Treasure Island (1988 Film) - Differences From The Novel

Differences From The Novel

In order to make the novel more fit for the screen, a number of relatively minor changes and simplifications were made to the story. First and foremost, all the fights are simplified to the point of cartoon violence, even though the participants comment the outcomes with the lines lifted straight from the novel, regardless of how much they actually resemble the action on screen.

Secondly, the characters became a lot more simplified. Jim Hawkins was turned into a "very, very good boy" with a knowledge of karate; Doctor Livesey turned into a hopeless optimist that managed to satirize each and every person he came across; Squire Trelawney became a cartoon of a not-so-competent, but a very ambitious local executive; and Captain Smollett turned into a cartoonish portrayal of a loyal, yet a bit too straightforward for his own good, army officer. While a number of additional omissions in the plots were made, these simplifications actually allowed the screening to keep relatively close to the letter and spirit of the classic Russian translation of the book, thus making this adaptation a rather faithful one, even though the fight scenes (predictably) have practically nothing to do with the text of the novel. When the movie was translated back into English, some of the accuracy was predictably lost.

While this adaptation features a number of deliberately silly scenes (i.e. where Billy Bounce has a stroke in the novel, he is literally stricken by a wooden beam in the movie after sneezing), it manages to keep relatively close to the letter of the book.

The movie took a full advantage of the fact that Russian (or Soviet, for that matter) attitude towards assigning ratings to movies is quite different from the approach of North America: while Russian/Soviet school of censorship was a lot less tolerant towards swearing and sexually suggestive material, it was far more liberal when it came to violence, thus allowing a number of American M-rated movies to be reclassified as PG-13 once the curses were replaced with more neutral langage and sex scenes cut out. Therefore, as far as cartoons go, this adaptation of Treasure Island is rather gory, while allowing to follow the script pretty closely.