Adam Savage's Favorite Novel-to-Movie Adaptation 

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Jurassic Park is a brilliant adaptation precisely because it changes it in the exact ways it needed to be changed in order to work as a movie thriller.

I saw Arrival FOUR times in the theater when it came out, what an astonishing movie! I wanted to share the experience with as many friends as I could. The last viewing was with my dad - I could tell the movie affected him deeply and we had some great philosophical conversations afterwards. Not long after he suffered a stroke, the first of several, and is no longer with us. I will always cherish Arrival and the memories that it helped create.

'Short story' immediately made me think of The Shawshank Redemption.

Hey Adam, thank you for reminding me that I have been meaning to watch Arrival for years. I paused your video and went and found it and watched it. It really _is_ such an amazing story. I've just read Ted Chiang's short story as well. Thanks for the nudge. 🙂

The "twist" at the end of Arrival is by far and away the coolest thing ever and I remember reading the short story before watching the movie and I was still blown away.

Another…Master and Commander: far Side of the world is a brilliant and underrated movie all on its own.

Hyperion Cantos would be insane if it could be pulled off onscreen. Denis Villeneuve might be the cliche answer, but his work on Dune plus Arrival shows he can film material deemed unfilmable. Cannot wait to see what he does with Rendezvous With Rama.

Remember before Peter Jackson, The Lord Of The Rings was considered unfilmable.

I still believe that The Silmarillion is unfilmable because of the immense scope, rich mythology but mainly the characters and story elements are so fantastical and otherworldly. You can't adapt that visually in a way that would do it justice. For example the creation of the universe through music and song. Characters like Feanor or Morgoth. Luthien destroying the fortress on Tol-In-Gaurhoth by singing. I can't imagine a fulfilling visual interpretation of these. Maybe you could pull single tales from it and film them separately as movie series. But not the whole thing.

'Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption' was a great transfer from Novella to movie. Its one of the few times the movie is better than the source material. It's a good book, but its way better as a movie.

For me, the Book the Hunt for Red October, and the movie is my favourite. I read the book first and the movie simply complimented what I had in my minds eye as I watched it.

One of the best adaptations of a novel is The Hunt for Red October. The film cuts out the technical manuals and a lot of the sermons against the Soviet Union, performs the latter by showing rather than telling, and finds the story that is buried in the novel's bumbling prose.

I read Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash years ago. Anyone remember those 3D “magic eye” posters from the ‘90s? There’s an old video on RU-vid that looks like random white noise-but if you look at it with the same eye-cross technique as those posters, it’s a 3D cartoon. 1000% reminded me of the brain-hijacking white noise from Snow Crash.

Reading the Maltese Falcon in 90 minutes...that must play out like the Benny Hill Show inside your head.

May not count, but The Orchid Thief to Adaptation is my favorite. I also enjoy The Princess Bride: there's a lot more in the book but you can tell how much the humor was polished and workshopped by the time it was filmed. Starship Troopers did a great job of adaptatiing the satire to Hollywood form. Also, I believe Phillip K. Dick had the record for author most adapted to film, largely because he also exclusively wrote short stories.

Adam, "The Maltese Falcon" holds a special place in my life. My late father introduced me to film noir with it. My beloved, whom I met after he'd passed? Gave me a Falcon replica from the original molds. Best gift ever. I always suspected you were good people.

Wow, as you were contemplating the question, and saying how “unfilmable” is often related to stories thought of as being of such immense scope, I thought of the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. And bang, you start talking about Neal. A bit later you read the viewer’s question where he mentioned The Martian. I started thinking about Andy Weir’s amazing Project Hail Mary, and I wondered how they could possibly portray in film the process of the protagonist learning to communicate with the alien, which led me to comment internally, well, look at how that was portrayed in Arrival. A minute later you were talking about Arrival! Dude, I was speechless. That’s some serious ESPN. 😁😁😁

My pick for "Unfilmable that you would like to see" would be: Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, directed by Guillermo Del Toro. I think he's the only person who would be able to depict the foolishness, pain and trauma of the war without glorifing any specific characters, and also have the melancholic comedy throughout.

