Hannibal’s novel ending outraged many fans, and would have sunk the movie, so they gave the movie a more upbeat ending. In the novelLector succeeds in brainwashing Clarice, using drugs, hypnosis and at one point making her think she’s talking to her deceased father. She happily dines on her former harrasser’s frontal lobes and becomes Lector’s willing lover.
I can’t believe nobody’s mentioned The Running Man.
The compleat list of what The Running Man (the Arnold movie) and The Running Man (one of Stephen King’s Bachman books) have in common:
- Some of the character names.
- The concept that it would be televised.
- Put it in
Somehow, I was always under the impression RAH wrote the “Destination Moon” short story after the screenplay, or at least simultaneously with the screenplay…
Sir Rhosis
In the Cut. Drastically different ending. Say what you want, but I kind of liked this flick.
SK’s short story The Lawnmower Man and the film have the following in common:
- Erm…
- Hi, Opal.
It’s up for debate how “literary” some of these are, but…
The Firm the movie ends with Mitch and wife riding into the sunset back to practice law at a real firm, while the book has a great getaway through Florida strip motels and absconding to the Caribbean with mob and FBI money
Cider House Rules-[spoiler]the movie condenses into two years a story that takes place over thirty or more years in the novel*
Night of the Iguana- the movie has most of the same characters as the play but a completely different storyline (the biggest change: the play is set ca. 1940 and the movie was set contemporary with its filming in 1964)
Frankenstein- the b/w 1931 classic has almost nothing to do with the book (it’s set in a different time, has a totally different feel, the monster is an incommunicative revenant, the Arctic chase is gone, etc.- some remakes were closer but still strayed significantly (especially in asinine sideplots)
Gone With the Wind- Rhett leaves Scarlett in both, but much sooner in the book (they are already separated when Melanie dies)
I was going to mention Hannibal if nobody else did, but it is interesting to me that I would have framed my post in an entirely different way; I loved the ending to the book, and the changed ending utterly ruined the film for me (other failings aside).
Perhaps it should be said, though, that I very much enjoyed the book as a whole. I understand many found the book to be rather overwrought and baroque, and I can understand an attraction to the somewhat more restrained tone of the film, and more conventionally pleasing ending.
All this mention of Minority Report and none of Total Recall? Another in which the whole movie is different than the short story. In fact, the short story almost doesn’t have an ending, just a prophecy.
If you want to consider mythology, I submit
. Although Perseus does rescue Andomeda, he doesn’t do it by riding Pegasus.
Not exactly a fine cinematic experience, but The Horse Whisperer movie version ending was drastically different from the book. I don’t really remember how either one of them ended right now, but I know it wasn’t the same!
Yep. In the book The Horse Whisperer, the title character dies in the end.
From Russia With Love. In the Fleming novel, Rosa Klebb manages to kick Bond in the shin, and Bond collapses, apparently doomed. (Although Fleming resuscitates him for more adventures, in a laughable deus ex machina: MI6 gives him the antidote to the poison in time. Yeah, right!)
I’ve always found the ending of the 1940 film version of **Rebecca ** disappointing:
[spoiler]In the original novel, the “perfect” marriage of Maxim and Rebecca de Winter is in fact a complete sham. In reality they loathe each other. Rebecca is flagrantly unfaithful to Maxim and he kills her after she leads him to think that she may be carrying another man’s child. There’s no doubt in the reader’s mind that Maxim is a murderer.
The film version makes Rebecca’s death an accident, with Maxim no longer a murderer.[/spoiler]
Or Troy, in which Agamemnon and Menelaos die in battle and there is no Cassandra.
Both stage and film versions of My Fair Lady, while retaining the structure and a lot of the dialogue of Shaw’s Pygmalion, change the ending: in the musical, Eliza goes back to Higgins at the end, but in the original play she leaves him for feckless but loyal dork Freddy Hill.
Which is why King successfully sued to have his name removed from it.
Sampiro - I know nothing of this book called “Troy” of which you speak. However, in The Iliad, the poem on which Troy is solely based, Cassandra barely exists as a character. Her part in the siege of Troy is in the works of Euripides, Vergil and Aeschylus. Criticise for the rest if you like, but not for that.
Ice Station Zebra The film diverges from the book once the sub arrives at the station. In the book the USS Dolphin arrives at the station rescues the survivors and finds the satellite. A fire breaks out aboard the sub and the spy has to identify which of the survivors is the saboteur in a scene right out of every mystery novel. No Soviet paratroopers, no standoff.
Fried Green Tomatoes though quite faithful to the book, did modify the end just a touch.
[spoiler]In Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe Jessica Tandy’s character, Ninnie Threadgoode, does die in the end. In the movie, she lives and goes to live with Kathy Bates.
I guess there are two reasons to do this. 1) It was really too sad for the movie and 2) the end of the movie implied that maybe Jessica Tandy was really Idgie. Although, those who were listening carefully at the start of the film will hear Ninnie say she is Idgie’s sister-in-law which is consistent with the book. Ninnie was a big-boned girl who married Idgie’s brother. [/spoiler]
Ehhh, that was for the censors. There wasn’t supposed to be much doubt in anyone’s mind that Maxim killed her. At the very least it was meant to be very ambiguous.
I don’t remember much (o.k., virtually nothing) about the James Fenimore Cooper The Last of the Mohicans, except that the fate of the sisters was quite different from what was invented in the Michael Mann movie.
Nope. Everyone, Heinlein included , says that he based DM on his first juvenile, Rocket Ship Gaileo. IIRC, “Destination Moon” was a piece written to hype the film.
Fight Club – the book and movie end completely differently, and some of the background detail is a bit different.
Off the top of my head:
[ul]
[li]Tyler and “Jack” meet for the first time on a beach a few years earlier, not on a plane.[/li][li]Tyler and “Jack” get their human fat from Marla’s mom, not by robbing a lyposuction clinic (initially, at least; they might have done that later).[/li][li]The recipes for explosives and napalm that Tyler gives are different in the movie, supposedly because of concerns that the ones in the book would actually work.[/li][li]The big one: The buildings Tyler and Project Mayhem have targeted do not blow up because Tyler used an explosive recipe that doesn’t work.[/li]The book continues past the events in the movie; specifically, “Jack” is institutionalized, and just when it seems that things might turn out okay, an employee addresses him as Tyler Durden.[/ul]