23 Book Scenes So Controversial They Weren't Included In The Movie Adaptation
Books can get by with a lot of touchy material since they take place in the theater of the mind. When those words are adapted into a movie, not everything makes it onto the silver screen. Whether they are too hot of a topic, haven't aged well, or simply didn't fit the story the movie was trying to tell, these are the book scenes that got cut.
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Trigger Warning: Some of the content on this list gets pretty graphic. While I don't get into specifics, I've organized the list so that the further down you read, the more grisly things are. For those who would prefer to skip the especially touchy subjects, I recommend skipping numbers 21, 22, and 23.
With that ominousness out of the way, let's start with good old Tom Bombadil!
1.The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring — An entire chapter is dedicated to Tom Bombadil in the book, but he's cut out completely from the movies.
J.R.R. Tolkien worked on the world of Middle Earth his whole life, but it's worth noting that The Adventures of Tom Bombadil was published in 1934, a full 20 years before The Fellowship of the Ring hit shelves. Some people feel that Bombadil feels out of place in the The Lord of the Rings, even though he is of significant help to Frodo at the beginning of his journey.
Whether or not he fits into the story, Tom is a cheery and delightful character that many fans want to see in an adaptation. I mean, how many other LoTR characters get their own theme song in the books?
2.The Great Gatsby — Gatsby's father shows up to his son's funeral in the book, but in the 2013 movie only Nick is present.
His name is Henry C. Gatz, and he gives some insight into who Jay Gatz really was. Not the mythical Gatsby, but just a man who wanted more out of life. The Baz Luhrmann movie leaves Jay's origins as a mystery, and both versions work well.
3.The Golden Compass — The climax of the novel is completely removed from the movie.
The movie was incredibly hyped, but didn't rake in the big bucks like they'd hoped. Since the filmmakers were pretty much banking on making a sequel, they tried leaving the movie on more of a cliffhanger. Without giving away spoilers, some characters are alive at the end of the movie but are dead by the end of the book.
The books got a second chance at an adaptation, though, with the HBO series His Dark Materials. The show is set to end on its third season, so hopefully, it will get the chance to end what the 2007 movie didn't.
4.Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire — Hermione's efforts with S.P.E.W. are not in any of the films.
Hermione starts the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare in Goblet of Fire, when she discovers the conditions house-elves at Hogwarts work under. Most of the house-elves found S.P.E.W. insulting, but Hermione went on to work for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures at the Ministry of Magic, so we all know she did plenty of good.
5.Paper Towns — A scene where Quentin and Margo break into SeaWorld was cut, as Blackfish was released after the book was written, but before the adaptation.
As producer Wyck Godfrey put it, "I think it's a little less playful to go to SeaWorld now."
6.Forrest Gump — In the book, Forrest smokes weed, goes to space with an orangutan, and crash lands in Papua New Guinea where he learns to play chess.
He also becomes a professional wrestler named "The Dunce," plays harmonica in a band with Jenny, and gets arrested for throwing away his war medal.
7.Fifty Shades of Grey — There's a certain scene featuring a tampon in the book that was not in the movie.
Basically, Christian Grey doesn't care if it's that time of the month.
8.The Godfather — In the book, the character of Lucy Mancini gets much more attention, though it's not the worst thing in the world that her role got less focus. That's because entire pages of Mario Puzo's novel are dedicated to describing her vagina.
She's especially broken up when Sonny dies, because he was the only guy with a big enough member to satisfy her. And this isn't some flowery, metaphorical prose that some people interpret as representing female anatomy. It's pretty to-the-point, and a doctor even tells her:
"Stop thinking in your head that you have a big box no man can love because it won't give his penis the necessary friction."
He then offers to "build [her] a whole new thing down there," and offers to try it out himself. Maybe Coppola could've fit that into his 1972, masterpiece, but does anyone really want that?
9.The Hunger Games — In the movie, Peeta simply injures his leg. But in the book, he loses it altogether.
After he got cut by Cato, Katniss tried and failed to stop infection from spreading. The Capitol amputated it, and the prosthetic was featured prominently in Catching Fire.
10.The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader — The scene where Aslan turns Eustace from a dragon back into a human is a bit more brutal in the book.
After bratty Eustace gets changed into a dragon, he learns his lesson about being more grateful for what he has and Aslan shows up to change him back. The scene is essentially the same in both the book and the movie, with just one difference.
In the movie, Aslan claws at the sand three times, which causes Eustace's scales to slowly tear away. He then roars, and Eustace is fully changed back to a boy.
