Comparison of The Perfect Storm Book and Movie - Essay Example

Number] The Perfect Storm Fishing is often perceived as a simple and easygoing career but people often fail to realize that it is an extremely stressful and dangerous job for the fishermen and their families. An attempt was made to tell the story and recreate the dangers that were faced by the Andrea Gail swordfish boat’s crew. It was a novel written by Sebastian Junger, named The Perfect Storm which presents details of a horrific storm that happened in 1991. Wolfgang Petersen adapted his film The Perfect Storm from the novel and depicted the stories and details from the same storm. The film shows an account of stories of men against the sea. However, there are a number of similarities and differences in the novel and the film, and the most important difference is the narration style. The film overall shows significantly the lives of fisherman and what they go through daily which includes the dangers associated with fishing. In the beginning of the movie, a group of fishermen come home after a long journey and their families and friends are excitedly waiting for their return. All of them celebrate together at a local bar. Billy Tyne is the captain of the ship who later announces that all fishermen will be returning to the sea for more fishing. Some of the fishermen are disappointed but they still agree (Junger 43). They manage to catch a huge amount of fish successfully but decide to return back when their ice machine breaks down. The crew also knew that they would be facing a hurricane in the sea on their way home but they thought they would get through with the huge amount of fish they caught. However, the horrible weather conditions and the large body of water coupled with it would always tend to overpower humans. By the end of the movie, there is an emotional visual of a sinking ship. For all other outsiders, the Andrea Gail disappeared with its crew without a trace, though it is quite clear to think and realize what actually happened to them. The movie and the book have a few differences which are not enough to disappoint the people who are watching the movie after they have read the novel. The book is a straight forward narrative of what happened and does not include any false details which would make it enjoyable and interesting for the reader. Junger wanted all the events to be written as they originally were without adding any false information in order to keep it true and believable. However, in the film there were many added events and extra details which were not present in the book. Many important details were rather missed out to make a better storyline and visual impact on the viewers. Many details were same in the movie and book including the main characters, their features, the correct city where it actually took place, and the type of ship. Wolfgang Petersen has used the technique of auteurism in his film The Perfect Storm in order to make a Hollywood classic while the style of Sebastian Junger for his book is completely opposite as it is rather a more journalistic style of writing. Junger uses his journalist style of writing to educate the reader about the event that he mentions and he ensures that his readers can make a speculation of the event just in the way he does. Petersen shows that his film is not fiction only through the declaration that it is based on a true story. Petersen’s narrative is created out of the possibilities that Junger has presented based on other events’ evidence. Junger leaves much of what happened to Andrea Gail to his reader. The auteurism of Petersen allows him to memorialize the Andrea Gail crew and explain it to the larger audience through commercializing his narrative and making it more appealing. Junger’s book is difficult to compare to the film because even though they have the same name, they are entirely different styles of narrative. Books and films that have the same style of narrative are easily compared than those with different narratives and perspectives. However in The Perfect Storm, the film is a Hollywood classic style while the book is rather journalistic and heavy with facts. The book is a straight documentary with the facts of the event while the movie is the inspiration of that documentary and made with drama, tragedy, adventure, and a classical style. An example of this is the portrayal of the huge wave in the movie that was going to wash away Andrea Gail. The movie shows the crew realizing that they are all dying due to the coming giant wave in slow motion. Just then Bobby Shatford and Billy Tyne charge the seventy-foot high wave that is right in front of them in full heroic symbolism (Petersen, 2000). The audience watches these heroes, fishermen who are memorialized, as they meet their deaths. Petersen romanticizes the portrayal of the giant wave which is far from what was written by Junger in his book. He has used the accounts of other fishermen on the ship to build up the possible scenario of the death of the fishermen from the giant wave, but his writing never ventures to display anything that is more than conjecture. Junger writes to explain the Andrea Gail reaching the zero-moment point, “whether the Andrea Gail rolls, pitch-poles, or gets driven down, she winds up, one way or another, in a position from which she cannot recover” (Junger 140). Thus, the storyline created in the film was not what Junger had intended to endorse as he also writes that his book is a complete account as much as possible about an event which can never fully be known. The differences in the styles of Junger and Petersen show the style of a writer and the auteurism as a director. Peterson’s choice of auteurism for his film was in order to rise up the audience’s appreciation for the heroism of the fishermen and the risks that they take. Peterson also said in an interview that he wanted to do his job to make the heroic characters of the sword fishermen and to show that they are heroes just by bringing their fish home (Petersen, 2000). Another difference is that Junger writes that Captain Tyne took the risk due to the number of swordfish in the hold and the payoff would be huge but Petersen goes further when he made the film. He did not make Tyne the villain because of the risk that he decided to take; rather Petersen portrayed his decision as his heroism. Tyne in the film goes to his fishermen and tells them that they are hit by bad weather and they have two choices; to leave the fish and waste a million dollars by hanging out there safe or to go ahead and accomplish the mission (Petersen, 2000). Thus, the villain is not Tyne, but the weather. Petersen made the choice to make The Perfect Storm a pure Hollywood classic due to purely economic reasons. The closest style to adapt Junger’s writing style of the account would be a documentary. However, Petersen knew that the audience for the documentary about sword fishermen wouldn’t have been as much as the audience size of a classical romanticized Hollywood film. The production cost for the film was about $137 million and thus limiting the size of the audience would have made it fatal. This is the major reason why Petersen adopted the auteurism style instead of a pure documentary. This choice of style creates a big difference between the book and the film. Petersen also changed the essential themes of the book just in order to reach to a wider audience. He adopted these changes as he was motivated by commercial and financial values. But still the film manages to create an impact on the audience as they learn more about sword fishermen and understand their heroism as they go out in the rough sea. Petersen and Junger have provided their audience two entirely different narratives and styles of the same story. Petersen has chosen to emphasize the heroism of the six main crew members by memorializing them and making his assumptions about the event that Junger does not make. However, Petersen has used the research and facts that Junger collected for his book to tell the story as realistically and accurately as it was possible. However, the key difference is the style of narration which brings the audience to a level where they get the same type of thinking. The audience of the book and of the movie both relate to the story in the same way as they develop anxiety and fear as they read or watch the characters being hit by the perfect storm and dying. Thus, despite the different narratives, the book and film both successfully manage to attract and involve the audience to the characters and develop a sense of care for them. Work Cited Petersen Wolfgang. The Perfect Storm. USA: Warner Bros. Pictures, 2000. Movie Junger Sebastian. The Perfect Storm. NY: W.W. Norton, 1996. Print. Read More