Book vs. movie

After I finished the book, I decided to rent the movie to compare it with the book and see if there were any changes or anything interesting I could pick up on. After finishing the movie, I was easily able to distinguish the differences between the book and the movie. I've decided to talk about the major differences that I saw when comparing the movie to the book.

The first difference I noticed was that there was an absence or a change in many scenes. For example, there is no car scene with Memo and Roy in the movie, Roy is a right fielder instead of a left fielder in the movie, and also, Iris, Roy's "girlfriend," is not a grandmother in the movie like she is in the book. Another major important difference is that in the movie, Iris has a teenage son that is revealed to be Roy's son too, because Roy and Iris grew up together when they were younger. This changed the movie a lot for me, because I could tell that Iris and Roy were going to end up together, because he liked her way much more in the movie. In the novel, Roy was much more drawn to Memo, and it was easy to tell he was thinking about her a lot of the time.

"Roy was thinking about Memo. If not for her he wouldn't be here trying to make himself at ease with this one"(146).

Quotes like the one above show Roy's constant thinking of Memo, while in the movie, I didn't see that at all .

What surprised me the most was the ending of the movie. As I awaited to see Roy lose the game purposely, bury Wonderboy, and become a loser who betrayes his city, I was surprised to see that none of this actually happened in the movie. In the ending of the movie, Roy steps up and hits a home run to win the game for the Knights, and then the Judge is fired. Roy and Iris then presumably live happily ever after with their son, and lots of money.

With all the changes, it was almost a completely different plot. I had to say that I liked the movie more, because there was the fairy-tale ending, and I hate to see the main character 'lose' at the end of a novel. With this being said, it is safe to say that Barry Levinson, who directed "The Natural," wanted to change some points in the novel to give it a heroic feel.