I've never read the book, but Cloud Atlas felt like a monumental undertaking that nobody but the Wachowskis could have realized to such perfection

I think my favorite book to movie would be The Green Mile. They followed the novel very faithfully, with incredible actor choices and fantastic performances.

9 Princes in Amber. Been started, stopped many times. Transitioning from realm to realm would be pretty tough. Filming Chaos would be tough. I WANT IT!

fear and loathing in las vegas was exactly what I saw im my head when I read the book

Oh man!!! I’ve been saying for years that The Maltese Falcon is the best book adaptation ever. And Adam Savage is agreeing with me! Truly, it’s my equivalent of his Coppola story. The reason for me, is that the film perfectly selects which parts of the novel to capture, and avoids the bad bits. There are sections of the book that would be very problematic on screen, and the film navigates around those parts so well that you could never tell. Some films cut or introduce material in a way that’s jarring and completely at odds with the original intent (Chandler based films seem to suffer a lot from this). But Huston weaves his film together perfectly. It’s sheer brilliance. Do as Adam says - read and then watch - and I think you’ll agree.

One of my favorites is the Jonathan Strange adaptation. As for unfilmable, I would say Malazan. I feel like it would have to either be broken into separate stories, kind of like the MCU, all being combined at the end or be made into something more like an anime.

In 1960 in the sixth grade, I fell in live with Sci-Fi stories when I read _Rocket Ship Galileo_ written by Robert A. Heinlein and published in1948. Last year I read sixty books, mostly fiction. I love stories in books, plays and movies. When I saw _Arrival_ in 2016 I was blown away. It was such a surprise in many ways. I have not seen anything as good before or sense.

Arrival is such a nice movie. The way it paces itself and works around a small and intimate setting with relatively few people just makes the movie breathe and it gives the actors room to act.

I think The Silence of the Lambs was a very faithful adaptation of the Thomas Harris book.

The Culture series by Iain M Banks done right would be epic. Consider Phlebas would lend itself very well to a series.

I know it probably sounds really stupid but I feel a real sense of connection and joy when my question makes it to one of these short clips :) I don't have a large social circle (tiny in fact!) But I always tell the couple of people in it, "hey my question got picked and clipped!" Lol thank you guys :) hope everyone at tested is having a wonderful week 🙂

I would love to see an adaptation of (1) Jack Vance’s Tschai (4 movies please) or (2) Tanith Lee’s Flat Earth (5 movies) or (3) Larry Niven’s Ringworld (4 movies, maybe 5 or even 9).

The second you said "short story" I immediately thought of Arrival.

God this is the first time I have heard anyone mention “Arrival”. I will always shout praises of this in particular

It is interesting that John Huston also adapted Rudyard Kipling's short story The Man Who Would Be King into a gem of a movie.

I was watching the video and thinking that my favorite adaptation was "The Maltese Falcon" (having read the novel after seeing the movie a gazillion times), and then Adam mentioned it. Yes!

I think I have Arrival on disk. I have a long sleeve gray t-shirt with one of the Heptapod symbols printed on the front. Thanks to this video, I bought Ted's "Stories of Your Life and Others" just now. I'll watch the movie tonight and reed the story tomorrow.

Two of m favorite fantasy writers as a kid, were Piers Anthony's Xanth series. Also David Eddings Belgariad.

Jaws always comes to mind as I've preferred the film adaptation.

I gotta say, I need a Blood Meridian adaptation (preferably as a miniseries) by Robert Eggers. If I could cast The Judge too, I'd cast James Spader. I will say, I don't think it's as unfilmable as a lot of people say

The Chinese version of "Three Body" is FANTASTIC. The cinematography and storytelling is SO GOOD. (On Amazon Prime)

I was thinking of Ted Chiang’s story and Arrival before you said it. Both so good.

