The timeless tale of forbidden love has been told again and again but no one tells it better than F. Scott Fitzgerald in ‘The Great Gatsby.’ Like many great novels ‘The Great Gatsby’ was turned into a movie in 1974. This signature storyline was revised and modernized in 2013 and another movie was made. Even though there are three different versions of this story the themes of culture, money and love run throughout all of them. Both the book and the film convey different imagery than the book bringing about different ideas, but still keeping the overall storyline. It is a classic mistake for movie producers to cut out and add scenes from the movie causing them to stray from the original storyline. This is true for the films that were created from ‘The Great Gatsby’ novel. The biggest alteration that occurs between the movies and the book is that the film stresses the romance side of the novel a lot more than Fitzgerald intended. A tragic romance is easier to sell in the theaters rather than a classical movie that is part of a time period that most of the audience was not a part of. The director Baz Luhrmann said himself that the film is a “great, tragic love story with action, passion, drama,” or at least that is what he transformed it to be. In the book the reader can obviously see the forbidden love between Daisy and Gatsby, but the book focuses more on Gatsby. Throughout the book the reader begins to unfold the reasons as to why Jay Gatsby is the way he is, through symbols and flashbacks to his earlier years, such as when he first met Daisy. Fitzgerald intended the story of Gatsby to be one of not just love but action and mystery. In the movie you get the feel that all the movie is about is parties and Gatsby trying to get Daisy to leave her husband. When Fitzgerald wrote the book he showed culture and intellect, not just one big party scene. The movie is way more modernized than the book was. For example there is rap music that plays throughout a lot of the movie which would not be the type of music that they would be listening to at a party. Also, in the movie it looked more like a party that was themed 1920s rather than actually being in that time frame. Luhrman did the best he could trying to portray that time period, but it was not very convincing. The movie lacked the symbols and foreshadowing of this love story that Fitzgerald seemed to be so fond of. Luhrman did not seem interested in the ideas of foreshadowing that Fitzgerald strategically placed throughout the novel. He seemed more interested in keeping the suspense up rather than dropping hints throughout the film. One important foreshadowing that was not forgotten about in the film is the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg. Above the city that Myrtle, Tom Buchanan’s mistress, lived was a big sign for an ophthalmologist named Dr. T.J. Eckleburg. This sign was huge set of eyes that seemed to be watching over everything that happened in that town, so they would always say in that town that “God was watching you,” or at least the billboard eyes were. This was foreshadowing of the scandal and cheating that would happen in that town, and with “God” watching there would be punishment for all of the wrong doing, which is found out as the book is read. The watching eyes was one of the huge foreshadowing symbols that is included in both the book and the movie. Luhrman left out a lot of foreshadowing events about automobile accidents which is a huge part of the book. He introduces Owl Eyes in the movie, but only briefly showed the accident that Owl Eyes was in. Only the overturned car in shown in Gatsby’s front lawn but nothing further was explained so the viewer is not sure if that was just another drunk guest or if it had meaning to it. The important part of that moment in the book is that there was another person in the car with Owl Eyes so it might not have been his fault, which is huge in representing the car accident at the end of the novel and not sure who was driving
