The thing about House of Leaves is that it's impossible to even adapt it into an audiobook. You HAVE to physically read it and jumble it back and forth as you jump from various sections of the book to solve the insanity presented in the footnotes. Read it for the first time this year and absolutely love it.
If House of Leaves were to be adapted to film, it would need to be a four season show and focus on one of the stories. First season would be the found footage of the family exploring the house and would benefit from an old-school 22-24 episode season and would be in full color. A reference to the full color edition. The second season would be Zampano's story. This season would be around 15-16 episodes and shot in black and white with key film elements (if you know, you know) in blue or red. A reference to the two color edition. Season 3 would be five episodes and have the subtile The Navidson Record under the House of Leaves title. Each episode focuses on each character in the record and each episode would be around two hours. This season would have the visual feel of documentaries of the 50s through the 90s, but would be in black and white and scenes frequently end cutting off the last few words of sentences. A reference to the incomplete edition. Season 4 would focus on Johnny's story and be completely black and white. A reference to the black and white edition. This season would be about 10 to 15 episodes. All the "apendicies" would be found online and on a bonus disc. I feel that by constructing an adaptation in this way, some of the themes around time and feeling unsettled that every season feels disjointed from each other would mimic the experience of reading the book and having to refer back to other episodes in different seasons. The one draw back is that all four seasons would have to be released at the same time. I feel that fans would really enjoy putting together different watch order lists and would generally have a good time with it.
Hey, a lot of movie adaptations are quite different compared to the books they’re based on. If you’d make a movie adaptation of House Of Leaves, you would make use of the medium film instead of how the book makes use of the medium… book.
I would kill for an animated Dark Tower. As to the -last entry. Just conceptually, I could see a set changing as the elements of what he's actually living in is revealed. You start out with a white tower that looks like a tower and as the elements are revealed, the visual shifts. That sounds to me more like something that would work better in animation too. But it's an interesting concept anyway.
The "Jake" problem in "The Dark Tower,".... I have thought of this. They COULD just have him played by a different kid actor and go the route of putting 1 easily identifiable feature (a birthmark on his face, a scar....) that each iteration will have. Them go with either not even mentioning it, just to "King" it up or make some explanation of why. Wouldn't work 100%, but Kings works usually.needna little tweaking to be adapted anyway.
They already tried to adapt the "The Dark Tower" first book into a movie, it starred Idris Elba as the Gunslinger. And I totally agree with you about it being animated. Look at the Simpsons, 30+ years and they haven't aged.
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov - the book is structured as a delusional self-obsessed editor providing line-by-line commentary on the final unfinished poem by a famous poet, but he’s convinced that the poem was actually written about his own (possibly imagined) backstory. The reading experience involves constantly flipping back and forth between the poem and the commentary and cross-referencing the various footnotes, and would be absolutely impossible to recreate in any other medium Mark Lawrence’s Library Trilogy, for similar reasons to Book Of The New Sun - there are certain major twists that would be impossible to conceal in any visual medium.
Pale fire can be adapted as mockumentary with a framing device that is longer. But the point is Pale Fire is poetry, that is always unadaptable unless you make a word by word voiceover
I definitely want an animated Dark Tower series. I remember they actually made a film with Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. I was good, but not great, but my dad said it was all the books put into a 90 minute film. So u could definitely see it as an animated series
There is a movie with the same name of the dark tower... And apparently it did draw some inspiration from the books 😂 Actually loved the prospect of having Mathew McConaughey and Idris Elba on the project... But the plot and script really took me out of it 😢
I loved your House Of Leaves video, both stylistically and content-wise. I admit I only watched it because I loved the author's sister's companion album (2000's album "Haunted" by Poe) which I had commented on. The book is next in my queue to read because your video was so convincing, and I've been listening to Haunted a lot recently. It still holds up 24 years later! Keep up the great work.
Haunted is such a fantastic album, one of my desert island picks to this day. Like you, I've never gotten around to reading House of Leaves, but I'm kind of inspired to dive into it now!
3 more unadaptable books I would add are "Finnegan's Wake" by James Joyce, "The Atrocity Exhibition" by J.G Ballard and "Barefoot in the Head" by Brian Aldiss. Three books that are difficult enough to read, let alone adapt. "The Book of the New Sun" series is among my all time favourites btw. Totally agree with what you had to say about it. Very very rewarding series of books to read. Honestly Wolfe's prose is a pleasure to read in itself, even if you disregard the fantastic story.
@@tintinismybelgian -Haven't read it I'm afraid. I'll certainly put it on my reading list though. Loved "Watchmen" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen".
Several of these sound like they could be adapted into video games. I could definitely see avenues for Dark Tower and House of Leaves to be done that way.
Actually, there's a Doom mod called MyHouse.WAD that's based on House of Leaves and it has had people all abuzz about it for a year or two now. Plenty of playthroughs, analyses and reviews can be found on UA-cam.
The House Of Leaves description reminded me of those Sam Barlow FMV games, Her Story, Telling Lies and Immortality. Immortality jumped to me because of the way the gameplay works through film reels and you see things that aren't in the film while playing. It could work in a game format like that.
The only medium I could possibly see House of Leaves being adapted into properly would be video games. Tons of survival horror titles like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Clock Tower, etc. deal with puzzle solving and backtracking, so I could maybe see it working there. Maybe
i knew house of leaves would be on here, there are some books that are too much about being a book to be able to adapt. i always thought that invisible monsters by palahniuk would be extremely difficult if not impossible to adapt, but then we did get fight club so... maybe?? great video, definitely gave me a few new titles to check out.
Truth be told, there are no bad adaptations--for writer's at least. If a movie is great, people buy the source material in droves; if it sucks, fans complain about how much better the book is and therefore recommend it to a new audience.
"Valis", to me, was a character study on a character from some other story. Perhaps a villain from someone elses story... this is his backstory. Something like that. Gives it a new light.
im doing an essay on infinite jest and adaption currently and im planning on discussing other unadaptable book, so this is literally the exact video ive been looking for
I would nominate "The Wild" by Whitley Strieber. It is a werewolf book, but not the kind you are used to. The protagonist doesn't get bitten by an animal and change into a two-legged furred "wolf man" every month on the night of the full moon. He changes into an actual wolf, and the change is permanent. The reason I believe this is unadaptable is not the special effects, but rather how to show that this wolf has human intelligence without seeming to be a ridiculous variant of "The Shaggy Dog" films.
Goosebumps My Best Friend is Invisible is one I always think of when it comes to unadaptable books. It depends on being a non visual media for the story to where you'd have to change the plottwist if you adapted it and weaken the whole thing
I’m just casually watching this because it popped up on my feed and now I am adding House of Leaves onto my Christmas list because it sounds like a perfect book. TARDIS-like building, people going mad, funky layouts, mystery galore? Count me in
I heard that Mike Flanagan (who is a huge Dark Tower fan) wants to make a Dark Tower tv series where each season covers each book. He also mentioned that there is one specific scene from one of the books that he knows exactly how he would film and is excited to film it if given the chance. Edit: I did not watch your full explanation to Dark Tower when I wrote this. So I did not know that you already knew this.
@ yeah but I feel like it would be cleaner to have seven seasons and every season named after each book. Less confusing on when one book ends and when the next starts.
The Culture series by Iain M. Banks are also unadaptable due to its complexity and scope as a sci fi series. Layers upon layers of political, economic and philosofical ideology as well as a vast universe with complex life and species... mix all that and add violence, politeness and humour to most characters and situations.
the Sci fi elements in the culture will be difficult to adapt, machines with 4 dimensional minds existing in hyper space wouldn't be easy to adapt at all
I first read House of Leaves a few years ago, and to this day it lives rent-free in my head. It's absolutely unadaptable! I don't even think an audiobook would do this book justice. There's power in the experience of having to heft the book around, flip it over, turn pages band and forth to crack codes...there's NO WAY an audiobook could capture the visceral exhaustion and exhilaration I experienced reading the book. A movie adaptation would be impossible. You're telling 3 stories at the same time, each one linked to and dependent upon the other. I knew as soon as I saw the title of this video that HoL would be on it--I'd have been VERY disappointed if it wasn't!
I’ve heard that the author won’t allow an audiobook, but I can’t find a source on this and he actually was working to adapt it into a TV show at one point so that’s probably not true. Still, it doesn’t even have an ebook, it’s so particular to print, that I don’t know how an audiobook would work. Different voices? Layered audio? Pitch shifting? I think it would take some truly outside-of-the-box thinking.
I would suggest that the book "S" (or The Ship of Theseus) by J. J. Abrams would be challenging to adapt. Similar to your description of House of Leaves, the experience of reading the text, the conversation between two people in marginal notes in two timelines, and reading the postcards/materials tucked into the pages make it a great experience.
They could adapt it but it would be lost in translation. I think they would end up using Eric and Jen as the "movie" and have the book and straka etc be a prop. Kinda like how they did DaVinci Code
PKD’s VALIS contains its own adaptation - a film that seems to describe his madness draws Horselover Fat to meet Sophia - and itself adapts the work that’s even less adaptable, the Exegesis (which is far larger than the excerpts included in most versions). But a fascinating opera was rendered of VALIS in the 1980s that set Dick’s words to remarkably memorable music.
I remember when people claimed that Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas was unadaptable and then a very well done movie adaptation was made by Terry Gilliam.
A hot take, but any of Toni Morrison's books. All would be fabulous, prize winning films/shows. But the nuance and introspection and magic that brings the reader into the character's lives is what I believe is unadaptable.