Thank you for being you, Adam. I’ve been in since I saw a couple of weirdos shoving pop rocks and cola into a pig’s stomach and thought, “don’t know what this is but I like it.” Very grateful for the access you’ve provided to your worldview. Inspiring, insightful, fun, and delightfully odd.

Arrival was great! I watched the whole thing sitting on the living room floor because I didn't want to pause it even to just get a chair

Bill Gibson’s NEUROMANCER is maybe my favorite book ever. What makes it difficult to adapt is that it’s not character or plot or meta insights that make it great, it’s his flow of words and language. It’s ‘just’ great writing, and that is nigh impossible to translate.

Yeah, I'd love to see _The Diamond Age_ in particular, though yeah, really any of Neal Stephenson's books, translated to screen. Though I think you answer your own question as to why they haven't been -- they're just too long to make it an easy process. That said, I think it could be done, and I think it could be epic. If they do REAMDE, though, I hope they'll shoot some of it on site at Hackerbot Labs. ;) (The Peter character is loosely based on a friend of mine from there.)

Arrival is so good! Probably my favorite sci-fi film so far this century. Also absolutely my favorite example of female STEM representation in movies in a long time (maybe ever). The leading lady gets respected as one of the best in her field, working alongside a team of all men with zero hint of gender bias. They truly listen to her as an equal, don't try to talk over/around her or mansplain anything. She also manages to avoid all the usual "smart female" Hollywood stereotypes. Not a supermodel-with-brains, goth nerd chick, klutzy but cute introvert, overpowering boss b-word, or "just one of the guys." If I'd seen it first when I was a bit younger, I can totally see myself changing paths and going into linguistics or some other field along those lines. I hope it gets shown to tons of young women (ones old enough to not get traumatized by the aliens), and inspires more of them to aim for STEM career paths.

I think the main barrier to a lot of this is the amount of story driven by inner monologue. Substantial changes are necessary for those books.

Compelling case for the two movies that were mentioned. But for my money, A Clockwork Orange is the finest novel-to-screen adaptation. It is nearly word-for-word in most of the film.

Snow Crash is still one of the craziest stories I ever read. I recently rewatched Cowboy Bebop and I think Snow Crash influenced the "Heaven's Gate" episode.

LOL Adam catching himself from swearing was great. _"There's some spectacularly weird sh-tuff..."_

Minority Report was a great short story to movie adaptation.

Love your channel adam im from south east london, to add to the novel to movie question. I read fear and loathing litrally 3 yrs before it was released and NEVER EVER thought this could be made into a film And i was not disappointed wow Ron or Royn if your American lol ❤

Cryptonomicon! Id especially love that scene when Shaftoe does a HALO jump into the island fortress in manila bay!

A Scanner Darkly is IMO a near perfect book to film adaptation

A hill I will die on, is recommending that (when possible) people watch the movie BEFORE reading the book. Because of all the editing and artistic license the producers, directors and editors need to do to make a profitable, watchable film, many people end up disappointed with the movie if they've read the book first. When you do it the other way you get to enjoy the movie as a movie, not as a watered-down, abridged, moving-pictures version of the book. If you don't have any expectations going into it, you cannot be disappointed. And then, reading the book can help you gain so much insight into the movie you saw. Motivation, backstory, internal dialogue, etc, all help bring those characters *more* to life. And you also get the missing bits that actually were unfilmable.

Now I want to write a pulp fantasy, as dark and gritty as any proper detective horror story; but with dragons.

Director John Huston's The Maltese Falcon from 1941 was the third time Dashel Hammet's novel was adapted for the big screen.

I knew about the film "The Maltese Falcon" for a long time and I think that I watched it once as a kid, when I was home from school sick. That would have been decades before I picked up a copy of the book at a library sale. I know that some people are not going to be happy when I write that the only thing that I was impressed with was how much the book description of Miles Archer read as matching Humphrey Bogart. The Sam Spade description impressed me by saying that his eyes were like a demon dreaming.

