Dear John, A very romantic and dramatic novel written by international best selling author Nicholas Sparks made its big screen movie debut in the US on February 5, 2010 raking in a huge $30,468,614 in box offices in the first weekend alone. It was also the second highest film debut opening on a Super Bowl Weekend. The storyline of the movie was somewhat similar to the book, but there was few differences between the two leaving some who have read the book as well as watched the movie a decision to which they liked best. Three weeks before the movies first screening, executives working on the movie made a drastic decision to change the story ending to fit what they felt the audience would like best.
Before we get to that, lets start with the basic outline of the story. Based in 2001, a 23 year old US Army Special Forces solider named John Tyree is deployed overseas. Just shy of one year left on active duty, he takes his leave back to his hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina. He spends his days on the beach. where he meets a young woman, Savannah Curtis. She is on her spring break vacation helping build a home for a family that has lost everything. They fall deeply in love within 2 weeks. At the end of their weeks together she returns back to school while John heads back overseas. They communicate back and forth, planning a future together, while the unexpected attack of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 changes everything including the fate of their relationship.
The differences between the book and movie start with something as simple as the color of Savannah’s hair. In the book she has beautiful long brown hair, while in the movie she has long wavy blonde hair. Next comes down to Allan, the young boy with autism. The book shows Allan as Tim’s brother, who does not actually make a big part of the story until towards the end of the book when Tim’s parents both tragically died in a car crash leaving Allan in Tim’s care thus, in the movie, Allan is Tim’s son whom he takes care of by himself while the mother has abandoned them. Tim on multiple occasions refers to her as always being on vacation hiding the truth of what really happened between them. After the 9/11 attacks, in both the movie and book John enlists for another 3 years, but both differing how Savannah found out about John reenlisting. In the book, John tells Savannah via writing her a letter, yet in the movie John takes a 24 hour leave to visit Savannah and meet her family. During a party they were hosting when confronted by Savannah’s fathers friend about the situation with the attacks John reveals he will continue to serve his country. After he returns back to his station the letters that he was so accustomed to receiving started to slow down more and more leading up to her last letter breaking it off with John and revealing that she has found someone new and has become engaged. In the book, John’s first return back to North Carolina on another leave happens a year after their first meet, but before 9/11. Savannah is still in school and John spends his whole time with her in her apartment. They get into their first argument, which leads to them making up. He returns back to base and receives a letter from a distant Savannah, stating she has found someone new. John re-enlists every year until 2006, never contacting Savannah throughout his time gone.
In both the book and movie, Johns father has a stroke a few years after him and Savannah had broken up. In the book, John comes home to attend to his father and find a caretaker to check up on him daily. He finds out the caretaker had not been doing a good job so he returns once again to help him move into a retirement home where nurses could take care of him. Shortly after leaving his father, he dies. John returns for the funeral and afterwards feeling alone decides to drive to Savannah’s hometown. He stops at a bar in the small town, asking if anybody knew her whereabouts. He finds his way to the neighboring house of her parents, which was Tim’s parents house. She asks him to come in and they have dinner together. John notices a picture on the wall from Savannah’s wedding day, her husband in the photo being Tim. John is shocked, but comes back the next morning as Savannah asked him to do so. They went off to the hospital to visit Tim. In the movie John finds out his father had a stroke and immediately flew home to see him. His father dies at the hospital. Regarding the endings, the book comes to a close after John visits Tim in the hospital and says his last goodbye to Savannah in the parking lot. He sells all of his late fathers coin collection except for one. John anonymously donates all the money to a fund to try to cure Tim’s cancer. Tim survives, and it ends with John watching Savannah from afar when she comes outside to put her thumb to the moon. In the movie, John sells his coin collection still and donates the money. He then returns back to active duty where months later he receives a letter from Savannah stating Tim had an anonymous donation which helped him for two months, but he died. It cuts to the last scene John is walking his bike down the street and stops to chain it up, then seeing Savannah in the window of a coffee shop. They smile at each other and give one another a hug.
Both the movie and book have differences but the message is all the same. Love.