Wow. I hadn't thought about her books being adapted, nor did I realize I've never heard of, much less watched, a film adaptation of any of her books. Now that I have, I absolutely agree. Morrison's novels incorporate elements of magical realism to varying degrees, but her style of magical realism is unique to her, and often unique from one book to the next. The function of those magical elements is rarely in the foreground, and often it does not feel magical as you're reading it-it feels tangible, grounded, and very real; and it's always in service to the story and characters, never the other way around. Or it feels that way. How Morrison weaves and reveals these certain magical or supernatural or otherwise unseen forces throughout the story is one of her greatest skills as a writer. There is a quality to her writing that I can only describe as gorgeous, but it falls egregiously short of capturing the way words and emotion and dialogue and narrative and description and character converge upon each other in a way that can only be experienced by engaging with the text. In my opinion 💜
Thomas Pynchons books in general are unadaptable. The only book of his that has gotten a movie version so far was Inherent Vice and thats only because it was his shortest book and the most straightforward one story wise. And even then people complained that the plot in the movie was difficult to follow lol.
Brand new viewer. I saw the title of the video and had to watch because I knew…I just knew…the tower would be in this list. As a Constant Reader, I have to believe man. It’s Flanagan. If anyone can do it, he can. A tv series instead of one janky movie, a season per book give-or-take; I think it can be done. I’ve just started my 15th (17th?) journey to the tower and I need an adaption before I die. I’d love for Stephen to be able to see at least the first part of it before he moves on to the clearing at the end of the path himself, and he’s getting up there in age. Anyway, I guess I’ll keep watching. As soon as I saw you grab the book, I had to pause and say something.
Really glad i found your channel! We have really similar tastes and opinions so any time you recommend something i havent read it goes straight to my TBR. Ive never heard of Book of the New Sun but it sounds right up my alley.
I know you haven't read it yet, but Blood Meridian is often on this list. Also, I think you can argue that The Shining is unadaptable because of the descent into madness. Kub's version was unable to adapt that significant bit
You can say that Kubrick"solved" the problem by writing a completely different story. In King's novel, for all of his faults, Jack Torrence loves his wife and son, which is the source of the true horror when the Overlook Hotel transforms him into a homicidal maniac out to kill both. In Kubrick's film, Jack Torrence has secretly HATED his wife and son, and the hotel merely nudges him into something that he has always WANTED to do. That's why Jack Nicholson's character seems a bit off from the very beginning. And considering that King based the character of Jack Torrence off of himself, that's also why he vehemently dislikes the movie. To say that Torrence wants to kill his wife and son is to say Stephen King wants to do the same which he takes personally. My problem with the film is the abuse Shelley Long suffered at the hands of Stanley Kubrick, which affected her the rest of her life. Kubrick had no faith in Long's ability to portray an traumatized woman, so he traumatized her on film.
I agree with you about The Dark Tower... Jake. Jake is the sticking point. Good idea about the animation angle. Or perhaps do something with CGI? I haven't read the others you mention, but saved 3 of them to my Amazon wishlist. Thanks!
Apparently there have been several tries to adapt John Kennedy Tool's "A Confederacy of Dunces" but nobody seems to be able to do it. This is probably because it would end up seeming sad and the main character pathetic - as opposed to how funny and moving it is to read. It wouldn't be difficult to create the world of New Orleans the book describes - but the getting the correct Tone would take a master.
New Orleans in the 60s is a time and place that is impossible to understand unless you were there. Nuances of meaning in every sentence, and between them, characterize this book. I vote for - impossible to adapt.
@@pommelhorsepommelhorse8731 I’ve tried to read it twice…I guess I’m a pleb since I just didn’t get it. Same for The Catcher in the Rye…if the main character is just too unsympathetic/ annoying I don’t want to my waste time. Especially since the plot of both novels just seems to follow them both around as they do nothing but annoy others. I never got the huge hype they both get heaped upon them
Could easily be adapted, pretty straightforward novel. People might just as well name a random novel and say it’s unadaptable. Amazing that there are any book to movie adaptations at all! 🙂
@ I respect them as literary works on that level, I just was perplexed when I read lots of celebrity interviews…I think it was DeCaprio who said he cried when he realized he was too old to play Holden in a movie adaption. Then it got so over used I never sure if it was based on iconic character study or just people parroting “I love Catcher in the Rye!” ( like some hipsters who used to pretend to listen Bob Dylan or read Shakespeare…it became the “cool thing to like”) or it genuinely spoke to folks on a level I wasn’t at. I’m going to try again to broaden my narrow horizons! I Appreciate your kind response and happy holidays!
Agree on The Dark Tower. Possible , but very hard. It would have to be a generously long mini series, and they would have to film all of the boys scenes first and hope after everything is done they don't need to re-film any. And, if it's on NETFLIX there is a good chance, no matter the popularity, of it getting cancelled the first year.
Zelazny's "Amber Chronicles". Much of the impact of the series comes from the surrealism and grand vistas, neither of which would work at all on screen. Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar" - Mostly told in snippets of news articles and reports, it was difficult to follow on paper; it would be incoherent on screen
I remember a couple years ago there was a dark tower movie on Hulu or Amazon prime. I don’t quite remember. All I do remember for that movie is that it was a disappointment.
Well, whaddaya know! The imdb lists both a 2017 feature film starring Idris Elba & Matthew McConaughey and a 2020 TV movie. The latter actually had a decently high rating!
Animated would also help a lot with the fact that so many sections just take place in people's head... which is why so many SK books don't seem to translate well to film
A lot of the weird of the New Sun is that things are so far into the future that there are mosaics weathering out of montainsides and that many creatures and objects are imported from the stars. The sheer age and breadth of humanity and it's experiences makes what is familiar to us as unfathomable as neolithic so ieties.
Great video! There aren’t many Dick stories that could be adapted. Blade Runner is a cool little movie, but it ain’t Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? On the other hand, everyone said Dune was unadaptable and then along came David Lynch with what I think is a masterpiece. Thanks for the show!
Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius Tetralogy. They did adapt the first book to film in the 70's, but it by and large failed to capture the essence of the book. And that first one, The Final Programme, would be possibly the most adaptable. The remaining three books...it would be difficult if not impossible.
My suggestion: Alastalon salissa by the Finnish author Volter Kilpi. It's a stream-of-conciousness novel; the events take place during just a few hours, it has plenty of inner monologues, and one of the famous "scenes" is the main character selecting which pipe to smoke, and this process takes up 70 pages. Sadly, the book has not been (officially) translated into English. You might be able to make a Lynchian adaptation of this book, but it would be quite the challenge.
Interesting list. Glad you mentioned Liu's Three Body Problem at the beginning, as that helps me with respect to how you're limiting your list. My first response automatically was Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Easily in my top 10 books of all time, though given there was an adaptation made I guess I can't count it. But in my mind, it still counts, as the adaptation was utterly unsuccessful. Therefore it's still unadaptable. However... I'll therefore have to say Donaldson's Thomas Covenant Chronicles. Or, turning a bit, even moreso: The Gap series.
My pick is Thomas Covenant, yours is the first comment I've seen that mentions those books. It would be amazing, but a rapist leper would be a hard sell as a protagonist.
@@zeroatlantis Agreed on all points. I loved the books as they challenged me as a reader to follow a character that was unlikable, stuck in a fantastic world that was wholly likable. Great tension in that.
The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. A 10 volume fantasy epic. Think War & Peace meets the Iliad. On a surface level, there are probably certain things that could be adapted, fantasy has been pretty popular to adapt in recent years. But the sheer scope of this series I think would be too daunting to attempt. There are books in the series that have totally different characters and locations from the ones you’ve already read, and if adapted as a show you’d have to spend seasons away from a large portion of the cast. Not to mention it would have to feature quite a bit of SFX to bring the magic and strange fantasy races to life. I just don’t think it would be possible to adapt.
I came here wondering if this series would be on the list. It's my favorite fantasy series of all time, and an unbelievably deep read. I think it could do well as an animated series, especially seeing how amazing Arcane and Blue Eye Samurai have been, but any live action adaptation would be a total mess.
My top pick would be, a series that is near and dear to my heart The Demonata series by Darren Shan. Same author of the Cirque du Freak series, (and we saw how well they adapted that) the Demonata is this super effed up, uber violent gory series that tackles humans and their encounters with demons. The demons are super grotesque and the stuff of nightmares, lietrally the first book one demon is an eight armed monstrosity with cracked skin, a hole in his chest filled with silver snakes and a face that is always looking like its on the verge crying and hes the main antagonist of the series, you have a demon baby with maggots or roaches on its head that are always eating at the head his eye sockets are empty with the exception of lights inside the sockets and the final demon is a dog whose paws end on female human hands with long nails and the head of a crocodile. And thats just the 3 demons in the first book. The series gets conceptually weird and messed up but in a good way. And the reason i think its unadaptable is because of the level of violence and how you would need practical effects of a god in order to do these creatures justice.
Imajica by Clive Barker has unadaptable qualities much like The Dark Tower (massive scope and things that would be expensive and impractical to do in live action) and The Book of The New Sun (aspects of the plot/environment/characters that are obscured through the writing that wouldn't work if they had to be shown on a screen). It also deals with a lot of offputting/disturbing content and themes, so there's no way an adaptation would get the budget it needs to be any good. Phenomenal read though, highly recommended.
As soon as I saw unadaptable my first thought was to Imajica. However upon some further reflection I think adapting it into something akin to the series Love, Death + Robots would actually do Imajica a lot of justice. I'm thinking of episodes like Beyond the Aquila Rift and The Secret War. It would be insanely expensive to make and because of Barker's relative obscurity outside of Hellraiser would also likely bomb, but I really think it's possible with the technology we have right now.
For the dark tower, I would love a take changing actors, maybe with a longer span of movies/TV show, like in "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus", where multiple actors played the same character. It would fit with the multidimensional spirit of the story and we could get lots of great cast showing their similar but different interpretation of the characters... and also avoid the 25 year old Jake by the end xDD. Maybe even a mixed media project, with animation, live-action TV show , movie... It would be real crazy to adapt everything and keep it clean and consistent, so why not embrace it?
