The King of ... Comedy? Five Cartoon Adaptations of Stephen King's Work

Stephen King is not only a great author, but a man who has given us a canvas on which we can create beautiful works of parody, and in this blog I'm going to explore five cartoons that have done adaptations of his work. I'm also going to delve into the art of the parody itself, and go off on a whole lot of tangents. And don't worry if you are not familiar with these Stephen King works or these shows, because Mandie's gonna walk you through it. 

In this little journey, I've encountered three types of parodies:

A. Drew inspiration from an existing property but can stand on its own

B. Is a very overt, often mocking parody of an existing property

C. Is a letter of love to maybe a lesser-known property that someone on the writing staff must really, really like and wants to generate more buzz about

And I'll be classifying each of the shows I discuss. Alright, enough preamble, let's dive in!

5. Thinner - American Dad

Parody type: A

Thinner is a book that King wrote in 1984 as his alter ego, Richard Bachman. I've read a few books he wrote under Richard Bachman, including this one, and don't really get why he used an alter ego, because the genre and the voice are pretty much the same. Well, I guess Rage is super banned, so I can see why he'd want to distance himself from that one, but I remember The Long Walk being pretty good, and Thinner being, well, okay.

Thinner follows the story of Billy, an overweight lawyer who accidentally hits a Romani woman with his car. A member of her family touches his arm and utters the word "thinner." Billy then begins rapidly losing weight. At first he thinks there might be a medical explanation, but as he continues to lose weight to the point that he is running out of time and his appearance is horrifying to others, he realizes he was cursed and needs to track down the Romani family. The book and the movie have slightly different endings, but in both, he is told that the curse can't be gotten rid of but must be passed to another, and he gleefully goes home to pass it on to his annoying wife.

It's an interesting side note that Stephen King has written two books about a fat man starting to rapidly, inexplicably lose weight in a manner that would lead to his demise. But 2018's Elevation is very different, with the main character not visibly changing despite his weight loss. He knows when he's going to get to zero and gravity is not going to be able to hold him to Earth, and he accepts his fate. Knowing his time is limited, he makes peace with himself and with his neighbors, and it's a really touching story. Unlike Thinner, where the solution the main character lands on is that he's going to kill his wife. 

But we're not here to talk about Stephen King's reimaginings of his own work. We're here to talk about American Dad's. Based on the source material being called Thinner, you might imagine I'm going to talk about the infamous body dysmorphia episode "The American Dad After School Special." But, no, I'm going to talk about "Old Stan on the Mountain," which was directly inspired by Thinner, even if it is the loosest parody on this list (the other four all literally say the name of the King work they are parodying).

Has Thinner been parodied in adult animation before? Yes, in a very mean-spirited Family Guy cutaway we're not going to talk about. But in American Dad, it's the premise of the entire episode. Stan goes really overboard insulting an old man who is taking too long to check out at a store, basically berating him for being old, and the old man lays a hand on him and cursed him. Rather than rapidly dropping the pounds, though, Stan starts rapidly adding the years.

"Oh, good," you think. "They're going the non-racist route with this adaptation."

Just wait.

Stan decides that to lift the curse, he needs to climb a mountain. And also, at one point, decides he needs to kill his son, but he falls asleep mid-stab because he's old, so Steve is fine. The curse is not lifted until Stan is berated for being old by a stranger and realizes that he has just done something incredible and that old people are useful. So, the curse is lifted, but Stan ... doesn't go completely back to normal. Let's just say he offended two people the day that he was cursed. Great job, American Dad.

It's a common theme in stories like Thinner that people in a position of power take that power for granted and when they offend or hurt someone they see as below them, it comes back to bite them tenfold. In Thinner, a lawyer with a pretty easy life is able to get himself off when he hits an elderly Romani woman with his car. In this American Dad episode, eternally pompous Stan thinks it's fine to publicly berate someone who is older than him. And I'm also reminded of the movie Drag Me to Hell, very thematically similar to Thinner, in which the main character doesn't give an old woman an extension on her loan, even though she could have, and as a result gets cursed. They're all cautionary tales about relying too much on privilege.

Isn't it weird, though, that of those three fictional characters, American Dad's Stan seems to be the only one to have learned a lesson?

4. Gerald's Game - Solar Opposites

Parody type: C

You might think that from Solar Opposites, I would choose "The Fog of Pupa," which is a parody of King's The Mist. But, I've already written about The Mist. You know what I haven't written about? Gerald's Game, one of the most harrowing movies I've ever seen. During the climax of the movie, I had to get up and walk out of the room. Except, I was living in a studio apartment that was just one room, so I just kind of ran into the wall.

In the universe of Solar Opposites, apparently everyone is familiar with Gerald's Game to the point it is commonly used as a verb, but for those of you who are not familiar, here goes. Gerald and his wife Jessie are trying to spice up their dying marriage by going to a remote lake house and trying some freaky stuff, the first thing being handcuffing Jessie to the bed. Jessie balks once handcuffed, and they have a struggle that results in Gerald having a heart attack and dying on top of her. So now Jessie is handcuffed to the bed and alone ... except she's not alone. There's a horrifying other presence in the lake house. As Jessie attempts to figure out a way to escape, she remembers childhood trauma and also hallucinates her dead husband guiding her.

The book Gerald's Game was long thought to be unfilmable, and, having seen the movie, I'd think it would be impossible to do a comedy parody. But, Solar Opposites did it. And, unlike when they did The Mist and they never really said "The Mist," when someone first mentioned mist Korvo said, "No, it's a fog," they constantly say the words "Gerald's Game" in the episode "The Earth Rake."

For those unfamiliar with Solar Opposites, the main characters are four aliens on a mission forced to live as a family (think 3rd Rock from the Sun as a cartoon), and despite not having normal human genitalia, these aliens are THIRSTY. No one is hornier, though, than Terry. He has a lot of romantic encounters over the course of the show, but most of his lust is for his mission partner Korvo.

In this episode, Terry has been promoted at work and Korvo is jealous, and also thinks his mission partner, who is, kind of dumb, is going to screw up an important business pitch meeting. So Korvo goes to visit Terry just before the meeting, says it's so sexy that he's in a position of power now, and they should go fool around in the hotel room. He then handcuffs Terry to the bed.

Terry: Wait, are you Gerald's Gaming me?

Korvo: You're the one who taught me to use mid-tier Stephen King plots to get what I want.

Korvo doesn't die, he just leaves Terry there and goes to replace him at the meeting. Terry, meanwhile, uses his foot to call the hotel receptionist.

Terry: Help me, I've been Gerald's Gamed!

Receptionist: If we sent help for everyone who got Gerald's Gamed, we'd have no time to sniff your boxers.

But, a hotel employee is sent, except he didn't take his meds today and ran up the stairs while eating a giant sandwich, and immediately has a heart attack and dies on top of Terry, who cries, "This is now exactly like the poster for Gerald's Game!" The next time we cut to Terry, he is covered with a multitude of dead bodies, because everyone who comes to see him ends up dying directly on top of him from "tripping or heart attacking or peanut allerging" and the weight of the bed is so great that it crashes through the floor into the room below him, which is occupied by another person handcuffed to a bed. Terry asks, "Are you being Gerald's Gamed too?" When the person nods, he says, "We're Bachman buddies!"

Have you been keeping track of the number of times people said "Gerald's Game?" I think I got most but not all of them. And also, the mention of both Stephen King (so you know this is a Stephen King thing) and his alter ego Bachman. Whoever wrote this episode is a Stephen King NERD who maybe someone owed a special favor. Here's what it looked like in the writing room:

Staff Writer: I really think the people want more Gerald's Game. I think we need a Gerald's Game parody.

Head Writer: You are always going on about that movie that was on Netflix several years ago. I don't think people will get it.

Staff Writer: They will if we say "Gerald's Game" in every other sentence and also make sure we mention both names of the person who wrote it. The world needs to know how good this movie is. Can we also mention that it's on Netflix?

Head Writer: No! We're on Hulu. We're definitely not doing this.

Staff Writer: I pulled your son out of a burning car

Head Writer: Ok, we'll do everything but the Netflix thing

This may seem like a critique of this Solar Opposites episode, but it is a loving one, because this hypothetical staff writer is, let's face it ... me. We love to share things that we love with other people, and this is exactly the type of comedy I write. Have you read my book American Crime Beauty Horror Story? Of course you haven't, unless you're my parents, who are also the only people who read my blog, so of course you have. It's FULL of media references and they range from widely known to pretty durn obscure, and my hope is that readers would be enjoying my book SO DANG MUCH that they'd want to at least Google what I was talking about. I've done stuff like that before. For example, when I edited my good friend Paul's book Yes And (Ish), there were a lot of references to the movie City Lights, and I watched it for the first time so I could understand the references, and I loved it. Maybe other people will watch it after reading his book, and maybe they'll love it too.

[buy my book]

3. Needful Things - Rick and Morty

Parody Type: A

Don't worry, this is the last fairly under-the-radar Stephen King work I'm going to discuss. You'll definitely be familiar with #2 and #1.

I myself have read Needful Things and seen the movie, but it was a long time ago and I don't remember either very well, it's not one of my favorite Stephen King properties by a long shot, so this is going to be a really brief recap. Some mysterious dude named Leland shows up in Castle Rock, Maine, and opens a store called "Needful Things." It's just a random junk/antique store kind of like the one that STEPHEN KING HIMSELF is operating in THE BEST CAMEO EVER in IT: CHAPTER TWO, but everyone in town who goes into the store finds something that seems specially meant for them. And it's incredibly cheap. They buy their items, and they love them. The stupid, fat mom character (a lot of Stephen King books have those) buys, I think sunglasses, that make her think she is having sex with Elvis Presley. The religious fanatic (a lot of Stephen King books have those) buys a piece of wood she thinks is from Noah's Ark. The main character's love interest, who has arthritis in her hands, buys a pendant that makes her arthritis better (it's full of spiders). But the thing is, they're paying with THEIR SOULS. Once they buy an item, Leland takes control of them and turns the city into a den of chaos and violence. 

