Losing the Plot: A Commentary on Media Literacy
In the act of creating adaptations of beloved originals, the adaptors cut scenes they deem superfluous in an attempt to keep the audience engaged. However, the very scenes they are cutting are often the key plot points for many adaptations, rendering the theme or lesson of the media useless. Though I am a book purist, this is not just from book to movie adaptations but even movie to musical or animated movie to live action movie. The variety of this mistake proves adaptors have a decreasing media literacy as they cannot understand the source material. In this essay, I will discuss The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and How to Train Your Dragon (2005) as they have adaptations that miss the point of the originals in some way.
In The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, the story is told through the eyes of Ponyboy Curtis, a fourteen year-old and lower class Greaser, and an encounter he has with the upper class Socs in the 1960s. The novel famously starts and ends with the same line, a feature the movie and musical adaptation keep for the novelty. However, the two adaptations miss the reason why Hinton starts and ends with that line. Ponyboy begins his narration with, “when I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home” (Hinton 1). This seemingly innocuous slice-of-life line sets up the series of tragic events Ponyboy is about to experience.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, the town is split by class, often leading to gang wars between the Greasers and the Socs. The audience sees a tragedy unfold through Ponyboy’s eyes as he and his friend Johnny are cornered by Socs. Through a series of events, Johnny kills one of the Socs, forcing the two boys into hiding out in an abandoned church with the help of their friend Dally. The three boys notice the church catches fire with kids trapped inside. Dally and Johnny sustain injuries saving the children, Johnny’s eventually leading to his death. This drives Dally to recklessly commit suicide, losing the will to live after Johnny dies.
When Ponyboy comes back following the loss of his friends, he is faced with the harsh reality of trying to move on. His brother tells him to stay in school, but apathy leads Ponyboy to drift through life. Towards the end of the school year, his English teacher informs him, “you’re failing this class right now, but taking into consideration the circumstances, if you come up with a good semester theme, I pass you with a C grade’” (Hinton 169). Ponyboy struggles with finding the inspiration on something important to write about for this assignment and eventually comes across the book he and Johnny used to pass time at the church. A letter falls out of the book, and Ponyboy reads the last words of Johnny, “‘I don’t mind dying now…it’s worth saving those kids…there’s still good in this world. Tell Dally’” (Hinton 178-179). This letter from Johnny saddens Ponyboy at first as he was never able to tell Dally. However, as he sits and thinks about Johnny’s last words being so sure that there’s good in the world, he becomes motivated. Ponyboy comes to the realization that “suddenly it wasn’t only a personal thing…hundreds of boys living on the wrong sides of cities…boys going down under street lights because they were mean and tough and hated the world, and it was too late to tell them there was good in it…someone should tell them before it was too late…it was important to me” (Hinton 179). Ponyboy’s sorrow and heartbreak for other boys like his friends who were dealt a bad hand in life pushes him to pick up his pen. He finally has an idea of something important enough to write about. The final lines of the novel end with the beginning of his composition, “And I finally began like this: When I stepped into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home…” (Hinton 179). The audience realizes within the last few pages of the novel that The Outsiders is Ponyboy’s composition. The beginning lines that start as everyday life for him develops into a hope to share with those who don’t know if there is still good in the world.
The Outsiders has been turned into both a movie (1983) and a musical (2024), and while these have become well-loved adaptations, they both miss pieces from the original narration that leaves the message lacking. The movie uses a narration of Ponyboy saying these lines as the first and last words in the movie, but they are reduced to a gimmick because of the lack of context. The movie has Ponyboy saying the same line for the first and last, but it's just because it's an interesting feature not because it actually explains what he's doing and why. While it does include Ponyboy’s required assignment and Johnny’s letter, Ponyboy’s deliberation is restricted to conflicted faces made by the actor portraying him. This omittance of S.E. Hinton’s reasoning for Ponyboy to specifically write about the events in the novel showcases that the importance of this detail is not grasped. They may be emotional in the movie, but they do not deliver when it comes to the deeper meaning. Without Ponyboy’s realization about the importance of Johnny and Dally’s story, the entire point of the novel falls flat.
Similarly, the musical decides to cut the assignment altogether. Instead, they have Ponyboy pick up a notebook and get questioned about it by his brother,
“SODAPOP: Ponyboy, what were you in there writin’ about?
PONYBOY: Tulsa.
SODAPOP: What about Tulsa?
PONYBOY: Just the typa stuff that happens here.
SODAPOP: So it’s like a story?
PONYBOY: I think it might be, yeah” (Rapp and Levine 83)
The musical goes into the final number that echoes the same starting line. However, without the context of Ponyboy having to choose a topic important to him, the arbitrary act of him picking up a notebook and nonchalantly writing about Tulsa does not have the same impact. This showcases a lack of understanding by those adapting the novel and presenting the audience with a lesser product.
