Annihilation: The 17 Biggest Differences Between The Movie And The Book

Two sides of the same story

Alex Garland’s Annihilation is a good movie, but anyone expecting a direct adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s book of the same name is likely to be surprised by how many liberties it takes in translating page to screen. Though both versions of the story end up communicating many of the same themes, the way they arrive at establishing them varies wildly.

Both are exceptional visions of the human drive for knowledge and the intertwined beauty and horror of our natural world. Looking at how the two versions approach this subject matter shows its complexity--and makes an argument for fans of VanderMeer and Garland’s work alike to see the other’s take on the same plot. With that in mind, here are 17 of the biggest differences between Annihilation the book and Annihilation the movie.

Annihilation spoilers follow!

17. The Expedition Members Get Names In The Movie

VanderMeer’s Annihilation doesn’t give names to its expedition members. Instead, they’re known only by their occupation. The film’s Lena is simply the biologist. She’s accompanied, too, by women referred to only as the psychologist, anthropologist, and surveyor.

16. They Have Different Jobs Than In The Book

The movie changes the characters’ jobs as well. The surveyor, Cass, is also a geologist and the anthropologist is replaced with physicist Josie and paramedic Anya. Dr. Ventress, despite having a new name, is still a psychologist in both versions of the story.

15. The Husband Is Dead In The Book

Natalie Portman’s Lena (known only as “the biologist” in the book) comes to the strange world of the Shimmer (the book’s Area X) after her husband has already embarked on a disastrous expedition before her. Named Kane and played by Oscar Isaac in the movie, he dies before she sets out in the book, instead of lingering in a coma.

14. Lena Is A Lot More Social Than Her Book Counterpart

Lena doesn’t just gain a name in Garland’s Annihilation, but a few new character traits besides. In the book, the biologist is deeply antisocial (she’s written like a less friendly version of the film’s reserved physicist Josie). Having her be more open and willing to talk to the other expedition members makes a lot of sense for the movie, though, as it provides opportunities for exposition that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

13. In The Book, The Biologist Goes To The Southern Reach Willingly

The late night abduction that brings Lena to the Southern Reach only happens in the film. In the book, the biologist willingly enlists after her husband’s death. She’s fascinated by the complexity of different ecosystems, her career that of a field researcher rather than a professor, and has been from an early age. Her decision to explore a strange new environment helps give her character personal motivation beyond a sick husband.

12. Area X Isn’t Referred To As “The Shimmer”

The movie’s expedition site is called “The Shimmer” rather than simply “Area X” (though this name does appear on a title card). A lot has changed in the Shimmer/Area X’s implied size and rate of expansion, too. Though its border is still pushing further out in VanderMeer’s version, the Southern Reach scientists aren’t worried about it threatening to engulf the surrounding environment any time soon. Instead, it’s more quietly disconcerting--an inexplicable phenomenon that sits almost impassively as years and years go by without anyone figuring out what it really is.

11. The First Book Doesn’t Explain How Area X Came To Be

Though the movie opens with an unseen object crashing into a lighthouse like a bizarre meteor, Annihilation, the first novel in VanderMeer’s trilogy, doesn’t provide readers with an explanation for Area X’s origins. It’s only later, as the story continues, that the source of Area X is give more context (and even then it’s far from clear).

10. The Lighthouse Was Combined With The Book’s Mysterious “Tower”

The movie’s climax, in which Lena follows Dr. Ventress into an ominous lighthouse, borrows from other elements of the book. In VanderMeer’s version, the lighthouse and the tunnel burrowing through the ground beneath it are two separate locations. The latter area, cryptically called “the tower” by the biologist despite being a tunnel underground, is near the expedition’s base camp, while the lighthouse is further away and serves very different plot functions.

9. The Book Has An Elaborate Hypnosis Subplot

The psychologist clearly knows more than the rest of the expedition in both book and movie. In the film, though, the only sign we have of her exerting direct control over the rest of the group comes from the hours that they can’t remember immediately following their entrance into the Shimmer. In the books, we learn that she has actually used hypnotic suggestion to lead the others and calm their nerves in ways that dramatically influence the plot.

8. The Movie Shows The Creature Attacks

The book describes large reptiles and strange sea creatures, but aside from one scene near its end, the reader is never shown the expedition fighting off their attacks. The movie adds a little bit of extra excitement through memorable run-ins with an enormous mutated alligator and probably the most terrifying bear in cinema history.

7. The Inside Of The Tower Is Even More Interesting In The Book

Lena’s descent into the lighthouse’s tunnel is unnerving, but the book goes even further with its version of the analogous “tower.” Inside, the walls also seem to be alive, and they feature living words created by small organisms that spell out a never-ending, vaguely Biblical-sounding run-on scripture that lends the whole situation an air of mysterious, religious fervor.

6. There’s No Affair Subplot In The Book

In the movie, Lena is haunted by an affair she had with a university colleague. It colors her relationship with her husband Kane and ties into the movie’s themes of unintentional self-destruction and self-sabotage. The book’s biologist has a fraught relationship with her husband, too, but it’s because of their differences in personality, not an affair.

5. In The Book, Area X Isn’t “Defeated”

Following the nightmarish “copycat” sequence that ends the movie, Lena sets a fire that ends up destroying the Shimmer even as its effects live on through her and her husband’s changed biology. The first of VanderMeer’s books ends with the biologist fundamentally altered by Area X, but without the ecosystem damaged.

4. The Entire Book Is Presented As The Biologist’s Journal

One of the most unique aspects of the book is its format, a journal written by the biologist detailing the events of the story. This record ties into the rest of the trilogy going forward, but, understandably, the movie depicts the expedition more directly. The framing interviews with Lena in quarantine function similarly to a past tense journal, but the effect is very different.

3. The Bear Is A Different But Equally Creepy Creature

Anyone who sees Annihilation will have the sight and sound of the movie’s horrifying bear burned into their memory. The book doesn’t describe the exact same creature, but it does have something that serves a similar purpose: a constantly moaning hybrid of various animals that mindlessly chases the biologist toward the end of the story. Readers don’t learn what, exactly, it is until the final part of the trilogy, though its true nature is somewhat similar to the film’s bear.

2. Everyone Dies Differently In The Book Than In The Movie

None of the expedition member’s deaths are particularly pleasant in either version of Annihilation, but they are different. Rather than get mauled by the bear, turned into a plant, or destroyed by an internal light as in the movie, the book’s group is killed, one by one, from an encounter with the creature that lives in the tower, jumping from the lighthouse after becoming “infected” by Area X, and in a paranoid gunfight between two members.

1. There’s No Visible Copycat Process In The Book

Lena’s encounter with the copycat organism at the end of the movie roughly mirrors a similar, far less describable scene that serves as the climax of the book. No less terrifying, the biologist confronts a creature dubbed “the Crawler” that lives within the tower and is also copied by Area X. The end result is almost the same, but VanderMeer relates the copying process by having the biologist describe the sheer terror in psychological terms while Garland translates this to screen through a physical creature that lets the audience share in Lena’s horror.

from GameSpot http://ift.tt/2HTQN7w