“What I really want from an adaptation is to feel the feelings | felt while reading the book, right? ” (John Green). Paper Towns directed by Jake Schreier is a 2015 release, starring the actors Natt Wolf and the model/ actress Cara Delevinge, tells the story of Quentin Jacobsen (Natt Wolf) and Margo Roth Spiegelman (Cara Delevinge). This movie is the chronicle of Quentin Jacobsen and how he has spent his life up till then loving Margo, who was his front door neighbor from afar without being capable of telling her how he feels.
So one night after she crawls into his bedroom looking for his help for a vengeful adventure, he goes to her aid. The next morning, Quentin looks for Margo and she is gone. Quentin though doesn’t give up; he finds certain clues that she left and goes in search of her. This movie is based on the novel by John Green and in my opinion, it couldn’t be a more erroneous film than it already is. This film is sincerely one of the worst that I have seen. This film not only is in a completely different timeline than the timeline of the book, it also possesses many erroneous parts all over the movie.
Also, the actor of Margo is nothing like the one of the book. For starters, what is so different from the movie from the book? Well to start off, the characters in the book and the movie are nothing alike. In the movie, Margo is depicted as someone that made mistakes and is trying to right her wrongs in a way. Like when she takes out Quentin on her last adventure, in the scene where she dances with Quentin in a way of saying I’m sorry for what happened in the sixth grade dance, (which is when she didn’t dance with Quentin just because one of the popular guys convinced all the girls not to dance with him).
While in the book (there is no other way to say this), she is a complete bitch. In the book, we can notice that yes, she was a different kind of person and yes, she was a mystery, but a mystery which only cared about herself. She even says she is: “the most horrible selfcentered person in the history of the world” We can also notice this in the book by how she runs away from Quentin and everyone after just lighting a fire of hope for Quentin’s love life. Another way that we are shown how Margo is a bitch in the book is now how she treats Ben, who is Quentin’s weird friend who was bullied through most of his high school.
As Ben receives a light of hope, when one of the most popular girls asks him to prom, Margo, who was friends with the girl when they see each other, disses her friend’s choice to go to prom with Ben. In the movie as well, there are many parts that are changed from the book. Of course, this may happen in many movies, but the writers of this movie took it to a whole new level. One of the things that are changed in the book is the timeline in which all of these events occur. Making this film very “fake” compared to the original book.
In the movie they make the road trip to find Margo just days before prom, making it a possibility for them to skip it. While in the book, prom has already happened and what they are actually skipping is the graduation. They leave just before the graduation starts making not only the starting point of the film wrong, but the whole story in a completely different timeline. This is what makes the writers of the film have to add stuff to the movie that never actually happened in the book, in order to make the film more like the book.
One example of this may be like the scene of the t-shirts that is changed. In the movie Ben, (Quentin’s friend) drops some pee, on the t-shirt of Radar (another friend of Quentin which was also on the road trip), which makes them take a stop in order to buy some new shirts for Radar and Ben. While in the book, the three of them had a promise with Quentin and it was that they would go naked under their robes for graduation, but since they never actually went to graduation they, had to urchase some clothes because they were naked under their cap and gown making them have to make a pit stop in order to get clothes. This movie not only changes and adds parts, but it also takes away much of what’s considered to be important parts of the book. Such as in the end of the book when we learn that Margo actually had a diary in which she pretended that she was with Quentin the whole time she grew up. In this journal, she pretended that after they saw the dead man, she and Quentin remained together, but in the movie this diary actually never existed.
The writers had taken it out completely. Another part that is also taken out is the part of Sea World, in this scene in the movie, Margo is like 10 years old, and after seeing the dead man in the middle of the road, she digs into him, as if she were a detective. She then goes to Quentin’s room in the middle of the night and tells him to go with him to Sea World to talk to the ex-wife of the dead guy that they found, but Quentin refuses because he says “he doesn’t want to get into trouble”. In the actual book, they break into Sea World and Margo is bit by a snake.
Making Quentin suck out the poison. This for me was a key part of the movie and knowing that it was left out it changed my whole perspective, since for me when I watched the movie, it made me think as if they had gone to the park together they would have remained united, but since they didn’t they weren’t. Now knowing that they did and that it still didn’t happen makes me angry that the actual writers of the film didn’t give this scene a chance to occur, nor the one of the book. In conclusion,