I'm going to reinterpret the question in the way I think you did over the course of the video, which is: Which book is unadaptable into a movie that is decent and works well. Using this, I'd say Lem's _Solaris_ is such a book. Yes, I know there are adaptations but they don't really reflect the book. Anyone who has read it (it's quite short actually) should know what I'm talking about. Another book that's coming to my mind is Joyce's _Finnegans Wake._ I've never read the book, nor do I intend to read it because I want my books to have a plot and be comprehensible. From what I understand, nobody (other than Joyce himself, I guess) has an effin clue what this book really is about. It seems like it's a gigantic inside joke and the only person who gets it, gets all the references in the book, was Joyce himself. So, I guess it's even more unadaptable than the books mentioned in the video because how are you gonna adapt a book that it essentially incomprehensible? Might as well try to adapt the Voynich Manuscript... Awesome video, though! I have a few of the mentioned books on my reading list and these kinds of videos remind me that I really should get around to reading them soon!
I read Solaris after seeing the Tarkovsky film, and I've also seen the earlier Russian TV version. I don't think the book was that different, it just had extra chapters on Solaristics that wouldn't make sense to adapt.
@@clownpendotfart I didn't know there was an earlier TV version so I can't speak about this but I would say that these chapters on Solaristics are an integral part of the text. It's been too long since I've read the book and then watched the movie to be able to point to specific things. I didn't enjoy the book and therefore wouldn't want to read it again. I found the Tarkovsky movie incredibly boring but it was definitely more faithful to the text than the one by Soderbergh. I actually liked the American movie better because it was not faithful. Normally, you are unlikely to hear me say these words but in this case, the movie added somewhat of an interesting story which is lacking in Lem's text. This is part of my problem with the book, there's not much of a plot, which is also why it's hard to adapt in a way that it reflects the book. I am fully aware that the problem lies on my side with the text; it's just not for me. Anyway, it's been too long for me to point to specific but I remember that when I watched the movies I thought that even the boring Tarkovsky movie improved on the book because it was different, and that it would be hard to put all the history bits about Solaristic in a movie and stay faithful to Lem's vision. But it's fine if you see things differently. It's not a hill I want to die on, I'm not even keen on fighting there! 😉 _Solaris_ just was the first example that came to my mind which is why I mentioned it. Anyway, thanks for your comment! It's often good to have differing perspectives.
Now you have me trying to think of five that were said to be unadaptable but wound up on film anyhow... Catch-22 and The Naked Lunch immediately spring to mind. Maybe The Watchmen for scope (Gilliam said he might've done it if it was to be a miniseries instead). Vonnegut's Slapstick? But is that unfilmable or is it just that the movie (Slapstick of Another Kind) was so unwatchable? And fifth... The Griffin & Sabine trilogy perhaps? Or is it more that those are just gimmicky novelty items that probably aren't adaptable into actual books? BTW, What do you think about the adaptability of Jerusalem by Alan Moore? I haven't started into it yet but I noticed there is a sort of free teaser of the audiobook here on UA-cam -- and that's around *seven hours long!* Think I'm gonna give that a listen now, actually...
I would say that a faithful adaptation of Naked Lunch is impossible. (Even if it were a miniseries, viewers would find its scatterbrained nature annoying and eventually lose interest.) But I think Cronenberg made the best attempt by catching the spirit of the book, with the body horror aspect, even if the finished product wasn't faithful.
I have a list that I suspect is parallel to this one: Books that I'm shocked no one has adapted yet. It very well could be that they're unadaptable. In no particular order: Thomas Covenant Chronicles - Donaldson Myth Series - Asprin Xanth Series - Anthony Callahan's Saloon Series - Robinson Coyboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille - Brust The Paladin - Cherryh Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates (and) Villa Incognito - Robbins
Blood Meridian You can't skimp on the violence and sheer debauchery or you miss the point and I'm not sure Hollywood is going to go there . Or even if it could pull it off without it coming off as exploitation. You can't capture the Judge without the subtext of the prose either. Without the subtext, he's just a one dimensional, comic book villain. So much of the book is in the prose that I'm skeptical that any adaptation would be anything more than a stylized, violent western.
Most of Mark Helprin’s novels. They tried with “Winter’s Tale”, and it was a mess. ADDED: Love the #1 choice. I need to go back and reread Wolfe’s novels.
There are multiple adaptations of Three-Body Problem. China has produced both a 30 episode (which seems excessive to me) live-action adaptation, along with an animated one. I watched the Netflix adaptation first (and liked it) before reading the first book, and didn't think the book was all that unadaptable, but I also haven't read the sequels (which I've read were partially mixed into the first season of the Netflix show). I'm currently reading Milorad Pavic's "Dictionary of the Khazars" because it was on J. G. Keely's list of fantasy recommendations, and I think that would be even less adaptable than any novel you're listing. It's more adaptable than Ambrose Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary", but Bierce was writing an actual (humorous) dictionary, and this is more like three conflicting encyclopedias on the same subject, along with some supplementary material.
Redshirts by John Scalzi. Not because of scope or complexity but because it takes the piss out of every sci-fi trope and meme with particular attention (the title says it) to a beloved franchise that leaned heavily into the tropes. [Read it if you haven't - if you're a sci-fi fan you will ROTFL. Adams-like at times with the comedic timing] Could be done in one or two movies or two (short) seasons of TV. Before they realised and after. Like a very light and funny version of Dark but with only one alternate. Will never be done because it slays holy cows. Should be because it is so funny, challenging and entertaining.
Most of Murakami's works are unadaptable, because not much happens plot-wise. For example, in Nejimakidori Chronicle protagonist's wife dissapear, dude gets depressed, finds a literal hole in the ground where to hide himself from the world, and meets some people that makes him see the wolrd in another light. That sounds good for a novella, but the book is 900 pages long. The book works because of Murakami's style, but a movie with that plot would get boring quickly.
I think you could adapt Book of the New Sun, into a game anyway. Because it's kind of already been done. Caves of Qud is an RPG that like BotNS takes place in the far future after the collapse of an extremely advanced civilization. It works because the game's visuals are extremely simple, borrowed from the fact the first versions of the game were entirely text based. So you can sort of work out what something is supposed to be, but the richness of the game comes from the text descriptions of objects, structures and people. Which can be as obscure and flowery as the writers can manage.
I think something like _The Book of the New Sun_ could work in an audio adaption. Something like a radio or podcast play/series. But any visual media is going to hit the problems you described.
Orhan Pamuk's "My nane is Red". It is a murder mystery, and each chapter is told to you by one of the characters in the first person. For example, there are chapters that the victim tells you, and he tells you "well, I'm the victim, this bastard killed me, I hate him," he tells you about the meeting with the murderer, the murder, etc., as he never names the murderer, you don't know who the murderer is. There are also chapters that are narrated to you by the murderer himself, such as "I am the murderer, I killed this idiot this way, etc", but he does not name himself either. There are also chapters that are narrated to you by the person who is investigating and other characters, and chapters that are narrated to you by, for example, Death (the abstract concept), or the color red (the abstract concept). You can only achieve that effect with a book, any image would reveal the mystery. I also think of more introspective books, which take place in the character's mind.
I would recommend you read If on A Winter's Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino. It's bizarre and weird and I liked it. It's also short, so it wouldn't take long to read. Also one that would be hard to adapt.
I might put Wheel of Time on this list. I have been enjoying the Amazon show (which I know is not a popular opinion among fans of the books, whatever), but the fact remains that if they're planning on putting out a season every 2 or 3 years, they're just not going to finish on time. There is just too much stuff, and those actors who were just barely not teenagers in season 1 are going to be in their 40s or 50s by the time this thing is over, if they even finish. There is a massive cast of characters, and there are certain scenes that, even with CGI, I'm not sure how you'd do them, particularly the very very end.
I'd say Stephen King's 'The Long Walk' wouldn't be easily adaptable but I've heard rumors that there actually is a current attempt to adapt it for the TV/Streaming format. On the other hand I'd give a recommendation of a series I'd like to see adapted: 'Cowboy Necromancer' by Harmon Cooper. Without spoiling it's basically if you took D&D, and put in an apocalyptic desert setting caused by aliens. I actually wasn't a fan of the Tree Body Problem adaptation. I was so excited for it and the opening scene as well as the flashback scenes were actually pretty much word-for-word and shot-for-shot accurate to the first book, but other than that, they just created their own entire story. I never got past the first episode because I was so disappointed. But then again, I'm just one person so I might be alone in that regard.
Regarding The Long Walk the rumours are true, they filmed in Winnipeg and rural Manitoba throughout the summer. I’m very curious because I thought it couldn’t be done, and I want to see how many of our small towns make the final cut.
@@musicmaverix How cool! I didn't know filming had already started. It's always a treat to see a crew come in a film down your street then be able to see it in action with the characters on screen.
Even if they might be unadaptable would love to see a huge fan of them try the number 1 book would be tough but I think if they made it look like what they think it is and it slowly becomes what we know it could work (haven’t read it yet) 😊
11:40 I think this one can be done If either 1) We did something new and put sections of the book like just beside the main movie/series while playing. 2)Do it as found footage and again put a dedicated section for the book. 3) Have a new character, or an amnesiac personality spend time reading the book with us. I think something similar could be applied to House of Leaves.
18:03 meanwhile, the Shannara series immediately gives away that the show takes play in a version of our world that is post-apocalyptic. And the books took I don't even know how many years before it reference to anything that made it sound like it was supposed to apocalyptic Earth
You couldn't adapt House of Leaves into a movie, but it does make a pretty good Doom mod. It would be a very weird thing to do but I bet it could be adapted into an incredible ARG also, in the vein of the best of the ones 42 Entertainment once did (The Beast for AI and I Love Bees for Halo 2 IMO, the ones they made just starting out were amazing), putting the players into a role similar to Johnny pulling all the scraps together.
I'm not sure any work is unadaptable, it's just in that adapting it you can't create a direct translation but approach it from a different angle to make it work as a film or TV show while keeping the spirit of the source material (which imo is the more important aspect of an adaptation). If anything, it forces creativity when you can't just transplant from one medium to another, and it's that that has resulted in some of my favourite film adaptions.
