The Hate U Give: Is the movie a good adaptation?

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas has been talked about by everyone since it was published in February 2017. The Hate U Give ended up winning countless awards and became a household name. Before the book was even published, the movie adaptation was in works. The movie adaption came out October of 2018 and received good ratings. As a lover of books, movie adaptions make me excited and nervous at the same time. I’m eager to see a story I love with actors on the screen but oftentimes the storylines are changed when the story is brought to screen and it’s not always for the best.

Both the book and the movie, The Hate U Give, have been on my radar to read/watch for a while and so I decided to read the book and then watch the movie back to back to see if the movie adaptation was faithful to the book.

The Hate U Give is about an African American girl that witnesses the death of her friend at the hands of a cop. In addition to this, she is also goes to a private school with predominantly white students. The story doesn’t just deal with the main character’s, Starr, struggle but also the struggle of the entre neighborhood. It’s definitely a hard story to read or watch but has a good overall message.

My first impressions of the movie was that it maintained the spirit and message of the book. Even with the changes that were made, it remained true to the original story and the changes did not mess with the integrity of the story. I would say there were very few changes made in general which I prefer in a movie adaptation. Some characters did have smaller roles in the movie versus the books but that can be expected because they have to be able to fit it into a shorter amount of time.

Because of this time constraint they did have to condense story lines a bit more and move some scenes around. The moving of the scenes didn’t really change anything major but condensing the story lines did cause them to cut out on of the major characters in the book, Devante. Without spoiling the plot, Devante plays a large role, especially in the second half of the story. He is a very redeemable character and plays a big part in the outcome of the book. The movie seemed to take some of Devante’s larger roles in the book and have Seven, Starr’s older brother, take those roles. Angie Thomas said in an interview with Entertainment that this was upsetting to her at first but when it was explained to her that it would make Starr’s story more important, she agreed. I personally really liked Devante in the book so I was sad not to see him in the movie, but I also understand where the director was coming from and can see how it would complicate the story line too much for a movie.

One change that I didn’t really understand was the change in Starr and Chris’s relationship. In the book they had been dating over a year and the entire family had met Chris and knew about the relationship but Starr’s father. In the movie the family had never met Chris but did know about him (Except for Starr’s father again) and they only had been dating about six months. I think this difference in time dating made them seem less familiar with each other than they did in the book. I preferred them having a closer connection in the book than in the movie where the relationship still seemed new.

The final major change from the movie to the book was the very end. In the end of the book, there is this very tense scene. The movie took this scene to another level by having Sekani, Starr’s younger brother, hold a loaded gun and threaten to shoot. Cops are there and have their guns pointed at Sekani. The point of the scene was to make one of the major themes in the book visual and I appreciated that part of it, but it also was a bit too dramatic for my tastes. I thought the original scene packed enough punch as it was.

They also changed the overall feel of the ending. In the book, there is a feel of optimism that things are going to change but that there is still some work to be done. I appreciated that the ending wasn’t that ‘they all lived happily ever after. The end.’ It made it more realistic and real. The ending of the movie, however, seemed a bit like that to me. It just made it seem like the neighborhood’s problems were all magically fixed when in reality, they still had work to do.

Overall, these changes didn’t change much of the message of the story and it is still a very effective movie. I always try to remind myself when I watch movie adaptations that movies and books are two different mediums and that there will be differences because of this.