Have you ever been sitting there watching a movie based
on one of your favorite novels?
And you're just so disappointed.
You're was like, Oh, I could've done that better.
Oh, they cut out my favorite minor character.
That scene was totally botched, I think whenever they make a book into a
movie, they have to make compromises.
And you're seeing it through the filmmaker's perspective, but they're
at least usually just sort of trying to capture the essence of the book.
But then there's those movies that you see and it's what did they do?
They weren't even trying.
This is almost nothing like the book.
They took a basic idea and then they changed it completely.
Well, that's what we're talking about today.
We're going to go into five classic books that are nothing like their movies.
Before we dive in, my name is Ellie Dashwood.
This is my channel where I talk about history, classic literature, and writing.
If you like any of those topics, please subscribe.
If you don't that's okay.
You're still cooly awesome.
Now let's go into number one: Love and Friendship.
Okay.
So if you have never heard of Love and Friendship, it is a movie that came
out in 2016, starring Kate Beckinsale.
And it's supposedly based on a Jane Austen story.
Now, first off, I want to clarify that Jane Austen did write a
story called Love and Friendship as part of her childhood works.
But it's not based on that story.
It's actually based on a short novellette that she wrote called Lady Susan.
So they just liked the other name better.
So they stole it and stuck it on Lady Susan when they made it into this movie.
Anyway, the basic story is there's the main character Lady Susan.
And she is a s elfish seductress.
She's been recently widowed.
So she's seducing her way through men, trying to find a good match
with a guy who was money, of course.
But she was having this affair with this married guy and his
wife sort of put an end to that.
So she gets kicked out of their house.
Because she was staying with them because this is the Regency Era and
everyone just stays with people.
And so she having nowhere else to go shows up of her brother and sisters in
law's house and causes their life havoc.
Now the basic plot line and the characters like names and who they are is very
similar in both the book and the movie.
And that is it.
Because if you read the book, it's this really interesting psychological
maneuvering between Lady Susan and her sister-in-law Catherine.
And it reminds me so much a Fanny Price and Miss.
Crawford in Mansfield Park.
In Mansfield Park, we definitely see Fanny coming up against the
Crawfords, who she knows are bad news, but nobody else seems to know.
And so she's trying to protect the family, but at the same time, it's
just this weird dynamic going on.
And I feel like it's that sort of on steroids in Lady Susan.
We definitely see this interesting psychological maneuvering
and trying to protect people.
But also Lady Susan, so like the master manipulator.
And it's a fascinating read.
You should definitely check it out.
Of course, Austen never disappoints.
So after reading that, I'm like, I'm so excited to go to this movie.
They turned it into this farce slash parody of Jane Austen.
The characters are weirdly drawn out and idiotic.
And they make all these risque jokes that isn't a Jane Austen trademark.
Exactly.
They took one of Jane Austen's masterpieces and turned it into a parody.
Right.
So it's kind of like taking Star Wars and turning into Spaceballs or Robin
Hood into Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
Yeah, that has a place in society.
But know that's what you're doing.
Don't try to pass it off as the real thing.
Right.
it was like, this is not Lady Susan.
So that is number one on this list where the book is so much better than the movie.
You should totally check out Lady Susan, the book.
Now up for number two, which I feel like is kind of the exact opposite situation.
It is the Phantom of the Opera.
Yes, I have to immediately say I love the movie, The Phantom of the Opera.
I love the stage play because of course the movie is a rendition of the
musical written by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Actually saw the stage plate.
It was one of the coolest nights of my life.
Cause I saw it in England on Her Majesty's Theater stage.
And it was so cool.
So of course I'm like, "Oh wow.
Usually the book is better.
Right?
" So I read the book by Gaston Leroux and it came out in the early 19 hundreds.
And again, it's one of those things where it's the basic idea.
There's this creepy guy under the opera house who's obsessed
with this girl named Christine.
And he sort of disfigured.
And she also has this lover named Raoul.
That basic ideas still there, but.
The book is just kinda weird and creepy.
and it's told from the perspective of a detective trying to get to the bottom
of what happened at the opera house.
And also the Phantom is just this really creepy guy.
Like I feel Gerard Butler led us to believe the Phantom was kind of hot.
And the Phantom is not hot.
He's actually this guy named Eric who owns a construction company.
Yeah, that's right.
He owns a construction company.
I don't know why that just makes the Phantom seem less mysterious.
It's just like, no, my name's Eric.
I own a construction company.
Also, I'm obsessed with this girl and I'm going to kidnap her under the Opera house.