Needful Things could be read as a commentary on greed, and on people believing things that logically could not be true, just because they want so badly to believe. The Rick and Morty episode "Something Ricked This Way Comes" touches on this in their A plot, but arguably much more in the B plot. Don't worry, we'll get into that.

"Something Ricked This Way Comes" doesn't come right out and say what it's parodying, like my #4, #2, and #1 entries, but it's pretty obvious. Summer gets a job working in a Needful Things-esque shop for a guy named "Mr. Needful" who is actually the devil. Since the book Needful Things came out in 1991 and I'd guess most Rick and Morty fans weren't even born then, I'm not sure how many viewers knew this was a parody, but I sure did. Everything in Mr. Needful's store is free (how does he pay Summer, who is his only employee?) but comes with a curse. There's the typewriter that automatically generates bestselling crime novels but then the crimes happen in real life, there's the face cream that makes you beautiful but also blind, there are the shoes that make you the fastest runner on earth but you have to run until you die.

One day, Morty's unlucky-in-love math teacher comes into the store trailed by three women, complaining, "The aftershave you gave me to make me irresistible to women also made me impotent!" Rick then shows up and jabs him with a needle, saying that this serum should take care of it. He's now un-cursed and he and the ladies head out to have presumably a good time. 

And now the jig is up. A woman comes in and grabs a bunch of items from Mr. Needful's store, saying, "All of this is free, right?"

Mr. Needful says, ominously, "Yes, you don't pay for these items ... with money."

The woman responds, "Oh, yeah, I know. You pay with the curses, right? That's fine, I'll just get the curses removed at the place across the street." And we see that Rick has opened up a curse-purge shop across the street from Mr. Needful's store.

Summer sides with Mr. Needful rather than with her grandfather (granted, Rick doesn't treat her very well) because Mr. Needful makes her feel important and she turns a blind eye to the evil. That kind of captures the message I think King was going for in Needful Things, but in my opinion, the B plot does so even more.

Jerry, the father of the Sanchez-Smith family, is an idiot, and everyone knows it, so any time he is allowed to feel important or superior, it goes right to his head. He's also constantly butting heads with his father-in-law, Rick. Rick hates Jerry for being too stupid for his daughter, and Jerry hates genius scientist Rick for making him feel stupid in comparison. So when Morty needs to do a science fair project, Jerry insists that he help Morty out as a father-son activity. And he decides they are going to make a solar system model, with the nine planets. Morty points out that Pluto is not a planet. Jerry flips out.

Jerry insists that he learned in third grade that Pluto is a planet, so it must be one. Granted, he has extra reason to be upset about being corrected by his son because he is always made to feel like the stupid one in the family, but this is just an example of something that often gets to me: people clinging to things that are not correct just because "that's what they've always been told."

There are some really minor examples of this that I've encountered, and some really major ones that the world has encountered. For example, a couple times when coworkers at various jobs have used the phrase "Central Standard Time" and we're actually in Central Daylight Time, I've attempted to educate them so if they are working with a client who is a freak like me, they won't sound unprofessional, and told them, "Central Time" is the easiest way to go. I've sometimes gotten the response, "I've always said Central Standard Time, and I'm going to keep saying it, it sounds smarter."

And then when the Sears Tower changed to the Willis Tower, Chicago practically went up in flames (again). So many people were getting mad when it was referred to as "Willis Tower." They were like, "I've lived in Chicago my whole life and it's always been the Sears Tower and no one will ever change that."

Me (in my head, I'd never address this one out loud): I mean, if you say Sears Tower, I'll know what you're talking about, but people younger than me might not. It's owned by a different company now. You shouldn't take it as a personal offense when people call it what it is called.

These are the kind of change averse people that I can see going into that Starbucks that used to be a Pizza Hut and having a conversation like this:

Customer: I want a pizza

Starbucks Employee: This is a coffee shop, we don't have pizza. This space was bought by a different franchise

Customer: NO IT WASN'T! I HAVE LIVED IN THIS CITY MY WHOLE LIFE AND THIS SPACE IS INHERENTLY A PIZZA HUT AND ALWAYS WILL BE! YOU ARE WRONG! MAKE ME A PIZZA OR I WILL TURN YOU INTO ONE!

That's basically how Jerry reacts to Pluto not being a planet. As Morty miserably works on the solar system model, Jerry is on the phone with NASA, screaming, "I want to file a declaration that Pluto is a planet! If that doesn't happen, my son is going to fail his science class, and I'm suing you first!"

Things take a turn when we find out the inhabitants of Pluto had been monitoring his conversation with NASA, and they beam him and Morty to Pluto, where he is celebrated "Earth scientist" Jerry and is hob nobbing with Pluto's wealthiest, being celebrated for defending its planet status. It goes right to his head and he smugly soaks it all up, dropping little gems like "My very eager mother just served us nine pickles, and guess what the pickles is. And it's Pluto" and getting wild applause.

One of the Plutonians, though, pulls Morty aside and tells him that Jerry's message is actually incredibly harmful, because Pluto is shrinking due to the wealthy corporations drilling plutonium and it's causing Plutoquakes and sinkholes, and if they think Pluto is a planet they'll just keep going. The wealthy Plutonians are celebrating Jerry because promoting him benefits them.

Plutonian: He could cost us billions of lives.

Morty: The thing is, though, my dad is really insecure-

Plutonian: Is everyone in your family an idiot?

Morty: Well, for sure me and my dad are, but-

So, in a way, both the A plot and the B plot in this episode reflect the themes of Needful Things. The perils of greed, and the perils of believing something that's too good to be true, just out of willful ignorance. Good thing that doesn't happen in real life.

2. The Shawshank Redemption - Family Guy

Parody Type: B

I don't have to recap The Shawshank Redemption, do I? Everyone's seen this movie, right? And I'm going to be perfectly honest, I never want to watch this movie again. Or The Green Mile. I don't even like talking about the latter, but the first time I saw The Shawshank Redemption, I was I think 12 years old and I knew nothing about the movie, so everything that happened was a surprise. I know the part that killed a lot of people was "Brooks was here," but the part that shocked me and cut me absolutely to the core was the murder of Tommy. I was miserable for the rest of the movie, until the, well, redemptive ending, which made me think, maybe I did like this movie? But I think anyone who cites this as their favorite movie is looking to experience misery and then achieve catharsis at the end, much like Andy DuFresne.

There are plot holes in this movie, and I've never read the book, so maybe they're explained in the book. One is that Andy's escape defies the laws of physics. Peter points this out in this clip: 

Not only would it be impossible for him to reattach the poster after his final escape, but he'd have to be detaching and reattaching his poster every day for years and have the poster appear perfectly taut and unwrinkled for no one to suspect anything. And this was a terrifyingly strict prison with close surveillance and one where Andy spent a lot of time in solitary. 

The thing is, some of Stephen King's stories just aren't meant to be plausible, they're meant to be affecting stories that provide escapism and, in some cases, catharsis. He's very good at making us emotionally bond with his characters. I'd only gotten a few chapters into Firestarter, for example, when I was like, if anything happens to this little girl and her dad, I'm going to go all Firestarter and burn down the horror section of the library. And. Don't. Even. Get. Me. Started. On. The. Dark. Tower.

The Family Guy episode "Three Kings" parodies Stand By Me, Misery, and The Shawshank Redemption. The parody of Shawshank Redemption actually wasn't as mean-spirited as I remembered, but it did point out some plot holes, and make fun of some aspects of the movie that were actually pretty serious, or tragic. There was no Brooks and there was no Tommy (a good thing, plus this was just 1/3 of an anthology episode so they didn't have the time) but they definitely covered Andy's assault by Bogs and Bogs' subsequent crippling. Though, crippling Joe in every single anthology or flashback episode is something the writers like to do.

Watching parodies like this kind of begs the question, when does a parody cross the line of lovingly roasting or being mean-spirited? I'm going to say that "Three Kings" sides on "lovingly roasting" (other than that joke they made about Joaquin Phoenix during the Stand By Me segment, which was really out of line). Family Guy can be very mean-spirited, but they also poke fun at properties that the writers clearly love. The best example of a loving roast would be their Star Wars trilogy. Family Guy is clearly in love with Star Wars, but they definitely pointed out plenty of plot holes or plot elements that didn't make that much sense. 

Some of their parodies, though, are just straight-up bashing the source material. For example, in the episode "American English," where they parody The Great Gatsby, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Of Mice and Men, they are really just trying to put all the faults of those books on display without really showing any merit (at one point in the Great Gatsby segment, Stewie says, "Yeah, I'm starting to think this isn't a very good book). I feel like they were much kinder to King.

Speaking of that episode, I've never read Of Mice and Men. So I got none of the references in that segment. Sure, it entertained me, it's Stewie and Chris and the other characters I love playing the parts, but I felt like everything was a nod to something that went over my head. That's kind of how Family Guy does parodies. And that brings me to the main point I wanted to make when I started writing this blog - what makes a perfect parody. In my opinion, it would be a parody that gives some winks to fans of the original property but also could be appreciated by someone who didn't even know it was a parody of something (way more on that to come). Does Family Guy's Shawshank parody work if you have never seen the movie? I would have no way of knowing. There are definitely some jokes you wouldn't get, like why is Andy calling the warden "obtuse," and it wouldn't be as funny that rather than playing opera music over the sound system and giving everyone a spiritual awakening, Andy plays "Hollaback Girl." In the original movie, Red, our narrator character, recalls something like, "To this day I have no idea what those French ladies were singing about, but it was beautiful." In Family Guy, he says something like, "To this day I have no idea what a Hollaback Girl is. I imagine it is a filthy thing, crawling with disease."

So, yeah. This segment is really funny. But how funny would it be if you hadn't seen the movie? If you haven't seen the movie, please go back in time and erase your memory of everything I just said so I didn't spoil anything for you, and then watch the Family Guy episode and get back to me.

