Adaptations: movies that ended drastically different from their literary counterpart

The title says it all: Can you think of any movies that had drastically different endings from the literary version? Just trying to find some good examples to excerpt for my Film & Literature class.

Thanks a bundle, Dopers :slight_smile:

cats

Off the top of my head, I can think of -

“the Shining” - but the film’s plot diverges from the book’s storyline about 30 seconds into the run.

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s” - in the film, George Peppard’s character isn’t gay, and is a kept boy by a wealthy, married socialite. Holly Golightly is an ambigious “party girl” (as opposed to a hooker in the book), and seems not to have a clue what “snow in miami” seems to mean. The movie has a schmaltzy happy ending, while the book ends with Holly skipping town for Brazil.

I haven’t actually seen the movie (and, Og willing, never will) – and it’s not the ending – but I’m pretty sure there’s no hot-tub scene in Hawthorne’s version of The Scarlet Letter.

“The count of Monte Christo” - even though the plots are broadly similar, the style of the movie and the book are utterly different.

“Starship troopers” - bugs. Humans fighting bugs. Main character called Rico. That’s about all I can come up with in the way of similarity.

The tack-on happy endings of the Disney animated versions of The Little Mermaid and The Hunchback of Notre Dame should count. Nobody dies.

Thanks, guys! Keep them coming :slight_smile:

Are we doing your homework here?

Minority Report

I ran in here to say “The count of Monte Cristo” but I see that someone has beaten me to it.
However, I’d like to share that I saw this movie on an airplane and when it ended I was like whatwhatWHAT?!?!?!?! and I wanted so badly to stand up and yell out “has anyone else on this plane read the book because I’m damn sure it didn’t end like that!” but then I figured if I stood up and yelled I’d probably get tackled and wrestled to the floor while the plane turned around in mid-flight and I’d have to explain to the FBI over a four-hour grueling interrogation that actually I was just upset about the movie. So I didn’t.

Do stage and movie versions of musicals count? If so, then consider the different endings with **Little Shop of Horrors ** as an example of variations depending on artistic medium. I much prefer the stage version of the ending!

Logan’s Run. There are 3 scenes in the movie that are very faithful to the book, quoting long dialogues almost verbatim. The other 90% of the movie is completely different.

**Moby Dick ** (the Gregory Peck version). The whale still wins, but the movie tries to make the finale much more dramatic.

**Sweet Bird of Youth ** (the Paul Newman version). Tennessee Williams wrote 3 or 4 alternative endings for his play. The 1962 movie did not use any of them.

Apparently adding a hot-tub wasn’t the only liberty Demi took with the book version of *The Scarlet Letter*.

I am shocked – shocked!

Forrest Gump.

In the book, Jenny and Forrest don’t end up together, and Jenny doesn’t die.

The first one that always comes to my mind:

The Planet of the Apes, by Pierre Boulle, has an ending that is extremely different from the one in the original movie made in 1968. Tim Burton’s recent remake has an ending that is closer, in spirit, to the novel’s ending.

Come to think of it, another novel by Pierre Boulle, the Bridge Over the River Kwai, was adapted in 1957 as one of my all-time favorite movies. The ending of the book does also differ in many ways from the ending of the movie.

Both great books, by the way, and no spoilers will be forthcoming in this post.

I was going to mention that movie, but it was more than just the ending that was different, wasn’t it?

The Natural

In Bernard Malamud’s novel, Roy Hobbs strikes out.

I’d like to tell you that the end of Planet of the Apes (Heston version) is radically different from the book, but so is the middle. And the beginning.

Contact is pretty different.

Rocket Boys (October Sky) has more or less the same ending, it’s just everything else that’s different. (And it’s an autobiography!)

D’OH! You beat me to it. Yes, the ending that is closer to the book, nominally, but neither movie bears any real resemblance to the book at all. Except for one:

There are, in fact, apes in all three.

The Time Machine. In the movie, the Main Character’s drive was personal (trying to “save” his wife), while in the book it was mere curiosity and exploration.

In the movie, the Eloi speak English. In the book, they don’t.

In the book, the Morlocks are frightening. In the movie, they’re comical.

In the book, there’s no uber-brained telepathic Morlock leader. In the movie, Jeremy Irons embarasses himself.

In the book, the time machine isn’t destroyed. In the movie, we wind up wishing that The Time Machine had been destroyed.

In the book, the Main Character winds up travelling into the far distant future, shortly before the sun dies, and has an encounter with odd giant crablike things. In the movie, they give us a disgustingly shlocky happy ending.

The only good things the movie brings to the table is the Moon destruction scene (shown in commercials and trailers) and Orlando Jones’ holographic character, which was very forlorn and tragic. Everything else was pure shite.

Christ, I hate The Time Machine. And the book was so great, too.

Oh yeah, and Lynch’s Dune has a totally and utterly ridiculous ending that has all hard-core fans in perma-:rolleyes: for all eternity.

You aren’t doing my homework, per se… I’m the teacher! But I was having trouble with endings. We are looking at scenes that build suspense without any kind of dialogue (lighting, music, expression, camera angles) and I have some things in mind for that. However, we are going to “adapt” the short story “Popular Mechanics” into a screenplay, and I want the kids to take some liberty with the endings. Before we begin, though, I’d like to show them some examples where the endings are completely changed. Thanks for all the suggestions, I will be looking into them.