Kaleidoscope Adaptation Analysis

In the adaptation of “Kaleidoscope” to the cinematic version, there are four significant alterations. To begin, an alteration that significantly detracts from the experience is that, in the cinematic version, they are in life pods as opposed to floating helplessly in space. The life pods give security and the ability for the astronauts to have a visual of each other on the monitors. By not floating in space, it eliminates the “falling;” taking away the feeling of helplessness (212). Another significant loss from being secured in the life pods is that Hollis does not lose limbs. In the source text, the loss of limbs is space “cut [ting][Hollis] away piece by piece,” stripping him of his honor, stability, and life (216). In “The Body,” Chris …show more content…
These kids have the freedom to smoke, drink, and misbehave. The third alteration from the cinematic version cuts away Stone and the kaleidoscope. This alteration is the most important simile in the source text. While helplessly floating away to his death, Stone realizes that he has come to a cluster of meteors that looks like a big kaleidoscope. With a kaleidoscope, whenever it turns, a new, beautiful pattern appears. The simile’s message is that the outlook on their final hours changes based off of perspective. Each astronaut has a different way to reflect on his life, so it is possible to say that the astronauts, as a unit, is the kaleidoscope. Each turn is a new pattern along with a new person. Once the kaleidoscope is broken, it spills everywhere, losing its beauty, while the astronauts are breaking away piece by piece to inevitable death. By removing this simile, the producers of the movie are not focusing on the different perspective that the astronauts might have had a good death because of the opportunity for them to reflect on their lives. Or that they had a terrifying death because they knew they were going to die, but they did not know

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