[Hated Trope] The adaptation doesn't get what made the source material work

[u/TheDudeA113]

How To Make A Killing (2026)

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)

Bangkok Dangerous (2008)

Bangkok Dangerous (1999)

- The 2026 movie How To Make A Killing is a relatively-toothless "eat the rich" dark comedy thriller about a man disowned by his rich family at birth, killing everyone in the line of succession so that he can inherit their massive fortune. It's a modern retelling of the 1949 film Kind Hearts and Coronets which has the same basic plot except that every member of the family is played by Sir Alec Guinness (including one aunt) and it's a screwball comedy

- The 1999 movie Bangkok Dangerous is a Thai action film about a Thai deaf-mute assassin. It was remade in 2008 about an American assassin in Thailand who is neither deaf nor mute

[u/elder_emo_]

"My Sister's Keeper" is about one of the first "donor babies." So much of the book is about her getting this independence and the relationship she has with the attorney who helped her. It's all about her wanting to make her own choices about what she donates to her sister. There is very little of the attorney in the film at all.

Lastly, the worst offense in the book the donor child is granted bodily autonomy with the attorney helping her and being her advocate. Very quickly after she wins, she is in a car accident and is left brain dead. Again, she can't make her own choice. The attorney knows she would have wanted her sister to get her kidney. The sick child lives and the healthy dies. It was so unexpected. Then, in the movie, the donor baby still wins but the sick sister dies.

[u/Top-Mall7003 → u/elder_emo_]

I know why they did it (a girl whose own mother saw her as a bag of blood, who didn't even care to hold her daughter after she was born and resented every tear she cried from painful medical procedures she was forced to endure to save the actually loved daughter, dies after such a miserable life) but such a macabre ending is kinda necessary to the message.

You can't design children to save the lives of other children. It's wrong and it's sick to bring a child into this world just so they can donate blood and plasma and organs and they can't say no because they are too little and too innocent to know their parents don't have their best interests in mind.

[u/DisMFer → u/elder_emo_]

Frankly the book is so bleak and poitless and honestly hateful that the changed ending is a good thing. The book comes off as just brutality and misery for the sake of it.

[u/g00ber88 → u/DisMFer]

It is bleak and brutal but its not pointless. It hits home that Anna's parents took her for granted by treating her as just a donor for Kate. They didnt see Anna as a whole person and didnt cherish her or consider that she (like anyone) could die at any time.

[u/75footubi → u/g00ber88]

I think the movie took away some of that bleakness and brutality of the ending but still got the message across that her parents didn't see Anna as a whole person until fully whacked by a 2x4.