In the book, Aslan first tells Eustace to "undress". Eustace starts clawing at his own dragon skin, which starts peeling off. He keeps tearing away layers of his skin until he gives up, seeing no significant change. Then Aslan steps in and starts clawing at his body, tearing away more skin.
While the movie shows dazzling golden light as the skin transforms, the book is much more literal. Eustace says it "hurt worse than anything I've ever felt," and compares it to peeling off a scab. Since the whole thing is one big metaphor anyway, it makes sense why the filmmakers made the changes they did. You can check out the movie version here.
11.Gone With the Wind — Screenwriter Sidney Howard had his work cut out for him when he adapted the source material, which has many problematic and flat-out racist scenes.
Leonard J. Leff of The Atlantic wrote a fantastic article exploring the problems in Gone With the Wind. The film itself isn't spotless (which isn't surprising, considering it was made in 1939), but it did omit a lot from Margaret Mitchell's novel. For example, the Black characters in the book are fine with slavery and the KKK is described as a "tragic necessity." There's plenty more in the 1,000+ page novel, but for more context, you can read Leff's article here.
12.Fast Times at Ridgemont High — Jeff Spicoli wasn't the loveable surfer-dude in the book (which was based on a true story). Instead, he was mocked by everyone else and was actually kind of an asshole.
In one scene that actually happened, Spicoli brought in a newspaper featuring photos of a car crash that had killed another student's father and sister:
“‘Look at these bitchin photos!' boomed Jeff Spicoli. 'You can see the people inside and everything.' Everyone froze. No one spoke."
Good choice to have him stick to the waves in the movie.
13.My Sister's Keeper — Movie version: Kate (Sofia Cassilieva) dies in her sleep and Anna (Abigail Breslin) lives, keeping her kidney. Book version: Anna dies in a car crash and her kidney goes to Kate, who survives.
14.Pinocchio — In Carlo Collodi's original story, Pinocchio murders the Talking Cricket.
He's not called Jiminy in the book, and Pinocchio has a bit of a temper. When the Cricket tells Pinocchio that he feels sorry for him because he is merely a marionette with a wooden head, it doesn't go too well:
"At these last words, Pinocchio jumped up in a fury, took a hammer from the bench, and threw it with all his strength at the Talking Cricket.
Perhaps he did not think he would strike it. But, sad to relate, my dear children, he did hit the Cricket, straight on its head.
With a last weak 'cri-cri-cri' the poor Cricket fell from the wall, dead!"
15.Divergent — A scene from the book where a Dauntless is stabbed in the eye was filmed, but ultimately cut
16.Stardust — In Neil Gaiman's novel, here's how the death of the unicorn goes: it stabs the Witch-Queen with its horn, then she stabs it back in its eye and brain, cuts off its head, spits into its mouth, and turns the body into a zombie. In the movie, it just gets zapped.
17.The Rescuers — In the book that the film is based on, the villain had already kidnapped several children by the time she is stopped. The others were hunted and killed by her dogs, two bloodhounds named Tyrant and Torment.
18.Jurassic Park — The opening scene of the book involves small, lizard-like dinosaurs eating a baby. While it wasn't included in the 1993 film, a version of the scene involving a young girl was in Lost World.
The opening scene Spielberg went with was perfect, so I'm not complaining.
19.IT — The infamous scene in which Beverly Marsh has sex with her six male friends (all 11 years old) in the sewers didn't make the final cut
Shocker!
20.ROOM — Author and screenwriter, Emma Donoghue, included a scene in both the book and the script where Ma tells Jack that she had a stillbirth before having him. Donoghue decided to cut it from the final draft.
According to Donoghue: "The problem was that when the confession happened at that moment — or anywhere else in the script I tried putting it — the scene became an utter downer. Worse: Whereas a book can meander toward its destination, a film has a forward momentum. The stillbirth story slammed the brakes and yanked us back toward the tragic past. So the scene I sweated over longest ended up cut, and I have to grudgingly admit that the film's better without it."
21.The Road — A scene from the book involving a baby roasting over a fire was filmed, but not included in the final cut. Author Cormac McCarthy completely understood.
22.American Psycho — Some of the torture scenes were too graphic to put into the movie.
I won't describe particularly gruesome scenes here, but suffice it to say the movie turned out just fine without the darkest parts of the book.
23.A Clockwork Orange — At one point in the movie, Alex DeLarge has consensual sex with two young women. In the book, he molests two 10-year-olds.