1. The Shining - The Simpsons

Parody Type: A +

I know you might think for The Simpsons I would choose the episode "Not IT," a parody of the movie IT, a movie I cherish deeply. But, that episode came out two years ago and I've been watching the IT movies pretty much my whole life, so I couldn't go into that one with a blank slate. So I'm going to talk about a different King parody, one that I watched and re-watched throughout my childhood, and that I loved, despite knowing literally nothing about the source material.

Years after I first saw the "Shinning" segment on "Treehouse of Horror V," I finally watched The Shining as a teenager, and I didn't care for it. I've heard the book is very different and much better, but I didn't care for the movie so I never felt like reading the book. I would rather just embrace the Simpsons adaptation. Sometimes, an adaptation (see: Wicked) or even a parody (see: this episode and, even more so, another one I'll discuss in a moment) can actually replace the source material, not just in your heart but in general cultural consciousness.

I guess I should address The Shining. I don't know if I have to recap this one, either, partly because I don't really feel like it, and partly because it's been parodied in both The Simpsons and Family Guy countless times. A guy named Jack brings his family to a hotel where he is assigned to be the winter caretaker, a hotel where the last caretaker went nuts and killed his family. Jack starts seeing ghosts, goes nuts, and tries to kill his wife and his son, who has a "shining" (mind-reading) connection with the head chef at the hotel. He goes on a rampage with an axe but fails to kill his family and freezes to death.

Again, I hear the book is a lot better. But you know what's really better? The Simpsons. This episode is funny to the point where I wasn't even sure if I wanted to see the original, because I'd rather this be my source material.

I guess, as a kid, I kind of knew it was a parody of something, based on the below exchange.

Willie: You've got the shinning!

Bart: You mean shining.

Willie: Quiet! You want to get sued?

But there's another episode of The Simpsons that I grew up with, one of my favorite episodes, one of a lot of people's favorite episodes, that I reached adulthood not knowing it was a parody of anything. That episode is "Cape Feare."

"Cape Feare" is the best parody of all time. Yes, people who have seen the movie Cape Feare would appreciate all the nods to the movie, but it's, just, it's so hilarious. There's so many ridiculously funny scenes that play to any audience. This was my friend's young daughter's favorite episode because of the scene where Sideshow Bob steps on all the rakes. And, we have evidence that this episode has eclipsed its source material in popularity and cultural ubiquitousness, that being the fantastic play Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play. 

In the first act of this post-apocalyptic play, a group of survivors are huddled together around a fire, trying to distract themselves from the horrors happening around them. To find comfort in nostalgia, they try to recall a TV episode that all of them remember, and they start piecing together the plot of the Simpsons episode "Cape Feare." They're not reminiscing about the movie it was based on, but about the episode. (The playwright did some research and this was the TV episode that the most people she surveyed remembered.) And, throughout the next two acts, you find that human culture has been completely rebuilt around a mythology based on The Simpsons and, specifically, "Cape Feare." 

That is the power of a good parody. I finally watched the movie Cape Fear two years ago, and I kept thinking, "oh, that's why The Simpsons did that" or, "oh, The Simpsons did a great job turning that into a joke." But, you don't need to even know Cape Fear is a movie to LOVE that episode, much like you don't need to even know The Shining is a movie to LOVE "The Shinning."

And that's my journey through the land of Stephen King being parodied in adult animation. I'll probably have to write a follow-up whenever Bob's Burgers does that parody of Cell where Tina finally gets a cell phone and everyone turns into zombies and murders each other. I think I heard that was in the works. Maybe that's just a dream I had.

Five Songs That Make Mandie Stray From Her Fierce Allegiance to Her Chosen Genre

 If you've ever been to something like a work outing, a blind date, or a big party where you only know one person, you're familiar with the concept of small talk. And a question that often comes up is "So, what kind of music do you like?" And the answer is often, "Oh, I listen to just about anything."

But my answer is not that. My answer is "I like alternative rock and emo rock that was released in a date range between approximately 1994 and 2012."

If you are one of those people who will listen to just about everything, I envy you. You must get so much more joy out of life than I do. And actually be able to go on road trips without making the other people in the car mad. Because other than some people like Green Day after they went kind of mainstream, and I got my roommates into Ludo one glorious summer, no one likes the music I do.

But, you know, I'm not completely close-minded. Occasionally, a song comes along that steals my heart and makes me stray from my genre. Even if it's the only song I would ever, ever listen to by this artist and have no interest in pursuing the rest of their oeuvre. Here are my top five diamonds in the rough. Some of this will get kind of personal.

5. Love the Way You Lie - Eminem Feat. Rihanna

Just gonna stand there and hear me cry
That's alright, because I love the way you lie

I feel like everyone who's not an Eminem fan has an Eminem song that is a guilty pleasure. For most people it's "Lose Yourself." I remember going on a road trip with my friend Corinne once and she was going through her music library, most of which was stuff I'd expect, and then she said, "Oh, and believe it or not, I have one rap song."

Me: Is it "Lose Yourself" by Eminem?

Corinne: ...Yes

If it's not "Lose Yourself," it's usually "Stan" by Eminem featuring Dido. And oh boy, do I have a lot to say about that song. The guy who drove me to school every day sophomore year of high school was into Eminem and for several weeks just played this song on an ENDLESS loop. I mean, yes, it's very interesting, it has Dido in it, and it's a departure from what I thought of Eminem at the time was just that he was an endless self-promoter obsessed with the fact that he is Slim Shady and has a cult following. Though, that's kind of what this song is about too, because the premise is that this superfan is so upset that Slim Shady took a long time to write back to his letters that he kills himself and his pregnant girlfriend. And then at the end of the music video, you find out Stan's little brother is turning into him, it's super cheesy. But, a particular celebrity I "stan" managed to fix that song and create my favorite Christmas video of all time:

Is there anything Pete Davidson can't make better? No. Was he very late to the party doing a pitch-perfect parody of the "Stan" music video? Yes, but, to be fair, he was probably like 8 when that song came out. Seriously, watch the video. It parodies not only the music video, but the Grammy performance when Elton John stepped in for Dido, and the cameo by Eminem at the end ... it's ... just every second of this video is worth a year of life.

But, neither of those are the song I'm going to talk about. I'm here to talk about "Love the Way You Lie," a song about a tumultuous but inescapable love-hate relationship. The music video features affecting performances by Dominic Monaghan (of Lord of the Rings, Lost, and FlashForward fame) (does anyone remember FlashForward?) and Megan Fox (of quitting the Transformers franchise fame). And even though it features one of the stupidest lyrics in existence (Now she's leaving out the window, guess that's why they call it window pane), several of the lyrics resonate with me. I have been in a situation before where I chose to live on beautiful lies, and I'd imagine a lot of us have.

4. Gangsta's Paradise - Coolio feat. L.V.

They say I gotta learn, but nobody's going to teach me
If they don't understand, how can they reach me?

I'm not going to lie about my second rap entry on this list. Unlike three of the other four songs, I have no emotional connection with  these lyrics. Despite what popular opinion would have you believe, I'm not living in gangsta's Paradise. I just have a lot of fun memories associated with this song, and as a result I still know pretty much all the words and will start doing an enthusiastic but terrible rap any time I hear it.

I didn't listen to a whole lot of music growing up other than Andrew Lloyd Weber and Sandi Patti, because my dad was afraid of music that was not classical music and my mom liked musicals a lot. Occasionally, like, The Carpenters or something would be thrown in there. So when my sister and I used our allowance to buy a bunch of random CD's, some of which were Grammy nominee anthologies, an extra dimension was added to our world. One of the songs we discovered was "Gangsta's Paradise," and, I mean, this song is not hard to rap. It's slow paced and really easy to understand. We sang along with it. We were RAPPERS, dude.

This reminds me of one of my favorite conversations my family has had, after my sister got back from a school trip.

Mollie: Ash said I was the most gangsta person on the geology trip.

Me: That's impressive!

Dad: What's gang ... sta?

Me: Especially considering the stock you come from.

3. Back to Black - Amy Winehouse

We only said goodbye with words, I died a hundred times

You go back to her, and I go back to

Amy Winehouse, a tragic member of the 27 Club, had incredible talent. Like Ariana Grande, she had a powerhouse voice and knew how to use it, seeming to possess talent well beyond her years. Like Taylor Swift, she connected with her fans by making some of her songs semi-autobiographical. 

And I really don't like any of her songs other than this one. I am more than willing to admit she's talented, but it's just not my genre. When "Rehab" was getting regular radio play, I wished I could just somehow launch myself into an alternate universe where that song did not exist.

But then there's "Back to Black." It's a haunting song that gets under my skin and just stays there. It so perfectly captures the pain and simultaneous numbness that comes from going through a breakup and realizing you have nothing. Amy Winehouse, like Eminem, was in a tumultuous on and off relationship. This song was written from a place of misery, and in my opinion (granted I am not familiar with her entire oeuvre) it is her masterpiece.

It's unfortunately common for this to be the case. Pink has said she writes her best songs when she is unhappy. In the episode of Family Guy where Taylor Swift finds happiness dating Chris, her fans boo her for singing a happy song ("I'm pretty and I'm rich and I'm in love, me, Taylor") and say, "We only like you when you're miserable!" And, then, there's Paramore. This is a girl-fronted emo band that did kind of a shift when Hayley Williams decided to do a happy song about her then five-year relationship and how much she loved her boyfriend called "I'm Into You." I remember while waiting to see some non-Paramore emo concert with my friend Keith, I told him "Paramore is bad now" and played that song for him, and he responded, "They need to stop being a band."

