To the silver screen: is it worth the journey?

Get it? I crack me up

Yesterday the Tuesday Top Ten topic was books we'd like to see made into movies. As I hopped around people's posts I was surprised to see how many people hate to see books up on the screen. I understand sometimes books don't translate well to the screen or that particular adaptation wasn't right. Sometimes the movie is a failure, regardless of if the source material came from a book or not. And of course when you read the book you get to make all of the choices a director is now making, so no movie will be your vision of a book. But personally, that doesn't bother me so much. I know a movie won't be quite what I envision and often I like the book better, but I still love to hear that my favorite books are going to be made into a movie. Maybe I'm just optimistic.

Sure, there have been bad adaptations but to me anyway, some successful movies come to mind: The Lord of the Rings trilogy, High Fidelity, The Silence of the Lambs. Sure things were left out and altered and added. But you know what? That's OK. Sometimes things work in a book that won't work on the screen. Sometimes the pacing that works in a book isn't going to work on film. Plus Hollywood does not seem to have a problem rehashing a story over and over (and over) again so if one adaptation doesn't work, I'm never surprised to hear another one is somewhere on the horizon.

So I just want to ask those that hate film adaptations of books if there's something specific you hate? I'm not knocking your opinion on it. I just want to understand. Are there general aspects of book films you don't like? Were you burned by an awful adaptation? Is all of the fans a book gets only after they've seen the movie? Please let me know! What is it about books on film that really grinds your gears?