While Laura Dern's heartbreaking portrayal of Strayed's mother sticks close to the book, some of Strayed's family didn't make the cut: Her older sister Karen and step-father Eddie aren't in the movie, which pares the fractured family down to just Cheryl, her mom, and her younger brother Lief.
Wild the film is true to the spirit of Cheryl Strayed's memoir, which chronicles her hike across the Pacific Crest Trail following the death of her mother. It's also, save for some smaller changes, accurate. Strayed is a producer on the film, and Nick Hornby consolidated Strayed's book elegantly.
The movie excluded essential parts from the book and concentrates on Chris's quest. It focuses more on Chris being adventurous, friendly, warm yet resentful towards his parents while Krakauer shows other side of Chris.
The culmination of the story (which motivates Buck to answer the call of the wild) is far different and much more powerful than the one the moviemakers created. The movie version of the story satisfied me as entertainment, the book with intellectual and narrative depth.
How closely does the movie stick to the Wild true story? Screenwriter Nick Hornby stuck fairly close to Cheryl Strayed's memoir. A noticeable difference is that Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) makes less stops on her journey and doesn't encounter as many people as she does in the book.
Cheryl Strayed walked a very respectable distance, but still less than half of the trail's 2660 miles. A thru hiker must average 20 miles per day in order to complete the trail in a single year due to snow levels at high elevation. Cheryl averaged 5-7 miles per day.
A similar thing happened after she sold "Wild" to Knopf for $400,000, Strayed tells Martin: "Again, the great, funny irony about that was that I got my first check, and we spent it all on credit card bills. We went out and had sushi. But our life didn't change.
Wild is a sumptuous, well-done and faithful adaptation of the book, without being 'try-hard' or lacking in any way. I would venture you can enjoy it without reading the book, but the attention to detail here means you'll enjoy it even more when you have.
What are the similarities between the book and movie The Call of the Wild?
Buck lives in Judges Millers estate at the beginning of both the book and the movie. He is then kidnapped by Manuel, the gardener. He is sold to dog salesmen heading to Alaska. He is disciplined by the Law of Club and Fang.
Krakauer draws a clear line from McCandless' earliest days through to his death; Penn's movie, on the other hand, practically has him springing fully formed from the head of Zeus after college, with no past and a bright future. That said, there are a great many specific parallels between the book and the film.
Both movie and book end with Buck living on to create a legacy with the lupine pack and their offspring. Wolves in the area are seen with "splashes of brown on the head and muzzle, with a rift of white ... down the chest," as London writes. Onscreen, Buck is last shown with his striking white wolf female companion.
Into the Wild addresses the issues of how to be accepted into society, and how finding oneself sometimes conflicts with being an active member in society. Most critics agree that Chris McCandless left to find some sort of enlightenment.
The average reader will spend 3 hours and 44 minutes reading this book at 250 WPM (words per minute). How long will it take you? To find your reading speed you can take one of our WPM tests.
One of the most heart-wrenching scenes in the book is when Cheryl and Leif are forced to put down their mother's sick horse. The horse grew weak after Eddie neglected it following the death of Cheryl's mother. Cheryl asks Eddie to mercy-kill the horse, but he doesn't. Cheryl then says Leif must shoot the animal.
Following the divorce, she changed her surname to Strayed, a name she chose after months of contemplation. She chose Strayed for its symbolism and because she liked how it sounded together with her first name. Strayed subsequently married filmmaker Brian Lindstrom in August 1999.
The novella The Call of the Wild features Yeehat Indians—not a real tribe, but a fictionalization of the Native people London encountered when he was in the Klondike—as antagonists, but also objects of pity.
What happened to the sled dogs in The Call of the Wild?
Buck's new masters are inexperienced and out of place in the wilderness. They overload the sled, beat the dogs, and plan poorly. Halfway through their journey, they begin to run out of food. While the humans bicker, the dogs begin to starve, and the weaker animals soon die.
What is the main problem in the book Call of the Wild?
Buck struggles between the natures of how he was raised, which was civilization and an instinctive savagery from his ancestors. Buck lived in a civilized manner in the beginning of chapter one, but he had to adapt to his surroundings when he was kidnapped and taken, to the Yukon Territory.
The Call of the Wild falls into the categories of adventure fiction and what is sometimes referred to as the animal story genre, in which an author attempts to write an animal protagonist without resorting to anthropomorphism.
There are several books Chris McCandless carried with him during his travels; these books include themes and ideas that McCandless considered relevant to his transient, search for meaning: Walden by Henry David Thoreau, The Call of the Wild by Jack London, Education of a wandering man by Louis L' Amour, Doctor Zhivago ...
Strayed always planned to reveal that she was Sugar at some point, and chose a moment when her literary star is about to shine brightly. Her memoir “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail” (out next month) is one of the hottest books of year, published by Alfred A.
In the movie, she keeps saying she's “hiking the PCT,” so someone unfamiliar with the trail landmarks might misunderstand (most people probably don't know that Mojave is not near the Mexican border and the trail doesn't end at the Bridge of the Gods). But yeah, she did not hike the whole PCT, and that's fine.
