Paper Towns Movie Analysis

Gonzalo Torres
ENC 1101
Paper Towns “What I really want from an adaptation is to feel the feelings I felt while reading the book, right?” (John Green). Paper Towns directed by Jake Schreier is a 2015 release, starring the actors Natt Wolf and the model/ actress Cara Delevinge, tells the story of Quentin Jacobsen (Natt Wolf) and Margo Roth Spiegelman (Cara Delevinge). This movie is the chronicle of Quentin Jacobsen and how he has spent his life up till then loving Margo, who was his front door neighbor from afar without being capable of telling her how he feels. So one night after she crawls into his bedroom looking for his help for a vengeful adventure, he goes to her aid.The next morning, Quentin looks for Margo and she is gone. Quentin
Of course, this may happen in many movies, but the writers of this movie took it to a whole new level. One of the things that are changed in the book is the timeline in which all of these events occur. Making this film very “fake” compared to the original book. In the movie they make the road trip to find Margo just days before prom, making it a possibility for them to skip it. While in the book, prom has already happened and what they are actually skipping is the graduation. They leave just before the graduation starts making not only the starting point of the film wrong, but the whole story in a completely different timeline. This is what makes the writers of the film have to add stuff to the movie that never actually happened in the book, in order to make the film more like the book. One example of this may be like the scene of the t-shirts that is changed. In the movie Ben, (Quentin's friend) drops some pee, on the t-shirt of Radar (another friend of Quentin which was also on the road trip), which makes them take a stop in order to buy some new shirts for Radar and Ben. While in the book, the three of them had a promise with Quentin and it was that they would go naked under their robes for graduation, but since they never actually went to graduation they, had to purchase some clothes because they were naked under their cap and gown making them have to make a pit stop in order to get
Such as in the end of the book when we learn that Margo actually had a diary in which she pretended that she was with Quentin the whole time she grew up. In this journal, she pretended that after they saw the dead man, she and Quentin remained together, but in the movie this diary actually never existed. The writers had taken it out completely. Another part that is also taken out is the part of Sea World, in this scene in the movie, Margo is like 10 years old, and after seeing the dead man in the middle of the road, she digs into him, as if she were a detective. She then goes to Quentin's room in the middle of the night and tells him to go with him to Sea World to talk to the ex-wife of the dead guy that they found, but Quentin refuses because he says “he doesn't want to get into trouble”. In the actual book, they break into Sea World and Margo is bit by a snake. Making Quentin suck out the poison. This for me was a key part of the movie and knowing that it was left out it changed my whole perspective, since for me when I watched the movie, it made me think as if they had gone to the park together they would have remained united, but since they didn't they weren’t. Now knowing that they did and that it still didn't happen makes me angry that the actual writers of the film didn't give this scene a chance to occur, nor the one of the