What are the biggest differences between the book and the movie?

There's a sailor who joins the good guys in the book that is missing from the movie.


SPOILER:




Also, a couple of the good guys who die in the book survive in the movie.

The fight at the cabin has a few extra events (the pirates bringing a cannon ashore and the good guys blowing it up) that aren't in the book.

Other than that, it's an extraordinarily faithful adaptation. If someone did a page-by-page review while watching the movie, there would probably be some other changes, but there wouldn't be many.



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I don't think anyone since Orson Welles has portrayed the dark side of Long John as prominently as RLS wrote it but that maybe because I don't much like Charlton Heston. The plot is pretty much on the nose apart from the differences noted. It would have been nice to see a prequel showing The Walrus at sea with Flint rounding up his crew, grabbing a bit of treasure and then knocking a few of them off when he buries it. It could finish up with him dying in Savannah and Billy Bones getting the map. What do you reckon ? A nice bloodthirsty story.

In the novel Jim's father is alive at the beginning of the book. It is he who makes the original arrangement with Billy Bones.

I have used this as my litmus test for whether any movie is a faithful retelling of the story and so far all of the movies I have seen (and I think I have seen most of them) have him dead before the movie begins.

I will admit that this version is more faithful than most, but there are several more changes.

[1] In the book it's around 6pm when Billy Bones dies. They have four hours before Blind Pew and company will return, so in that time Jim and his mother try to get others to help them but are unsuccessful. Of course, the help does arrive in time as shown in the movie.

[2] As I remember it the process when Jim cuts the Hispaniola loose is a little different. I think that the ship actually drifts to the other side of the island versus being sailed there.

[3] Silver escapes from the ship when it stops to take on supplies somewhere, not in a boat as shown in the movie.

I am sure that there are more, but those are the ones I caught and remember.

The differences are trivial and don't change anything in any significant way. This adaptation is excellent.