20 Movie Characters Completely Different From Their Source Material

Originality feels like it is at a premium on the big screen in recent times, with it apparently seeming a safer bet for movie studios to lean on a pre-established property than to do something that people have never seen before.

This is where the unprecedented amount of sequels comes from, as well as reboots, remakes, and adaptations of anything from novels, comic books, and video games, to viral internet memes. However, that being said, it is rare that such adaptations are ever perfectly faithful to their source material, otherwise what would be the point (other than a quick cash grab, of course).

There are levels to this. A detail can be tweaked here or there, maybe even a plot line or a character dropped in their entirety, but then there are those characters who are changed completely, without even a trace of who they were in their first iteration.

Important characters have been reduced to less than nothing, insignificant characters have been made integral, backgrounds have been changed, motivations altered, as well as appearance, role in the story, and in some cases, the entire point of the story has been twisted around them. Nobody wants shot for shot remakes, but do we need these kinds of changes either? 

When a character is changed from the source material for a big screen adaptation, it could be done for any number of reasons. Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) was unrecognisable in Steven Spielberg's Jaws when compared to the version from Peter Benchley's novel, and though it's not always the case, this was for the better.

He may not have been the central protagonist, of course this was Brody (Roy Schneider), but he was certainly right up there with him, and it's hard to imagine audiences rooting so much for him had he been adapted faithfully from the book.

There, not only was Hooper arrogant and rather slimy, he actually had an affair with Ellen Brody behind the Chief of Police's back. Though they certainly got on well when Hooper joined them for dinner in the film, it's almost impossible to imagine Dreyfuss' character doing something like that. He was a nice guy, and a decent man, and was far easier to connect with on screen.

In this regard, the film is rather more straight forward than the novel, with less twists, turns, and intricate dynamics in favour of a straight up man vs shark story, and this worked. Yes, Hooper was ultimately eaten by the great white originally, but it made far more sense to Spielberg's version of the story to have him a hero to root for next to Brody than a bad guy getting his comeuppance.