The Princess Bride
William Goldman made a number of changes in the development of The Princess Bride screenplay.
The changes Goldman were not subtle, because when you transform a book into a movie there are major adaptations that must be made for a movie to be successful. The changes may affect the quality of the movie incomparison to the novel. This report is going explainthe three most significant changes and how these affected our view and appreciation of the story.
The most significant difference between the book and the movie, was that the narrative parts of the book which display the characters thoughts were removed.The book describes what the characters where feeling and thinking, which brought us closer to them. When we know what the character feels and thinks, the story becomes a three-dimensional world.
In contrast to the book, the movie seemed plain on this point, because we hear the characters speak, but we do not get to know the real thoughts and feelings of the characters. Goldman really had no way of telling us what the character was all about. The director should have expressed the characters thoughts into words, which is not that difficult to do.
Another change that happened when developing the novel into a movie, was that the Zoo of Death was not shown in the movie. In the book, the Zoo of Death was one of the main places where the characters interacted.
This is when we found out how good friends Inigo and Fezzik were. It was a great part in the book, because our imagination seemed to picture the Zoo of Death, quite easily. Also the Zoo of Death proved to us how Prince Humperdinck was so obsessed with killing and hunting animals. It showed how the Prince had a rotten and evil personality, which no one could cope with.
When they described the Zoo of Death having various floors, and having hundreds of viscous animals. However, in the movie they simply had a one level chamber which was boring and ordinary.
Another important change which happened was when they described each characters personality individually, in the book with a subtitle. For example, this waswhen Goldman began to talk about Inigos childhood and how his father was murdered. In the movie Inigo briefly talked about his fathers death to the Man In Black, which seemed to be boring and dull. Goldman should have filmed a younger Inigo battling the Count.
This significant change in the movie should not have happened, it would have made the movie more interesting and comical.
These changes to the movie obviously weakened the quality of the film.Goldman wrote a book which was outstanding and exciting, but the movie was a different story. The movie , in some parts seemed dull because of changes which were not necessary to be made. Goldman should have thought about what his audience wanted to see, not what was easier for him to produce and direct.