I don't know what this says about us as people, but I think there are two kinds of fanbases. There are the people who are like, "This song is fun and I'm going to listen to it and have a good time" and there are fanbases who are like, "I'm going to listen to this song to get all my feelings out and make me feel like I'm going to be okay because these celebrities have had these feelings too." I mean, I'm sure we all want Hayley to be happy, just keep playing the old stuff, alright? My karaoke go-to may be My Chemical Romance's "I'm Not Okay," but I sincerely want nothing more for my man Gerard Way than for him to be way better than okay. Wow, I went off on a massive tangent. At least I didn't bring up Pete Davidson. Wait ... oops.

2. Take Me to Church - Hozier

I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies, tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife

Offer me that deathless death, oh God, let me give you my life

Who would have thought I'd become obsessed with a song by a folk singer, when I feel like alternative rock music was turning more folk-y around the time this song came out and it was killing my genre. So many bands I actively hate from around that time because they were destroying rock as I knew it. Mumford and Sons is not something you can headbang to. There goes my youth, I guess.

But this song is really, really freaking good.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Hozier fan and, just like all the other entries on this list, I don't want to listen to any of his other stuff. He was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live this weekend and I kind of groaned. At one point, I yelled at the TV, "Play your one good song!" But, he didn't, probably because this song is ten years old.

But I really love this song. It's so wrenching and powerful. I can't entirely identify. I can identify with struggling to have faith, and that could be a completely separate blog post I'm never going to write, but I've never been part of a church and had to deal with the self-flagellation the narrator in this song is going through.

It's just so incredibly soulful. In 2015, I went to the Lagunitas Beer Circus (it was a thing and it was wild), and there was a woman playing a piano that was spinning around in the air who did a cover of this song and maybe it was the beer but I fell even more in love with this song than I already was.

Anyway. When I want to feel feelings, I "Take Me to Church." Just not any of the other Hozier stuff.

1. I'm So Sad - 3OH!3

It's not so bad, if I don't try to fight it back

But I'm so sad, I'm so sad

3OH!3 was a hip-hop? rap? duo that for the most part flew under my radar in the 2000's, and when I did notice them, they were annoying, like a fly you would swat away and forget about.

But then, in 2021, as the world was reeling from quarantine, a beautiful thing happened to my YouTube recommended videos. A music video called "I'm So Sad" descended from heaven into my computer and taught me that life is worth living again. Quivering in rapture, I wondered who these minstrels were who had not only serenaded me but given a hug to my very soul. Then I looked them up and I was like, oh, it's those obnoxious guys. Who struck me as so sophomoric you didn't know if it was supposed to be ironic and actually very profound and you're just not smart enough to realize it, which is kind of how I felt about Blink-182. So when YouTube tried to show me more of their videos, I was instantly like, NO THANKS, but I still watch this video. Pretty often. It's become a member of my family. 

Are these "budget Nick Lacheys," to quote the song, really so sad? No one can ever really know what someone else is going through. Is this song their way of screaming into the void? I'm reminded of a minor character from Mrs. Dalloway who felt she had no outlet and would just scream internally "But I am so unhappy!" as if that would lead someone to come and help it get better. Yeah. I just compared 3OH!3 to Virginia Woolf. Deal with it.

But, they are successful pop stars, you might say. Or, were successful pop stars. Or, they exist. Why are they not happy? But one of the lyrics in the song is, "And if I had, all the **** I wish I had I'd still be sad, I'm so sad." They are sad. And they don't know why. They are all of us. They are everything.

Some people just don't work out until they become emo. Like Tobey McGuire as Spiderman (the emo sequence in the third movie is the only part of that trilogy I liked). Or Adam Sandler, who I thought was a plague upon humanity until I saw the movie Funny People where he's kind of an emo. Who should go emo next? I feel like I should get an emo ray gun and go out and use it to emo-rapture all the musical acts I can't stand. And then we will all get in a kick line like in the end of the "I'm So Sad" video, and vomit smiley faces like they do in the music video, and have a good cry, and become one.

Anyway. "I'm So Sad." Great song. Please don't ever perform any song other than this one ever again, guys.

What Was Your Name Again? A List of Forgotten Fictional Characters

Sometimes, a fictional character just doesn't work out, and the author realizes they need to rewrite their character, or cut them out entirely, or simply forgets that they exist. This blog post is dedicated to those characters. 

10. Charlie's Sisters - It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

The season 16 episode of "Always Sunny" where it is revealed that Charlie has two sisters confused a lot of people. However, the creators of the show maintain that Charlie always had sisters and people just forgot about them.

In the season 1 episode "Charlie Got Molested," Charlie's family has an intervention that introduces us to his Uncle Jack and also features two young women in the background. In season 16's "Frank Shoots Every Member of the Gang," Charlie reunites with his sisters. This seems to completely come out of the blue as the sisters have not been mentioned since, and Charlie's mom seems very focused on a family consisting only of herself, Charlie, and her brother, Uncle Jack. It's a safe guess that the creators completely forgot Charlie had sisters, were rewatching their show for the podcast they now do about it, and remembered that they exist, so now Bunny and Candy are back in the picture. 

9. Half the Cast - Sex Education

What do you do when half of your characters quit a show after season 3 and you were planning to have a season 4? 

Well, in this case, I'm guessing they knew well in advance that several lead actors were leaving, and just rapidly rewrote the ending to season 3. I won't give away too many spoilers, but I'm just incredibly curious as to how this played out. I just looked up the 7 (!) actors that resigned after season 3, and only one of them lists another project they were going on to star in. Losing half the cast is part of why season 4 was so sloppy (oh yeah, [insert character's name here] goes to a different school now), even if we did have a few great moments from Emma Mackey, who was cast in the movie Barbie strictly because people were talking online about how she looks like Margot Robbie, but when they brought her onset they realized they don't look that much alike and cut her scene. Best of luck to you in the future, Emma.

8. Queen Amidala - Star Wars

"Whenever you notice something like this, the Force did it."

Let me let The Simpsons explain:

This inclusion is based on a single line, but I find it hard to believe one of the greatest sci-fi franchises, with one of the most frightening fanbases, could slip up this bad. In the movie Return of the Jedi, Princess Leia says that she remembers her mother, and that she was beautiful, and sad. In the prequel that came out several years later, Revenge of the Sith, we see that Queen Amidala died in childbirth while having Luke and Leia. Leia could not possibly have remembered her mother. 

I looked up some online threads that contended Leia remembered her mother due to the Force, but why would Luke not remember her? The Force was stronger with him than it was with Leia. I'm going to back out of this before I get into a fight I'm not really equipped for, but it feels like the prequel filmmakers ... kind of forgot something.

I mean, no, they didn't. The Force did it.

7. Eddie's Sister - The Dark Tower series

To be fair, Stephen King spent decades writing these books. And I read most of them in a spree.

But he totally forgot one of his character's names.

Eddie is the junkie with a heart of gold we meet in the second book, The Drawing of the Three. He was supposed to be played by Aaron Paul in the movie adaptation, but, hey, I did a whole podcast episode about that, it didn't happen.

Eddie's sister, Gloria, got hit by a car as a child, which fractured his family and led to him and his brother becoming drug addicts. This was brought up often in the earlier books in the series.

Then Stephen King took a break.

And then he finally got back to it, and there's another flashback where Eddie is thinking about his sister and reflecting on how "Selena never stood a chance."

I remember reading this scene and being like, what, really? You could have gone back to any of your previously published books and found out what her name was, but ... you know what ... it ends in the letter "A" and that's fine. He wrote the last three books at some kind of fever pitch, with the Hamilton-esque energy of someone who writes like he's running out of time. Like someone who just got hit by a car. And decides to make that part of the books, as well. No time to look up kid's name. No one will notice, right?

6. Libby - Lost

There are a lot of unsolved mysteries in Lost, but for me one of the biggest ones is what they were planning to do with Libby. (SPOILERS AHEAD!) Libby was a psychiatrist who seemed committed to helping everyone on the island, but especially Hurley, who had previously been in a mental hospital. Hurley was a fan favorite so Libby quickly became a fan favorite as well when the two started a relationship. Then, in a flashback scene at the end of one episode, we see that Libby was in the mental hospital at the same time that Hurley was. Not as a doctor ... but as a patient. I remember being stunned by that stinger ending.

And ... they just never return to that. Libby is very abruptly, randomly killed. The character Michael (best known for yelling "WAAAALLLLLT" a lot) had just shot Ana Lucia, and Libby had just walked in to get blankets for a picnic with Hurley and witnessed it, so he shot her too. 

There are a whole lot of rumors about why they killed Libby when her plot was just starting to thicken. One is that both Ana Lucia and Libby were fired from the show because both actresses got DUIs, but I don't think you get fired from a show for a DUI unless you're on, like, Sesame Street or something, and the writers state that they had planned both characters' deaths well in advance of the DUIs. I'm not sure if I buy that, though. And that brings me to the next theory. That they weren't going to kill Libby, but everyone hated Ana Lucia, so they had to kill another character for the episode to have emotional impact, and Libby was just ... the easiest character for them to forget about.

As a side note, I actually liked Ana Lucia for the same reason a lot of people hated her - she slept with Sawyer, and I thought the insufferable Jack-Kate-Sawyer love triangle might finally end. I wish I could say it's the most ridiculous love triangle Evangeline Lilly has ever been the center of, considering it involves her and Sawyer being locked in a cage together at one point and forced to eat animal crackers and having sex so that Jack can watch (is that when the show jumped the shark?) but it's not, because it's a complete tie with the Hobbit movies, where Evangeline is forced to choose between the typically emotionless Legolas (Orlando Bloom really needed work I guess) and a dwarf who introduces himself to her by telling her to put her hand down his pants. Yikes. 

What was I talking about again? Oh, yeah. Libby. Gone too soon, always still a mystery, one of many the Lost writers decided to sweep under the rug.

Believe it or not, I loved this show.

5. The Hulk - Marvel Comics

I'm going to have the least to say about this one because I've never seen any Hulk movies or read the comics, but I heard about this and I just think it's a funny story. Apparently, the Hulk's alter ego name was originally "Bruce Banner," but Stan Lee kind of forgot about that and started calling him "Bob Banner." It's a good thing that comic book nerds would not pick up on little details like that and start to riot, right? No such luck, so the issue was resolved by saying his name was officially "Robert Bruce Banner."