I will follow your lead. I made my list prior to watching the video, and I was surprised that our lists didn't intersect. Honorary mention goes to William S. Burroughs' "Naked Lunch." As with your honorary, they did make an adaptation, but just how bad it was proved how unadaptable it was. The book scrambles chronology worse than any Tarantino film and its plotline which really doesn't exist is baffling. A video store owner had a challenge to anyone who could prove that they watched the entire video would get a free rental. No one claimed the reward. Tolkien's "Silmarillion" has had a portion adapted (Rings of Power) but filming the entire book could only be possible with long running tv show. Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's "Illuminatus!" trilogy is one long shaggy dog story. The series combines every conspiracy theory ever made into one super complex tangled web. Could it be filmed? Yes. Could the audience make any sense out of the biggest weave ever written? I doubt it. I loved David Gerrold's "The Man Who Folded Himself." The main character travels backward and forward in time and in the process creates thousands of paradoxes many of which create new versions of him/herself. Simple paradoxes in movies cause the average movie goers' head to explode. I love exploring paradoxes and I still found myself backtracking to decipher what was happening. A super easy film to make but pointless is Alan Francis Garner and Cindy Cashman's "Everything Men Know about Women." The book consists of empty pages. To adapt the book would mean simply filming opening and closing credits. I'm really surprised no James Joyce book made your list. I choose "Ulyssess" but most of his books would qualify. "Ulysses" is written in a stream conciseness. Sentences aren't always in the right order. One very long chapter lacks punctuation. It took me a total of thirty years to complete this book. I consider it to be a masterpiece. It was also banned everywhere for obscenity. It was brought to court where the judge said that there were indeed multiple scenes of perversions of every sort. But he could not possibly anyone possibly reading this incomprehensible book for the sex. This ruling changed what could be considered obscene and our freedom of speech was greatly expanded.
Tolkien's 'Silmarillion' was said to be unadaptable but I do think there will come a time when this masterpiece will be adapted, most likely in animated form
It is interesting that you brought up Dark Tower getting an adaptation when it did get a movie adaptation years ago. To be fair I don't think fans or even critics liked it but I'm surprised you didn't mention that version.
I’d add more books to that list, and for very different reasons. _Always Coming Home_ by Ursula K. LeGuin immediately comes to mind. This book is basically a collection of text fragments, songs, poems and archeological findings about a possible future civilisation. It is weird, wonderful and incredibly hard to read. I am not a native English speaker, and I don’t even _want_ to try and read this is English (fortunately, a small independent publisher put out the first complete translation into German - now I must find the time and energy to tackle those 860 page behemoth). Some parts of the book may be adaptable, and one might certainly set original stories within the world built by LeGuin, but adapting the whole thing adequately is thoroughly impossible. Philosophical questions, the aspect of an archeology of the future, the different viewpoint, the massive portion that mostly explains culture and society would simply lose most of its impact in any on-screen adaptation. The second book that I think is very much unadaptable is mostly due to the immense scale. _Jerusalem_ by Alan Moore is (in its recent first German edition, published by the same small independent publisher, btw, another book I won’t even try to read in English), a book of over 1400 pages (the English hardcover unlisted by Norton in 2018 has nearly 1300 pages - granted, the softcover 3-volume edition of _The Lord of the Rings_ published by HarperCollins UK has a total of nearly 1600 pages, but it is conveniently divided into 3 volumes). This book is enormous and features elements from the concept of time as the fourth dimension and is a kaleidoscope of forms and styles that could never be adequately translated to film. The only way to maybe adapt this thing would be as a series, taking every overarching part as a full season of 8-10 50 minute episodes, and even this feels like a difficult endeavour. Other works fall in the same category. _Ulysses_ by James Joyce, for instance. Or, as you mentioned Kafka, try basically _any_ work of Franz Kafka himself - not that there weren’t adaptations of some of his books, but the unsettling nature of reality losing all logical sense is basically impossible to show on any screen. _Der Process_ (and I use the original German title here) for instance is a book about a mysterious bureaucracy, some sort of trial that is never explained (not even to the protagonist), the verdict is never handed down (it isn’t even clear if their _is_ a verdict) - it is very strange, not only because the novel was never actually finished. There have been adaptations of the book, for stage and as movies (most notably the 1962 film by Orson Welles featuring Anthony Perkins), but though it is an interesting film, critics rightfully wrote that “Kafka didn’t win anything by this transformation, and his readers are rightfully disappointed” (cinema 63). In my opinion there are basically two reasons that make a book potentially impossible to adapt: Sheer scale (as in Jerusalem or Ulysses), which _could_ be realised by huge budgets, multi-season series and possible animation to remove the problem of aging characters, and form (as a wide expression), such as the strange pseudo-scientific approach to an archeology of the future in Always Coming Home or the weird, existentialist and expressionist situation Josef K. finds himself in Der Process.
I'm in the middle of a book right now, and I genuinely don't think it can be adapted. If it was adapted ... it would probably be pretty terrible. God Emperor of Dune. I mean ... the main character in this novel would be near impossible to adapt. If you even search for art about the main character, you get so many different illustrations; basically no one really agrees about how he looks, despite Frank having given quite a lot of detail in the book. That's not the main problem however. The main problem is the content itself. There's barely any story, like, at all. I've heard someone say that this book was just the main character talking, and I really agree! Nearly every chapter has the main character in it, and it's always a dialogue between this main character and one other. I love this book with all my heart, it touches upon such interesting ideas and concepts, but in no way is this adaptable. Nobody would go to the cinema, see a lot of talking, leave, and feel satisfied. That's just not gonna happen.
Hence why Denis Villeneuve is ending his Dune adaptations with Dune Messiah. Which isn't a very cinematic story either so we shall see how that pans out.
I remember people looking at "Dune" as unadaptable. 90% of that book is people talking in caves or cockpits, or rooms. The giant worms would be difficult, but if you just accept that it will not look perfect you can do it with rear projection and stop motion. You need a bunch of people fighting with swords in the desert? That is intensely doable. You need a colosseum scene? That is intensely doable. I would argue the only reason it did not work under David Lynch is because they tried to turn it into 1 movie and they kept some of the worst traits of book (you can hear everyone's internal monologue) rather than just turning it into multiple movies or a TV show.
The thing about House of Leaves is that it's impossible to even adapt it into an audiobook. You HAVE to physically read it and jumble it back and forth as you jump from various sections of the book to solve the insanity presented in the footnotes. Read it for the first time this year and absolutely love it.
It's a book that was barely adaptable into a book.
If House of Leaves were to be adapted to film, it would need to be a four season show and focus on one of the stories.
First season would be the found footage of the family exploring the house and would benefit from an old-school 22-24 episode season and would be in full color. A reference to the full color edition.
The second season would be Zampano's story. This season would be around 15-16 episodes and shot in black and white with key film elements (if you know, you know) in blue or red. A reference to the two color edition.
Season 3 would be five episodes and have the subtile The Navidson Record under the House of Leaves title. Each episode focuses on each character in the record and each episode would be around two hours. This season would have the visual feel of documentaries of the 50s through the 90s, but would be in black and white and scenes frequently end cutting off the last few words of sentences. A reference to the incomplete edition.
Season 4 would focus on Johnny's story and be completely black and white. A reference to the black and white edition. This season would be about 10 to 15 episodes.
All the "apendicies" would be found online and on a bonus disc.
I feel that by constructing an adaptation in this way, some of the themes around time and feeling unsettled that every season feels disjointed from each other would mimic the experience of reading the book and having to refer back to other episodes in different seasons. The one draw back is that all four seasons would have to be released at the same time. I feel that fans would really enjoy putting together different watch order lists and would generally have a good time with it.
Found out my sister was trying to read it on her kindle. I begged her for her own sanity to stop and gave her my own physical copy.
It was adapted into a Doom (the videogame) mod.
A big swing, but fantastic
Hey, a lot of movie adaptations are quite different compared to the books they’re based on. If you’d make a movie adaptation of House Of Leaves, you would make use of the medium film instead of how the book makes use of the medium… book.
They used to say The Lord of the Rings was unadaptable.
I'd argue it still is because of the changes that were made in the films. In some ways it's just its own thing and only has the names in common.
The Lord of the Rings remains unadaptable.
@@DunybrookNonsense. Never in the history of cinema or drama has ANY screenplay been exactly as the book.
Same for Dune, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Fight Club.But they pulled it off in these cases.
The Two Towers and Return were so far off from the books they shouldn't be called Lord of the Rings...
I would kill for an animated Dark Tower. As to the -last entry. Just conceptually, I could see a set changing as the elements of what he's actually living in is revealed. You start out with a white tower that looks like a tower and as the elements are revealed, the visual shifts. That sounds to me more like something that would work better in animation too. But it's an interesting concept anyway.
That could be pretty good. Get Tarantino to direct a ministries. Could be amazing. But keep king out of it, except for the royalties.
"Lord Foul's Bane" & "Nine Princes in Amber" are both unadaptable. I'd love to see an animated version of Zelazney's Amber Chronicles. tavi.
I agree Thomas Covenant would be an impossible sell as a main character...but that story on screen would be amazing.
@@zeroatlantisIt’s doable, it just wouldn’t make money because the idea if a passive protagonist you don’t like is too foreign to people
The "Jake" problem in "The Dark Tower,".... I have thought of this. They COULD just have him played by a different kid actor and go the route of putting 1 easily identifiable feature (a birthmark on his face, a scar....) that each iteration will have. Them go with either not even mentioning it, just to "King" it up or make some explanation of why. Wouldn't work 100%, but Kings works usually.needna little tweaking to be adapted anyway.
They already tried to adapt the "The Dark Tower" first book into a movie, it starred Idris Elba as the Gunslinger. And I totally agree with you about it being animated. Look at the Simpsons, 30+ years and they haven't aged.
On the other hand, King of the Hill is returning and Bobby Hill is now 21!
