The Great Gatsby: Fitzgerald vs. Luhrmann

Overall, Luhrmann did his best to maintain the tone Fitzgerald had in the novel. The cast was accurate with the heavy descriptions of the characters in the book as well as the setting it was filmed in. Fitzgerald created such vivid and specific pictures along with rich dialog. In a sense, Luhrmann pretty much had the scenes and characters already laid out from the text. Luhrmann was consistent with the plot and dialog in the novel, but did make noticeable tweaks to the story and characters.

- To give frame to Nick Carraway's narration, Luhrmann opens with a broken-alcoholic Nick in therapy. This does work well for a narration in a movie, but it shows Nick as distraught and venerable, unlike in the novel where he is a careful and considerate person. Although not accurate, this alcoholic narration gives a purpose to the creation of book The Great Gatsby.

- Perhaps for the sake of Hollywood entertainment, Daisy is portrayed more as a damsel-in-distress  than a free-spirited woman. Fitzgerald goes into deep detail about the sound of Daisy's voice which really gives Daisy her whimsical charm that is felt in the novel. For Luhrmann, he certainly captured Daisy's beauty, but not so much her brains.

- Meyer Wolfsheim is also portrayed a little differently in the film than the novel. A striking feature of Wolfsheim in the novel is his cufflinks made of human teeth, making him much more barbarian. The film only shows him with one human tooth acting as a broach on his suit. Understandably, human teeth as cufflinks would undermine the class Wolfsheim was shown to have in the movie. Never the less, the tooth cufflinks are an unforgettable feature.

-  In then novel, it is revealed to Wilson days later who struck Myrtle with the yellow car. Fitzgerald builds suspense when Wilson continually repeats he "had a way of finding out" who killed Myrtle, but doesn't tell how or who. This gives a sense that Wilson is slowly slipping into insanity. In the film however, Tom goes right out and tells Wilson it was Gatsby the same night Myrtle was killed, most likely for the sake of time

- Gatsby's death was far more dramatic in the film than in the novel. In both instances, Gatsby is waiting for a phone call from Daisy. The phone rings while Gatsby is taking a swim, but how Gatsby is shot differs. In the novel, Gatsby is lounging on an inflatable mattress when a phone call arrives, but it is not directly revealed whether Gatsby believes it is Daisy (which we can suppose he did before he died). The film is much more dramatic. Gatsby is actually getting out of his pool when the phone call arrives, he stops on the ladder for a second and smiles. He continues to get out of the pool and stops once again to stare at Daisy's house across the bay, then, a gun shot through the heart and Gatsby looks up at Daisy's house across the bay one last time and whispers "Daisy". So much more dramatic than a gunshot on an air mattress.