Warm Bodies; Book vs. Film

  I heard a few months back about this movie coming out, and also heard there was a novel first. Naturally, I ran out to buy it and read it so I could eventually compare the two. Because...that's what I do.
  If you still don't know anything about Warm Bodies, it's a twist on the usual zombie tale by Issac Marion. The main character is in fact a zombie, who calls himself R (since he can't remember the rest of his name) and has thoughts and very suddenly feelings for a living girl after eating her boyfriend's brains. Whoops.
  I thought this story was just adorable. It wasn't like anything I'd ever read before; it was funny and had some heartwarming themes. It's also a pretty short read, around 200 ish pages (hey, I think that's short!) and it's the kind of book I'll be reading multiple times.
  I've heard people babbling about it being somehow related to Twilight, or it's "the new Twilight" or whatever bull honkey, perhaps just because Summit is attached to the film and Stephanie Meyer has a short blurb quote on the book. It. is. not. The writing style is better, fresher, and there are no awful terrible messages about forced/abusive relationships. So let's just not go there.
  I was way excited for the movie. I was expecting them to leave things out and change things, as is the way of book to film transitions, and that did happen. But it was still a cute movie on it's own. It lacked a few things here and there (which I'll bring up) but overall it wasn't a big let down and I still really enjoyed it.
 So brace for spoilers! I'm about to list differences.

  1. There is so much more about the two separate societies they probably didn't have time to cover in the film. The zombies are a little more life like than it showed. They have their own customs. R gets "married" after bumping into a girl and the Boneys decide to pair them permanently. They are even given two children to look after (nodded to in the film I believe by the two kids he passes a few times). New zombies and zombie children are also "taught" how to hunt in a small arena with a live person. This is paralleled by the living society, where people still get married and are taught how to kill zombies at a young age.
  2. The living society didn't block off part of a city in the book as they did in a movie. I think there were quite a bit less of them; they built a small town inside of a stadium. Buildings where constructed out of scraps of other buildings and streets were labeled with pictures instead of words for children who hadn't learned to read yet. In the movie it was this huge area with what was obviously a class separation due to over crowding. The leader had a big fancy apartment, while others lived in tents. Plausible I guess but not sure why the change.
  3. As with most book to films, a lot gets left out or changed about the characters. R's best friend M is actually a huge bearded man, who happens to still retain a sexual perversion and still manages to "have sex" with zombie women. His body parts frequently fall off. They made his development kind of quick in the movie but it makes a lot more sense in the book. Perry is not the jock gone douchebag he appears to be in the film. R eats quite a bit more pieces of his brain and Perry almost becomes a second voice in his mind. He encourages R, roots for him to go for Julie and get better. The memory of Perry dying is unpleasant, but doesn't revolt R into spitting out the piece. Julie is even feistier in the book, but she also takes R to the grave site of her mother and we hear a lot more about her life. Julie's friend Nora is a darker skinned Ethiopian girl missing part of one of her fingers. She is sassy, most definitely, but with more dimensions than her Caucasian film equivalent.

  4. The big finish of the story happens a bit differently than in the film. Julie's father believes R's disguise temporarily and he hangs around longer in their city. It's only during a rainy night when R is thinking about how hungry he is that a guard notices him and R can't help himself. He's just gotta eat the guy, which sets off the alarm after his body is found.
  5. There is a big battle in both renditions. R and Julie do a lot of running around from the Boneys and Julie's father after he realizes R isn't living. But Julie is pretty hesitant to kiss R. This seems like a sure way to get infected. They talk about it before they get cornered and Julie decides "fuck it" and does it anyway. I don't remember them being a pool when it happens, but maybe it does.

  Those are the main differences I can think off without finding specific passages from the book. There are little details left out, the things that don't quite matter as much, like certain things R collected on his plane, or the music he chose to convey his feelings, or what Julie ate when they went looking for food. Picky stuff. It's just really interesting to me to find differences and details in books and their films. If you've seen the movie but haven't read the book, do it! It's fun to see the world expanded and find out new things people don't know unless they've read it.