Fight Club
In the film: the Narrator discovers that he and Tyler are one and the same, so he shoots himself in the head, and he and Marla watch everyone get a clean financial slate as buildings explode around them.
In the book: The Narrator still shoots himself in the head to stop Project Mayhem, the epilogue says that he thinks he’s died and gone to heaven. In reality, he’s in a mental hospital, with Project Mayhem members as his orderlies, who all hope that Tyler will return.
First Blood
In the film: After being run out of town and fighting back against the police’s brutality, a PTSD-stricken Rambo is convinced to give himself up by his former commanding officer Col. Trautman. He’s then detained.
In the book: After being hunted throughout the book, Rambo is fatally injured and is about to commit suicide with a stick of dynamite, when he’s approached by an equally fatally wounded Sheriff. Wanting to die in combat, Rambo’s about to take aim at the man, when Col. Trautman shoots him in the head with the Sheriff’s shotgun, alleviating Rambo’s suffering.
The Mist
In the film: The trapped survivors make it to a car and try to drive to safety, but the car runs out of fuel on a forest road. At this point, Thomas Jane’s David, shoots the survivors, including his young son, to spare them from a horrible fate. He runs out of bullets for himself, and walks out into the mist, waiting for death, only to find that the army’s come to help. It’s a brutal ending.
In the book: The book has a more optimistic ending. The survivors escape down a mist-shrouded highway, and they hear a safe destination spoken on a static-y radio, to give them hope.
A Clockwork Orange
In the film: After a lifetime of ultra violence, Alex is submitted to treatment and is cured of the compulsion for violence, at the cost of his love of classical music. After trying to commit suicide, he finds that he’s been cured of his aversion, and is able to go back to his violent ways.
In the book: Most of the same events play out; the treatment, the aversion to violence and the suicide attempt, but when his depraved impulses return, Alex decides he doesn’t need them. He thinks violence is a pointless waste of time, and just wants to be a productive member of society.
Apt Pupil
In the film: After discovering that his neighbour Kurt Dussander was a war criminal, Todd blackmails him. When Dussander finds himself in the hospital due to a heart attack and is recognized by a fellow patient, who’s family he killed in the gas chambers, he blows into his IV and induces a fatal stroke. Todd, on the other hand, denies everything and accuses the school guidance counsellor of being a pedophile after he get suspicious.
In the book: Todd’s more of a homicidal maniac in the book, and after Dussander dies, Todd kills the guidance counsellor and embarks on a shooting spree that ends in his death.
Dr. Strangelove
In the film: After trying to negate a nuclear war started by a rogue general, the government and President are unable to prevent one of the deployed bombers from being found or recalled, so he destroys a missile silo, triggers a Soviet doomsday machine and most likely annihilates all of human life.
In the book: They still can’t reach the last bomber, but due to the bomb getting damaged as dropped, it fails to hit the target, and doesn’t detonate to its full capacity.
After that, the world starts to put arrangements in place to prevent this from ever happening again.
I Am Legend
In the film: Robert Neville is an army virologist who’s immune to the vampire disease and is supposedly the last man on earth. He then finds two other uninfected people and ends up sacrificing himself to ensure that they get to a fortified compound of other humans with a cure. He then becomes the title “Legend.”
In the book: There’s nothing special about Neville, other than the fact that he’s immune to the virus. He spends his days hunting vampires and his nights hiding and trying to learn biology to understand what’s happening. He soon learns that the entire population of the planet has become vampires, and he is their boogyman; the monster that stalks them when they sleep and slays their children. He is the legend that haunts their dreams.
The Thing
In the film: We get to see the thing in all of its alien glory, and then the base is destroyed in the hopes of killing it. We’re left with two survivors, MacReady and Childs, neither trusting the other to be human, slowly freezing to death in the snow.
In the book: The novella ends after the aliens are revealed and their plan of escape is discovered moments before they get away, resulting in a victory for humanity. It’s a more decisive ending.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
In the film: After Esmeralda is sentenced to death for witchcraft, by Frollo, Quasimodo saves her. In the ensuring fight on top of the cathedral, Frollo succumbs to the usual Disney villain death, and falls to his doom. Everyone else lives happily ever after.
In the book: Quasimodo fails to save Esmeralda due to a misunderstanding, and she dies. He then actively pushes Frollo off the top of the Cathedral and disappears. He’s found by accident two years later in the crypt of the royal gallows, where he died of starvation after taking Esmeralda’s corpse in his arms and never leaving.
Jurassic Park
In the film: Everyone makes it to the visitors centre and after some issues with the power and some raptors, they call for help and Grant, Sattler, the kids, Hammond and Malcom leave the island. Oh, and the T-Rex is a hero.
In the book: At the end, the Costa Rican Air force rescues the survivors and napalms the island of Isla Nublar. As well, it’s assumed that Hammond and Ian Malcolm are dead
Planet of the Apes
In the film: Astronaut George Taylor discovers that he’s been marooned on a post-apocalyptic Earth all along.
In the book: The main character, a journalist named Ulysse Merou, is actually on a different planet with self-aware apes, sentient monkey and dimwitted humans. When he finally makes it back to Earth, he finds that 700 years have passed and that a similar hierarchy has happened there too.
Watchmen
In the film: Adrien Veidt reveals that he’s set nuclear reactors to melt down, with the unique signature of Dr. Manhattan, thus unifying both the US and the USSR against a common enemy.
In the book: It’s a lab-created psychic alien creature that’s detonated in the middle of NYC, that unites the world against a common cause.
Forest Gump
In the film: It’s revealed that Forrest is waiting at the bus stop, because he got a letter from Jenny. He learns he has a son, he and Jenny marry, Jenny dies and Forrest raises his son alone.
In the book: Everything ends up differently. Jenny survives and marries another man, and has his child instead. He also starts his own shrimp business with Lt. Dan and an orangutan that he once went to space with.
The Shining
In the film: After murdering Hallorrann, Jack comes after Wendy and Danny, who escape the hotel. Danny leads Jack into the hedge maze and tricks him, and Jack freezes to death, then is mysteriously shown in a photograph of the still-standing hotel.
In the book: Hallorrann is only injured by Jack, and helps Wendy and Danny escape. Also, the hotel is more of a malevolent presence, using Jack as a vessel for its evil. Danny reminds the Hotel/Jack that the boiler’s pressure needs to be managed or else it’ll explode. It does, destroying Jack and the Overlook hotel.
Hannibal
In the film: After an incident with hungry pigs, Hannibal takes Clarice to a secluded lake house, drugs her and has her watch him eat the brain of her sadistic co-worker Krendler. She wakes up and handcuffs herself to him and calls the FBI. He’s about to sever her hand, then the next thing we see is her with both hands intact, and Hannibal on a plane, missing one of his.
In the book: Hannibal tries to brainwash Starling with psychotropic drugs and therapy and eventually succeed. They both eat Krendler’s brain and she offers herself to him. They then run off together to Argentina.
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