Another baseless change that further proves the decline of literacy among adaptations is the musical portrayal of George Wilson in The Great Gatsby. In the original novel, George Wilson is a humble mechanic working hard to provide a better life for himself and his wife. He serves as a moral foil to the other upper class characters who live in finery and façade. When Wilson’s wife, Myrtle, goes out with Tom Buchanan, Nick attends and hears all about the affair. Myrtle complains about her husband in the presence of their rich friends saying “‘‘[she] thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick [his] shoe’” (Fitzgerald 38). Myrtle clearly is unhappy with the lower class life Wilson has provided her with. Myrtle’s friend tells Nick, “‘They’ve been living over that garage for eleven years’” (Fitzgerald 39). While Wilson may be poor, these lines portray him as a decent, working man. His decency is later deepened when he finds out about Myrtle’s affair. His neighbor finds Wilson a complete wreck, “really sick, pale as his own pale hair and shaking all over” as Wilson was “his wife’s man and not his own” (Fitzgerald 145-146). His loyalty to his wife deeply contrasts from his wife, Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom who all cheat on each other and with each other throughout the novel.
The musical does not pick up on this detail, instead turning Wilson into a shady dealer trying to scheme his way into money. In the musical number, “Valley of Ashes,” Wilson speaks with conman Meyer Wolfshiem and makes a deal with him.
“[WILSON, spoken]
Well, now what?
[WOLFSHIEM, spoken]
Another shipment comes on Thursday
[WILSON, spoken]
After dark?
[WOLFSHIEM, spoken]
Deep breaths, Mr. Wilson. You keep running your business, I’ll keep running mine.”
While this detail may seem insignificant, it destroys the purpose of Wilson’s character to Fitzgerald’s novel. Nick describes the upper class’s behavior in disgust as “they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (Fitzgerald 191). Wilson is the direct opposite of that and is part of the population that is left to deal with the messes of the wealthy. Turning Wilson into an underhanded dealer is a senseless decision that dilutes the tragedy of his life in the lower class. It removes his status as a decent man among the wealthy sharks destroying lives in their path.
The final adaptation that disregards the original material is the live action adaptation of the originally animated How To Train Your Dragon (2005). Hiccup is a viking raised to fight dragons but continually falls short. He instead befriends a deadly dragon after accidentally disabling him with a failed dragon trap. Hiccup calls him Toothless and attempts to help the injured dragon fly again. In the animated film, there is a scene around the midpoint of the film, Hiccup finally succeeds in navigating Toothless with the prosthetic tailfin. They stop at an island and are interrupted by smaller dragons called Terrible Terrors. They try to steal Toothless’s fish but are stopped when the bigger dragon shoots fire into their mouths to dissuade them. Hiccup has two key lines during this exchange, those being, “‘Not so fireproof on the inside, are ya?’” and “‘Everything we know about you guys is wrong.’” The second line shows Hiccup’s true change of heart from his dragon-hating upbringing into someone who will stand in complete opposition to his dad. The first line is an important realization to defeating The Red Death at the end of the film. Hiccup realizes he can use the information that dragons aren’t fireproof and overwhelm The Red Death using its own fire against it and having Toothless deliver the final blow.
The same director adapted the movie into live action but cut that scene. He claims “...in the film, it felt like it was dragging the pace down, and it was delivering information that we were already getting. It was cute, but it wasn’t contributing anything” (Tangcay). While the director of both would be expected to be the most knowledgeable in his own film, it still removes these two revelations that contribute to Hiccup’s character arc. This scene not only shows Hiccup’s complete change of heart, but learning about a dragon’s lack of internal fireproofing directly contributes to his triumph over the villain. In no other scene does Hiccup learn about this weakness, and while it may just be a five minute scene, his entire strategy falls apart without it. This information is the key to the ending battle, so in a shot for shot remake, why make this change? A movie should not rely on fast, action-packed scenes all the time to keep the movie interesting, especially when a scene with important dialogue is cut in the name of “pacing.” This scene that supposedly is “dragging the pace down” follows the ‘Test Drive’ scene, which is one of the most quickly paced scenes in the movie. Good storytelling is not afraid of letting the audience sit in a cooldown after an action scene.
Changing these scenes show a complete lack of understanding of the source media. They contribute to character arcs being continually written flatly in an attempt to streamline plots for the audience. Cutting pieces in the interest of speeding up a process is a shortcut that leads to carelessness. In an age where the audience’s inability to understand is constantly being pandered to, these cheap choices in adaptations change the depth of the messages.
Works Cited
Davies, William, et al. How to Train Your Dragon. Directed by Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, N/A, 2010, N/A.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Scribner, 2004.
Hinton, S. E. The Outsiders. Penguin, 2012.
Rapp, Adam, and Justin Levine. “The Outsiders Script.” Scribd, 23 Aug. 2026.
Tangcay, Jazz. “‘How to Train Your Dragon’ Director Explains Changes to Animated Movie.” Variety, Variety, 13 June 2025,
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