Best novel to movie adaptation I’ve seen is Silence of the Lambs. I read the book after seeing the movie and I was amazed at how close the movie had been to the book.

I’d like to see Blood Meridian adapted by the Cohen brothers. I always wanted to see a Neuromancer movie. When I first saw the trailer for the Matrix, I actually thought it was an adaptation of that novel.

I took Detective Fiction in college. The whole course was reading the story, then watching the film. It's a great way to enjoy the material, but it also illustrated how detective fiction evolved as a genre.

House of Leaves (Danielewski) directed by Aronofsky, Villeneuve, Nolan or even Studio Ghibli

Rendezvous with Rama would be a sight to behold.

It's a short early reader series and one of the proto-YA novels but Garth Nix's Seventh Tower series & Shades Children would be difficult but not unfilmable. I'd give them to Villinueve. He gets the bleakness and scale required for the settings. It's also high time for a true to tone Animorphs TV series.

Arrival is a masterpiece just like the original novel.

Hearing you talk about Raymond Chandler gave me goosebumps

I love the tip about Arrival. It is one of the most amazing sci-fi films ever, if you truly understand what sci-fi means. Thanks Adam!

Yes! Neal Stephenson's work needs to be done. Have Snow Crash done in the same style as 'Into the Spiderverse'

Yep, ‘Arrival’ fantastic movie. I hate the thought of the underlying premise of the story, but love the way they constructed and told the story. you need to watch one of the movie analysis videos to highlight how much of a work of art this movie actually is. [I need to read the short story again because the movie has eclipsed it]

I couldn’t agree more with how short stories are a much better fit for a movie script than a book is.

The wheel of time is definitely "unfilmable" if you want to do it justice, that saga is so massive and packed with so much stuff i didn't even bother with watching the amazon series because i know they could never do it justice

The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson. An incredible book.

It's funny that Adam considers Arrival a good adaptation of the source material, since it went out of its way to gut the meaning to make it palatable for a general audience. It did this by simply not discussing free will, when the central problem of the story is what "free will" means to someone who can "remember" her whole life at once. For instance, in the book, her daughter dies in her 20s during a hiking accident the mother could have prevented (not as a child of an incurable disease as in the movie) because the mother, who can "remember" her entire future, knew it was going to happen. When she explains to her husband that she knew and did nothing, he divorces her when he can't understand. This was left out of the movie because it would have been too difficult for audiences to process, as any suggestion that free will may be an illusion will throw them into a tizzy, so the only thing Villeneuve took from that aspect of the original story was the twist that the flashbacks she's remembering are of a daughter that isn't born yet. He turned a poem about time and free will into parlor trick. Pathetic..

Lots of Stephenson's work would be hard to film but I'm surprised no one has made a movie out of Zodiac. It seems like something Hollywood would be all over.

Without a shred of doubt, my favorite short story to film adaptation is Stand By Me (1986). One of my top 5 favorite films of all time, a film I've treasured since I was like 7 years old. It's based on the short story "The Body" by Stephen King. I will say that I honestly think that the film is way better.

I have learned that, for me, watching the movie and then reading the book is more entertaining. I would rather imagine the faces of the actors while reading the book, than being distracted by or disappointed that the actors don’t match what I had imagined while reading. Not to mention the book then ads content to the story, whereas the movie almost always is forced to leave content out.

Yes! I love Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon! Zodiac is another one of my comfort books. Neal is one of my favorite authors!

Book to movie? Get Shorty Best short story conversion? Secret Life of Walter Mitty Short story I would like made? The Long Walk - Stephen King, Strange Highways or Trapped by Dean Koontz Novel I want made into a movie? Lightning by Dean Koontz Books that may be too difficult but could be amazing? Elric of Melnibone book series.