I mean, I know there are some people who go by their middle names, my grandfather for one, but I don't know that I've met too many that alternate between first and middle name, unless they are characters in a domestic thriller. Which I read a lot of. ("What? Marie is actually Sally Marie, who I was mean to in high school? No wonder she applied to be my nanny so she could steal my husband!") Is that what's going on here? Is Marvel Comics a domestic thriller? Should I read it?

4. Lisa's Friends - The Simpsons

Bart constantly has friends, but when Lisa gets a friend or love interest, it's usually contained to one episode. Sometimes, the characters continue to be used in the background in group scenes. But sometimes, they even mess that up. Janey, for instance, is sometimes shown in Lisa's class and sometimes in Bart's. Did Janey get skipped ahead? Speaking of characters who got skipped ahead, do you remember the character Allison who Lisa became best friends with in season 6? She still shows up in crowd scenes all the time, but she's obviously not Lisa's friend, because in the next season a main plot point is that Lisa does not have a single friend. I mean, I get they probably couldn't book Winona Ryder multiple times, but how does Lisa lose so many friends? The one who had horses, the one who was a Republican ... I guess those don't count because they were pretty clearly one-episode characters, but that doesn't apply to Janey. There are a lot of young boys in Springfield who get to be fleshed out (Martin Prince even has a whole episode, which is pretty bad) but really all we have as far as girls are Sherri and Terri (they're twins ... that's really all there is to them, they're twins) and, when the writers need Lisa to have a friend for plot reasons, Janey gets dropped in. One can only assume that Lisa drives people away with her smartest-person-in-the-room attitude, moral superiority, and jazz obsession, which are things that endear her to us on the show but probably would seem very off-putting in real life.

3. Meg's Friends - Family Guy

Speaking of cartoon sisters who have friends only when the plot requires it! Meg has three recurring friends, Patty, Ruth, and Esther. They've been on the show for decades now, but are so unmemorable that in the episode "Girl Internetted," where Meg's YouTube channel inspires people to gain weight, they show up and say to Meg, "Hi, we're your friends, Patty, Ruth, and Esther! If anyone remembered who we are, they'd be shocked to find out how fat we've gotten."

The writers also apparently forgot. Patty is the favorite of the trio, and even kind of gets her own episode when Brian attempts to date her, but she mentions at one point she has two moms who are lesbians. A few seasons later, we see her parents, and they're not two moms, they're a heterosexual little people couple. Ruth is shown once to be politically outspoken, once to have a thing for Meg's mom, and apparently got her tongue ripped out in the episode that's a parody of Taken, but none of those things are ever referenced again. And Esther ... virtually never talks. She's the second most silent character on Family Guy after Roberta Brown, who has never had a line. She's there in all the scenes with the Brown family, but never says anything, it's pretty weird. 

This show has made fun of itself for not having enough female characters. Both in the "Cinderella" parody, where Stewie is one of the stepsisters, and in the "Friends" parody, when Lois is recounting her 1990's days with her roommates, "Bonnie and ... other Bonnie!" The thing is, the female characters are there ... just largely forgotten.

2. The Entire Flanders Family - The Simpsons

Remember when I said the Simpsons couldn't remember how old Janey is? Well, hold on to your butts. We're about to get into the Flanders family.

And, I'm not one of those Simpsons *****es who thinks that everything should be frozen in the same year, like Marge and Homer still should have been in high school together in the 70's. I want this show to last forever and continue to be relevant, and I love that Homer and Marge are millennials now. 

But that's not what this is about. It's the complete confusion about how the Flanders know the Simpsons, their kids' ages in relation to Bart and Lisa, and whether the kids actually go to Springfield Elementary and if so what class they would be in.

In an early season, we see a flashback episode of the Simpsons moving to the neighborhood to make way for baby Lisa, with Flanders and an already very much born Todd singing "We welcome you to the neighborhood" and that's them meeting them for the first time.  (Lisa wasn't born yet, but both of the Flandereses were.) But then, in later seasons, there are flashbacks where we see Marge and Homer having been friends with Ned and Maude before the former were married, and, the episode that really shakes up my soda, the one where we find out Homer delivered Todd Flanders. And that's supposed to be a very special Christmas episode, not a one-off. And, Lisa had been born in that episode. Having Todd's middle name be "Homer" seems like a kick in the face to all the seasons that came before, and it's one episode that makes me realize where Simpsons jerks are coming from.

I mean, Flanders at one point revealed he is 60 years old, and that at the time did not jive with him having Beatnik parents, but the show has gone on long enough that it works now. But what of the ages of the children? Rod is the most forgotten Flanders, but we see him celebrating his tenth birthday in one episode, which is confusing because we always assume Todd, the shorter and much more featured one, is the same age as Bart (10). He's paired up with Bart multiple times, including their mini-golf competition and teaming up to save the lemon tree from Shelbyville. In the episode where the fictional news program "Rock Bottom" does a fast reel of everything that they've gotten wrong over the years, one of the headlines that flies by is "Todd is actually the older Flanders."

Basically, Ned, Maude, and their two sons have become blank characters that could be fitted into any slot based on what the plot requires, because the writers never picked a lane with which characters were born when and how Homer actually knows Flanders. Is he an unfortunate neighbor, or is he a lifelong friend? The flashback episodes between the Simpsons and the Flanders are always pretty messy. There are some characters that maybe ... you just shouldn't try to flesh out. More about that in my next entry.

1. Larry the Barfly - The Simpsons

Some characters should be fleshed out, and some shouldn't. There are characters you forget existed for 30 years, and then remember that the character exists, decide he is "beloved," and do the only logical thing and kill him off.

Let me backtrack a little. Homer's got his drinking buddies. There's Barney, who they haven't really tried to flesh out other than the couple of seasons he was sober, and then decided that didn't work and undid it. There's Carl, who got two episodes based on what I'm assuming was supposed to be a throwaway line early in the show, "This reminds me of my Icelandic boyhood." There are two episodes devoted to Carl coming to terms with being Icelandic, adopted, and Black, and not knowing what his identity is. They worked well. There's Moe, the bartender. Fleshing him out never works very well. He's just a scumbag, let him be that. And there's Lenny, who has no personality, intelligence, or ... anything other than he works at the power plant, drinks beer, and is in love with Carl. (Trust me.) And, if you ever try to give Lenny any character depth, Simpsons writers, I will come after you. This man exists to be a throwaway gag and always should be.

But, there's occasionally another Barfly in Moe's Tavern, and his name is Larry. He's been there since season 1, and only spoken in 3 episodes, but has been in almost every crowd scene. In one episode, they accidentally put 2 Larrys in the crowd. That's how invested the writers were in Larry.

But what if ... they remembered that he existed again ... and could do an advertising campaign saying they were going to kill off a beloved Simpsons character in next week's episode?

That is what dominated my Twitter feed in the week preceding Larry's demise, where we find out that he was a "beloved" character and considered Homer, Lenny, and Carl to be his best friends. The Simpsons has a history of going for unearned grief. In the episode Round Springfield, which was going to be their Emmy bid, they were going to kill off Marge's mother but decided instead to kill off Bleeding Gums Murphy, who was barely even a character. But much more of a character than Larry the Barfly. And, of course, the way they teased Maude Flanders' death by saying a beloved character was going to die this week. They even kind of mocked themselves for that when her eulogy mentioned she wasn't one of the most memorable characters and didn't have any catch phrases or anything. Still, more of a character than Larry.

But, now, when I rewatch old episodes, I always notice Larry, whereas I never really would have before. And it makes me a little sad that they did kill off one of their standby, um, character designs. Because I have to accept I'll be saying goodbye to more familiar faces in The Simpsons as the voice actors retire.

Anyway. That's my list of forgotten characters. But now, through my words, they live on.

What They Meant to Say Was ... Mandie's Ranting Journey Through Redemptive Adaptations

 Adaptations. We all know what it's like to be the jerk in the room who read the book before they saw the TV show/movie/play/whatever and were just bouncing in anticipation when the rest of the world found out how the Red Wedding played out. Well, at least I know what it's like to be that jerk. But there are a lot of roads you can take with an adaptation of a book.

There are the safe routes, where you eliminate some of the source material but stay very true to it otherwise, or when you might add a thing or two that wasn't in the book but stay very true to it otherwise. An example of the former would be the Harry Potter movies, where some subplots (e.g., Hermoine's elf charity) were eliminated to keep the franchise from being 12 movies long, but we still had all the nuts and bolts of Harry Potter. An example of the latter would be Big Little Lies, which added a few things (e.g., Madeline's affair) in order to make it last however many episodes it lasted, but otherwise was very true to the book and their additions gave Reese Witherspoon more to do. 

And then there are the adaptations that completely throw a middle finger at their source material. I'm looking at YOU, The Golden Compass. 

But we're not talking about safe adaptations or bad adaptations today. We're going to talk about the truly great adaptations that remade their source material in ways that would leave you saying - gasp - "This was better than the book!"

8. WICKED - THE MUSICAL (M read the book first)

I remember having the realization years ago that absolutely any story can be turned into a musical as long as you can insert a love triangle into it somehow. This is often a love triangle between a man and two women. See: Miss Saigon, Jekyll and Hyde, Aida, Les Miserables, and Wicked. Was there a love triangle in the book? Yes, but not the one you're expecting.

If we examine the musicals Les Miserables and Wicked, you'll see some definite similarities between the love triangles. Cosette and Galinda are the privileged, beautiful characters, while Eponine and Elphaba are the pining outcasts. Each has her own anthem of pining: Eponine's "On My Own" and Elphaba's less belty "I'm Not That Girl." And every emo theater girl who is pining over someone makes these characters their IDOL. I used to know a theater kid whose online handle was "I Wanna Be Eponine" and another theater kid who would tell people, "You don't understand ... I AM Elphaba." If you mad identify with Elphaba, you might want to skip to #7.

