Handmaid's Tale Book Vs Movie

The phrase “the book is always better than the movie” is true for every book-to-film adaption. Certain aspects and details are always left out of the film versions due to factors like money, resources and equipment, and time. Directors cut certain subplots to keep movies “watchable” so that they gain a large profit from moviegoers. Some facets of what determines the watchability of a film is youth, sex or sex appeal, and a thrilling or mysterious plot. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is another victim of Hollywood’s dramatization appeal. What was a cautionary novel, Reed Morano, the director of the film version, turned into a “binge-worthy” show for Hulu subscribers. The film and book version of The Handmaid’s Tale are similar in their

In the book, there was a long war and change in many areas but not all; however, the show portrayed the war as a quick takeover centralized in one place. This edit of details strips from the emotional affect the book had. In the book, change was subtle but evident; this made it worse for the women because they slowly had their freedoms stripped from them to transition into this new society. Yet from the film’s implication, the audience may believe that the loss of independence and freedoms the women had would be deemed less painful. This would also explain Offred’s slip up that was added to the film version of the story. When meeting Serena Joy and the Commander, Offred says “you too” which is supposed to represent talk of the past. It is received as a mistake, but this scene strips the emotional trauma from when Offred was at the Red Center. In both versions, the Red Center is portrayed as a terrible re-programming facility where Offred lost her friend Moira, saw and heard traumatic things like Janine getting blamed for being gang raped, witnessed a woman getting her eye cut out for disobedience, and was surrounded by women having mental breakdowns daily. Atwood described the Red Center as such a place to explain how Offred had these rules so readily engrained in her memory, and for the film version of Offred to so easily forget such a simple rule delegitimizes the seriousness and chaos of the conditioning she went through and her psychological state of