Finally, the long-awaited movie adaptation of the Giver is here. However, no movie adaptation stays completely true to its source material, and the Giver is no different. The Giver movie sustained some massive changes to its characters and plot, not all of which were good. The movie changed the characters’ ages. In the movie, the characters were aged to the average dystopian-fiction age. While Lily only aged a year, Jonas and his friends aged a lot more, jumping from twelve to eighteen.
This age change may have worked with the movie’s modernized dystopian fiction plot and the target audience, but it took away, too. Jonas was only twelve in the book; he was still a child. When a child learns of war and pain and loneliness the way Jonas did, it’s borderline heartbreaking. After all, he’s only a child. When an eighteenyear-old reacts that same way to learning those things, it’s not very effective. You almost want to tell him to “grow up and man up”. When a child escapes his home and family to help them realize true feelings, it’s remarkably brave and courageous.
When an eighteen-year-old does it, it’s nothing special. An age change may have helped the movie get a wider audience, but I wasn’t a big fan of it. The characters’ roles and personalities changed, too. In the book. Fiona was merely Jonas’s acquaintance, while in the movie, she is one of his best friends, and later the object of his affection. Asher also changed when moved to the big screen. In the book, he was the crazy, mischievous “class clown” type, but he was much more serious in the movie.
Maybe his change of personality was merely a side effect of aging six years. After all, it would be a bit strange watching an eighteen-year old behave like a child. The Chief Elder, who you probably forgot existed in the book, is very present in the movie, and drives a lot of the action in the last half of the movie. Most of the basic plot of the book and movie is the same. Both are set in the distant future, in a community devoid of color, feelings, and choice. The plot is recognizable, but it has been changed quite a bit.
Of course, some action needed to be added to the movie, since the book had almost none, but all of that action took away from the book’s original ambiguous, philosophical feeling. It is understandable, though, since this movie appealed to a mostly teen or young adult audience, that staying one hundred percent true to the book would not work. Also, most of the changes in the movie had a reason. For example, during their ceremony, Asher and Fiona were assigned Pilot and Nurturer, as opposed to Assistant Manager of Recreation and Caretaker of the Old.
Asher and Fiona’s new jobs would be useful later in the movie. When Jonas needed to take Gabe from the Nurturing Center, he would need a Nurturer who worked there to help him. Also, when Jonas was escaping, a pilot would be asked to find and get rid of Jonas. Jonas’s escape in general had a lot more tension than it did in the book. Jonas and the Giver planned Jonas’s escape for a while in the book, and only mildly altered the plan by taking Gabe. In the movie, Jonas’s escape was spur-of-the-moment.
Jonas’s escape in the book was thrilling because of our built-up compassion towards him and our uncertainty of whether or not he and Gave would live. In the movie, that thrill was generated by the close call between Jonas’s escape and Fiona’s almost-release. Both methods were effective. But the reason that the latter method worked was because of the relationship between Jonas and Fiona. In the book, Jonas’s feelings for Fiona were minor and not mentioned very much; rather, they were used to help the reader realize what the Community took away. In the movie, hose feelings were blown up into a full-on love story.
These feelings were useful to the movie’s plot: The fact that Jonas and Fiona had feelings for each other drove up the tension when Fiona was about to be released while Jonas was escaping. But, despite it’s role in the plot, this love story was one of many generic, overdone stories of its kind. Overall, the Giver’s plot was changed to fit into the successful dystopian-fiction mold. It ended up working, but still lacked the depth that the book had had. The movie also changed the way in which the viewer got information.
The book relied more on the reader’s intelligence The movie, however, spoon-fed a lot of the information to the viewer. For example, in the book, the reader was expected to figure out that the boundary of memory existed and how it worked, while in the movie, everything was explicitly told to the ver via a map and a conversation between lonas and the Giver. The book was also a lot more ambiguous than the movie. It left more for the reader to decide: Did Rosemary know that she was going to be killed when she was released?
Did Jonas and Gabe actually survive in the end? The movie, however, gives more concrete answers to those questions. Maybe this is due to the fact that the movie was directed toward a younger audience. I, personally, like ambiguous endings more than concrete ones. The Giver’s movie adaptation was okay. When standing by itself, it’s actually a pretty nice movie. But when compared to the book, it’s not as good. Overall, the changes in the movie were understandable, but they are still subject to personal preference, and in my opinion, they weren’t that good.