Anyway, this is one of the ones where the movie is so much better,
and the play is so much better.
You can read the novel, if you want and meet Eric owner of a construction company.
So number three, the Scarlet Pimpernel.
Now this is one of those ones that the book is totally different from the movie.
And I'm talking about the 1982 version with Anthony Andrews,
Jane Seymour, and Ian McKellen.
But they're both incredibly awesomely epic in their own ways.
And I love both of them, which I think is fascinating that they were able to
do that because they both have such strong storylines and characters.
And they're just both great.
If you haven't read or watch these, you should.
But I'm going to talk about what I think is the main differences here.
But first, I'm going to tell you a little bit about it.
Because I know not, everybody's very familiar with the Scarlet Pimpernel.
And what it is, it was the story of the first modern superhero.
If you don't believe me, I'm going to make a whole video on this topic.
This book was first published in 1905 by Baroness Orczy, who
was a noble woman, obviously.
But she had been economically brought down and it was first
a stage play and then a novel.
But it's historical fiction because she wrote it about the French revolution.
And the Scarlet Pimpernel was a British aristocrat who was saving French
nobility from dying at the guillotine.
Because during the French revolution, they kind of went crazy.
They're just killing everybody.
And so he would go and he would save them before they could be killed and
he can bring them back to England.
So the Scarlet Pimpernel was his superhero name, but he had this
persona as Sir Percy Blakeney.
Sort of like how, Batman is Bruce Wayne or Superman is Clark Kent.
So Sir Percy Blakeney is the original superhero who sort of acted like an idiot.
He was dumb.
He was just all about his clothes.
He was just like, "I'm not really smart or reliable."
And of course that way nobody would ever guess that he is the one who
is stealing people from prison in France to save their lives.
Now, he gets married to this French woman and that happens
in both the book and the movie.
Now here is the major difference.
I feel like between the book and the movie.
Is the main focus of the story in the book is told from his wife's perspective.
Where in the movie it's more focused on the Scarlet Pimpernel himself.
So in the book, its this really unusual romance between two married
people from the wife's perspective.
Where she's like," I'm married to this guy.
He's kind of an idiot and that's really bothering me because also kind of hot.
And I have no clue that he's a superhero secretly.
Also all of a sudden the villain shows up and is threatening me."
And so that's her plot line that we have to watch play out throughout the book.
And in the movie, it's more from the perspective of the Pimpernel.
And he's like, yeah, "I'm a superhero saving these people.
Now I'm married to this French woman that I have mixed feelings about.
I don't know what to do, but everyone thinks I'm dumb.
I'm just going to save people."
So I think it's interesting both perspectives and the plot lines.
The plot lines run very differently.
The Pimpernel saves different people in the movie than he does in the book.
And it's just.
That sort of thing.
But either way, they're both fascinating.
And also if you are not interested in having to get the book and
read it, you can have someone read it to you through Audible.
If you think this is going to be an ad for the Audible Premium
Plus subscription, you are right.
So let's just take a brief minute and talk about the awesome aspects of Audible.
Audible Premium Plus is an audio book subscription that lets you have unlimited
streaming of the Audible Plus Catalog.
And that catalog has some pretty epic titles such as Pride and
Prejudice read by Rosamund Pike.
Yes, that's right.
You could have Jane Bennet from Pride and Prejudice 2005
reading you Pride and Prejudice.
That is pretty cool.
My favorite part of their subscription is that every month you get one credit
to choose a book to keep forever.
So for example, if you listen to Pride and Prejudice and you really loved it,
you could buy it with your one credit.
And then even after you cancel your subscription, you still get to keep it
and you can listen to it all you want without having to pay anything more.
Right now, you can sign up for a free one month trial with my affiliate link
below, and they'll actually give you two credits, so you can get two books to keep.
That way, even if you cancel your membership after your trial ends,
you still have those two books to listen to and enjoy Again, the link
to get your free trial is in the description of this video below.
So definitely go check that out.
I personally love Audible and I definitely recommend it.
Thank you so much for supporting my channel
. Now on the very important topic of the Scarlet Pimpernel.
I actually do have the audiobook from Audible of the Scarlet Pimpernel.
It Is so well-read I actually did use one of my credits to get it.
And so I still listen to it all the time.
I know I'm weird.
I like the Scarlet Pimpernel way too much, but you should
definitely check out that title.
If you ever get on Audible.
next number four little house on the Prairie now.
Okay.
I know this is not a movie.
It's the 1970s to 1980s television series.
But let's just pretend it's a really long movie for this five
movies are nothing like the book.
