Film and literature are closely related, and in 2023 alone fans expect to see the upcoming The Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and Dune, Part 2, and a new season ofShadow & Bone has already dropped on Netflix. That said, even faithful adaptations probably shouldn't try to replicate their source material in a new medium. This is especially true when novels include scenes that are too controversial to place on the screen.
While sometimes fans are frustrated by everything that's left out of film adaptations, some scenes probably don't belong on the screen. From The Road's darkest elements to an infamous scene in Stephen King's It, there are certain scenes from books that will probably never be translated into film.
This article includes discussions of sexual violence, mutilation, miscarriage, and children engaging in disturbing behavior.
10 A Visit To SeaWorld
Paper Towns
In Paper Towns, wallflower Quentin goes on a mission to find Margo, an outgoing popular girl, after she goes missing and leaves clues for him to follow. Though not particularly popular, Paper Towns is a cute, fun storyline based on a young adult novel by John Green.
In Green's novel, there is a scene where the teens visit SeaWorld. However, this teen drama was released soon after the documentary Blackfish. After this heartbreaking story about animals suffering in captivity, the director thought depicting the carefree trip to SeaWorld was in bad taste and omitted it.
9 Forrest Experiments
Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump is an iconic movie from the '90s starring Tom Hanks. Even viewers who haven't seen this hit comedy-drama are aware of its pop culture impact. However, many fans aren't aware that this hit was originally a novel written by Winston Groom. Both the book and movie are great in their own ways, but there were a few notable scenes left out of the film adaptation.
Forrest Gump smoking marijuana upset some readers, both for political reasons and because it felt like it was in bad taste. The film dropped several scenes, like Gump's trip to space with an orangutan, and ignored Forrest's dark side but the motivation behind dropping his pot smoking felt different. Gump's universally beloved and showing him passing around a joint felt controversial.
8 Peeta's Leg
The Hunger Games
Though it's hard for movie fans to appreciate Peeta, fans of the Hunger Games novels know he went through a lot more in the source material than in his films. While The Hunger Games featured his injured leg, the adaptation chose not to include the plotline where he lost his leg and had to wear a prosthetic.
This aspect was likely left out of the Hunger Games adaptation because Peeta's storyline didn't focus on his disability and may have been controversial if the detail was included but not built upon. On the other hand, some viewers were annoyed Peeta's character wasn't allowed to grow and thought the film missed a good opportunity for more representation.
7 Losing An Eye
Divergent
Fans love Divergent for its honest performances and for the way it honors the novels, written by Veronica Roth. However, there were a few more gruesome scenes that were left out of the adaptation.
One notable moment within the first Divergent novel, however, features one of the Dauntless losing an eye in a fight. Though these details highlighted how dangerous and violent the faction could be, the scene was too brutal to include in a sci-fi franchise intended for younger viewers.
6 Another Baby
ROOM
Before she was Captain Marvel, Brie Larson stared in ROOM as a young woman who gave birth to and raised a child while she was held captive by an evil stranger. Though the film contained a lot of disturbing scenes and was heartbreaking for many viewers, it left out some storylines from Emma Donoghue's novel.
While in captivity, this young mother had a miscarriage that she later explained to her son. This scene was cut from the film because of pacing issues but also because miscarriage is an incredibly difficult topic, even in a movie with a premise as disturbing as ROOM's.
5 Racist Comments
Gone With The Wind
Gone With the Wind still enjoys a positive reputation in some quarters, and with captivating characters like Scarlet O'Hara and Rhett Butler, Margaret Mitchell's Civil War drama certainly has its merits. However, the film is transparently racist in several ways, and it portrays a romanticized version of Confederate America that some people cling to, to this day.
Mitchell's novel is even worse in this regard, and it makes racist statements that even 1939 Hollywood shied away from. The source material depicted some black characters as "accepting" their slavery. One line in the novel also mentioned how the KKK was a "tragic necessity," further highlighting the overt, unsettling racism in the novel that's never quite explicit in the film.
4 Brutal Torture
American Psycho
American Psycho is an incredibly unsettling movie but it's also a cult classic with a dedicated fanbase. Like Bret Easton Ellis' novel, the film is known for its accurate and insightful look into a disturbed man's shallow mind, the adaption still left out some of the novel's most graphic scenes.
While the movie American Psycho is quite graphic and disturbing, the novel's detailed portrayal of brutal, bloody torture was left out of the film. While books are often banned for ridiculous reasons, these scenes got Ellis' novel kicked out of several countries. In the end, even one of the creepiest psychological horror movies of all time wanted nothing to do with them.
3 The Innocent Victim
Jurassic Park
While the Jurassic Park franchise is known for its brutal and bloody scenes, the book had a scene that was too disturbing to transfer to the movie. At the beginning of Michael Crichton's novel, a baby was devoured by tiny dinosaurs.
Though Jurassic Park's film franchise changed a lot about Crichton's book, this scene was too dark to show on the screen. A cleaner version of this scene was created for The Lost World: Jurassic Park when a young girl was attacked by a pack of tiny procompsognathus but the original scene was never adapted in the long-running film and TV franchise.
2 The Infant
The Road
While films tend to avoid upsetting scenes involving infants, novels are much more likely to break taboos of this kind. While The Road is a great post-apocalyptic movie, one scene involving an infant wasn't included in the film.
The infamous scene in Cormac McCarthy's novel involved a baby being roasted over a fire. Though the scene was developed for the film, it didn't make it into the final version of the adaptation. While The Road is much darker than most horror movies, people cannibalizing small children was an atrocity too far, even for this film.
1 The Sewer
It
Even horror fanatics are freaked out by the terrifying Pennywise in Stephen King's It. However, there were some scenes in his bestselling novel that were so creepy that both versions of the movie avoided adapting them. In the infamous sewer section, there's a point where Beverly initiates a juvenile orgy with the other Losers.
This scene is particularly unsettling since the heroes are 11 years old at this point. Any scene with minors engaging in sexual activity would be troubling to watch on screen, but this scene also doesn't fit into the rest of the novel well. Even in the most shocking horror films, some storylines just don't belong on the screen.