Short Giver synopsis

by Twinzorz

This is exactly what it sounds like. This is a short summary of things that were changed when the popular dystopian novel, The Giver, was made into a movie. It is nothing long, just 3 really long paragraphs and 1 really short one. (Feel free to comment on this or message me about it!)

Readers might wonder what is going through the head of Giver movie director Philip Noyce when he made the novel into a movie. The author Lois Lowry's book, published in 1993, is set in a seemingly utopian community where pain and other sad emotions are gone, but it is slowly shown to the main character Jonas and the people reading the book that it is in fact dystopian. While both the book and the movie are good, the movie and the book are different when you look at them, especially the jobs of Jonas's friends Fiona and Asher, Jonas and Fiona's relationship, and, most noticeably, Jonas's escape from the community.

In the book, Jonas, Asher, and Fiona are shown to readers that they were friends together in their childhoods and when they are Twelves in the community, when the book is set. In the movie, not only do they look much older than the book tells us they are, but also Jonas and Fiona have a romantic relationship starting in the middle of the movie. Also, instead of giving Asher and Fiona the jobs they had in the book, Asher being Assistant Recreation Manager and Fiona Caretaker of the Old, the director decides to give Asher Drone Pilot and Fiona Nurturer. Unlike some of the other differences, these all have a set reason for being changed during the movie's production. These were all changed to set up for the most important and exciting part of both the book and the movie, the escape of Jonas and Gabe.

The escape in the movie is very different from the escape in the book, even directly contradicting it at times. For example, the age difference allows for a romantic relationship between Jonas and Fiona, which in turn leads her to help him escape in the movie, while Noyce changed her job to Nurturer so she could help him get Gabe on his way out. Earlier in that movie sequence, Asher tries to stop Jonas but Jonas knocks him out. Jonas then is involved in a chase sequence when he tries to get Gabe, but Jonas manages to get out with Gabe where the chase continues into the forest and past the Giver's house. The Giver and Fiona were put in their version of prison. The two drones are sent out after Jonas goes over the edge with Gabe, and Asher controls one of them. He ends up catching them, but he lets them go out of kindness. They are about to release Fiona but right before that Jonas gets to the Boundary of Memory. None of this even happens in the book, which begs the question of, why would Noyce do this?

The answer is publicity. This is done to the movie to add more action to it, make it more appealing to the viewers. Almost every book to movie production does this, mostly in the climax of the plot, but sometimes in other places. And though it does make some people who read the book and watch the movie mad because of those plot discrepancies, it does help sell the movie. If you made a movie, would you do this?