When bringing the written word to the movie theater, it's sometimes in the film's best
interest to get rid of the most disturbing stuff.
Everybody and their mother knows about E.L. James's erotic romance novel Fifty Shades
of Grey. Naturally, as one of the more memorable bestsellers of the decade, James's book was
destined for a major motion picture adaptation. The movie hit theaters and was, unsurprisingly,
a huge box office success despite predominantly unfavorable reviews.
As fans of the book noticed, however, one particular sequence from the novel didn't
make the cut the infamous "tampon scene," in which Christian wants to get it on despite
the knowledge that it's Anastasia's time of the month. Director Sam Taylor-Johnson told
Variety:
"It didn't make it into the movie. It was never even discussed."
The film's producer, Michael De Luca, agreed:
"The book needed to put you in Ana's shoes to be a successful experience. A lot of it
was very literal. The movie didn't need to do that. It's a completely different medium."
The romance film Me Before You, known by many for starring Game of Thrones' mother of dragons
Emilia Clarke, had the benefit of being adapted for the big screen by the novel's author herself,
Jojo Moyes...which only makes it more interesting that the film lacks one rather critical plot
point.
In the movie, the female protagonist Louisa "Lou" Clark is quirky and intelligent, which
is why nobody really understands what keeps her from spreading her wings. In the book,
however, we know exactly what Lou's deal is. While drinking with a group of guys in high
school, she was sexually assaulted, something she keeps firmly under wraps. This critical
plot point is used to explain pretty much everything about Lou, from her weird and overtly
non-sexual sense of style to her offbeat personality.
Moyes claimed they tried for six months to put that scene into the movie, but it simply
didn't fit.
Emma Donoghue didn't just write the impactful 2010 novel Room. She also wrote the screenplay
for the award-winning novel's film adaptation, which itself was nominated for multiple Academy
Awards, including Best Picture. As is often the case, however, Donoghue struggled with
the harsh reality that not every scene from the book is good for the movie.
In the case of Room, Donoghue chose to cut out the scene in which Ma tells her son Jack
that she gave birth to a baby girl before him. Because she had no medical attention
in captivity, the child was tragically stillborn.
Despite having written the scene into the script, Donoghue made the tough move to remove
it completely. Donoghue told Variety:
"The stillbirth story slammed the brakes and yanked us back toward the tragic past.[ …] I
have to grudgingly admit that the film's better without it."
The entire conceit of The Hunger Games is built on death, pain, torture, and cruelty.
In a fascist nation called Panem, an annual contest selects two children from each of
12 districts to fight to the death, both to amuse the elitists in charge and to punish
the population for a failed uprising from many years earlier.
"I volunteer as tribute."
Not only does President Snow's government in the Capital enable the deaths of 23 children
each year in elaborate war games, but it develops and utilizes technology to lead to more suffering,
both in and out of the Hunger Games. While Suzanne Collins' very successful Hunger Games
books were aimed at teens and children, the movie adaptations eliminated some of the Capital's
particularly ghastly acts. For example, anyone who tries to escape Panem and gets caught,
as well as those mixed up in potential uprisings, are turned into what are called "Avoxes":
Their tongues are cut out, meaning they can't talk, and they're forced into a life of slavery
in the Capital.
Capital-employed Hunger Games-makers also utilize so-called "muttations," genetically
modified creatures, to make the competition even deadlier. The final three competitors
in the first Hunger Games novel face off with wolf-type monsters. And thanks to science,
each of these so-called "mutts" unsettlingly bears the face of one of the children sacrificed
earlier in the Games.
Many of filmmaker Cameron Crowe's works are based on true stories. In 1981, Crowe published
Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story, and to observe teenagers in their element,
the 22-year-old writer pretended to be a senior in a real California high school. That book
became the basis of the 1982 classic teen movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, one of
the most salacious and eye-opening accounts of teen life ever put to film. The breakout
star was future ultra-serious, two-time Academy Award-winning actor Sean Penn, who starred
as Jeff Spicoli, a well-liked, good-natured surfer-stoner dimwit.
"huh huh, all I need is some tasty waves, a cool buzz, and I'm fine"
But in the book, Spicoli is a target of his classmates' derision, both for his lack of
intelligence and outright cruelty. Per Crowe's account, a student's father and sister are
killed in a grisly car accident, and Spicoli bursts into the kid's class, showing off a
newspaper article with crash photos. The kid cried and nobody spoke to Spicoli for a month.
That scene didn't make it into the mostly comedic Fast Times film.
Michael Crichton's 1990 novel Jurassic Park is a techno-thriller, detailing the death
and destruction that occurs when the science-created dinosaur clones that inhabit a remote theme
park start attacking as many humans as they can. One of the scariest and most memorable
scenes in the blockbuster 1993 film adaptation is when small but deadly velociraptors track
down kids Lex and Tim as they hide in a kitchen. They get out safely, but a far worse and sickening
fate befalls a much younger child in Crichton's novel.
The first sequences of the book, in which Costa Rica is plagued by a series of mysterious
lizard attacks, didn't make it into the movie. Those lizards are obviously Jurassic Park
escapees, and in one scene from the novel, a nurse discovers three little dinosaurs attacking
a baby.
The 1990 film Misery is an adaptation of a Stephen King novel, and it's a horror story
that doesn't involve monsters, ghosts, or creatures. The scary thing in Misery is a
human, and it's Annie Wilkes, played by Kathy Bates. Annie is a super-fan of romance novelist
Paul Sheldon, played by James Caan, and she gets the chance to meet him after saving him
from a car accident. But when she finds out that Paul's upcoming novel will kill off her
favorite character, Annie's adoration turns sinister, and she holds Paul hostage in her
home, forcing him to write what she wants. When Annie leaves for the day, Paul goes snooping
in the house to learn more about his captor. Upon her return, she realizes what he did,
and restrains him against a bed.
"I know you've been out,"
Then, to ensure he doesn't try another escape, she violently and graphically shatters his
ankles with a sledgehammer. Perhaps director Rob Reiner and screenwriter William Goldman
are just more squeamish than King. In the original book, Annie doesn't club Paul's ankles
— she amputates a foot with an axe, and then cauterizes the bloody stump wound with
a blowtorch.
Jiminy Cricket, from the 1940 film Pinocchio, is one of the most memorable characters in
the vast universe of Disney animated films, and for good reason. He's kind, patient, and
serves as the conscience of marionette-turned-real-boy Pinocchio. Writers and animators greatly embellished
and fleshed out the character for the film, based on Carlo Collodi's episodic fairy tale
novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, published in serial form in 1881 and 1882.
In the source text, Jiminy Cricket is known only as "Talking Cricket" and he isn't a major
character. Early in the story, when Pinocchio has left home, the Talking Cricket advises
the boy to head back to the safety and comfort of home. Pinocchio flies into a rage over
being told what to do, and he picks up a hammer and throws it at the Talking Cricket. Pinocchio
harbors no remorse over this incident, which would have made for a very dark Disney film,
telling Geppetto, quote, "It was his own fault, for I didn't want to kill him."
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