In the movie adaptation of the book, there were a number of differences, some minute and some so astronomical that it makes me wonder how they could ever make the sequel movie. I'll start with the biggest difference, the one that made it seem unfeasible for a sequel movie to ever exist, and I'll work down to the mildly irritating things.
In the book, the entire final scene of Lena being claimed on her sixteenth birthday is played out differently. This is where some spoilers will start! So in the film, Lena is also given a bit of extra information that she will have to kill someone that she loves in order to break the curse. That does not happen at all in the book, but there is a different stipulation. If she is claimed by the Dark, then all of the Light witches will die and vice versa. It wouldn't seem to matter if she was claimed by the Light and all of the Dark would die, but it also includes her Uncle Macon, because he is an Incubus.
Which brings me to my next point. In the film, they never tell you that Lena's Uncle Macon is an Incubus, which also means that he is claimed by the Dark without choice, as all Incubuses are, and that he feeds off of people's dreams. There is a scene in the movie where Ethan wakes up in his room one night and Macon Ravenwood is there, gives Ethan a warning to leave Lena alone and jumps back out the window. In the book though, Macon is feeding off of Ethan's dreams, and that is how he gives him such a chilling and accurate warning to stay away from Lena -- he's been stealing Ethan's dreams for sometime.
A huge difference from the book to the film is the Kelting that Lena and Ethan do. They have an ability to sort of throw their thoughts to one another, but not necessarily read each other's minds -- more like a telepathic texting. This ability they have is never mentioned in the movie, it just seems as though Ethan is very tuned-in to Lena's emotions and thoughts. That is also how they communicate most of the time and how he knows to come to Lena's aid in the battle. Speaking of which...
The end battle scene came to the same ending that the book did (almost) but it got there in a very different way. In the book, Ethan misses most of the war reenactment and is stabbed by Lena's evil mother Sarafine. Lena uses the spell that cursed her whole family to save him, and her uncle dies because of it. Then Lena uses her ability over nature to block out the moon and she isn't claimed at all, but another song starts about her seventeenth birthday now. In the movie, Lena's Dark cousin Ridley seduces Ethan's best friend and makes him shoot Ethan during the war reenactment. However, Uncle Macon was using his shape-shifting abilities and was pretending to be Ethan, so Uncle Macon is the one who was shot and ends up dying.
The last big thing that changed, although it didn't influence a possible sequel, was the last scene of the movie. In the end of the book, it ends after the final battle with a warning song of Lena's now seventeenth birthday. The film adds in an extra couple of scenes at the end. After the battle, it shows Lena and Ethan outside of Ravenwood Manor, and Lena makes it "snow" with flowers. While this is happening, she erases his memories of her so that he can go on and live a normal life. But when Ethan runs into Lena in the library before leaving on a college visit to NYU, it jostles his memory of her. Once his memories of her come back (about 10 seconds later), he yells her name and the movie ends. In the book, Ethan just has to deal with having a cursed with girlfriend.
Other problems I had with the movie that didn't affect a sequel or the ending were the accents, Marian's role, Ethan's father's role, and Link and his mother's roles. First, for some reason the heavy southern accent drove me insane during this movie. Every character has it, but in the books they discuss how Ethan does not because his parents are professors, and Lena doesn't because she's not actually form the area. Lena's accent bothered me more because she was not supposed to have even close to a southern accent. Next, the lack of Marian's role was very disheartening to me. Amma in the movie covers both her own role as well as Marian's, kind of a two-for-one character. I wish they hadn't pushed the two together though because they both play such different and influential parts in the movie that I can't see how the sequel would work with this duel character role. Also, Ethan's father is never present in the movie, but I wish that they had included more how the lack of his presence impacts Ethan's life and choices, and how his being locked away in his study is like a looming cloud on Ethan's life. Lastly, Link is in the movie, but barely. Compared to his role in the book, Link's role in the film is basically killing off Ethan/Macon and being seduced. Really, he is another huge influencer on Ethan and is there for all of the shenanigans that Ethan gets up to. Link's mother's reveal as Sarafine came far too early in the movie in my opinion. In the book that reveal came toward the end of the book and I was disappointed that they felt that they had to spread out the action in the movie more in order to fill in some spaces.
There were a few other things, like Lena's driving a different car, that were different in the movie than they were in the book, but I wasn't as put out by these changes as I was about the big ones listed at the top. Overall, the movie was coherent and enjoyable, but I do wish that they hadn't changed so much toward the end. I think that the movie would have done better and that it would have made more sense to the sequel if they had kept the ending more true to the book. Still, the cast was excellent, special effects weren't anything to cry about, and the movie was a fun watch.
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