10 Movies That Abandoned The Source Material (For The Better)
7. The Princess Bride
There's no doubt that The Princess Bride makes a lot of changes to the source material, but there is some debate among fans as to how little it resembles the novel. After all, it matches the books high fantasy setting, dry-wit tone, the characters are mostly the same etc. But there are some huge changes that it makes that basically makes it a completely different movie.
For one, the ending is a lot happier, as the book implies that they may all die horribly at the end. So there's that.
The film is also a lot tighter written and paced than the book. Mostly because one of the main sub-plots of the book is the kid having to constantly beg his sadistic old grandad to continue the story for him for days between each "chapter". Of course, the film nixed this entirely.
Beyond that, there are tons of little character details that the film either cuts out entirely or alters in arbitrary ways (the scars on Inigo's face are vertical instead of horizontal in the book, and we don't know the significance of the change, either).