The Razor's Edge a top five book and film for me. Also - I've never really thought that Slaughterhouse Five could be given an adequate film representation.

I mostly read nonfiction and my book-to-film opinions are probably not widely supported. I didn't like Kubricks Clockwork Orange that much and hated his Lolita but I loved the books and Adrian Lyne’s version of Lolita starring Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is a great film that does a wonderful job of capturing the important themes of a great book and yet the two are told from the perspective of different characters. People might have originally looked at the book and thought it wouldn't work as a play (as it was done before a film) but they figured it out. Telling the film from McMurphy’s perspective works well, for the film where you might have had to use voice-over through the whole movie to directly translate the book.

The Man with Bogart's Face was a (short) novel and a faithful movie adaptation

3:22 the guy who introduced me to Andy Weir as an author *_ABSOLUTELY HATES_* that movie because the messed up the space pirate joke.

i hated the part in the martian where mark does the iron man thing, the whole point of that part in the book was he got this far, now he needs to give his crew the reigns and let them save him

I never thought they would pull off Who Framed Roger Rabbit due to the story line and limitations of actor to cartoon characters was so involved. I also give props to Peter Jackson making the Lord of the Rings trilogy accessible to all.

I would have to have The Shawshank Redemption at or near the top of my list

Ever consider doing a channel about film, cinematography and movie making trivia?! I’d watch two hours of you just going at it for an entire movie every week. If not now… certainly once you hang your builders hat.

Not my favorite movie, but A Room With A View is the most accurate page to screen adaptation I’ve ever seen. The book is very short, so perhaps that’s why it works so well.

I'm with you Adam on any Neal Stephenson story. I think Ananthem could be amazing without requiring an astronomical budget. The character count is limited for Neal and all the crazy stuff could be done with practical effects for the most part. could even be pitched as A YA movie 😂.

♥ Drive My Car. The perfect rainy Sunday afternoon film (we get quite a few of those here n the UK).

the Dead- John Huston based on James Joyce short story... and I agree with you about Arrival. (note- one of the "worst" adaptations is Blade Runner because so much of the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" is left out, and the title isn't even in the book...)- oh, and Huston's Man Who Would Be King from Kipling short story