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov - the book is structured as a delusional self-obsessed editor providing line-by-line commentary on the final unfinished poem by a famous poet, but he’s convinced that the poem was actually written about his own (possibly imagined) backstory. The reading experience involves constantly flipping back and forth between the poem and the commentary and cross-referencing the various footnotes, and would be absolutely impossible to recreate in any other medium
Mark Lawrence’s Library Trilogy, for similar reasons to Book Of The New Sun - there are certain major twists that would be impossible to conceal in any visual medium.
A show could get close to Pale Fire if it were edited with an audio commentary track by a “friend” of the deceased director.
Pale fire can be adapted as mockumentary with a framing device that is longer. But the point is Pale Fire is poetry, that is always unadaptable unless you make a word by word voiceover
I definitely want an animated Dark Tower series. I remember they actually made a film with Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. I was good, but not great, but my dad said it was all the books put into a 90 minute film. So u could definitely see it as an animated series
It wasn't great 😕
There is a movie with the same name of the dark tower... And apparently it did draw some inspiration from the books 😂
Actually loved the prospect of having Mathew McConaughey and Idris Elba on the project... But the plot and script really took me out of it 😢
You remember? Is this movie so obscure that it requires a special memory to recall it?
@@joekapp6826 no, but it was so bad that I force my mind to forget about it.
I took it to be the next iteration of Roland's journey.
I loved your House Of Leaves video, both stylistically and content-wise. I admit I only watched it because I loved the author's sister's companion album (2000's album "Haunted" by Poe) which I had commented on. The book is next in my queue to read because your video was so convincing, and I've been listening to Haunted a lot recently. It still holds up 24 years later! Keep up the great work.
Thanks
Haunted is such a fantastic album, one of my desert island picks to this day. Like you, I've never gotten around to reading House of Leaves, but I'm kind of inspired to dive into it now!
3 more unadaptable books I would add are "Finnegan's Wake" by James Joyce, "The Atrocity Exhibition" by J.G Ballard and "Barefoot in the Head" by Brian Aldiss. Three books that are difficult enough to read, let alone adapt.
"The Book of the New Sun" series is among my all time favourites btw. Totally agree with what you had to say about it. Very very rewarding series of books to read. Honestly Wolfe's prose is a pleasure to read in itself, even if you disregard the fantastic story.
Finnegan’s Wake was the first book that popped in my head when I saw the title of this video.
What do you think about Alan Moore's Jerusalem? I think that the Dead Dead Gang section would be the most adaptation-friendly part.
@@tintinismybelgian -Haven't read it I'm afraid. I'll certainly put it on my reading list though. Loved "Watchmen" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen".
@@bobsteele9581 Jerusalem is a very long book. Spoiler Alert: It has no scenes that actually take place in the city of Jerusalem.
@@tintinismybelgian -Thanks for the info 👍
Several of these sound like they could be adapted into video games. I could definitely see avenues for Dark Tower and House of Leaves to be done that way.
Actually, there's a Doom mod called MyHouse.WAD that's based on House of Leaves and it has had people all abuzz about it for a year or two now. Plenty of playthroughs, analyses and reviews can be found on UA-cam.
The funny thing is that would make sense in a way, a non-linear format for a non-linear book.
The House Of Leaves description reminded me of those Sam Barlow FMV games, Her Story, Telling Lies and Immortality. Immortality jumped to me because of the way the gameplay works through film reels and you see things that aren't in the film while playing. It could work in a game format like that.
I am so glad that you picked "The Book of the New Sun". I love this series. It's so true about it being unadaptable. One of my favorites of all time.
The only medium I could possibly see House of Leaves being adapted into properly would be video games. Tons of survival horror titles like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Clock Tower, etc. deal with puzzle solving and backtracking, so I could maybe see it working there. Maybe
i knew house of leaves would be on here, there are some books that are too much about being a book to be able to adapt. i always thought that invisible monsters by palahniuk would be extremely difficult if not impossible to adapt, but then we did get fight club so... maybe?? great video, definitely gave me a few new titles to check out.
Truth be told, there are no bad adaptations--for writer's at least. If a movie is great, people buy the source material in droves; if it sucks, fans complain about how much better the book is and therefore recommend it to a new audience.
"Valis", to me, was a character study on a character from some other story. Perhaps a villain from someone elses story... this is his backstory. Something like that. Gives it a new light.
im doing an essay on infinite jest and adaption currently and im planning on discussing other unadaptable book, so this is literally the exact video ive been looking for
Dhalgren by Samuel Delany...utterly a book that is beyond adaptation.
I was going to mention the same book!
Me too!
It would make just as much sense as a movie as it did in book form lol
I would nominate "The Wild" by Whitley Strieber. It is a werewolf book, but not the kind you are used to. The protagonist doesn't get bitten by an animal and change into a two-legged furred "wolf man" every month on the night of the full moon. He changes into an actual wolf, and the change is permanent. The reason I believe this is unadaptable is not the special effects, but rather how to show that this wolf has human intelligence without seeming to be a ridiculous variant of "The Shaggy Dog" films.
Goosebumps My Best Friend is Invisible is one I always think of when it comes to unadaptable books. It depends on being a non visual media for the story to where you'd have to change the plottwist if you adapted it and weaken the whole thing
I’m just casually watching this because it popped up on my feed and now I am adding House of Leaves onto my Christmas list because it sounds like a perfect book. TARDIS-like building, people going mad, funky layouts, mystery galore? Count me in
The first two books that came to my head somehow weren’t mentioned, Blood Meridian and Gump and Co. are like prime examples of unadaptable books.
I heard that Mike Flanagan (who is a huge Dark Tower fan) wants to make a Dark Tower tv series where each season covers each book. He also mentioned that there is one specific scene from one of the books that he knows exactly how he would film and is excited to film it if given the chance.
Edit: I did not watch your full explanation to Dark Tower when I wrote this. So I did not know that you already knew this.
Dark Tower really only needs three seasons.
@ yeah but I feel like it would be cleaner to have seven seasons and every season named after each book. Less confusing on when one book ends and when the next starts.
After the S-show he did with the Dark Tower I wouldn’t let him film a Frosted Flakes commercial.
_Wuthering Heights_ is notoriously unadaptable. Of course, many have tried...
The Culture series by Iain M. Banks are also unadaptable due to its complexity and scope as a sci fi series. Layers upon layers of political, economic and philosofical ideology as well as a vast universe with complex life and species... mix all that and add violence, politeness and humour to most characters and situations.
@@IvoLouro yes 🤘
the Sci fi elements in the culture will be difficult to adapt, machines with 4 dimensional minds existing in hyper space wouldn't be easy to adapt at all
I first read House of Leaves a few years ago, and to this day it lives rent-free in my head. It's absolutely unadaptable! I don't even think an audiobook would do this book justice. There's power in the experience of having to heft the book around, flip it over, turn pages band and forth to crack codes...there's NO WAY an audiobook could capture the visceral exhaustion and exhilaration I experienced reading the book.
A movie adaptation would be impossible. You're telling 3 stories at the same time, each one linked to and dependent upon the other.
I knew as soon as I saw the title of this video that HoL would be on it--I'd have been VERY disappointed if it wasn't!
I’ve heard that the author won’t allow an audiobook, but I can’t find a source on this and he actually was working to adapt it into a TV show at one point so that’s probably not true. Still, it doesn’t even have an ebook, it’s so particular to print, that I don’t know how an audiobook would work. Different voices? Layered audio? Pitch shifting? I think it would take some truly outside-of-the-box thinking.
I would suggest that the book "S" (or The Ship of Theseus) by J. J. Abrams would be challenging to adapt. Similar to your description of House of Leaves, the experience of reading the text, the conversation between two people in marginal notes in two timelines, and reading the postcards/materials tucked into the pages make it a great experience.
Ah, yes. And Crispin Hellion Glover produced similarly elusive reading in his books "Oak-Mot" and "Rat Catching".
They could adapt it but it would be lost in translation. I think they would end up using Eric and Jen as the "movie" and have the book and straka etc be a prop. Kinda like how they did DaVinci Code
PKD’s VALIS contains its own adaptation - a film that seems to describe his madness draws Horselover Fat to meet Sophia - and itself adapts the work that’s even less adaptable, the Exegesis (which is far larger than the excerpts included in most versions). But a fascinating opera was rendered of VALIS in the 1980s that set Dick’s words to remarkably memorable music.
Adapting the unadaptable? Cronenberg somehow managed with The Naked Lunch.
My ex made me watch The Thing. Just the mere mention of Cronenberg makes my stomach churn 😂
I remember when people claimed that Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas was unadaptable and then a very well done movie adaptation was made by Terry Gilliam.
A hot take, but any of Toni Morrison's books. All would be fabulous, prize winning films/shows. But the nuance and introspection and magic that brings the reader into the character's lives is what I believe is unadaptable.
Wow. I hadn't thought about her books being adapted, nor did I realize I've never heard of, much less watched, a film adaptation of any of her books. Now that I have, I absolutely agree. Morrison's novels incorporate elements of magical realism to varying degrees, but her style of magical realism is unique to her, and often unique from one book to the next. The function of those magical elements is rarely in the foreground, and often it does not feel magical as you're reading it-it feels tangible, grounded, and very real; and it's always in service to the story and characters, never the other way around. Or it feels that way. How Morrison weaves and reveals these certain magical or supernatural or otherwise unseen forces throughout the story is one of her greatest skills as a writer. There is a quality to her writing that I can only describe as gorgeous, but it falls egregiously short of capturing the way words and emotion and dialogue and narrative and description and character converge upon each other in a way that can only be experienced by engaging with the text. In my opinion 💜
Beloved starring Oprah and Danny Glover in 1998. Not well received but an attempt was made.
My pick is definitely Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Anyone who has read it knows what I mean.
I haven’t read it, but based on what I know about it, I’m inclined to agree.
