9 Films That Ruined The Book

2. Moonraker

Moonraker, Roger Moore's fourth outing as James Bond, was actually supposed to be made into a film even before author Ian Fleming had completed the novel, which begs the question: what went wrong? Hopping on the sci-fi bandwagon following the success of Star Wars, production company EON decided to adapt the novel in 1979, despite the previous Bond film having stated in the closing credits, "James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only". Unfortunately, they chose to do away with just about the entire premise of the book, completely reimagining the storyline into a preposterous, totally unbelievable caper that resembles a James Bond/Star Wars spoof more than it does a legitimate entry into the Bond canon. In fact, the film version was so unrecognisable from the source material that writer Christopher Wood was authorised to write a whole new novel titled James Bond And Moonraker that more closely resembled the film. Upsettingly, the Fleming novel is one of the most thrilling of Bond's literary adventures, making it a crying shame that this abomination ever made it to the big screen in the form that it did. Of course, that didn't stop it from being a box office smash hit and becoming the highest-grossing Bond film until 1995's GoldenEye.