Man, I would LOVE a Snow Crash/The Diamond Age adaptation (both, ideally). And I think I'd rather they become two tenuously-connected streaming/TV series (with each episode in the 50-60 minute range), rather than a pair of 2.5-hour films. The first season could fit into ~6 episodes, and the second would maybe require 8 to 10, as it's a far more complex novel that is quite disconnected with modern experience at present *(with the exception of the idea of the primer itself, which is basically just a gussied-up smartphone with black box AI guiding its operation, growing in how well it can "nurture" a specific child as it gets more and more data*).* That way, there's time to let the story just breathe, so that the audience kind of gets the idea that what they're watching is just one crazy sequence of events in a world full of insane stories (from a present-day perspective). And to tell you the truth, I have spent a great deal of time imagining what these adaptations would look like (MAJOR spoilers below). In my mind, Snow Crash Episode 1 would start by briefly telling the story of a world fallen into corrupt, often lawless interregnum, tactfully incorporating real-world political polarization and extremism into the story. Indeed, L. Bob Rife could be introduced here as this fundamentalist Christian libertarian guy who played a major part in the downfall of modern society, fighting to remove or neuter the institutions that safeguard democracy, all in the name of profit. Then we'd see how the chaos of the *EXTREMELY late-stage capitalist society* is navigated by two VERY different main characters separately (Hiro as the badass pizza delivery driver, YT as the skateboarding courier), before they meet and YT helps him out. And at this point, we'd not see much of the Metaverse - the episode would contain vague references to this concept, and maybe a scene therein that doesn't contain Hiro or YT, but the meat of the explanation would be saved for the second episode). The pilot would finish with a brief scene showing us Raven on his motorcycle, but it wouldn't give away who he is (or how insane he is). Episode 2 would contain the inciting incident - Hiro's buddy becoming comatose due solely to watching something on his computer, sending YT and Hiro on their journey to unravel what is going on and why. Raven's character could be explored here, and we would briefly see Bob Rife and Raven interact. Episodes 3 and 4 would have other elements of that world brought in or developed further, as our main characters investigate the mystery (eventually getting a sample of the drug, and learning that Snow Crash isn't just a narcotic, but a computer virus). We would also spend some time in the Central Intelligence Corporation, where the stakes would get raised even higher during the interrogation of YT's mother (I think that would translate well to television). Additionally, we'd spend a lot more time with Hiro in the Metaverse (god, what a dream/nightmare for visual artists everywhere, rendering this concept into a real-life virtual reality space), jumping between first and third-person perspective (depending on what makes sense for the specific scene), while learning about the other seemingly disconnected parts of the story. Then, Episode 4 would end with YT being kidnapped, and seeing The Raft with her own eyes (and through this scene, the true scale of The Raft could be revealed to the audience, all with a massive zoom-out from above). Episodes 5 and 6 would see Hiro going to The Raft, and porting into the Metaverse, the real and virtual parts of his life being smeared together in a ludicrous fight for survival (with both real and virtual nukes involved), and we would learn what Rife is really up to, setting up an explosive conclusion. Personally, I think that such an adaptation would be an incredible way to introduce this amazing story to new audiences...and as a bonus, the hard work (i.e. the imagination it took to create this story) is already done. I won't go into how I envision _The Diamond Age: A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer,_ but trust me, I've also plotted that one out! I think it would be a lot more difficult, requiring a higher budget and Peter Jackson-esque levels of visual wizardry (like, IRL stuff, minitures and the like, not CG on a green screen), but it would definitely be possible to tell that story in an extremely-compelling manner. *Neal Stephenson is an extremely prescient author, as this is just one of the ways in which he understood what the future would look like in 30 years, way back in the mid-'90s.

My favorite novel to movie adaptation that came to mind was Guns of Navarone. It is helped by an amazing cast Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, David Niven (one of the best monologues in film history imo).

Speaking of Coppola, The Godfather is the most faithful adaptation I’ve ever read/seen.

Another shared favourite film - Drive my Car. Really awesome film. (Along with Philadelphia Story and Arrival)

I have yet to find anyone to make an HP Lovecraft movie that really embodied the spirit of the books. I’m not sure if it’s possible, because so much of the narrative experiences are within the mind of each reader, connecting the dots in their own personal way. I’m not sure if that can be replicated on screen.

My favorite "unfilmable" novel would be "Ringworld," by Larry Niven.

Most of the greatest sci-fi films of all time are short stories. I adore Arrival and am heading to the bookstore to get the novella lol

Hi Adam, a thing appeared in a dream this week that could be part of a movie and a nice prop invention. It was an exoskeleton prison. Sort of an ankle bracelet on steroids. Titanium slim design with AI surveillance systems that looks, listens, gps… at your activities. If you’re doing something, anything that goes against ones partial release conditions, it locks and restrains your movement. Many aspects of the idea need exploration but I think it has potential.

I would really love to see a Seveneves movie. And Fall; or, Dodge in Hell would be amazing--that's one I think some might consider "unfilmable". Just the way he sets up whole subplots and side narratives to establish concepts that will become important later. Stephenson is my favorite.

For myself, I have three authors works I'd love to see adapted to film: -- David Weber's "Honor Harrington" books; his first, "On Basilisk Station" would be a perfect primer for future films. -- Bill Baldwin's "Helmsman" series; I got hooked with "The Trophy", and it's classic space opera. -- Anne McCaffrey's "Dragonriders of Pern"; any would be great, but I'd be remiss if I didn't nominate "The White Dragon" or "The Harper Hall" trilogy. As an honorable mention, Tanya Huff's "The Seeker" books would be totally fun to see in movie form!