But yeah, this really nothing like the books .Now, I liked both of them.
The books are a fascinating look into life on the Prairie.
It is an autobiography written by Laura Ingalls Wilder who grew up in the American
Midwest during the late 18 hundreds.
And it gives us interesting details like how they spring, cleaned their house.
I remember being hogs heads being cured and just so many interesting things.
In the seventies and eighties, Michael Landon took that and
turned it into a TV show.
That was so seventies.
It was so eighties.
And so not like the book, but it's kind of hilarious because not only
are a lot of the characters different.
She has whole siblings in this TV show that didn't exist in real life.
The hair is different.
The hair so seventies, it's kind of funny.
B ut I think the biggest change is a Little House on the Prairie was
turned into social commentary and completely 1970 social commentary
on topics and issues that if you had asked the Ingalls family, what they
really thought on them, you would have gotten the complete opposite answer.
Right?
Cause I mean, they're dealing with everything from racism to weight-ism
to the rights of circus performers.
I don't think there's an issue that they did not try to tackle.
I mean, there's probably some, but it's just social commentary the whole time.
Okay.
Number five.
Pride and Prejudice.
Now, before anyone tries to kill me because they think I'm dissing
either in the 95 or the 2005 version.
I'm going to clarify that I'm talking about Pride and Prejudice 1940.
Yes.
There is a 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice.
It's black and white.
It stars Greer Garson and Lawrence Oliver.
And.
It's nothing like the book.
First off the most obvious difference, they took Pride and Prejudice, and they
threw it into the 1830s fashion-wise.
So you see these big hoop skirts happenin'.
There's none of those empire waisted to dresses that makes
everyone look pregnant in this show.
One of the reasons they did this is it came out the year
after Gone with the Wind.
And of course Gone with the Wind was such a big hit.
It's like, "Hey, everybody's loving these hoop skirts.
We need the hoop skirts in Pride and Prejudice.
Also, if we reuse the hoop skirts from Gone with the Wind,
we will save on the costumes."
Right?
These movie makers knew what they were doing budget wise.
But they also took a lot of liberties with the plot.
For example, they turned Mr.
Collins into a librarian instead of a minister.
And they added random archery scenes because of course, archery
belongs in Pride and Prejudice.
But I think the biggest blaring obvious difference is Lady Catherine De Bourgh.
We all know Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
She's horrid.
She's the worst aunt ever.
No.
1940 version of Lady Catherine de Bourgh is so glad Darcy
from true love with Elizabeth.
The only reason she didn't like her for a second, was maybe she is after his money.
But as soon as Lady Catherine realizes its true love she's so happy for her nephew.
On what is that Lady Catherine de Bourgh?
Now actually I want to talk a little bit about one of the reasons
for all of these changes, too.
Is the whole point of this Pride and Prejudice was to idyllize England.
This came out in 1940 and at that point, world war II was raging in
Europe, but America had not entered.
Of course they don't enter until 1941.
But there's this whole debate going on in American society of do we go and
help England and the allies in this war?
And the general consensus was no.
Because everyone remember what happened in world war 1.
It was like, "Hey world war one, wasn't our fight.
And we got involved in it and it got a lot of people killed and the ones that
weren't killed came back traumatized.
We're not going to do that again.
Let Europe deal with its own issues."
But of course like any debate, at the time, there was the opposite side of like,
"Hey, these are our friends in Europe.
We need to go save them."
And the movie makers of Pride and Prejudice were on that side.
So what they were trying to do was paint this very idyllic scene of
England that would make Americans think, "Oh, that's the motherland
that America descended from.
We need to go protect them."
And so, if you have all these warm fuzzy feelings, when you watch
Pride and Prejudice about England, And then you read in the newspaper,
"oh, they're getting bombed."
That causes you to be angry.
Right?
It's like, "no, that's, that's the warm, fuzzy, Pride and Prejudice place."
And then when you're angry, you're like, boom, we're entering the war.
We've got to protect Pride and Prejudice Land.
Right?
Well, that's kind of what they were hoping for.
Now.
Of course, we all think that America entered the war because Japan attacked
Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.
But really is that true?
Or was it pride and prejudice that just altered all of history.
That's the real reason America entered the war.
I don't know.
These are the deep mysteries of life that we may never know.
But anyway, that was the list of five movies that are nothing like their books.
And the real reason America entered world war two apparently.
Let me know in the comments below which of these books and movies
you love, or maybe don't love.
And subscribe to my channel, if you want to watch more videos like this.
Anyway, keeping Epic and awesome.
Bye.