It is common in today's media-driven society to reach into the past for inspiration and ideas. A trend has developed where original works are transformed into other mediums. For example: books are turned into movies and/or plays, movies are turned into weekly sitcoms, and cartoons will spawn empires (Disney). These things happen so often that an audience rarely stops to question the level of authenticity that remains after these conversions. Perhaps it is only when a project is not well received that people begin to think of the difficulties involved with changing a work's genre. Using Gulliver's Travels as an example, discrepancies and additions in the movie can be contrasted with Jonathan Swift's original text.It can be assumed that one of the biggest challenges in making a movie from a book lies in the time constraints that movies have, especially those that are intended for TV, as was Gulliver's Travels. Swift talks about Gulliver's time in Laputa for almost forty pages, where as the movie only spends a small portion of its three hours focusing on this kingdom. One of the largest additions to Swift's tale occurs during the movie's portrayal of this third part of the book. At the start of Chapter V, Gulliver travels to the Academy of Lagado so that he may examine and learn more about the society. He properly describes to the reader their inventions, experiments, and the scientists. In the movie, however, Gulliver goes to the Academy in a frantic search for someone who has heard of England. His interest is clearly not in the happenings of the building; rather he is there for purely selfish reasons. During this search, Gulliver accosts a man who instructs him to go to the Room of Answers to find out how to get back to England. After going into various other rooms, Gulliver finally stumbles upon a door that is barred with planks of wood. Cobwebs and dust obscure the sign at first, but Gulliver breaks down the barrier and...
