An insult to the book.

I think you're looking for the Internet Book Database. We discuss movies here!

I've had a lot of sobering thoughts in my time Del Boy, it's them that started me drinking!

I like to think of this movie the same way I do with the 90's "A little princess", and the Fleischer cartoon of Gulliver's travels: wonderfully enjoyable (to me, anyways) movies with very tenuous ties to their novel counterpart.

I think a thorough adaptation would need to be done through a miniseries, like the Gulliver's Travels from 1996, which I hear is pretty accurate, and covers more than just the Lilliputian story.

I love faithful retellings, but sometimes divergence works too. *shrug*

It begs the question... would this book get published today?

Seriously. If someone by the name of Alexandre Dumas wrote this book for the first time verbatim, would a publisher look at it?

Probably not.

Audiences change.

Most of Dumas' works were newspaper serials, and so have a different 'way' about them than novels... even contemporary novels.

It's impossible to say of course, but it would be interesting to see what Dumas would have to say about this movie.

You gotta wonder why you put yourself through such a horror as watching this movie if it were really that bad. Or do you just get off dissing the artistic efforts of others to make yourself feel vastly superior? Perhaps you might understand more about how and why they did what they did if you listened to the commentary on the DVD. It will explain to you the differences between the book and the movie, why they made their decisions as to what to cut and what to put in, and what they were trying to accomplish, including the fact that this was 2002 and people were in the mood for a good revenge movie after 9/11, which this certainly provided.

I'm always pretty amazed at how people expect a movie to be like a book. They never are, and often those that are closest to the original novel are too long and too boring. This is one of my favorite movies, and yes, I read the book although I can't say I remembered all that much when I saw this in the theater the first time. It didn't matter to me if it was different from the book. It was certainly similar enough that it deserved the name, it was gorgeous to watch, had exciting swordfights, wonderful locations and costumes, the music was stunning, and it doesn't get much more beautiful watching Jim Caviezel, Dagmara Dominczyk, and Henry Cavill play the main roles. Guy Pearce was pretty incredible as Mondego, and there were a series of great villains. The acting was great. This was actually a low-budget film, but I would never have guessed it.

If you want something just like the book, read the book. It's still there and won't go away anytime soon. I will continue to watch the movie now and then and appreciate everything they managed to do to tell this story.

—
"How was the war, sir?"
"As any war, ma'am, a waste of good men." (Poldark)

The Count of Monte Cristo is the literary equivalent of a tv series. If you found out they were remaking Sons of Anarchy into a movie would you expect them to recreate the entire story and all the characters? Of course not. You'd expect them to hit the basics and then let the story play out in a way fit for a two hour movie. Why would it be any different with a 1200 page serialized novel?

OP: It's a fine adaptation of the classic novel. To do the book justice would require a 4-5 hour epic ala Gone with the Wind which the film most likely didn't have the budget for. The rewrites done for the movie is cliched Hollywood drama, but the film wasn't bad taking it for what it is.

After all... tomorrow is another day.

I disagree, I read the book and saw Chamberlain's version but I still love this. You would probably loathe a lot of older films based on books as many are adapted to the screen with many changes. You should expand your palette.

The first half follows the book for the most part, with some changes to make it more action packed (like Edmond escaping the guards initially and then fleeing to Mondego's for a sword fight) but yeah I agree the second half is completely different.