When I rewatched this film recently I noticed it was based on a book, which piqued my delight. It’s all about storytellers and storytelling, about the urbane fantastic and tall tales, so it’s one of my favorite movies. It turns out the adaption is nearly “in name only”, but that doesn’t mean the book is bad.

The bare bones are there but 1) There are many many elements that don’t show up in the movie but do in the book and vice versa and 2) the mediums translate to two totally different executions. In the movie, there’s a framing device where the son is attending to his dying father who he’s resented all his life for telling these stories and being an attention-hog/liar. The book is pretty much just these stories–no framing device. It’s like a collection or anthology of tall tales about his dad’s life.

They are somewhat less colorful but there are more of them. For example, there is no wolfman-ringmaster in the book. Not even a circus. The old woman’s eye is there, but the circumstances are much less scary than presented in the movie. Tim Burton peeled away the book to its core, then added his own style to it.

But both are chock full of content from the anecdotes and tall tales and stories, like in the movie. The only difference is the movie remixes them. It’s like adapting a video game to a movie–you can make all the changes you want as long as it stays true to the spirit of what made the original great (e.g. Silent Hill, Mortal Kombat, Sonic the Hedgehog). And that’s the case here.