I read the book Wicked before it became a musical. When I found out it was being turned into one, I was like, I guess I could see this being a musical, the only thing they'd have to change is ... EVERYTHING. So, I bought the soundtrack, and eventually saw the play. And they did change ... EVERYTHING. They turned a really dismal story about infidelity and political unrest into a heartwarming rom-com that also has some touching girl-girl friendship.

So. The opening number of Wicked is fairly true to the source material in that Elphaba's mom gets taken in by a possibly-wizard-type-person and then gives birth to a green daughter and a daughter with no arms (that's right; in the book, Nessa is not in a wheelchair, but she has no arms, but that would have been way too hard to stage). Elphaba also is allergic to water and has fangs.

Is there a Fiyero in the book? Yes, but they don't go "Dancing Through Life" at the Ozdust Ballroom so much as ... I don't remember, I think they go to some kind of drug orgy where people are having sex with tigers. And he doesn't hook up with Elphaba until years later, when he is married and has kids. They have an affair, and he impregnates her, which doesn't thrill his wife (who is not Galinda, she's a character named Sarima that we don't meet in the musical). 

At the end of the book, we have a gear shift, and this is my favorite part of the book. It changes from being a depressing slog to just being an absolute farce in the last 20 pages. Dorothy and her companions are coming to kill Elphaba, and everyone is just so bored, including Elphaba, that they don't even care what happens and are cool with Dorothy throwing water on her. Even Elphaba's son is so enamored with Dorothy and so bored that he's practically ready to help her throw the water. It's the only part of the book I liked, and it's hilarious.

But the musical, by changing ... EVERYTHING ... is so much better. I honestly love this musical. I was really surprised that when I went to see it, they were actually selling copies of the book at the merch stands. I'd think the wannabe Elphabas would want to live in blissful ignorance and not read that. They don't want to read the version where everyone dies. 

In the musical, not only do we get to see Elphaba land her man (who is not a married father in the musical), but we get more exploration of the relationships between the female characters. There's even a duet "Wicked Witch of the East" between Elphaba and Nessa that was not on the soundtrack album and is really great. I'm looking forward to seeing it in the movie. I'm actually expecting they'll expand a lot on all the characters' relationships in the movie, since they're making it into ... two movies. (Another instance of that later.) And ... how are they going to end it? In the trailer, they show Dorothy and friends marching along a yellow brick road, but I can't imagine it will end the same way as the book. Or the seemingly tacked-on happy ending of the musical. Maybe something in between. I can't wait to see this movie.

7. THE MIST - THE MOVIE (M read the book first) 

If you've ever read or watched any listicle about most shocking movie endings, surely you know of The Mist. It is one of the most shocking movie endings of all time, and if you don't want it ruined for you, please skip to #6. 

Stephen King is secretly one of my heroes, and I read the book "The Mist" during downtime whilst working at a movie theater. The same theater that would eventually show the movie "The Mist."

The book centers around David, who is making a store run with his young son when a bizarre mist overtakes the town. While he and his son are in the store, things escalate, and bizarre creatures are coming out of the mist, blocking any attempt at escape. Some of the people trapped in the store (called "flat-earthers" in the book) believe this is a sign of end times, requiring human sacrifice, because according to Grandpa Simpson on The Simpsons, sacrificing people to your god is something people did all the time in the 30's. David and some of the non-flat-earthers are trying to determine a logical escape, as opposed to the killing-people thing, and ultimately are able to get to David's car. This includes Amanda, who David bangs. They yell other people's names while they are banging. Bad move, David. You just met this woman, and you don't even know for sure whether your wife is dead.

So, what happens to our heroes when they escape from the store? In the book, you never find out. It ends with David scrawling on hotel paper that they are just going to keep driving as long as they can, keep running from the monsters. Because what else can you do when reality has been turned upside down?

It's a running joke that Stephen King can not write an ending. (Way, way, way more about that later.) But this is a book that he just chose to ... not end. "Yeah, we're still out there driving."

The movie created an ending. It wasn't an ending a lot of people liked, but Stephen King himself said that by adding this ending, they fixed his book. David does run out of gas, and everyone in the car (including his young son) decides he will shoot all of them so that the monsters do not get them. He has enough bullets for everyone except himself. After killing everyone in the car, he goes outside to sacrifice himself, only to realize the Army is here and the monster crisis is over, so what he just did was for nothing.

One of my coworkers, who had a young son, was traumatized by this ending.

This was so much grittier than the source material, and I think that's what made it great. Not only the ending, but the fact that there was no love interest, it was purely a survival story. David and Amanda don't hook up in the movie. And the fact that Stephen King completely backed this adaptation reminds me yet again why he is one of my favorite authors. He creates wonderful content but is completely open to changes that would take it next-level.

6. FIGHT CLUB - THE MOVIE (M saw the movie first)

Fight Club, the movie, was a cultural phenomenon. I mean, 1999 brought us Fight Club, The Matrix, and The Blair Witch Project, all of which were huge game-changers in different ways. Did you see it coming that Edward Norton's unnamed insomniac protagonist is actually Tyler Durden? I didn't. The reveal is perfect. They do impose Brad Pitt's face over his a few times, less subtly but much quicker than when Black Swan imposes Natalie Portman's face over other characters'. It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it thing.

This movie was amazing. It was slick, cool, and smart, and delivered multiple great performances and an iconic ending. I watched it so many times in high school.

Then we get to me finally reading the book.

When I was 20, I was a bridesmaid in a wedding and my bridesmaid gift was the book "Haunted" by Chuck Palahniuk. Reading this book, I became acquainted with Palahniuk's habit of driving a theme into the ground and then keep driving. The premise was that 17 people were sequestered in a hotel or something and commanded to write their magnum opus, but they also thought they were on reality TV. So they started destroying the food that they liked so they would be the thinnest. One of the characters reflects on Holocaust survivors ("they could wear anything"). Another line used I think multiple times in the book is "a reflection of a reflection of a reflection." Eventually, of course, there is cannibalism.

So, I'd read that book, so why don't I read Fight Club? I loved the movie.

It's not a very good book.

To start, the unreliable narrator thing is not pulled off very well. Am I just saying that because I'd already seen the movie and knew what was going on? Maybe, but this book dives into the Palahniuk method of driving a point too far (I'm assuming, I've only read two of his books) and it absolutely does not land the ending. Our narrator is still aiming to take down modern society, but it lacks the slick dark humor of the movie. There's a subplot the movie completely avoided with Marla constantly fighting with her mother because Marla wants lip injections and wants her mother to donate her fat, fat that the narrator thinks could be used for making soap and other things. And, at the end, the narrator shoots himself and wakes up in ... heaven? It's unclear whether this was a complete hallucination, but it's a pretty ridiculous scene.

Anyway. Fight Club. Perfect example of a book where they saw the seeds that could grow into something great, and pulled it off. More on that in my #5.

5. JUMANJI - THE MOVIE (M read the book first)

I'll probably have the least to say about this one, because it has been many years since I read the book or saw the movie. I mean, I was probably like 5 when I read the book. It was a picture book.

In the picture book, we have siblings Peter and Judy playing a board game they got from ... I forget where ... that is jungle themed and once you start playing the game, you have to finish. This results in a lot of jungle animals actually showing up, creating mayhem, and probably well drawn (it was a picture book). When they finish the game, everything goes back into the game board, and the kids' parents come home to find them just asleep. One of the kids says "we were bitten by tsetse flies and got the sleeping sickness" and one of the parents says "it looks like you both have the sleeping sickness" and we get a good larf and that's Jumanji.

The movie decided it was going to create a mythology and a dark history for this board game and for these children (I mean, in the movie, their parents are dead), and add a lot more characters, and created a blockbuster I totally wouldn't mind watching again right now.

I remember the movie being so good. The deliciously creepy atmosphere, the generations-repeating-themselves and going-back-in-time-to-fix-things themes, Robin Williams whispering the word "Jumanji" toward the end with a look of complete victory on his face. I miss him, we all do. Jumanji did the same thing Polar Express did. It took a book that was like 20 pages long and had a couple pictures in it and built up an elaborate backstory. Except Jumanji was actually GOOD, whereas Polar Express is a plague upon humanity. But, more about movies with multiple Tom Hanks roles later.

4. JURASSIC PARK - THE MOVIE (M saw the movie first)

For most of my childhood, I was not allowed to see Jurassic Park. But my parents, especially my mom, were ravenous for Jurassic Park. It was the second coming. Of dinosaurs, of course, what did you think I was talking about? My mom, at one point, CONSIDERED buying me "Jurassic Park: The Junior Novelization" so that I could at least be exposed to the Word if I was still not old enough to experience its incarnation, but she said she flipped through the first chapter and it actually described the worker being killed in the opening scene (not graphically, just "the worker was gone"), so she decided not to buy it. So, it would be another year or two before I was allowed to watch Jurassic Park, along with my younger sister, because if you have a sibling who is within three years of you, you get all privileges at exactly the same time, regardless of who is older. And we watched it. And I wrote in the diary I now know was never private, BEST MOVIE EVER! A MILLION STARS AND MORE! I frickin loved Jurassic Park. And, shortly after, I read the book. And its sequel. And pretty much any Michael Crichton stuff I could get my hands on.

When I read the book, one of the things that really surprised me was that Ian Malcolm died, and Gennaro lived. In the movie, the very opposite happens, and Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm returns as the protagonist in the sequel, The Lost World. I don't remember exactly how they explained that in The Lost World, since I was like 11 when I read it, but I believe he was believed to be dead from his wounds, but managed to hang in there. But I believe that when Crichton wrote this book, he meant for Malcolm to be dead, and then realized that he had bet on the wrong horse. Maybe even before the casting of the charismatic Jeff Goldblum. Malcolm is an expert in chaos theory, whatever that is, and that alone makes him a fascinating character. He's ... pretty much expecting whatever mayhem is coming.

