Zodiac: Comparison Between Book And Movie

Book adaptations are a huge trend in the modern era of cinema and the entertainment business in general. Almost every book, whether fictitious or not, has been made into a 2 hour long film that usually gets popular. Movies like It, The Hunger Games and Goodfellas are good examples. For this case of book adapted to big screen Hollywood films, I’m using the film Zodiac. It kinda feels obvious why a book this big would get a adaptation equally as big. From what I had gathered from a bit of commentary and sources other than the film, I was able to see how accurate the director had made his movie and what he was making the movie on. Zodiac is directed by David Fincher and was released in March of 2007, with big stars like Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark
Major letters involving early murders are still shown in the film, but most of the letters, like announced but unconfirmed kill letters, were cut out of the film, once again to shorten an already lengthy movie. But in all honesty, I think it was a very good decision on Fincher’s part. One thing that was technically compressed in order for this movie not to be super long was the script itself. As mentioned before, the Zodiac screenplay was huge. But that doesn’t stop David Fincher from trying to shorten up the script. In order to shorten it up, Fincher had asked the cast to speak faster. While this is more of a small form of compression and probably only shorten up the film by 10-20 minutes or so, I still think it’s such an interesting idea for compression, and it honestly goes really well for the film. It doesn’t change anything about the film’s overall
One thing that make the film stand out compared to the book is the the overall character arcs. Surprisingly enough, while the story is about the chase for the serial killer, pretty much like the book, the overall main characters had gotten to three characters: Paul Graysmith, David Toschi, and Paul Avery. One thing that was very clear when it came to the book was that Graysmith never intended to be the main character for the story, more of like a narrator and evidence collector for the case that had him obsessed for the longest time. Meanwhile in the film, the film seemed to be more focused on Graysmith. It shows everything around Graysmith, like letters coming in from the Zodiac to his workplace at the Chronicle, or how his daily life changes within more of his obsession of the Zodiac. It also seems to depict this rise of friendship and cooperation between Graysmith, the Chronicle and the police and its downfall as every individual had come to distance each other and want to forget about Zodiac: everyone except Graysmith would be the only obsessive enough to still be on the