'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' is a good film, but the novel by Seth Grahame-Smith is so much better! It goes into more detail about his life in general, and it includes all the important people in his life. It runs really well alongside real events in Lincoln's life. In this post I am going to go through, bit by bit, what was left out of the film, and what was done differently. Warning, if you haven't read the book or seen the film, then this post contains spoilers.
The theme of the film is different
I know how strange that sounds, the theme of the film is obviously vampire killing, but what I mean is the driving theme, what Henry says to Abraham that begins his journey, "I man only ever gets that drunk if he is going to kiss a girl or kill a man, so which one is it?" I liked this change, it was a smart one, but the book one is much better, it is "some men, are just too interesting to let die". Obviously this wouldn't make much sense in the film because what they have taken out and what they have changed, but int he book, it is extremely important, and leads to a far better ending.
Abraham starts killing at a much younger age
In the film, he kills Jack Barts when he is a young man, after his father refuses to work for him anymore and still had a dept to pay. In the novel, Thomas Lincoln is portrayed as the proud character he is in the film, in reality, he was unambitious, and never did anything more than what he needed to feed his family. When he finally develops some ambition, he gets a loan from Barts in order to expand his new farm (yes he was a farmer in real life), he worked out that if he had a good harvest then he would have the loan paid off in no time, and would be one of the richest men in the area. Unfortunately, there was a drought that year, and he didn't make nearly enough to pay back his debt. So Barts took it out on his wife. Abraham kills Barts, when he is still a young boy, after his father admits to him that vampires exist after a heavy night on the drink, Abraham trains endlessly with his ax (he chops wood for his father), and planned his revenge.
Henry saves Abraham from a different vampire
In the book, Henry saves Abraham from a different vampire, an elderly female. At this point Abraham is the age he is at the beginning of the film. Abraham underestimates the elderly vampires strength and is in the process of being drowned when Henry saves him.
In the novel vampires can kill other vampires
Not quite sure why they changed this, I think it was a poor decision, it would be awesome having vampires rip others vampires heads off.
Henry's origins is different
In the novel, he arrived to the new world with his wife and unborn child with a group of colonists, he wasn't attacked by a group of vampires then in the film, what happened was that a vampire had traveled across with as a doctor, and whilst the Lord was off getting supplies in England, the Doctor slowly killed all the colonists, for a while no one suspected a thing, they all assumed it was some sort of plague.
The film misses out a lot of important people in Abraham's life
It skips over Armstrong, his first vampire hunting partner, his first wife, who was killed by a vampire and all the rest of his children. In the film we only see one, whereas in real life, he had a few, I can't remember how many exactly, I'm thinking maybe three or four, one of which actually outlives him, and dies at the age of eighty-eight.
The film misses out Armstrong and Speed hunting together
Naturally if they weren't going to include Armstrong, then they're weren't going to include their one hunt together, but I think they should have, because it was a really interesting chapter. They hunted a doctor, and they discovered that he kept humans barely alive in glass coffins in a morgue, draining their blood into some huge vessels. The hunt ends with the two barely making it out alive, Armstrong minus a hand. It's not an important part of the book, but it would have looked good on the big screen.
There's the basics of what is different, in my next post I will talk about the really interesting stuff, like how in the novel there was no train of silver, and how the ending would have shocked audiences across the world if it had remained true to the book. Sorry about these posts being so short, I wasn't intended to split this one in two, but I just haven't had the time over the past few days. By tomorrow part 2 of this post will be online, along with my Weekly Blu Ray Review. Also on Monday, as usual, I will post my Movie Recommendation Of The Week and on Tuesday my review of 'The Amazing Spider-Man'.
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