And then we get to the kids. I've always been pretty adamant that Crichton did not know how to write kids. They would always be hyper intelligent robots, or insufferable damn wiener kids. In the book, Tim was a young teenager or preteen who was a hyper intelligent robot (he's the one who got the park back online in the book) and Lex was I think 6, and an annoying kid to the point where you'd want to just throw her to the dinosaurs; she offered nothing. In the movie, they swap the ages of the children, and also flesh them out. Neither of them is one-dimensional and neither is insufferable, even if they bicker like normal siblings. You can see why Grant would want so badly to protect them. And I love that they kind of divided Tim's character (if you can call it that) between the two siblings. Tim is a dinosaur nerd, while Lex is the computer nerd who manages to get the park back online, part of the reason I loved this movie as a kid (the girl a few years older than me turned out to be a hero!).

Another huge difference between the book and the movie is that in the movie, Hammond actually has a good deal of humanity. In the book, he seems to hate his grandchildren and see them as a burden, and, hold on to your butts, he actually dies in the book, and based on how his character was portrayed, you wouldn't really care. In the movie, we feel for him. As they're fleeing the park, you can see his dreams crumbling, and you feel all the feels. 

Hollywood has horribly botched some of Crichton's best books (see: Sphere, Timeline), but Jurassic Park is a darn near perfect movie. And maybe even made Crichton rethink some things (e.g., "I shouldn't have killed off Malcolm, but that lawyer getting eaten while he was sitting on the toilet might be fun"). Like other 90's movies I've mentioned, this was a game changer, and the reason people still continue to be horny for dinosaurs and Chris Pratt.

3. CLOUD ATLAS - THE MOVIE (M saw the movie first)

I love this movie so much I don't know if I can even write about it without drooling all over my keyboard. But, write about it I shall, so I'll put on a bib and continue. Like all of the other items on this list, the writers and directors saw the seeds of something great in the book, and turned it into a masterpiece. 

I saw this movie in theaters and fell in love with it, so of course I read the book, and a few other David Mitchell books, and I realized I'm kind of meh on David Mitchell. Cloud Atlas, of course, I liked, but not as much as the movie. I liked The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. I HATE Ghostwritten. Please, stay the **** away from that book. And I was kind of all in for the first half of Bone Clocks but then it got too meta and weird.

Cloud Atlas was an incredibly ambitious book. If you're not familiar with the premise, there are six protagonists. They live in different eras, spanning from the 1840s (Adam Ewing) to a post-apocalyptic Hawaii (Zachry). There is a link from each character to the next. For example, Robert Frobisher (1930s) is reading Adam Ewing's memoir. Sonmi (2100s) is watching Timothy Cavendish's movie. They also all have a birthmark that looks like a comet, and David Mitchell has said it was intended for readers to understand that all six of the characters had the same soul.

The book has a nested format. We start with the earliest story, Adam Ewing's, and tell half of it, then move forward until we get to post-apocalyptic Hawaii, tell that entire story, and then start moving backwards, ending with Adam Ewing again.

The filmmakers made two brilliant decisions, and to be fair neither of them would work in book format, they took what was kind of laid out for them and they ran with it. For one, rather than the nested format, they constantly switch between the six timelines, so that all six of the storylines are playing out simultaneously and we can see all the common threads. For two, they cast the same actors in each of the storylines. Every actor in this movie plays multiple roles.

Cloud Atlas is a life-affirming work of joy, which further removes it from the book, because David Mitchell, as I've come to understand from reading his books, loves ambiguity and hates joy. And part of the comfort and joy this movie brings me does come from the fact that the same actors are used in all six timelines. One of the most dramatic scenes in the movie is when Sonmi (played by Doona Bae) is about to be executed, right after seeing her lover Hae-Joo (played by Jim Sturgess) killed. She says she is not afraid of death, that she knows she will always be in love with him, and she feels that in some reality she will open a door and he will be there. We then cut to the Adam Ewing storyline, where Adam (Jim Sturgess) is coming home from his sea voyage and running into the arms of his wife (Doona Bae). Geez, I tear up just thinking about it.

Mitchell doesn't give us that scene. In fact, he ends most of the storylines in ambiguity. We don't get to see Adam Ewing reunite with his wife and tell his father-in-law that they are leaving to join the abolitionist movement. In the book, we know from his memoir that he was planning to do that, but we don't really know whether he even made it home. There's also ... not a lot of love in the book. It's typical sterile Mitchell narration. Did Frobisher love Sixsmith? Did Sonmi love Hae-Joo? We don't know. It kind of doesn't seem like it. But the screenwriters filled in the gaps, and gave us all the feels.

Anyway, I can't drool on my keyboard anymore, but when I researched this movie I found out some fun stuff. Like, David Mitchell actually has a cameo in the movie. And James McAvoy and Ian McKellen were both asked to be in the main cast. And, speaking of James McAvoy and Ian McKellen, oh boy, it's time to get to my #2 and #1 adaptations.

2. IT - LET'S SAY THE SECOND MOVIE (M read the book between seeing the 1990 miniseries and the 2010's remake)

So many improvements in, well, both film adaptations, but I'm going to focus on the one I've seen more recently. Improvements ranging from 1) cutting Audra was a good idea/no adultery 2) no animals are harmed 3) actually has an ending 4) the kids don't all have sex in a sewer. I should never have to say that last one about any movie.

What is my history with IT? Well, I know for a lot of people in my generation, the original miniseries sparked a fear of clowns that would linger until adulthood. I first saw IT when I was maybe 8 and my dad had fallen asleep in front of the TV. I walked in during the scene where Pennywise crawls out of the shower drain and it was so cool that it cemented my love of murder clowns. I sat there, rapt, for the rest of the movie. IT would remain one of my comfort movies for the rest of my childhood.

Flash forward to when I'm 15 and starting to read Stephen King. I find a copy of IT at the library and am so excited. Sure, it's 800 pages long, but I'm down. And for the first 500 pages, NOTHING could tear me away from that book. I LOVED it so much. The book, unlike the movies, is constantly jumping between past and present and also has several scenes filling you in on the history of Derry (which is only nodded to in the film adaptations). There was one night I was supposed to help my sister with something but I was reading IT, dammit, so I wasn't going anywhere, and she yelled, "That had better be the best book ever!" And I yelled back, "IT is!" 

Until it wasn't. Stephen King ... just didn't know how to end this book. I touched on this when I talked about The Mist, and I'd say the same for the Dark Tower series and The Stand. It's kind of ... especially egregious in IT, though. The last 300 pages are just a story completely spinning out of control. Suddenly Pennywise is everything and also nothing, and the end of the book ... well, we'll get to that. It felt like Stephen King had taken a bite too big to chew when he started this novel.

But, I really love the movie. And let's get to some of the improvements the movie made.

1. Cutting Audra was a good idea/no adultery

IT is about the Losers Club. They are blood brothers (and sister) and always will be, and the only ones that can defeat Pennywise.

In the book, and in the 1990 miniseries, Bill's wife Audra decides to follow him to Derry, gets sucked into the deadlights, becomes catatonic, and needs to be rescued. As much as this book needed another female character, it just seems like ... too much. Especially because IT: Chapter Two already had six protagonists and was already the longest horror movie in history. And especially especially because in the book, adult Beverly sleeps with both Bill and Ben while they're in Derry. In the movie, there's romantic tension between Beverly, Bill, and Ben, but we don't feel bad about it because Audra is not a heroic wife coming to find her husband. In the one scene they give Audra at the beginning of the movie, she's hilariously insufferable, though perhaps not as insufferable as Eddie's wife (played by the same actress who plays his mom). And they completely removed the adultery. That means we can continue to root for our main character, Bill (played brilliantly by James McAvoy), and we don't have to feel like Beverly just, kind of, settled for Ben.

2. No animals were harmed

It's a common trope in Stephen King novels that there is a group of characters that are just baddies, and that's the case in IT, where the Losers band together partly due to a group of bullies that is a shared enemy. In addition to having circle jerks (more about that later), the bullies enjoy killing animals. And, thank God, that wasn't in the movie. In one scene, one of the bullies is about to shoot a cat, but his father stops him and the cat gets away. If that had gone differently, this couldn't be one of my favorite movies.

3. Actually has an ending

Yeesh, Stephen King did not know how to end this book. I mentioned how when the book completely spins out, Pennywise is both everything and nothing. In the movie, they streamline it much more. Pennywise is basically the embodiment of fear, and the reason Beverly is able to survive the deadlights is that she is not afraid of him. Yes, their lack of fear and their diminishing Pennywise to defeat him at the end of IT: Chapter Two may seem like a weak ending, but I feel like it makes a lot of sense in context. 

In the book, the adult Losers lose their memories about as quickly as the child Losers do. Beverly and Ben (since Bill was taken, I guess) rush to get married immediately before they forget who each other are.

Compare that to the absolutely beautiful ending of the movie. You can tell that the surviving Losers have healed and that they will continue to remember everything and share a bond forever. The fact that their scars fade and they don't lose their memories proves Pennywise really has been defeated. Ben and Beverly don't have a rushed wedding, but we see Ben asking Beverly how she slept last night and she says, "I had a beautiful dream." This is more confirmation that Pennywise is no more, because previously Beverly had been haunted by dreams of her friends' deaths every night. And one of the last lines of the movie is Bill telling Mike, "I love you, man." 

My second favorite scene of IT: Chapter Two is Stephen King's cameo. Bill grows up to be an author, and one of his books is being made into a movie but it doesn't have an ending, he just doesn't know how to write them. While back in Derry, he goes into a shop where the shopkeeper is - Stephen King. Bill sees a copy of one of his books and asks Stephen King if he'd like him to sign it. Stephen King responds, "Nah, I didn't like the ending." That scene continues to bring me infinite joy.

4. The kids don't all have sex in a sewer

Yeah.

