“The Life of Pi” is based on a 2001 fantasy novel largely about the adventures a boy stranded on a lifeboat with a tiger for 227 days but also about meditations on the nature of God and The Universe as seen through the varying perspectives of Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. Below, the trailer for the movie your stoner friends and your “spiritual” friends will refuse to shut up about later this year…
I’m wondering how much of an adaptation this is. Without spoiling (commenters, try not to do that either – I still have to get around to reading the bloody thing) I recall people reading the book being furious about some sort of highly-unpleasant/unexpected plot twist that’s not even hinted at here; so we’ll see what happens if/when audience feel blindsided by something possibly less “whimsical” than what we’re seeing here.
MOVIEBOB CENTRAL 
James, this is your daily reminder: you are a fucking hypocrite.
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Without spoiling it, I think the “twist” you're talking about is more implied than outright stated. I was fairly young when I read the book, and I didn't realize that was a way of interpreting it until I was reading about it after I had finished. Make of that what you will.
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I remember before Prometheus they had a showing of the flying fish scene in this movie, and I remember thinking “what the hell is this, this I gotta see”. Here Ang Lee has never made a movie that I've ever liked, but this might just finally be the one. Who knows?
But Bob really got my hopes up a little too far when he mentioned “Calvin and Hobbes”. (Sigh)
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Without spoiling (but consider this your warning, if you're sensitive):
The twist you refer to happens at the denouement of the novel, so it stands to reason that it wouldn't be shown or even implied in the trailer.
Also, anon, the “twist”, which is more of an alternative interpretation of the events of the main story, is indeed OUTRIGHT stated and is suggested by the Pi himself.
I was young when I read it and chose to believe the more whimsical, initial reading that makes up the bulk of the novel. The “alternative interpretation” was one I understood to simply be a dismissal or even sarcastic jibe and cynical readers.
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It's a great book and an intriguing trailer. I've not got a lot of patience for 'literary fiction', but Life of Pi really is significantly plot driven, very exciting in places, and quite consistently funny as well. Could definitely make a good movie if made with care.
The 'twist' you talk about isn't really a twist at all, just an alternative interpretation. In fact how you choose to deal with this information is literally the point of the story.
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“Arthouse Calvin & Hobbes”
Goddamnit Bob I was drinking coffee, now I have to clean my pc screen
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Why is Calvin and Indian boy? This movie is FAIL.
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this is one of my favorite books.
the twist HAS to be in there. I'm not sure how much I LIKE the twist, but it's in some ways the whole point of the story – it will be included, i'd bet. and yeah, it most certainly wouldn't be in the trailer.
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Hey Bob, now that you've brought up the possibility of a Calvin and Hobbes movie…do you think a Calvin and Hobbes movie could work?
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Hey Bob, when are you going to grow a pair and admit that Obama's as bad as Romney (both are pro-war and anti-civil liberties).
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Hey James, when are you going to grow a pair and admit that your a fucking stalker and don't deserve any rights?
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Read the wiki article just to get at the twist, since the movie isn't my cup of tea.
Turns out, the twist made it my cup of tea. What do you know.
though to be honest…even mentioning that it's a twist movie is probably too much.
I would absolutely be able to figure out the twist very quickly just by knowing it was there and understanding what kind of movie this is.
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Bob, I think you're selling the book pretty short in your description here. It's legitimately one of the better things written on religion and the connectedness of various belief systems to each other in recent memory, and the way it reconciles the beliefs of three major religions into one working system is far from just vague stoner “spiritualism”. There's good reasons this book is taught in universities, and honestly I think you'd probably enjoy it if you read it with an open mind. That said…
I'm not terribly happy about what I'm seeing so far of this movie just because it seems like it will probably focus almost entirely on the events taking place on the lifeboat, which anyone who's read the book will tell you doesn't happen until over a third of the way through. I honestly enjoyed the first part of the book before the lifeboat bit probably better than the rest of it, not to say I didn't enjoy it as a whole. I feel like this is something that would be very difficult to translate to film just because so much of the book, and the parts that really shine, consists of long, detailed treatises about zoology and religion which you can't really do in a film.
As for the “twist”, I wouldn't say the book has a twist so much as it has an “alternate interpretation” that the narrator offers. I think if readers were pissed off about that, it's because they didn't read very deeply to begin with and saw it as something that negated the rest of the story, which wasn't the case at all.
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Definitely going to be making an effort to go see this one.
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“I think you're selling the book pretty short in your description here. It's legitimately one of the better things written on religion and the connectedness of various belief systems to each other in recent memory, and the way it reconciles the beliefs of three major religions into one working system is far from just vague stoner “spiritualism”.”
Seriously? Ok, it isn't stoner spiritualism, it's utterly boring mainline liberal-in-the-most-technical-sense whitewashing spiritualism, which is in my book an even more egregious misread of religious truth. Everything there has already been done by Paulo Coelho, and even he managed to grow more teeth later in his career. The saccharine nearly made my teeth fall out.
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