My opinion is..
They can definitely be fun (see; Spider-Man 2, X-Men 2 and Hellboy) but they often end up bad (see; Daredevil, Batman & Robin, and Jurassic Park, though it helps that the book was pretty bad there too!)
They can be good or bad? That's... a pretty broad thesis. :)
Reading a book generally takes longer, so the viewer has more time to absorb details and so forth. When it's converted to film, many things need to be simplified or expressed visually. I guess it's eventually up to the skills of the movie makers, but some types of story probably convert easier than others.
Different media, different methods. It's easy to express what a character is thinking or explain their motives in text, for example.
The only comic to film adaptation I really liked was Ghost World.
>>2 Yes, well, I'm an indecisive person. :P
If I HAD to choose..
It's generally a bad thing, literature-to-movie adaptations. Some better examples are It and Fight Club(Though I'm personally not a fan of this particular book). In both adaptations much was lost and they turned up as an even-more-generic-then-before horror story and a general clusterfuck of info and pseudo-philosophy, respectively.
Althought I dont like John Grisham novels.. have enjoyed the adaptations that the movies have done, with "The Pelican Brief" being the most notable imho. Maybe its probably because books dont interest me that much, and movies tend to be a bit more interesting.
Cinema is a far less subtle medium than literature. Thus, less subtle works that might not be very interesting as books may work better as movies.
I personally liked Jurassic Park the movie, along with the Lost World. Nothing like the book (which were better IMO), but still very entertaining in their own right.
I liked the movie adaptation of Babe (with the talking pig) as well. We will not speak of the sequal.
I liked Jurassic Park when it was new. Havent seen it since then though..
Sin City's movie adaptation is as true as it gets.
I liked the Clockwork Orange adaption.
http://4-ch.net/tv/kareha.pl/1103459854/
Wasn't very pleased what they did to Abe, Kroenen (although it's nice they game this underused character some airtime) and the story. However I agree on Spiderman and Xmen, aswell as on the bad examples you gave.
Another e.g. for crappy adaptions would be almost every movie based on a H.P. Lovecraft story.
It almost seems that the core of a good comic adaptation is trying not to get obcessed over the 'comic' part of the movie, going overboard with exaggeration and impossible to replicate environments. Several of the Batman movies went all out on trying to symbolically recreate comic book angles and appearances and they were complete and utter shite.
I wonder if it has anything to do with closure?
No the Batman desasters were solely Joel Schuhmachers fault.
Burton's Batman was pretty cool, although he messed with the story as well.
>>13
Story isn't so much as presentation. How often do comic book writers retcon and shuffle around their own continuities for the sake of sales? Constantly.
The first Batman movie Burton did was more a movie about the Joker than it was about Batman.
Continuity means jack shit as long as the item you present works.
There was an article on Joel Schumacher and Batman on www.jaypinkerton.com . Essentially, Batman Returns didn't make enough money and the studio decided to make the films more commercial. Poor Joel is getting shit for someone else's decision.