I had already read Firestarter when I read IT. The main character of Firestarter is supposed to be 10 years old, and she has some kind of uncomfortable sexual awakening, I think when she has a dream about riding a horse or something. So, I had kind of uneasy feelings reading a Stephen King book that had an 11-year-old female protagonist, and oh man, things just went from bad to worse.

Beverly basically puberties all over the whole book. IT could have been titled "IT: The Story of Beverly's Vagina." I think there was a line when she first reunited with the other Losers as an adult like, she had a memory of her first period, and she thought it had something to do with Ben. Beverly's father, in the book, seems to really want to have sex with her. Thank God, in the movie, he is just generally verbally abusive. Beverly, meanwhile, is exploding out of her clothes in all the right places. Yes, the book actually describes this. And when she happens upon the bullies having a circle jerk, she thinks she probably has figured out how sex works.

After the kids THINK they have defeated Pennywise in the book, there is one more obstacle - they're losing their memories and they can't figure out how to get out of the sewer. Beverly has an idea for how they can remember the way out of the sewer. That idea involves all six of the boys having sex with her, one at a time. They're 11.

I did not know this was going to happen when I started reading the book. I was starting to get worse and worse feelings about Beverly, but I never imagined this. Apparently, though, the magic of Beverly's vagina worked, and they made it out ok. Is that why Ben rushed to marry her? So he would have access to the anti-amnesia vagina? Your hair is winter fire my butt.

Anyway, Beverly doesn't have sex with anyone in any of the movies, and her dad is not a pervert. Good job, filmmakers. Good job.

1. LORD OF THE RINGS - THE MOVIES (M read the books first)

How to even start on my history with Lord of the Rings? When I was in high school, one of my classmates who I looked up to (he would end up being our valedictorian) said his favorite book was Lord of the Rings. I was intrigued, and I read it.

Shortly after that, we started seeing posters for the upcoming movie adaptation, and my classmate was upset about the casting of Elijah Wood as Frodo. He complained, "They cast a teen heartthrob as Frodo. Frodo is supposed to be a hobbit. They're supposed to barely look human. And he's supposed to be 50 years old."

You know, he really wasn't wrong, but, I really think the filmmakers made the right choice here. Sometimes, per every other example in this blog post, you have to sacrifice absolute adherence to the source material in order to make a more palatable movie. If this movie had starred a 50-year-old, furry, big-nosed troll, how well would it have done? Instead, the hobbits look like people, but smaller. I understand this wrecked my classmate's childhood, but I'd just read the books like, a few months ago, and I didn't care.

And the movies (especially the first one) are better than the books.

The Fellowship of the Ring

I'm sorry if it ruined people's childhoods, but, this movie VASTLY improved upon the source material.

I don't remember the book that well, but it takes ... half of the book for the story to actually get started. Frodo finds out there's a ring and he's going to have to do something with it at some point, so he waits several years and gets old and fat. Then, he and his three companions start out on their mission. They encounter various dangers, and I start to think, oh boy, the story is finally starting! But then they are immediately saved by a Deus ex machina or Tom Bombadil ex machina (thank God they made the only right decision and didn't include him in the movie).

Halfway through the book, they meet Aragorn, and then the story actually DOES start. This is a trilogy of books where you can completely skip the first half of the first book, and the last half of the third book. More on that later. 

Not only does the movie get us to Aragorn much quicker, but we actually feel like there were some kind of stakes prior to the formation of the fellowship, so you're already invested (which I hadn't really been in the book up until that point). Also, the characters are fleshed out to the point where viewers can actually latch onto a cast of nine protagonists, which is a staggering feat. In the book, Pippin is the youngest of the hobbit crew, but not necessarily stupid, but the movie endears him to us by making him comic relief. In the book, Legolas and Gimli initially don't like each other but it's told in a single sentence that they "became fast friends." In the movie, we see their rivalry and Gimli's dwarf pride actually play out.

And then there's Arwen. She actually gets to do something. In the book, I don't think she says a single word, but they see her at some point and she is beautiful. The thing is, the only other female character in the trilogy, Eowyn, kills the MFing Witch King. If she did that and Aragorn still went for Arwen, there would be riots by people who had not read the books (probably). We needed a reason to get behind Arwen, so they had her do something badass. (We'll ignore the fact she does nothing in the next two movies.) When I saw the midnight preview of The Two Towers and Eowyn was starting to get flirty with Aragorn, someone in the audience yelled out, "You got a elf, man!"

This is by far the strongest installment in the trilogy, with music, visuals, and acting that will continue to haunt you. You feel like you are going on the journey along with Frodo. And because you're new to the trilogy, you don't realize that Lord of the Rings should have been called Lord of the Plot Armor. You see Boromir die, you think Gandalf died, maybe you even thought Sam was going to drown for a hot minute or two. 

This movie came out at the same time as the first Harry Potter movie. I remember my cousin asking if we wanted to go see Harry Potter and I told her that Lord of the Rings makes Harry Potter look like two apes scratching each other. Why Fellowship is not in my top 10 movies of all time is: 1) I saw it too many times. I guess the mines of Moria scene is always gonna be great but how many times can I watch Merry and Pippin having fun antics with fireworks and mushrooms 2) The fan base scares me. And as someone who had friends who were obsessed with this movie and someone who was on the internet, I came frighteningly close to that fan base 3) I'm just a jaded, jaded individual now.

The Two Towers

I was disappointed when I saw this movie.

I mean, let's backpedal a little. In the book The Two Towers, we get a lot of boringness with Merry and Pippin hanging out with Ents, but then there's also the showdown in Shelob's lair. The book literally ENDS with Frodo being presumed dead (because you haven't realized this is Lord of the Plot Armor) and Sam taking over as ring bearer. And, yes, Sam is our favorite lovable oaf in the movies, but he is TERRIBLE in the books. I was PISSED at the ending of Two Towers.

Then the movie came out and I was like, oo, Shelob and the cliffhanger ending should be cool.

And they saved that for the third movie. I walked bleary-eyed out of that midnight showing like, what the ****.

Don't worry, this movie is still three and a half hours long or something like that. And there is a LOT of padding/filler. It's the weakest of the three. But, to the movie's credit, I feel like they focused on the right things. And also, they made Sam suck a lot less than he does in the books.

There is a whole lot of Ent stuff in the book, because Tolkein is more into lore than he is into writing the next big holiday blockbuster. And they minimized that in the movie, because they realized people probably aren't going to care a whole lot about some slow-talking trees. If you haven't read the books and you're invested in this franchise, you care about those 9 main characters! (Yeah, there are still 9, Boromir has a brother, and Gandalf magically came back to life.) So you want to see Legolas and Gimli having their little orc death count rivalry, you want to see Legolas and Aragorn having a fight that comes out of nowhere, you want to see Aragorn fall off a cliff but be saved by plot armor, and, guess what, we have a love triangle now! Arwen even shows up in a dream sequence to remind you that she still exists.

So, takeaways for The Two Towers: 1) Sam isn't terrible like he was in the book 2) Some of the stuff they added was dumb (like Aragorn falling off the cliff) but I get why they added it 3) I can maybe understand why Helm's Deep and Shelob's lair might have been too much for one movie, especially granted how much they squeezed out of Helm's Deep 4) still would have liked to see the giant spider tho.

The Return of the King

This is Peter Jackson's victory lap, and boy did he bask in it. This movie was nominated for 11 Oscars and won all of them, including Best Picture. I remember my friend showing me a conversation between her and her boyfriend the following day where she asked him how the Oscars were. He said, "Well, kind of boring, because Lord of the Rings just won everything. They got best horse in a movie, Seabiscuit was pissed."

I think that Fellowship made the exact right choices in what they were going to cut from the source material, and Return even more so. Did you think Return of the King had too many endings? Everyone does, but did you read the book? The movie basically cuts out the second half of the book. Now you know why they put Shelob's lair in this movie rather than Two Towers.

So, what happens in the second half of the book? Well, halfway through the book, they've defeated Sauron and destroyed the ring, so everyone just goes home. But when the hobbits get home, they find out there's a new crop of baddies (well, old ones assuming new identities) messing up the Shire. So they have to get rid of them. And so we have the whole story-after-the-story chapter "The Scouring of the Shire." When I read that chapter, I was like, seriously? Why? It was so anticlimactic. But, as I said before, Tolkien was more about lore than narrative structure, so of course he'd be like, I just told this incredibly epic story and it ended and we're supposed to have emotional release, but I have another idea for a short story that might be cool and I'm going to throw it in there.

It would have been awful if this had been included in the movie. Our hobbit heroes wouldn't get their homecoming, and, of course we know they're going to defeat the baddies easily. This is the Lord of Plot Armor, after all. Then there are a ton of appendices where we find out what happened to each character from the end of the book until death, I think Sam was mayor like 8 times.

Going back to the plot armor thing. You KNOW everyone is going to make it through this movie (except Theoden, but he's old and he was crazy for a while). You know there are no stakes. But the movie goes out of its WAY to wring every feel out of you. Every character thinks they are going to die. There are lines like

"Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?" - Gimli

"I'm glad you're here with me, Sam, at the end of all things." - Frodo

"I didn't think it would end this way." - Pippin

"Death is just another path, one we all must take." - Gandalf

Did anyone really think any of our buddies we're so invested in at this point were going to die? Was anyone like, well, my money's on Sauron? Those are the same people who thought Toy Story 3 was going to end with the toys going into the incinerator. But, just like Toy Story 3, this movie set out to make you cry, and I will say at the end I was SOBBING. 

All that said, I'm proud of whoever decided to throw the second half of the book in the garbage before writing this screenplay, even if they did make up for it by adding scenes of the hobbits ... jumping on Frodo's bed ... sitting in a pub saying nothing ... I forget what even else. I know the audience was getting pretty twitchy with the multiple endings when I saw this in the theater, but, think, how much worse it could have been.

So, in conclusion, book adaptations are a land of contrast. But not these. All these were good ones.

And screw Flanders.