Warning: Spoilers below!
Just about anybody can think of a time when they read a book, watched the movie and were appalled by the adaptation. For my father and sister, it was The Maze Runner. For me, it would be All the Bright Places (2020). There are definitely things that I can and will knit pick about this movie, but it also left out or changed a lot of important details.
In the Netflix Original, All the Bright Places, Violet Markey—played by Elle Fanning—finds herself standing on the edge of the bridge where her sister had died in a car crash nine months earlier. While on a jog, Theodore Finch—played by Justice Smith—sees her on the ledge and talks her down. They end up becoming partners for a school project and their relationship grows from there.
Content warning: both the movie and book contain mentions and intentions of suicide. There will be many spoilers below. For the biggest spoiler in the movie, though, I will just talk about before and after the event.
Let’s start with some of the knit-pick-level stuff. First, Violet was seen as Miss Popular and Miss Perfect in the book, even though she was putting distance between her and her friends. In the movie, however, she is still friends with Amanda and Roamer, but it seems as if they are just other students, not the most popular kids in the school.
Second, Finch’s Post-It notes in his room were not organized as they were in the book. In the book, Finch has Post-It notes on each wall separated by quotes, song lyrics he made up, words he likes and reasons to “stay awake.” In the movie they are separated by color, which wouldn’t be such a big deal if they weren’t all related to staying awake.
Next, when their teacher is talking about the project for which the main characters are partners, Finch is supposed to announce to the class he wants to be Violet’s partner and embarrass her. Instead, he just asks if they can pick their own partners.
In the movie, they went to go see the shoe tree together before a certain event. In actuality, it was supposed to be after this event. These aspects were just little knit picks; there are a lot bigger issues that I will discuss now.
First and foremost, Violet and Finch meet on the bell tower at school in the book. They are both contemplating jumping but save each other instead. The movie places Violet on the bridge where her sister died, and Theodore just happens to stumble across her.
This switch-up is hugely important since they are supposed to “save each other” and the school is supposed to hear a rumor that Violet saved Finch. Instead, nobody ever hears or talks about it and the story moves forward without this.
Second, you are supposed to realize that Finch has bipolar disorder from his manic and depressive phases. In the book, this is conveyed through the different “characters” that Finch takes on, depicted by how he dresses and his intense love for Violet or when he gets inspired to paint his room blue and rearrange it.
The movie did a horrible job conveying this. Instead, the beginning suggests that he needs to go to therapy or he would go to jail, but Finch would otherwise appear completely fine until suddenly he just wasn’t. Also, in the room painting scene, he paints a small patch in anger but doesn’t paint the entire room or rearrange it in a manic phase like in the book.
Third, Finch has a suicide attempt in the book in which he swallows an entire bottle of pills and then panics and runs to the hospital to get his stomach pumped. This story gets back to Violet, and when she hears about this, she is supposed to confront Finch. Then, they are supposed to argue which results in a tense relationship between them. Instead, the movie leaves out the pills and they just argue over something small and stupid that would’ve never caused such a big rift between them.
Finch is also supposed to have weekly dinners with his dad where he and his sisters sit down with the dad’s wife and kid, who he treats a lot better than them. In the movie, it is mentioned that Finch’s father was abusive and that he was gone now. This leaves huge holes in the story that have been filled in the book.
After the biggest event in the movie occurs, absolutely nothing lines up with the book. In the book, Violet continues onward in her quest and learns that life isn’t about where your journey ends, which she had believed after her sister Eleanor’s death.
In the book, Violet learns that life is instead about all the stops you make along your journey. The movie, however, does not follow Violet’s quest all the way through. This takes away from the “life is about the journey, not the destination” message that is very prominent in the book.
Honestly, if I had never read this book, I might actually have thought this was a good movie. Now that I know what the movie could have lived up to, I am greatly disappointed in how Netflix assembled such a sad rendition of the movie.