Thomas Pynchons books in general are unadaptable. The only book of his that has gotten a movie version so far was Inherent Vice and thats only because it was his shortest book and the most straightforward one story wise. And even then people complained that the plot in the movie was difficult to follow lol.
@ I think you could probably adapt The Crying of Lot 49.
@@pegasusactua2985 PTA is supposedly adapting Pynchon's Vineland now.
I don't count that abominable World War Z movie an adaptation
Brand new viewer. I saw the title of the video and had to watch because I knew…I just knew…the tower would be in this list.
As a Constant Reader, I have to believe man. It’s Flanagan. If anyone can do it, he can. A tv series instead of one janky movie, a season per book give-or-take; I think it can be done.
I’ve just started my 15th (17th?) journey to the tower and I need an adaption before I die. I’d love for Stephen to be able to see at least the first part of it before he moves on to the clearing at the end of the path himself, and he’s getting up there in age.
Anyway, I guess I’ll keep watching. As soon as I saw you grab the book, I had to pause and say something.
Really glad i found your channel! We have really similar tastes and opinions so any time you recommend something i havent read it goes straight to my TBR. Ive never heard of Book of the New Sun but it sounds right up my alley.
Check it out it's one of my favorite series of all time. Look into it a little bit first because it's not for everyone but boy I love it.
Kafka on the Shore confused the hell out of me
That's a lot of Murakami. KotS is particularly odd. And also not a fan of the cat subplot.
I know you haven't read it yet, but Blood Meridian is often on this list. Also, I think you can argue that The Shining is unadaptable because of the descent into madness. Kub's version was unable to adapt that significant bit
Came here to say the same abt Blood Meridian
I read an article awhile ago from a link on Google which said that Bone Tomahawk proves that an adaptation of Blood Meridian is possible.
You can say that Kubrick"solved" the problem by writing a completely different story. In King's novel, for all of his faults, Jack Torrence loves his wife and son, which is the source of the true horror when the Overlook Hotel transforms him into a homicidal maniac out to kill both. In Kubrick's film, Jack Torrence has secretly HATED his wife and son, and the hotel merely nudges him into something that he has always WANTED to do. That's why Jack Nicholson's character seems a bit off from the very beginning. And considering that King based the character of Jack Torrence off of himself, that's also why he vehemently dislikes the movie. To say that Torrence wants to kill his wife and son is to say Stephen King wants to do the same which he takes personally.
My problem with the film is the abuse Shelley Long suffered at the hands of Stanley Kubrick, which affected her the rest of her life. Kubrick had no faith in Long's ability to portray an traumatized woman, so he traumatized her on film.
Stanley Kubrick didn't adapt The Shining. He looked at the book and made his own movie vaguely inspired by the novel.
I figured it would be #1 on the list.
This terrific video virtually demands a response!
Glad you liked it!
Steve is actually an undercover Stephen King, Murakami, and Danielewski fan confirmed.
I saw the title, and was immediately like, "If House of Leaves isn't on here....."
I agree with you about The Dark Tower... Jake. Jake is the sticking point. Good idea about the animation angle. Or perhaps do something with CGI? I haven't read the others you mention, but saved 3 of them to my Amazon wishlist. Thanks!
Apparently there have been several tries to adapt John Kennedy Tool's "A Confederacy of Dunces" but nobody seems to be able to do it. This is probably because it would end up seeming sad and the main character pathetic - as opposed to how funny and moving it is to read. It wouldn't be difficult to create the world of New Orleans the book describes - but the getting the correct Tone would take a master.
New Orleans in the 60s is a time and place that is impossible to understand unless you were there.
Nuances of meaning in every sentence, and between them, characterize this book. I vote for - impossible to adapt.
@@pommelhorsepommelhorse8731 I’ve tried to read it twice…I guess I’m a pleb since I just didn’t get it. Same for The Catcher in the Rye…if the main character is just too unsympathetic/ annoying I don’t want to my waste time. Especially since the plot of both novels just seems to follow them both around as they do nothing but annoy others. I never got the huge hype they both get heaped upon them
Could easily be adapted, pretty straightforward novel. People might just as well name a random novel and say it’s unadaptable. Amazing that there are any book to movie adaptations at all! 🙂
@@brianmurphy250
If it’s not your cup of tea then fair enough of course, but people like them for being funny and/ or insightful.
@ I respect them as literary works on that level, I just was perplexed when I read lots of celebrity interviews…I think it was DeCaprio who said he cried when he realized he was too old to play Holden in a movie adaption.
Then it got so over used I never sure if it was based on iconic character study or just people parroting “I love Catcher in the Rye!” ( like some hipsters who used to pretend to listen Bob Dylan or read Shakespeare…it became the “cool thing to like”) or it genuinely spoke to folks on a level I wasn’t at.
I’m going to try again to broaden my narrow horizons!
I Appreciate your kind response and happy holidays!
Agree on The Dark Tower. Possible , but very hard. It would have to be a generously long mini series, and they would have to film all of the boys scenes first and hope after everything is done they don't need to re-film any. And, if it's on NETFLIX there is a good chance, no matter the popularity, of it getting cancelled the first year.
Riddle Walker, Engine Summer, and The Einstein Intersection. Try to adapt those. I dare you.
Zelazny's "Amber Chronicles". Much of the impact of the series comes from the surrealism and grand vistas, neither of which would work at all on screen.
Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar" - Mostly told in snippets of news articles and reports, it was difficult to follow on paper; it would be incoherent on screen
I remember a couple years ago there was a dark tower movie on Hulu or Amazon prime. I don’t quite remember. All I do remember for that movie is that it was a disappointment.
Well, whaddaya know! The imdb lists both a 2017 feature film starring Idris Elba & Matthew McConaughey and a 2020 TV movie. The latter actually had a decently high rating!
I love your videos! Great recommendations! Thank you so much.
@@barbaralawrence7284 Thank you!
I would love to see the Dark Tower animated, I think it could capture a lot of the series' soul, the scope and atmosphere.
Animated would also help a lot with the fact that so many sections just take place in people's head... which is why so many SK books don't seem to translate well to film
@@nordwithnovelty There's also the possibility of part animation and part live action, don't forget...
The first book I thought of as being unadaptable is ‘The Gods Themselves’ by Isaac Asimov.
A lot of the weird of the New Sun is that things are so far into the future that there are mosaics weathering out of montainsides and that many creatures and objects are imported from the stars. The sheer age and breadth of humanity and it's experiences makes what is familiar to us as unfathomable as neolithic so ieties.
What about gravity's rainbow
Great video! There aren’t many Dick stories that could be adapted. Blade Runner is a cool little movie, but it ain’t Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? On the other hand, everyone said Dune was unadaptable and then along came David Lynch with what I think is a masterpiece. Thanks for the show!
Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius Tetralogy. They did adapt the first book to film in the 70's, but it by and large failed to capture the essence of the book. And that first one, The Final Programme, would be possibly the most adaptable. The remaining three books...it would be difficult if not impossible.
I did the same with the 3 body problem, watched the 1st ep then didn't watch the rest until recently. Yeah really good show.
My suggestion: Alastalon salissa by the Finnish author Volter Kilpi. It's a stream-of-conciousness novel; the events take place during just a few hours, it has plenty of inner monologues, and one of the famous "scenes" is the main character selecting which pipe to smoke, and this process takes up 70 pages. Sadly, the book has not been (officially) translated into English.
You might be able to make a Lynchian adaptation of this book, but it would be quite the challenge.
They already made a Dark Tower movie adaptation in 2017.
No Blood Meridian? If you haven't, it's worth reading!!!!
No blood meridian. Haven't read it yet.
@@rammelbroadcastingDefinitely put it on your tbr list!
Was literally was gonna say this, was like how is Blood Meridian not on this list it’s the first book I thought of
Blood Meridian is easily adaptable, just not worth it. McCarthy's most overrated book.
@@rammelbroadcastingyou'll be disappointed. It's terribly overrated.
Interesting list. Glad you mentioned Liu's Three Body Problem at the beginning, as that helps me with respect to how you're limiting your list. My first response automatically was Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Easily in my top 10 books of all time, though given there was an adaptation made I guess I can't count it. But in my mind, it still counts, as the adaptation was utterly unsuccessful. Therefore it's still unadaptable. However... I'll therefore have to say Donaldson's Thomas Covenant Chronicles. Or, turning a bit, even moreso: The Gap series.
My pick is Thomas Covenant, yours is the first comment I've seen that mentions those books. It would be amazing, but a rapist leper would be a hard sell as a protagonist.
@@zeroatlantis Agreed on all points. I loved the books as they challenged me as a reader to follow a character that was unlikable, stuck in a fantastic world that was wholly likable. Great tension in that.
The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. A 10 volume fantasy epic. Think War & Peace meets the Iliad. On a surface level, there are probably certain things that could be adapted, fantasy has been pretty popular to adapt in recent years. But the sheer scope of this series I think would be too daunting to attempt. There are books in the series that have totally different characters and locations from the ones you’ve already read, and if adapted as a show you’d have to spend seasons away from a large portion of the cast. Not to mention it would have to feature quite a bit of SFX to bring the magic and strange fantasy races to life. I just don’t think it would be possible to adapt.
Shit, I can’t understand the book, let alone an adaptation🤣
I came here wondering if this series would be on the list. It's my favorite fantasy series of all time, and an unbelievably deep read. I think it could do well as an animated series, especially seeing how amazing Arcane and Blue Eye Samurai have been, but any live action adaptation would be a total mess.
My top pick would be, a series that is near and dear to my heart The Demonata series by Darren Shan.
Same author of the Cirque du Freak series, (and we saw how well they adapted that) the Demonata is this super effed up, uber violent gory series that tackles humans and their encounters with demons. The demons are super grotesque and the stuff of nightmares, lietrally the first book one demon is an eight armed monstrosity with cracked skin, a hole in his chest filled with silver snakes and a face that is always looking like its on the verge crying and hes the main antagonist of the series, you have a demon baby with maggots or roaches on its head that are always eating at the head his eye sockets are empty with the exception of lights inside the sockets and the final demon is a dog whose paws end on female human hands with long nails and the head of a crocodile. And thats just the 3 demons in the first book.
