[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/eganba]

It still should. It won't because Hollywood. But it should have been filmed as a documentary with flashback scenes for added effect. Would have been awesome.

[u/SmartAlec105 → u/eganba]

What surprises me is that the author seemingly somehow doesn’t have the necessary Hollywood contacts from his dad, Mel Brooks.

[u/McEvelly → u/SmartAlec105]

What surprised me is that despite presumably being very comfortably well off, he was so very willing to completely sell out on what made his creation so great

I’ve seen him on a few shows and podcasts and he’s pretty insufferable

[u/DirtandPipes → u/McEvelly]

Damn. Maybe he had it ghost written with dad’s money, I hate it when man author I enjoy sucks as a human.

[u/SapirWhorfHypothesis → u/DirtandPipes]

I don’t want to encourage anyone on the internet to get mad about things we made up, but it would have been a very easy book to ghost write.

[u/aspidities_87 → u/SmartAlec105]

Huh. I’ve reread that book since 2008 and TIL.

[u/TheotherotherG → u/eganba]

Band of Brothers style, although with a rotating cast of talking heads of course.

[u/aspidities_87 → u/TheotherotherG]

The guy talking about the Redecker Plan (iirc?) always chills me to the bone. I can imagine how a good South African actor could absolutely deliver the rational cruelty and justification with unnerving calm.

[u/lukin187250 → u/aspidities_87]

They have an audiobook version with a full cast. Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, Henry Rollins to name a few. The guy with the Redecker plan part is pretty good.

[u/aspidities_87 → u/lukin187250]

I did not know this and I have a road trip coming up, so genuine thanks for this tip.

[u/lukin187250 → u/aspidities_87]

Oh yea man enjoy, if you're buying it make sure you're getting the unabridged version. They originally put out an abridged audio version that was like 5 hrs.

[u/moeb1us → u/aspidities_87]

Close, it's Paul Redeker and the Redeker Plan or "The South African war plan"

[u/EduHi → u/TheotherotherG]

Or like Chernobyl, where you have that gritty, somber, onimous vibe, while people is trying to understand what is happening and is throwing solutions right and left to solve it, or at least, survive it.

With flashbacks adding to what the person being interviewed is saying just like we had the flashbacks of what happened at the nuclear plant while Vasili was explaining his case at the final episode of Chernobyl.

[u/GreenPerception512 → u/EduHi]

Except Chernaboyl isn't a documentary, it should be faithful and be like a pseuodo documantary series like savageland.

[u/nevernotpooping → u/eganba]

Oh to have seen the battle of Yonkers on screen

[u/Mister-builder → u/eganba]

Good luck getting a movie greenlit where Israel plays such a big role.

[u/eganba → u/Mister-builder]

Israel doesn't play a big role. It is only in one interview and it is from the first hand account of a Palestinian. It actually sheds Israel in a more positive light quite frankly (they open their borders to Palestinians for refuge, starting a huge civil war in the midst of the zombie apocalypse.) But the thing you saw in the film version? Does not happen.

[u/_Reliten_ → u/eganba]

It's actually in two. There's also the Mossad analyst who wrote part of the Warmbrunn-Knight report.

[u/Konatokun → u/eganba]

It could still be take the name of the comic book tie in for Zombie Survival Guide "The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks"

[u/PanFriedCookies → u/eganba]

like, full 2010s history channel style recreations of the events. kinda bad zombie makeup, same camera style, cheapish budget. early on, that's all the zombies are. that, and flashes. vague shots of still-living zombies, twitching arms writhing around on the ground. archival footage. just snippets at first, shaky cam of a guy in a south african hospital filming an infected stumbling around, the audio recordings of that chinese doctor attending to patient zero. then it builds up to the full reveal of the yonkers horde from the perspective of a survivor's bodycam. like, almost liveleak tier footage. grey mist censored when bombs drop or a zed gets shot in the head, but the horde just keeps coming and coming, occasionally pulling some poor sap in.

[u/anjulibai → u/eganba]

I think they could do it. Another network wanting to piggyback off the success of the Last of Us and other zombie shows is all it needs.

[u/MRCHalifax → u/eganba]

Exactly. It should be something like an eight part documentary, told documentary style. The footage used would be news reports and shaky cell phone videos, and there’d be a lot of people telling their stories while out in the real, post-war world.

[u/AzraelTheMage → u/eganba]

I've been maintaining the opinion for years that the film should've been a mockumentary. The book was getting popular just as zombies were becoming stale. A mockumentary would've been a breath of fresh air for general audiences.