In the book Rambo is the bad guy. While the film has a body count of one, Rambo kills many in the book.
shareThe film makers didn't want to make Rambo a bad guy since it would offend Vietnam Vets. I'd rather have had Teasle be just as sympathetic as Rambo in the movie but hating on the police has always been popular.
shareIn the book he was nude.
shareRambo dies in the book; so, there’s a major difference right there.
Having said that, how many other book-to-movies have made the same choice? A lot.
Just for fun cause I hadn't visited this topic in a long while here are some movies that have the same ending as their book counterpart.
Gone with the Wind
Old Yeller
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
A Clockwork Orange
wrong.
'A Clockwork Orange' has a last chapter that Kubrick ignored.
in that chapter Alex begins to actually question his reality and looks forward to changing his hooligan ways.
The film ends at the second-to-last chapter.
I was told a while back that the last chapter where Alex changed wasn't written til after the movie came out.
share"In Kubrick's opinion – as in the opinion of other readers, including the original American editor – the final chapter was unconvincing and inconsistent with the book"
Kubrick made a decision not to include it, as per the 'American' book edition.
the original has all 21 chapters.
i don't fault the film.. it's a more entertaining ending i guess.
Now thinking of it my dad mentioned the last chapter of the book when I watched it with him a few years ago. He felt Kubrick should have included it. Honestly I don't want to watch a Clockwork Orange again because it was too messed up. Feel the same way about Raging Bull.
shareAlso wrong, and a massive difference, is that Alex is a 15-year-old kid in the book. Seeing a 28-year-old man dressing and acting that way is a jarring difference that completely alters the meaning and message of the original.
shareFunny, that reminds me that when watching the 1930s Wizard of Oz through out my entire childhood, I never knew Dorthy was supposed to be a little girl since she was played by a teenager. Didn't find out til I was an adult.
shareI agree the themes and the characters are pretty different from the book, the events that happen though are close enough.
shareIn the book, they were both 'bad guys', and died.
In the movie, neither of them dies, which is a bit of a cop-out.
Then again, the book is very crass, cheap, low-quality lobby novel, it's not particularly well written, and although it makes more sense (Rambo always waits for the cop to leave before he returns to the town, and lives there a few days, goes fishing and does all kinds of stuff he doesn't do in this movie), it's also drawn-out, and the ending is pretty depressing.
It's also full of cursing and bad language, so this movie is better, but still not a brilliant story.
I really don't get you insisting Teasle is a bad guy in the book. Unlike the movie, he lets Rambo get food in town when he comes back into town a second time. He gives him a ride back out of town and tells him not to come back. Also, unlike the movie, his friends and coworkers aren't psychopaths.
The worst thing he does in the book is punching Mitch in the mouth for not helping save his stepfather Orval from getting caught in the flow of the creek. He admits right after that he should not have done it. He does declare he will kill his fellow cops for not helping and for running away. But he later regrets saying so and feels bad for them when he hears Rambo kill them with his rifle.
Also, unlike the movie he listens to Trautman and comes to feel bad for how he treated Rambo. In the end, right before dying, he feels love for Rambo. That doesn't make him a bad guy in my eyes.
Whereas, in the movie Teasle is an unsympathetic jerk who is best friends with a psychopath who both abuses Rambo and tries to kill him while he is holding on for dear life off the side of a cliff. Then Teasle also in the movie refuses to listen to a stinking thing Trautman says about Rambo and in the end would rather get shot to death with a machine gun than to feel sorry for him. He's a bad guy in the movie but not in the book.