The series gets conceptually weird and messed up but in a good way. And the reason i think its unadaptable is because of the level of violence and how you would need practical effects of a god in order to do these creatures justice.
Imajica by Clive Barker has unadaptable qualities much like The Dark Tower (massive scope and things that would be expensive and impractical to do in live action) and The Book of The New Sun (aspects of the plot/environment/characters that are obscured through the writing that wouldn't work if they had to be shown on a screen). It also deals with a lot of offputting/disturbing content and themes, so there's no way an adaptation would get the budget it needs to be any good. Phenomenal read though, highly recommended.
As soon as I saw unadaptable my first thought was to Imajica. However upon some further reflection I think adapting it into something akin to the series Love, Death + Robots would actually do Imajica a lot of justice. I'm thinking of episodes like Beyond the Aquila Rift and The Secret War. It would be insanely expensive to make and because of Barker's relative obscurity outside of Hellraiser would also likely bomb, but I really think it's possible with the technology we have right now.
For the dark tower, I would love a take changing actors, maybe with a longer span of movies/TV show, like in "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus", where multiple actors played the same character.
It would fit with the multidimensional spirit of the story and we could get lots of great cast showing their similar but different interpretation of the characters... and also avoid the 25 year old Jake by the end xDD.
Maybe even a mixed media project, with animation, live-action TV show , movie... It would be real crazy to adapt everything and keep it clean and consistent, so why not embrace it?
I'm going to reinterpret the question in the way I think you did over the course of the video, which is: Which book is unadaptable into a movie that is decent and works well.
Using this, I'd say Lem's _Solaris_ is such a book.
Yes, I know there are adaptations but they don't really reflect the book. Anyone who has read it (it's quite short actually) should know what I'm talking about.
Another book that's coming to my mind is Joyce's _Finnegans Wake._
I've never read the book, nor do I intend to read it because I want my books to have a plot and be comprehensible. From what I understand, nobody (other than Joyce himself, I guess) has an effin clue what this book really is about. It seems like it's a gigantic inside joke and the only person who gets it, gets all the references in the book, was Joyce himself.
So, I guess it's even more unadaptable than the books mentioned in the video because how are you gonna adapt a book that it essentially incomprehensible?
Might as well try to adapt the Voynich Manuscript...
Awesome video, though!
I have a few of the mentioned books on my reading list and these kinds of videos remind me that I really should get around to reading them soon!
Agreed. As I myself noted, just because it's been adapted, though not well, doesn't mean it's been adapted...
I read Solaris after seeing the Tarkovsky film, and I've also seen the earlier Russian TV version. I don't think the book was that different, it just had extra chapters on Solaristics that wouldn't make sense to adapt.
@@clownpendotfart I didn't know there was an earlier TV version so I can't speak about this but I would say that these chapters on Solaristics are an integral part of the text. It's been too long since I've read the book and then watched the movie to be able to point to specific things.
I didn't enjoy the book and therefore wouldn't want to read it again. I found the Tarkovsky movie incredibly boring but it was definitely more faithful to the text than the one by Soderbergh. I actually liked the American movie better because it was not faithful. Normally, you are unlikely to hear me say these words but in this case, the movie added somewhat of an interesting story which is lacking in Lem's text. This is part of my problem with the book, there's not much of a plot, which is also why it's hard to adapt in a way that it reflects the book. I am fully aware that the problem lies on my side with the text; it's just not for me.
Anyway, it's been too long for me to point to specific but I remember that when I watched the movies I thought that even the boring Tarkovsky movie improved on the book because it was different, and that it would be hard to put all the history bits about Solaristic in a movie and stay faithful to Lem's vision.
But it's fine if you see things differently. It's not a hill I want to die on, I'm not even keen on fighting there! 😉
_Solaris_ just was the first example that came to my mind which is why I mentioned it.
Anyway, thanks for your comment! It's often good to have differing perspectives.
Now you have me trying to think of five that were said to be unadaptable but wound up on film anyhow...
Catch-22 and The Naked Lunch immediately spring to mind. Maybe The Watchmen for scope (Gilliam said he might've done it if it was to be a miniseries instead). Vonnegut's Slapstick? But is that unfilmable or is it just that the movie (Slapstick of Another Kind) was so unwatchable? And fifth... The Griffin & Sabine trilogy perhaps? Or is it more that those are just gimmicky novelty items that probably aren't adaptable into actual books?
BTW, What do you think about the adaptability of Jerusalem by Alan Moore? I haven't started into it yet but I noticed there is a sort of free teaser of the audiobook here on UA-cam -- and that's around *seven hours long!* Think I'm gonna give that a listen now, actually...
I would say that a faithful adaptation of Naked Lunch is impossible. (Even if it were a miniseries, viewers would find its scatterbrained nature annoying and eventually lose interest.) But I think Cronenberg made the best attempt by catching the spirit of the book, with the body horror aspect, even if the finished product wasn't faithful.
I have a list that I suspect is parallel to this one: Books that I'm shocked no one has adapted yet. It very well could be that they're unadaptable.
In no particular order:
Thomas Covenant Chronicles - Donaldson
Myth Series - Asprin
Xanth Series - Anthony
Callahan's Saloon Series - Robinson
Coyboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille - Brust
The Paladin - Cherryh
Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates (and) Villa Incognito - Robbins
Blood Meridian
You can't skimp on the violence and sheer debauchery or you miss the point and I'm not sure Hollywood is going to go there . Or even if it could pull it off without it coming off as exploitation.
You can't capture the Judge without the subtext of the prose either. Without the subtext, he's just a one dimensional, comic book villain. So much of the book is in the prose that I'm skeptical that any adaptation would be anything more than a stylized, violent western.
The right actor/director team might be able to get close. I'm just wondering who would even audition😂
Most of Mark Helprin’s novels. They tried with “Winter’s Tale”, and it was a mess.
ADDED: Love the #1 choice. I need to go back and reread Wolfe’s novels.
Two books that come to mind are Finnegans Wake and Gravity’s Rainbow
Rammel, you magnificent bastard. I read your book!
The complete chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson is also a good shout 🤘
Now in this Advanced CGI and AI world, any novel is adaptable!! just need even budget to produce it!!
Agreed. My alltime favourite fantasy series.
Ugh. Read the first, didn't like it and stopped.
@@douglasdea637 Lots of people felt similarly. Some people can't handle an atypical protagonist.
Good luck getting the audience on side for a protagonist who is a whining, sniveling rapist.
There are multiple adaptations of Three-Body Problem. China has produced both a 30 episode (which seems excessive to me) live-action adaptation, along with an animated one. I watched the Netflix adaptation first (and liked it) before reading the first book, and didn't think the book was all that unadaptable, but I also haven't read the sequels (which I've read were partially mixed into the first season of the Netflix show).
I'm currently reading Milorad Pavic's "Dictionary of the Khazars" because it was on J. G. Keely's list of fantasy recommendations, and I think that would be even less adaptable than any novel you're listing. It's more adaptable than Ambrose Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary", but Bierce was writing an actual (humorous) dictionary, and this is more like three conflicting encyclopedias on the same subject, along with some supplementary material.
Redshirts by John Scalzi. Not because of scope or complexity but because it takes the piss out of every sci-fi trope and meme with particular attention (the title says it) to a beloved franchise that leaned heavily into the tropes.
[Read it if you haven't - if you're a sci-fi fan you will ROTFL. Adams-like at times with the comedic timing]
Could be done in one or two movies or two (short) seasons of TV. Before they realised and after. Like a very light and funny version of Dark but with only one alternate.
Will never be done because it slays holy cows. Should be because it is so funny, challenging and entertaining.
I mean, parodying Star Trek was basically Galaxy Quest and that movie slapped
Three body problem actually has 2 adaptations....
Even more than that! It has at least 2 Chinese adaptations, and one English-language one.
Most of Murakami's works are unadaptable, because not much happens plot-wise. For example, in Nejimakidori Chronicle protagonist's wife dissapear, dude gets depressed, finds a literal hole in the ground where to hide himself from the world, and meets some people that makes him see the wolrd in another light. That sounds good for a novella, but the book is 900 pages long. The book works because of Murakami's style, but a movie with that plot would get boring quickly.
I agree
There are many films with similar descriptions.
I do admit, Fortiche doing an animated version of Dark Tower would be dope
I was waiting for "Blood Meridian" to show up. That would top my list, but great list regardless
I think you could adapt Book of the New Sun, into a game anyway. Because it's kind of already been done. Caves of Qud is an RPG that like BotNS takes place in the far future after the collapse of an extremely advanced civilization. It works because the game's visuals are extremely simple, borrowed from the fact the first versions of the game were entirely text based. So you can sort of work out what something is supposed to be, but the richness of the game comes from the text descriptions of objects, structures and people. Which can be as obscure and flowery as the writers can manage.
I think something like _The Book of the New Sun_ could work in an audio adaption. Something like a radio or podcast play/series. But any visual media is going to hit the problems you described.
Never heard of anyone talk about this before
Orhan Pamuk's "My nane is Red". It is a murder mystery, and each chapter is told to you by one of the characters in the first person. For example, there are chapters that the victim tells you, and he tells you "well, I'm the victim, this bastard killed me, I hate him," he tells you about the meeting with the murderer, the murder, etc., as he never names the murderer, you don't know who the murderer is. There are also chapters that are narrated to you by the murderer himself, such as "I am the murderer, I killed this idiot this way, etc", but he does not name himself either. There are also chapters that are narrated to you by the person who is investigating and other characters, and chapters that are narrated to you by, for example, Death (the abstract concept), or the color red (the abstract concept). You can only achieve that effect with a book, any image would reveal the mystery.
I also think of more introspective books, which take place in the character's mind.
