A few days ago I broke down and saw the new movie Heaven is For real because I have been enjoying the book so much. I thought the movie was actually very good and was pretty similar to the book. Although there were some major changes that I would like to share.
In the film there were some odd changes
to Akiane’s back-story. The film begins with a subtitle that tells us
the prologue is set in “Lithuania – Present Day”, and it ends with Todd
watching the CNN report and calling her “a girl on the other side of the
world.” But Akiane, whose mother is indeed Lithuanian, was born in Illinois
and raised in Idaho, and is just as American as Colton. And she
completed this painting sometime after her eighth birthday in 2002,
before even the real-life Colton had had his near-death experience. Changes like these don’t really mean much in the grand scheme of things.
But it’s precisely the fact that these details don’t really matter that
makes me wonder why the filmmakers changed them in the first place. Did
they feel that they needed to put even more distance between Colton and
Akiane to make the similarities between their visions seem like a much
bigger sort of coincidence, perhaps? This was the most major change that I saw throughout the movie compared to the book. I did believe this was a major change because starting with the girls story at the beginning made the view point different than the book. The hospital scene was also much more intense in the book because the author used many elevated diction words that the movie did not have. This diction allowed me to pain a picture in my mind that did not match the movie.
Overall, I thought the movie was very enjoyable and great for a movie! There were some disappointing changes but Overall, I would recommend you seeing the movie and reading the book!
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