My Attitude To Hollywood Adaptation Of The Most Dangerous Game Novel
Hollywood is notorious for butchering stories and making them into movies by changing large chunks of the story. However, an exception to Hollywood’s damage of literature would be in the 1932 Film adaptation of Richard O’Connell’s short story; The Most Dangerous Game. There were many differences between the story and the movie. The movie made changes such as adding a second set of prisoners, but also made changes by referring to General Zaroff as Count Zaroff. However, the changes that were made in this movie were not very different from what was in the story and it did not completely change the plot. After watching the movie, I do not believe that many of his ideas are lost “lost in translation”
Some of the changes in this movie are very different than some of the content in the original text. In the book, Rainsford arrives at the island because he falls off the boat since his pipe fell overboard. However in the movie, Rainsford arrives at the island because the boat sinks and the survivors of the sunken ship were eaten by a shark while they were in the water. Also another change that happened in the movie was when Rainsford went into Zaroff’s house and saw two other survivors/hostages. In the story, Rainsford arrives at General Zaroff’s house and the only people there are General Zaroff and his Cossack servant; Ivan. Although Hollywood made all of these changes were made to the story to make the movie seem more appealing to the public, the main idea of the plot does not change at all.
Very few of O’Connell’s ideas or aspects was actually lost in translation. In both versions, they were discussing their opinions on hunting. They both made the plot clear and understandable; a wealthy New Yorker by the name of Rainsford decides to go on a hunting trip in the Amazon (Brazil) for jaguars, however, he gets abandoned in one way or another by his boat and he ends up on an island owned by a Russian man named Zaroff who enjoys hunting. Eventually Zaroff mentions that he hunts for a different type of game; humans, this disturbs Rainsford. Eventually Rainsford becomes Zaroff’s next target. So General/Count Zaroff starts hunting for the hunter. Rainsford uses his wits to injure Zaroff and convince him that he died when he fell off a cliff. Eventually Rainsford kills Zaroff. The main idea that I just stated above was not changed in the movie by Hollywood. The only thing that was lost in the movie was some of the conversations between Rainsford and Zaroff about Zaroff’s personal life back in Russia.
I strongly believe that the changes Hollywood made to this story did not impact the story very heavily. Also, many of Richard O’Connell’s ideas were not lost through the translation from text to movie. The only impact that the changes that were present in the movie had on me was that it was there to add more details to the movie that would appeal to the eye of the public. O’Connell’s main ideas were clearly present in the movie. Although Hollywood has an infamous reputation of making movies out of butchered versions of well-written stories, this was not present in their film adaptation of The Most Dangerous Game by Richard O’ Connell.