I would recommend you read If on A Winter's Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino. It's bizarre and weird and I liked it. It's also short, so it wouldn't take long to read. Also one that would be hard to adapt.
I might put Wheel of Time on this list. I have been enjoying the Amazon show (which I know is not a popular opinion among fans of the books, whatever), but the fact remains that if they're planning on putting out a season every 2 or 3 years, they're just not going to finish on time. There is just too much stuff, and those actors who were just barely not teenagers in season 1 are going to be in their 40s or 50s by the time this thing is over, if they even finish. There is a massive cast of characters, and there are certain scenes that, even with CGI, I'm not sure how you'd do them, particularly the very very end.
I'd say Stephen King's 'The Long Walk' wouldn't be easily adaptable but I've heard rumors that there actually is a current attempt to adapt it for the TV/Streaming format.
On the other hand I'd give a recommendation of a series I'd like to see adapted: 'Cowboy Necromancer' by Harmon Cooper. Without spoiling it's basically if you took D&D, and put in an apocalyptic desert setting caused by aliens.
I actually wasn't a fan of the Tree Body Problem adaptation. I was so excited for it and the opening scene as well as the flashback scenes were actually pretty much word-for-word and shot-for-shot accurate to the first book, but other than that, they just created their own entire story. I never got past the first episode because I was so disappointed.
But then again, I'm just one person so I might be alone in that regard.
Regarding The Long Walk the rumours are true, they filmed in Winnipeg and rural Manitoba throughout the summer. I’m very curious because I thought it couldn’t be done, and I want to see how many of our small towns make the final cut.
@@musicmaverix How cool! I didn't know filming had already started. It's always a treat to see a crew come in a film down your street then be able to see it in action with the characters on screen.
11:56 First book that popped to mind when I saw the title of your video 😄
House of Leaves sounds like a serial TV drama where each season starts with a new writer.
Great topic!
Thanks
Even if they might be unadaptable would love to see a huge fan of them try the number 1 book would be tough but I think if they made it look like what they think it is and it slowly becomes what we know it could work (haven’t read it yet) 😊
11:40 I think this one can be done If either 1) We did something new and put sections of the book like just beside the main movie/series while playing. 2)Do it as found footage and again put a dedicated section for the book. 3) Have a new character, or an amnesiac personality spend time reading the book with us. I think something similar could be applied to House of Leaves.
18:03 meanwhile, the Shannara series immediately gives away that the show takes play in a version of our world that is post-apocalyptic. And the books took I don't even know how many years before it reference to anything that made it sound like it was supposed to apocalyptic Earth
You couldn't adapt House of Leaves into a movie, but it does make a pretty good Doom mod. It would be a very weird thing to do but I bet it could be adapted into an incredible ARG also, in the vein of the best of the ones 42 Entertainment once did (The Beast for AI and I Love Bees for Halo 2 IMO, the ones they made just starting out were amazing), putting the players into a role similar to Johnny pulling all the scraps together.
I'm not sure any work is unadaptable, it's just in that adapting it you can't create a direct translation but approach it from a different angle to make it work as a film or TV show while keeping the spirit of the source material (which imo is the more important aspect of an adaptation).
If anything, it forces creativity when you can't just transplant from one medium to another, and it's that that has resulted in some of my favourite film adaptions.
I will follow your lead. I made my list prior to watching the video, and I was surprised that our lists didn't intersect. Honorary mention goes to William S. Burroughs' "Naked Lunch." As with your honorary, they did make an adaptation, but just how bad it was proved how unadaptable it was. The book scrambles chronology worse than any Tarantino film and its plotline which really doesn't exist is baffling. A video store owner had a challenge to anyone who could prove that they watched the entire video would get a free rental. No one claimed the reward. Tolkien's "Silmarillion" has had a portion adapted (Rings of Power) but filming the entire book could only be possible with long running tv show. Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's "Illuminatus!" trilogy is one long shaggy dog story. The series combines every conspiracy theory ever made into one super complex tangled web. Could it be filmed? Yes. Could the audience make any sense out of the biggest weave ever written? I doubt it. I loved David Gerrold's "The Man Who Folded Himself." The main character travels backward and forward in time and in the process creates thousands of paradoxes many of which create new versions of him/herself. Simple paradoxes in movies cause the average movie goers' head to explode. I love exploring paradoxes and I still found myself backtracking to decipher what was happening. A super easy film to make but pointless is Alan Francis Garner and Cindy Cashman's "Everything Men Know about Women." The book consists of empty pages. To adapt the book would mean simply filming opening and closing credits. I'm really surprised no James Joyce book made your list. I choose "Ulyssess" but most of his books would qualify. "Ulysses" is written in a stream conciseness. Sentences aren't always in the right order. One very long chapter lacks punctuation. It took me a total of thirty years to complete this book. I consider it to be a masterpiece. It was also banned everywhere for obscenity. It was brought to court where the judge said that there were indeed multiple scenes of perversions of every sort. But he could not possibly anyone possibly reading this incomprehensible book for the sex. This ruling changed what could be considered obscene and our freedom of speech was greatly expanded.
Tolkien's 'Silmarillion' was said to be unadaptable but I do think there will come a time when this masterpiece will be adapted, most likely in animated form
Surprised ‘This is how we lose the time war’ isn’t in here. I really wouldn’t see it possible to have that visualized in a movie
Thank you for the recommendations!!
It is interesting that you brought up Dark Tower getting an adaptation when it did get a movie adaptation years ago. To be fair I don't think fans or even critics liked it but I'm surprised you didn't mention that version.
They've often called the Rama series unadaptable, but I would love to see it done with today's technology with VFX.
The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, I, Robot, The Foundation Series, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Lord of the Rings, Batman comics.
I’d add more books to that list, and for very different reasons.
_Always Coming Home_ by Ursula K. LeGuin immediately comes to mind. This book is basically a collection of text fragments, songs, poems and archeological findings about a possible future civilisation. It is weird, wonderful and incredibly hard to read. I am not a native English speaker, and I don’t even _want_ to try and read this is English (fortunately, a small independent publisher put out the first complete translation into German - now I must find the time and energy to tackle those 860 page behemoth). Some parts of the book may be adaptable, and one might certainly set original stories within the world built by LeGuin, but adapting the whole thing adequately is thoroughly impossible. Philosophical questions, the aspect of an archeology of the future, the different viewpoint, the massive portion that mostly explains culture and society would simply lose most of its impact in any on-screen adaptation.
The second book that I think is very much unadaptable is mostly due to the immense scale. _Jerusalem_ by Alan Moore is (in its recent first German edition, published by the same small independent publisher, btw, another book I won’t even try to read in English), a book of over 1400 pages (the English hardcover unlisted by Norton in 2018 has nearly 1300 pages - granted, the softcover 3-volume edition of _The Lord of the Rings_ published by HarperCollins UK has a total of nearly 1600 pages, but it is conveniently divided into 3 volumes). This book is enormous and features elements from the concept of time as the fourth dimension and is a kaleidoscope of forms and styles that could never be adequately translated to film. The only way to maybe adapt this thing would be as a series, taking every overarching part as a full season of 8-10 50 minute episodes, and even this feels like a difficult endeavour.
Other works fall in the same category. _Ulysses_ by James Joyce, for instance. Or, as you mentioned Kafka, try basically _any_ work of Franz Kafka himself - not that there weren’t adaptations of some of his books, but the unsettling nature of reality losing all logical sense is basically impossible to show on any screen. _Der Process_ (and I use the original German title here) for instance is a book about a mysterious bureaucracy, some sort of trial that is never explained (not even to the protagonist), the verdict is never handed down (it isn’t even clear if their _is_ a verdict) - it is very strange, not only because the novel was never actually finished. There have been adaptations of the book, for stage and as movies (most notably the 1962 film by Orson Welles featuring Anthony Perkins), but though it is an interesting film, critics rightfully wrote that “Kafka didn’t win anything by this transformation, and his readers are rightfully disappointed” (cinema 63).
In my opinion there are basically two reasons that make a book potentially impossible to adapt: Sheer scale (as in Jerusalem or Ulysses), which _could_ be realised by huge budgets, multi-season series and possible animation to remove the problem of aging characters, and form (as a wide expression), such as the strange pseudo-scientific approach to an archeology of the future in Always Coming Home or the weird, existentialist and expressionist situation Josef K. finds himself in Der Process.
I'm in the middle of a book right now, and I genuinely don't think it can be adapted. If it was adapted ... it would probably be pretty terrible.
God Emperor of Dune.
I mean ... the main character in this novel would be near impossible to adapt. If you even search for art about the main character, you get so many different illustrations; basically no one really agrees about how he looks, despite Frank having given quite a lot of detail in the book.
That's not the main problem however. The main problem is the content itself. There's barely any story, like, at all. I've heard someone say that this book was just the main character talking, and I really agree! Nearly every chapter has the main character in it, and it's always a dialogue between this main character and one other. I love this book with all my heart, it touches upon such interesting ideas and concepts, but in no way is this adaptable. Nobody would go to the cinema, see a lot of talking, leave, and feel satisfied. That's just not gonna happen.
@@Atrulion I agree it's the most unadaptable of that entire series by far.
Hence why Denis Villeneuve is ending his Dune adaptations with Dune Messiah. Which isn't a very cinematic story either so we shall see how that pans out.
@@pegasusactua2985 Yeah. I'm also very curious how he adapts that book.
I agree everything can be adapted as long as censorship does not come into play or corporate greed doesn't ruin it
I remember people looking at "Dune" as unadaptable.
90% of that book is people talking in caves or cockpits, or rooms.
The giant worms would be difficult, but if you just accept that it will not look perfect you can do it with rear projection and stop motion.
You need a bunch of people fighting with swords in the desert? That is intensely doable.
You need a colosseum scene? That is intensely doable.
I would argue the only reason it did not work under David Lynch is because they tried to turn it into 1 movie and they kept some of the worst traits of book (you can hear everyone's internal monologue) rather than just turning it into multiple movies or a TV show.