10 Movies That Abandoned The Source Material (For The Better)
3. Who Framed Roger Rabbit
For the top three of this list, we went with movie adaptations that so barely resemble the books they were based on, you're left wondering why they even bothered buying the film rights to the novels in the first place.
Case in point: Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
While all the character names have been kept intact, their motivations, personalities, and indeed the entire mystery was altered for the film.
There are entire plot-important characters that were cut out of the story, several aspects of the world building were nixed, and the minor detail you may not notice... it's barely anything but yeah, ROGER RABBIT DIES. In the first chapter.
Indeed the entire story is centred around not who framed Roger Rabbit, but in fact who murdered him. Valiant is a lot more one-dimensional in the book (possibly due to the lack of Bob Hoskins), and the mystery plays out completely differently.
The book is a fun read, but if you know the twists, it becomes a lot less entertaining like these boilerplate detective novels tend to. Which is why even the book's original author fully agrees that the film is the superior version.