Oh where to start? The book for any movie is usually bound to be different since Hollywood loves to take favorite stories and mangle them beyond all repair. But in some cases it’s almost as though the book and the movie are two separate entities with only the names of their characters being the same. Take Forrest Gump for example, the book seems to be a different story altogether when you look at it side by side with the movie.
For instance:
In the book Forrest stands six feet and five inches and is well over two hundred pounds. In the movie he’s of average size and not that heavy.
The book shows Forrest as being a champion-level chess player while in the movie Forrest never plays chess.
The book version shows Jenny leaving Forrest and marrying another man, while in the film Jenny still leaves Forrest but eventually comes back and soon after passes away.
In the book Forrest is at least somewhat intelligent but only in certain fields, he also shows a high level of ambition and aptitude towards running for the US Senate. In the movie Forrest is a very innocent person that doesn’t really have much ambition but instead goes where he’s led at first and then makes his own way the best he can.
Even how he grows up is highly different in the book since he is raised in a shack, swears a lot, and eventually flunks out of college. In the movie Forrest doesn’t swear at all and is raised in an historical mansion. He also graduates college and then goes into the US Army. Also in the book, Jenny isn’t a stripper and Bubba is white, while in the movie she is most definitely a stripper and Bubba turns out to be black.
The differences between the book and the movie are so great that it might be more comforting to the author to claim that the film took the most basic aspects of the book and ran with their own idea rather than admitting that Hollywood pretty much tore apart his story and added in what they wanted. It’s sad to say it but the film version seems a lot more positive and upbeat than the book, though it’s still irritating at times to see how Hollywood is so reluctant to push forth the vision of the author in favor of their own ideas.
It’s very true that both sides need each other when it comes to telling a story, but the idea that anyone would tear apart someone’s story with such reckless abandon is kind of heart-rending. It makes me want to never give any consideration to making one of my own stories into a movie simply because it might get torn to pieces and be less than recognizable when all was said and done. While Forrest Gump might be an improvement on the original it’s still the audacity that goes into creating such a movie that’s hard to fathom.
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