Man isn't here? I can't understand how Starship Troopers, which is far and above one of the worst films I've ever seen, can be here, but The Illustrated Man somehow gets ignored. —Richard Veroszlinde
Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park was one of the few movies that I liked better than the book. Michael Crichton's characters were all strict stereotypes, but decent acting and excellent direction by Spielberg was able to move past the limitations of the book. —Anthony_F
The Andromeda Strain
I'd add The Andromeda Strain to the good list. —John Harden
The original movie. The remake was crapola! —krreagan
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Its not sci-fi, but Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a killer book and an even better film, thanks to the acid-trip visuals, Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro's hysterical acting and a pretty faithful adaptation of the book by director Terry Gilliam.