Emerald Fennell‘s new Wuthering Heights movie is dividing critics right now.
Many books have gone on to receive loose adaptations for the silver screen, and Fennell’s take on Emily Brönte’s novel seems to be among them. Critics can’t agree on whether the shocking horniness, campy flair and vast diversions from the book are good or bad.
While we’ll let you decide on that for yourselves, Watch With Us takes a look back on some of the weirder movie adaptations of books.
From nightmare-inducing children’s book reimagining to odd interpretations of a Dickens classic, we ranked the four strangest book-to-movie adaptations ever.
4. ‘Dune’ (1984)
Before Denis Villeneuve directed two Oscar-nominated adaptations of Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction novel, Twin Peaks creator David Lynch took a crack at adapting it back in 1984. This was the art-house director’s big, bold move into the mainstream after his financial and critical success with The Elephant Man. Of course, the director of Eraserhead wasn’t going to give audiences another Star Wars, which is what executive producer Dino De Laurentiis wanted. Thus, the already strange story of giant worms, magic spice, corpulent, floating dictators and psychic witches was given a somewhat Lynchian treatment.
Sting plays a sexy sociopath clad in a Speedo, while most of the many, many monologues from all the characters are whispered rather than spoken. There’s also a mutated being that sits in a giant tank, grotesque heart plugs that the Harkonnens wear like it’s the latest fashion trend from Milan and a weirdo child (Alicia Witt who acts like she’s already lived a thousand years. Unfortunately, Lynch’s creative decisions and diversions from the source material forced his Dune to endure extensive cuts, which hacked the theatrical release down and created more distance from Lynch’s intended vision. It’s to the extent that Lynch publicly disowned the film and even removed his name or changed it to a pseudonym in the credits of certain releases. While Dune 1984 has established a cult following, it’s still quite divisive.
3. ‘The Hobbit’ trilogy (2012-2014)
Maybe it’s hyperbolic to claim, but Peter Jackson‘s three-film adaptation of the short children’s story prequel to The Lord of the Rings should go down as one of the worst decisions in filmmaking history. Jackson created a global pop culture phenomenon with his early 2000s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous fantasy trilogy, with each novel getting its own film shot back-to-back with the other in sequence. When it was revealed that The Hobbit would finally receive a live-action movie treatment too, the announcement stated that it would be split into two films directed by Guillermo del Toro. Then, del Toro exited due to delays and creative differences, and the production ballooned into three films, with original LOTR director Jackson at the helm.
As is the reason for turning every single-book story into multiple parts, turning the simple, 300-page The Hobbit into three extremely long movies was obviously done out of greed, not out of respect for preserving the dignity and beauty of the story. Instead, The Hobbit became three weird, bloated spectacles. There is ultimately so much wrong with all three The Hobbit movies that it would take longer than this short list to get into it all, but things like adding a pointless love triangle subplot with Legolas (Orlando Bloom), making the overarching antagonist not be Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch), heavy usage of overtly fake-looking CGI and unnecessary sidelining of Bilbo (Martin Freeman), the main character. Of course, perhaps The Hobbit films most unforgivable sin is how unbelievably boring it is.
2. ‘Ghosts of Girlfriends Past’ (2009)
What if we remade Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (again) and we made it about a womanizing bachelor (Matthew McConaughey) who is visited by the spirits of his ex-girlfriends (who are still alive) to teach him a lesson about how to be a real lover? Perfect, that sounds amazing — here is $40 million to make it happen. That is essentially the premise of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, which adapts Dickens’ novella about a miserly, isolated old man who is visited by three spirits on Christmas Eve and learns to appreciate life and everyone in it.
Instead, there’s no Christmas, no figgy pudding, no Tiny Tim or spirits covered in giant chains, and Matthew McConaughey learns about the value of monogamy and gets Jennifer Garner to fall in love with him. It’s likely that never in a million years did Dickens think his Victorian-era novel would be turned into a romantic comedy in which ghostly Michael Douglas (who portrays a version of the original character of Jacob Marley) tries to hit on the Ghost of Girlfriends Past (Emma Stone) who appears as a 16-year-old girl. In any event, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is funnier than it has any right to be, and it’s certainly a creative take on a story that has gotten too many adaptations to count.
1. ‘The Cat in the Hat’ (2003)
Unlike the live-action version of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas — which, despite being a crime against nature, has somehow managed to remain a Christmas classic in the nostalgic minds of some Millennials — the film adaptation of The Cat in the Hat still endures as an ill-conceived nightmare and one of the first dominoes to fall in Mike Myers‘ diminishing career. In the beloved children’s story of The Cat in the Hat, the titular Cat is a chaotic figure, but ultimately a source of fun and pleasure for the children he visits, played by Dakota Fanning and Spencer Breslin in the film.
In Bo Welch‘s The Cat in the Hat, the Cat (Myers) is a wicked demon imp. To its credit, the movie does a great job at embracing Seussian aesthetics, with colorful, creative production design, costumes, sets and cinematography. It’s just a shame that everything else (script, characters, dialogue, acting, a pervasive feeling of dread and despair) makes the movie so borderline unwatchable. Alec Baldwin wears a girdle, the fish is entirely CGI, Thing One and Thing Two are creepy as hell and there’s far too much weird, double-entendre humor for a children’s movie.
