With movie budgets increasingly going through the roof these days, it's perhaps little wonder that the studios increasingly turn to "known quantities". Remakes, reboots and adaptations have become their bread and butter, all of which provide a much better guarantee of a return on their investments when compared to risky original ideas. Some adaptations are hugely effective, making the transition from their source - be it books, comics or even video games - to the screen without losing too much of the essence in translation. Others, however, are not so successful, particularly those properties which are rightly or wrongly labeled as "unfilmable". Here are ten adaptations which fit into that category, films which - while not necessarily bad in their own right (although some sure are) - fail to do justice to the source material.
10. Watchmen
Alan Moore is a writer who insists on remaining completely detached from the movie adaptations of his works. Often concerned with exploring esoteric and subversive material, his stories are deeply symbolic ventures told with a distinct approach to art. Given Zak Snyder's track record for making impressive looking but incredibly superficial movies completely lacking in depth, it's somewhat remarkable how far away from a complete disaster his movie adaptation of Moore's seminal comic Watchmen actually is. Snyder approximates the visual patterns and motifs admirably well, capturing the tone of the source in all its strikingly iconic glory. Unfortunately, as with all Moore adaptations, Snyder's Watchmen is lacking in both the subtlety and maturity of the original, over-emphasising the violence for cheap thrills and of course scandalously tampering with the ending. Still, as we'll see later, it's far from being the worst Moore adaptation to hit cinemas...