Comments on: Comparison Between BENJAMIN BUTTON the Story and the Movie

By: Pop Culture Nerd

Pop Culture Nerd — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:55:05 +0000

Hi Jessica,

Welcome! I’m glad you came by to get that off your chest. Since you’ve read my post, you already know I agree with you. It was weird they made him a shriveled baby instead of a grown man with a beard and cigar who could talk and drink. Be an old man or a baby, not half and half!

By: Jessica

Jessica — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:36:15 +0000

I got to this piece by Googling “benjamin button movie completely different from movie,” without quotes, though, so I was so glad to see others who enjoyed the story and found the movie to be crap! When the movie first came out, I was excited to hear it was based on an FSF story I hadn’t read, so I read the story first and loved it. Heart-wrenching, skillfully-created characters, slice of a very specific time and set of circumstances – everything I enjoy about FSF. We finally just rented the movie, and when it started, I tried to give it a chance; I really did. But it was within five minutes that I said, “This is all wrong! It doesn’t make any sense! What is this family doing adopting this weird, shriveled, geriatric baby who cries? Where’s his CIGAR?!!” So, off it went back to Netflix. Thank you for letting me get all of this off my chest.

By: popculturenerd

popculturenerd — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 04:59:25 +0000

Thank you! I just don’t understand people who thought it was brilliant.

By: Satin

Satin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 04:31:39 +0000

Damn, that film was the worst piece of crap i’ve seen in a long time.

By: kiminsanford

kiminsanford — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:36:31 +0000

I loved the movie and, after reading the short story the day after I saw the movie, I am so very glad they changed it so drastically. The movie was upbeat and wonderfully heart warming — the short story was dark and depressing! I am sure I would not have enjoyed the movie as much if it was more closely based on the short story. Which, by the way, is a drastic difference from most movies made from books – movies tend to short change the original story in the book!

By: ^RISE^

^RISE^ — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:05:52 +0000

I find the short story to be an inferior piece of work. Why would a man who knows that his time on Earth is so short spend it being angry and cruel?

Roth took the idea and improved on it. The film is much better.

By: ARB Ent

ARB Ent — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:59:54 +0000

I’m really confused as to why anyone who read the short story would think a faithful adaptation would only be 30 minutes long. Maybe if by faithful you mean cut and pasting the story onto a Final Draft-like program, but that would yield a script. A faithful adaptation would mean you spanned the entire story and flushed it out a bit to allow for the passage of the story’s timeline.

By: popculturenerd

popculturenerd — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:21:29 +0000

D.J.,

Eric Roth kept none of the characters’ names except for Benjamin’s. If it wasn’t in the title, I wonder if he would have changed that, too.

He didn’t really keep any of the characters, either. Besides Benjamin, his father is the only character who overlaps and he abandons Benjamin at birth in the movie. He does shows up a couple times later but isn’t a presence in Benjamin’s life. And Hildegarde and Daisy’s only similarity is that they’re both female—they’re completely different characters.

I agree with you that Fitzgerald’s story and ending are very powerful but the movie is not an adaptation, Roth did not “add to it.” He did not make Fitzgerald’s story “his own,” he created an entirely different one. The only similarities between the two are the title, aging concept and exploration of mortality.

And about those trailers—I loved them, too. They’re part of the reason my expectations for the film were so high.

By: D. J.

D. J. — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:51:38 +0000

Firstly, Eric Roth wrote the adaptation, not David Fincher and Brad Pitt.

Secondly, on the review page, I responded to your concerns by saying that if Roth had made a faithful adaptation, it would be a half hour film. He had to add to it. That said, I’ve read that Roth kept the characters names (mostly) and the premise, but really made it his own story. Which I am, as a great admirer of the short story, completely okay with. Why? Because Roth has stated that the story is about life and death. The ending of the short story, in my opinion, was Fitzgerald’s triumph. You can tell by the way that those last few paragraphs unfold like nothing else in literature. It’s a powerful, powerful ending, and I am sure that Fitzgerald saw it as the most pivotal point of the story. And what Roth has done, from what I gather from the trailers, from popculturenerd’s review and responses, and from the filmmakers’ comments themselves, is writ the ending large.

Yes it would have been fun to see Benjamin running roughshod all over the Yale defense, but doesn’t that sound a bit like Forest Gump to either of you?

By: ARB Ent

ARB Ent — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:16:44 +0000

Thanks for the comparison, PCN, but I am really confused as to why the producers/director/studio didn’t incorporate more of the plot of the short story. In your Q&A piece with Pitt and Fincher, they each admit to never having read the short story. Sounds like they missed the boat on a wonderful story that might have in turn made a much better movie. It’s the only reason I wanted to see the film in the first place!