gone girl: book vs movie

both were good but there's a clear winner

I first watched Gone Girl one night alone in my freshman dorm room on a rare occasion where I actually sat down and watched a full movie. Sometime later on I decided I should read the original novel by Gillian Flynn, and this wish to read it was heightened by the fact that I liked Flynn’s other book Sharp Objects. Then, by chance, I found Gone Girl in my favorite used book store, so I knew I had to buy it (even though it might’ve been cheaper online…). Naturally, I read the entire book very quickly and rewatched the movie to get the full experience.

abusing my new knowledge of canva to make this mediocre graphic

So, which did I like better? I think that this is one of those cases in which both versions are very good, but they also are quite different stylistically. This makes sense given that the author has her own style and the director, David Fincher, is an established director with his own general styles of mood, cinematography, and so on. It’s not like it was two random novices — these are notable people in their respective fields. The creator (author or director) is identifiable within each piece. I’ll go through some of the major differences I noticed between the two.

One of the biggest differences I detected quickly was the way that the genre shaped the story and how life-like the characters were. The movie felt very sterile, and I don’t necessarily mean that in an insulting way. The characters looked like they were acting, as if they were plotting and carefully planning each movement and each word. They all felt untrustworthy, shallow, intentionally fake, and very calculating. I didn’t notice this as much in the book because the characters felt more like normal people. They said that they pretended to be someone else, but it’s more palpable in the movie as you watch the characters put on their respective acts. The casting was really good though and matched how the characters were described in the book. Rosamund Pike does look like a beautiful, rich NYC girl, and Ben Affleck could pass as a cute, pretentious, midwestern boy.

The film’s dialogue also felt a bit more forced and less spontaneous, again pointing to how wily the characters seem. It made their masks more apparent. This gives very different impressions between each version and would affect who you’d side with or empathize with the most. Per usual, it was easier to project on to characters in the book, but I think this difference is a lot larger compared to other book-to-movie adaptations. There’s a lot of unnerving subtleties in the movie that changed the way I viewed the characters. The overall color palette of the movie also lends to the sterile, distant feeling of the movie. Additionally, I felt a lot more connected to the characters as I read, but, to be fair, I spent a lot more time with them by reading the book over multiple days compared to sitting for mere hours for the movie.

I also think that the movie was a bit more staunchly within David Fincher’s typical genre of choice for his movies: psychological thrillers. The novel is also a thriller, but I think that it has moments in which doesn’t feel like such a tense thriller. The alternating chapters between Nick’s POV and Amy’s diary entries almost make it feel like we’re alternating between crime thriller and romance-story-gone-bad. We see a little bit of this in the film with the flashbacks, but they’re too short and infrequent to really feel like there’s any sort of genre or vibe shift caused by the flashbacks. Generally, this is to say that I thought that there was a bit more variety in tone and such when I read the book compared to when I watched the movie. Again, this isn’t to be insulting (there are benefits to each!); it’s just a creative difference I noticed.

There is one thing I will note for the credit of the movie — it did not feel like 2.5 hours. The book is just over 400 pages, so it’s not super long for a typical novel, but movies that are over 2 hours seem really long to me. However, as I watched the movie, it felt a lot shorter than it was. It was really easy to stay focused on the movie and not have my mind drift off, as it can with longer movies. Part of this could be because it’s a movie I know I like, but I also just think that everything they kept in the movie was interesting, and the pace wasn’t super slow.

One thing I’ll note to the detriment of the movie/credit of the book — Amy seems crazier in the movie, in my opinion. I know that they couldn’t add more detail to an already long movie, but there were some critical details that could explain why Amy resented Nick. For example, (mild spoiler) we miss out on the fact that he wouldn’t go with his mom to her cancer treatments so Amy had to go instead. For a momma’s boy, not going to sit with her while she’s getting treatments would not indicate that he truly meant “in sickness and in health” if he can’t even do that for the person he seems to care more about. There’s also some parts in the beginning of the movie that would’ve been more confusing without the context of the book. It’s not confusing enough to make the beginning unenjoyable, but with less context you’ll need to put more effort into analyzing each thing that happens.

The verdict: I liked the book better. I preferred how the characters seemed a bit more genuine in the book and less intentionally manipulative. I also liked how the tone and vibe shifted a lot more in the book as we bounced between perspectives. Also, the details are really important in this book. I know everyone says that about books, but for this type of story I really do think that every detail matters. Nevertheless, I did really like the movie and would recommend it to people, but I’d make sure to tell them to read the book. I’m not sure if it would be better to watch or read it first because I’m not sure which version would make the twist more impactful. That can be the part you decide yourself.

---

That’s most of my thoughts on the book and the movie! There’s definitely more to say about the topic, but this was just the parts that stuck out the most to me. Hope you enjoyed reading about how they differed. This will probably be another series on my blog, the “xxxx: book vs movie” series. I love reading and then watching a story, and I often have a lot of thoughts about the two, how they differ, and the benefits/drawbacks of each version. I just finished reading “The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum” so maybe I’ll write a post about the book vs movie if I can find it online. I also still need to watch the “Sharp Objects” miniseries as well as the movie versions of Valley of the Dolls and The Picture of Dorian Gray, so those are other contenders.

Anyway, let me know what you thought about Gone Girl or if you have other book/movie combos that you want me to write about!

As a little bonus, I’ll add some of the quotes I marked in the book below:

“It had been an awful fairy-tale reverse transformation. Over just a few years, the old Amy, the girl of the big laugh and the easy ways, literally shed herself, a pile of skin and soul on the floor, and out stepped this new, brittle, bitter Amy. My wife was no longer my wife but a razor-wire knot daring me to unloop her, and I was not up to the job with my thick, numb, nervous fingers.”

“Love makes you want to be a better man—right, right. But maybe love, real love, also gives you permission to just be the man you are.”

“I don’t miss men looking at me. It’s a relief to walk into a convenience store and walk right back out without some hangabout in a sleeveless flannel leering as I leave, some muttered bit of misogyny slipping from him like a nacho-cheese burp.”

“One should never marry a man who doesn’t own a decent set of scissors. That would be my advice. It leads to bad things.”

“I am a great husband because I am very afraid she may kill me.”

ttyl,

emily :)