Full Metal Jacket - Adaptation of Novel To Film

Adaptation of Novel To Film

Film scholar Greg Jenkins has done a detailed analysis of the transition of the story from book to film. The novel is in three parts, while the film largely discards Part III, and massively expands the book's relatively brief first part about the boot camp on Parris Island. This gives the film a duplex structure of telling two largely separate stories connected by the same characters, one which Jenkins believes is consistent with statements Kubrick made back in the 1960s of wanting to explode the usual conventions of narrative structure.

Sergeant Hartman (renamed from the book's Gerheim) is given an expanded presence in the film. The film is more focused on Private Pyle's incompetence as a presence that weighs negatively on the rest of the troop. In the film, unlike the novel, he is the "sole problem recruit". The film omits "Hartman's" disclosure to other troops that he thinks Pyle might be mentally unstable, a "Section Eight." By contrast, Hartman congratulates Pyle that he is "born again hard". Jenkins believes that to have Hartman be in any way social with the troops would have upset the balance of the film, which depends on the spectacle of ordinary soldiers coming to grips with Hartman as a force of nature embodying a killer culture.

Various episodes from the book have been both cut and conflated with others in the film. Sequences such as Cowboy's introduction of the "Lusthog Squad" have both been drastically shortened and supplemented by material from other sections of the book. Although the book's final third section was largely dropped, pieces of material in it have been inserted into other episodes of the film. The climactic episode with the sniper is a conflation of two episodes in the book, one from part two, and another from part three. Jenkins sees the film's handling of this episode as both more dramatic but less gruesome than its counterpart in the novel.

The film often has a more tragic tone than the book, which often falls back on callous humor. Joker in the film remains a model of humane thinking, as evidenced by his moral struggle in the sniper episode and elsewhere. His struggle in the film is to overcome his own meekness, rather than to compete with other Marines. Hence, the film omits his eventual domination over Animal Mother.

The film omits the death of the character Rafterman. Jenkins believes this allows us to reflect on his personal growth in the film, and speculate on his further growth afterwards. Jenkins also believes it would not fit into the film's plot structure.