By Channing Whitaker | Staff Writer

Since the book came out a couple of years ago, “Gone Girl” has finally evolved into a movie. The novel “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn and the movie directed by David Fincher center on a husband whose wife goes missing on the day of their 5^th wedding. With a star-studded cast including Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, and Tyler Perry, the movie reaches the expectations set by the book because all the main events that were explained as big importance in the book was duplicated by the movie in a great straight forward manner.

The story revolves around Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), whose wife Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) goes missing on their fifth anniversary.

The movie’s pace was painfully slow while the book had great suspense throughout the story. In the beginning of the story when Nick Dunne found out that his wife went missing, there was a lot of run on dialogue between the police and his relatives that made me bored and feel a little confused on the purposes of those early conversations which turned out, had no importance throughout the movie version.

Also in general, director David Fincher put the scenes out of order, instituting flashback scenes from previous days before the missing of Nick Dunne’s wife. While for the book, it maintained chronological order. For example, when Nick Dunne found out that his wife Amy set him up to seem that he murdered his wife, the movie did not explain how Amy set up Nick until the second half of the movie. While the book jumped right into Amy’s actions from the previous days when Nick was in the long process of searching for his wife. Eventually, Amy came back to him near the end of the story as she apologized for all her cruel actions that Nick had to deal with.

The movie definitely had a lot of similarities to the book despite the movie going out of order. The plot in both the movie and the book are very similar in terms of placement when major events occurred. Also, the backgrounds of the main characters in the story are again very similar in both the movie and the book. Between the book and the movie though, I preferred reading the book over the movie because it explains the incidents that happen throughout the story in a more in-depth way compared to the movie.

I found the book to be easier to follow despite the length being really long. The chapters in the book were broken up into really small bits so I could gradually process information. The movie I felt was harder to follow. Despite reading the book previously before watching the movie, I really did not get the understanding of what was going on in the story until about halfway in the movie. For when the major events in the story occurred, there were not really any great transitions from previous scenes that built up to the major points throughout the story.

Also, the book allows you to have a creative extrapolation of how you would picture the story as you read. While when you watch the movie especially after reading the book, it ruins what you imagined if you previously have read the book.