Gulliver's Travels: book vs movie

Gulliver's Travels: book vs movie

Context:

First of all, there is a big difference between the contexts in which both works were done. According to the literary work written by Jonathan Swift, the story is settled in the early 18th century, and there it is mentioned that Gulliver departs from London what means that he was from England.
Gulliver’s Travels have a lot of satire, and Swift employs both humor and critic so as to attack British and European society through his descriptions of imaginary countries.
Gulliver’s Travels is about a specific set of political conflicts which can be appreciated in the rivalry between Lilliputians and the people from Blefuscu. It resembles the political conflicts of the time in England.

Otherwise, the movie is developed in our current times and it begins in a post office in New York City in the US. It is adapted to modern times and it is resembled in the use of very known movies like Stars Wars, Titanic and also the use of the song "Kiss" of Tom Jones. By making reference to all these elements, the director of the movie tries to create a feeling of closeness to the audience. In despite of that, the movie has a lot of irony and fun which make people to enjoy it a lot and to remember this new version.

Characters from Gulliver’s travels

Gulliver’s travels have some characters that appear in both versions, in the movie and in the book. However, if we compare the same characters in both, they have different personalities. In the case of the main character, called Gulliver, the version of the book shows us a character that is intelligent and very literate. In the version of the movie, this character is shown as not as very intelligent and he usually fails in his tasks. Another characteristic showed in the book is that Gulliver is very good at maths and at sailing. Those features are all the way around in the version of the movie. On the one hand, the movie shows us a funny and a fearful character, and on the other hand, the book shows us a character that represents respect, braveness and intelligence.

Other character that appears in Gulliver’s travels is “the emperor”. In the book, the emperor is a person that sets the rules in Lilliput and is respected by everybody. However, in the movie this character is disrespected by the people of Lilliput and he is not able to rule at all.


In the book, the Princess is a character that is shown as a powerful person, but in the version of the movie she is just a charmy and lovely woman that is in love with a farmer. Actually, she does not take any important decision. In the book, she is in love with Gulliver, but in the case of the movie, she just thinks that he is a good person.

And finally, Mary Burton Gulliver, that is the wife of Gulliver in the book, does not show feelings toward Gulliver, and it seems that she does not love him. The movie version shows us a woman that is not Gulliver's wife. At the beginning, she does not have any feelings for Gulliver, but at the end she fells in love with Gulliver. Also, in the movie she is a very important character, because Gulliver wants to seduce her, it makes love one of the main topics of the story. Otherwise, in the book she does not play an important role.

Special Features

Is the “new” movie of The Gulliver’s travels a sci-fi story, or is it closer to a long advertisement? Or maybe it is a totally new version of the story, something like “The New Gulliver’s travels”. Of what we are sure is that the movie was a quite funny movie, but it was very different from the real book. Actually it added many things that never really appeared or happened in the literary piece of Jonathan Swift published the first time in 1726. Those things that happened only in one of the works, the book or the movie, we decided to call them Special features.

- The appearance of a robot in Gulliver’s travels?

Yes, even if it is difficult to believe that an invention from the 21st century had an appearance in the movie, that was based on the original book where all those little and modest people used to work very hard, it actually happened. A robot appeared there in the movie in order to defeat the Ugly beast Gulliver, it was a robot even bigger and stronger than Gulliver. It was a robot specially deigned for the movie, because in the book, at least in the first chapter, there was no “beast” bigger than our main character in all Lilliput.

- Famous products and Brands in a movie based on an old story?

Many… and when we say many, we really say MANY different brands and products appeared in the “new” movie, which of course were not even mentioned in the real work (book). Why? Well, because they did not exist in those years! We are talking about Coca – Cola, in this particular case we were able to watch the cans of soda once Gulliver found his wrecked ship. Besides, Gulliver (Jack Black) had a very important object with him at the time of departing from New York that he lost in the shipwrecking, but finally he recovered it with his ship. What was that object? A can of soda? Yes, in some way, but there was another object even more important for him, an Iphone, a touchpad telephone designed and produced by Apple Inc. Last but not least, it is difficult to think about what sort of things Gulliver did to have fun, but of what we could be sure is that he never played videogames in those years, but guess what… The new Gulliver used to play a game called guitar hero produced and distributed by RedOctane, MTV Games.

- Did something happen in the book that did not appeared in the movie then?

Of course it happened, but as you can figure out those things were not really related to objects and brands that a developed and capitalist culture would include in their works. Some of those differences are:

- Gulliver was severely punished when he urinated the Queen's chamber. That scene also appeared in the movie, but in this case“The big Beast” was seen as a protector and for the same reason he became more reliable to the Lilliputians.

- The Lilliputians were not as friendly with Gulliver in the book (when he was in prison) as they were with him in the movie, since in the literary work Gulliver was condemned to get blinded and die of starvation after he urinated the Castle.

- In the book Gulliver left Lilliput once he repaired his ship with his own hands. He left Lilliput all alone, without any partner with him. Did he return to his warm house far away from any problem and adventure? Actually, he did. But he returned and stayed there just for two months and then he started his next sea voyage only to arrive to a country of Giants.