Okay, so I read a lot, and I get very attached to the books that I read. When I hear that one of my favorite books is being made into a movie, I , to quote The Rocky Horror Picture Show, “shiver with antici………..pation.” But part of me also dies; to be more accurate, that part of me is probably tied to the back of a pickup truck and driven through a field of glass shards. And that is all because I KNOW that they will find a way to screw it up.

I thought I was safe for a while after I watched Catching Fire and The Fault in Our Stars, but then it happened: The Giver was released. 

Lois Lowry’s The Giver was one of my favorite books when I read it in the fourth grade, and it was still one of my favorites when I read it again in June. I was so excited when it was being turned into a movie because I was so convinced that a director would not mess with anything that was so perfect. I was wrong, clearly.

The protagonist of the novel is a twelve year old boy named Jonas and he becomes the Receiver of Memory in his “utopian” community and all that jazz. I will assume that we have all read the book so I won’t go into detail to avoid making this too long (if you want to go into detail, you can ask me because I have a lot of feelings).

I was in the movie theater all excited for it to start and when it did, I kinda had a “ummmm what” moment. The boy playing Jonas did not look 12; they raised his age to 16. I’m not going to lie, Brenton Thwaites did a great job and looked really good playing the part- oh, so thats why they raised his age. They wanted to be able to sell the character to a bigger audience, because what 16 year old girl is going to look at a 12 year old boy and think “omg marry me, please!” Not only did they kind of remove the extra layer of innocence resulting from the age of the character by raising the age, but they added a love interest! Sure, Jonas has some thoughts about his classmate Fiona in the book, but it was never actually explored; Fiona was there for a second and then we all kind of forgot about her. But in the film, they had a whole secret romance going on! All I could think was, “HOW DARE YOU.” The whole plot was altered just to make the movie more Hollywood with a Twilight-esque forbidden love. I also question why Taylor Swift and Meryl Streep were in this movie. Okay, I admit that I hate Taylor Swift, but so many more people could have played the part of Rosemary better. And Meryl Streep’s character was not even in the book! It was interesting to see the point of view of the Chief Elder, but was it necessary? Meryl, you let me down; it is Mama Mia! all over again. These big celebrities were just thrown into this movie to draw in more people and make more money.

So basically, for me, The Giver was my personal definition of “selling out.” Every change was made just so the creators of the movie could make more money off of it. I personally believe that this movie would have been immensely successful without all of these changes because the book was a great quality read that so many people love. So thank you, Philip Noyce (the director of The Giver) for killing one more part of me. The story was perfect before you came in and threw it into a blender and turned it into your really-good-book-and-Hollywood smoothie.

So I probably could have just said that “selling out” really is “selling out” when the end result of the art work is more disappointing than what it should have been, but this was so much more fun.

Now I should note that the movie was actually really great; like I cried like a baby because it touched my soul. But it just would have been better if they kept true to the book and did not sell out for the money.

P.S.- You should read The Giver if you have not already, and there are 3 more books in the series and they are fantastic.