What Book Was That Movie Adapted From? Quiz

Answer: Emma

The protagonist in both the movie and the book is a spoiled rich girl who fancies herself a matchmaker until she finds herself out of her depth. In the novel, Emma ends up falling in love with her sister's brother-in-law Mr. Knightley and at the end they marry.

In the film, Cher falls in love with her step-brother Josh, although the ending has a humorous twist. Cher and Josh kiss for the first time; in a voice-over, Cher says, "you can guess what happens next," and the scene cuts to a wedding - then we hear Cher saying, "As if! I'm only 16 and this is California not Kentucky." And of course, it turns out to be someone else's wedding.

Answer: Blade Runner

Both the book and the film concern a bounty hunter who hunts down rogue androids, and both touch on philosophical and religious themes, such as what it means to be human. However, there are many differences between the two, and the book delves more explicitly into mystical themes.

For example, it describes a (fictional) religion called Mercerism that employs a virtual reality device to allow followers to identify with the religion's founder.

Answer: Heart of Darkness

Both the film and the book feature a character named Kurtz who has set up a cult in the jungle in which the local people worship him as some kind of god, and whose last words before dying are, "the horror, the horror." The book's title reflects the idea that while the colonizers thought of the wild jungles of Africa as a great "heart of darkness", the real darkness was within themselves.

The film explores this theme in the jungles of Cambodia and Vietnam amidst the brutality of the war.

Answer: Make Room! Make Room!

Both the book and the film explore the idea of overpopulation leading to depleted environmental resources and social problems. The film adds a unique twist in that government decides to solve the problem of diminishing food resources by resorting to cannibalism. This led to the classic line, "Soylent green is people!"

Answer: The Taming of the Shrew

In both the play and the film, there are two daughters, Bianca and Kat/Katherina; the younger daughter Bianca is a sweet girl who most guys find desirable, while her older sister Kat/Katherina has a willful personality and is therefore unpopular. In the play, the girls' father forbids Bianca from marrying until Katherina does.

In the film, the girls are high school students, so the father's restriction is on them dating rather than marriage. The play puts considerable emphasis on the cruel "taming" of Katherina by her husband, which continues to generate controversy to this day, but this element was omitted from the film.

Answer: Cruel Intentions

The film changes the characters and setting from French aristocrats to wealthy high-school teenagers in New York. The two main characters in the film have similar names to their counterparts in the novel, e.g., Kathryn Merteuil and Sebastian Valmont in the film are respectively based on the Marquise de Merteuil and the Viscount de Valmont in the book.

The film has a somewhat more upbeat ending than the book, at least for Valmont's jilted lover. In the book she dies broken hearted, but in the film, she is seen driving away in Sebastian's luxury car after publicly humiliating Merteuil. (In the book, Merteuil's humiliation is brought about by Cécile's lover.) Apart from "Cruel Intentions", there have been several film and television adaptations of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," and it has been adapted to other media, including ballet!

Answer: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

The short story is rather darker than the film. In both versions, David is rejected by his mother, although for different reasons. In the film, the mother intends to have David destroyed but does not have the heart to go through with it and abandons him instead, and they are reunited at the end of the film in heart-warming, albeit extraordinary circumstances.

In the short story though, the mother is unable to love David because he is not her own flesh and blood, and decides to return him to the factory, even though he loves her and thinks she love him.

Answer: Hellraiser

Clive Barker directed this film as he was unhappy with previous film adaptations of his work. The original title of the film was to be "Sadomasochists from Beyond the Grave", which is a fairly accurate description of this extremely graphic production.

The film was originally given an X rating, so Barker had to cut some of the more sexually graphic scenes to achieve an R rating. (I've always found it odd that extreme violence and torture are more acceptable to censors than non-violent sex scenes, but what can I say?)

Answer: We Can Remember it for You Wholesale

Like many of Dick's works, this short story blurs the boundary between reality and dreaming, as many of the protagonist's supposed fantasies turn out to be real memories. The film version is considerably more violent than the short story, and introduces several different plot elements, such as the alien technology that alters the atmosphere of Mars.

The short story features aliens in a different role, e.g. when the protagonist was a child he encountered aliens who suppressed his memory of them.

Answer: Eyes Wide Shut

The last of Kubrick's films, this adaptation changed the original setting from early 20th century Vienna to 1990s New York City, although it was filmed entirely in England because of Kubrick's fear of flying. To ensure an R rating, several explicit scenes had to be digitally altered in post-production for theatrical release. An uncut version was later released on DVD and Blu-Ray. Kubrick gave the protagonist Bill the surname "Harford" as an allusion to Harrison Ford, because he wanted to model the character's demeanour on this actor.