“The Book Thief” Movie Reflection People always say 'the book is so much better than the movie'. In The Book Thief’s case, I agree with this statement. In my opinion, I think the original novel that Markus Zusak wrote was more captivating and told the story in a more fascinating way, including narration by Death and many other important details that were not included in the movie. For this reason, the movie did not do the book justice. Unlike the book, it felt like it was rushing through events in the beginning and the ending of the movie, but in the middle it felt slow and a little dull. The movie was still good, but I don't think it was as good as it could have been. As I mentioned before, many events from the original story were not in the movie. Some events that were in the movie got altered, which, to me, changed some effects of the story. An example of this would be when Hans stood up for the Jewish store owner getting beat by a Nazi, where in the book Hans courageously gave a Jewish man a piece of bread. The way it was written in the book seemed like more of a risk because it put his whole family in jeopardy, whereas in the movie it didn't seem as heroic. Also Alex Steiner and Hans should have left for the service at the same time, like in the book, because then Liesel and Rudy could have made a connection over their missing fathers. Although the movie made many changes, in some ways it also modified the book in a good way. One scene not in book was where Rudy and Liesel were in the woods, shouting “I hate Hitler!”. I thought this was a good addition because it was a sweet moment between them starting to become closer. Overall these added and excluded parts were mostly not complimenting the real story. I think the movie did a decent job of portraying Liesel's relationships. Like in the book, it was shown that Liesel and Rudy quickly formed a friendship that never really moved past friendship. But unlike the book, I don't think the movie showed what a love-hate relationship they had. Liesel and Rudy weren’t nearly as jokingly mean to each other as they should have been, which was what their friendship was really built on. As for Liesel's relationship with Max, I think it was exactly how I pictured it in my head when I was reading. It really showed how Liesel didn't see the differences between Max, because she only saw the similarities. On the other hand Death's role, in my opinion, was a let-down in the movie. I expected Death to be narrating throughout the entire movie, making his snide remarks. In the book, I looked forward to Death's comments because they
