Differences With The Film
Some plot points and characters were omitted from the film version, while others were added.
- In the novel, Ellie is well into her 40s, as is Palmer Joss.
- Attempts to cut funding for Ellie's project are not prominent in the novel.
- S.R. Hadden's retirement plan and his last journey are different.
- Ellie's romantic relationships are different.
- Ellie's mother is still alive, and re-married after her father died.
- The President of the United States is a fictional woman, not Bill Clinton.
- The contents and the coding of The Message are different (polarity modulation vs between lines of video).
- The work on The Message causes a major thaw of international relations in the novel.
- There are three Machines built in the novel, but only 2 in the film.
- The transport capsule is enclosed within solid rotating spheres, with a vacuum between the spheres, instead of falling through spinning rings.
- The Machine transports only one inhabitant (Ellie, an American) in the film.
- The apparent elapsed time of the journey, from earth's perspective, is considerably shorter in film.
- The alien "beach" in the novel is indistinguishable from a real beach, while in the film it is given an artificial, dream-like quality.
- The entire last chapter of the novel was not included in the film.
Read more about this topic: Contact (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words differences and/or film:
“When was it that the particles became
The whole man, that tempers and beliefs became
Temper and belief and that differences lost
Difference and were one? It had to be
In the presence of a solitude of the self....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The woman’s world ... is shown as a series of limited spaces, with the woman struggling to get free of them. The struggle is what the film is about; what is struggled against is the limited space itself. Consequently, to make its point, the film has to deny itself and suggest it was the struggle that was wrong, not the space.”
—Jeanine Basinger (b. 1936)