MovieChat Forums > The Parallax View (1974) Discussion > Rare case where the movie is better than...

Rare case where the movie is better than the book

posted 8 years ago by whitecaps
4 replies | jump to latest

In this case much better.

It's usually the movie where they change the book with some 'happy ending' but in this case it was the book that used some silly deux-ex machina to have the main character, not only survive, but even get married.

Totally destroyed everything in the book that had preceded it. The movie, in contrast, stayed completely true to its message.

I just saw the movie again yesterday and there are a few things about it that make no sense to me but I'll leave them until later.

If anybody else ended the film thinking "this part didn't make sense" is there any reason to believe that some things in the film were supposed to not make sense.

Well just one example of this: why did the Parallax Corporation make the people they killed look like accidental deaths, but have the Senators they were hired to kill assassinated in public?

Given that they went to all the trouble of killing all those people who merely witnessed the death of the first Senator, even though they didn't even know that they had seen something beyond what they thought they had seen, why didn't they, for instance, just give PEP to the Senators they were hired to kill?

I have a few other similar questions like that.

[–] ray_kuryla 8 years ago

I agree that the movie is better than the book. I will admit that I may be biased because I saw the movie before reading the book, but the movie was more haunting and foreboding than the book. I also admit that it's a rarity for a movie to be better than the book from which it was adapted. The only other one I can think of off the top of my head that was the same phenomenon was the movie "L.A. Confidential" The movie was way better than the book.

[–] gbean2397 7 years ago

To ask a somewhat dumb question: I'm currently thinking about getting the Parallax View book after having just watched the movie, and since I have a niche for researching the differences between a book and its movie, how different is it from the movie? It's okay, you can do spoilers, just as long as it has the spoiler censor bars. I thank you for any info on the book.

Peace out. ✌

[–] spookyrat1 7 years ago

That is a good question, but I gather they may have wanted to influence public opinion/thinking via a public death utilising a "patsy", as opposed to a "natural death" via PEP.🐭

[–] ccr1633 7 years ago

Recall the fine Dirty Harry sequel "Magnum Force." Later in the film the rogue cops are trying to recruit Harry to their side and mention that the criminals they assassinated were chosen, for starters at least, to be well-known public menaces so that their actions would be "understood" by the public as large. Presumably, they thought this would make their death squad approach more sympathetic.

In The Parallax View, one motivation to assassinate in public these rogue politicians like Carroll, who apparently threatened the corporate powers that be, is similar: if you step out of line and threaten big business interests, then you can expect to be a target. The beauty of this is that the message is sent with no culpability, no specific face behind the authoritarian scowl. Killing Carroll while he was on vacation or something would be less effective at creating a subtle climate of fear.