Spoilers are ahead for the ending of Netflix’s Leave the World Behind (and the 2020 novel).
Some of the biggest changes Netflix’s Leave the World Behind makes to the book it’s based on actually shift both the story and themes of the project. In some instances, those alterations that happen in the jump from page to screen better suit the adaptation’s new medium; in others, changes could have viewers wishing for a more faithful riff on the source material. In Netflix’s Leave the World Behind, which is based on Rumaan Alam’s bestselling 2020 novel of the same name, Sam Esmail does a little of both types of tinkering. Both versions center on two families who are forced to share a house while society crumbles.
Julia Roberts plays Amanda Sandford, a privileged white woman who takes her family — husband Clay (Ethan Hawke) and two kids, Archie (Charlie Evans) and Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) — to a Long Island beach house. When G.H. Scott (Mahershala Ali), the property owner, shows up with his daughter Ruth (Myha’la), Amanda can’t believe a Black family owns the home. The thrillingly tense armageddon setting of Leave the World Behind creates an interesting backdrop against which Esmail interrogates implicit (and explicit) racism. As the Scotts and Sandfords learn to orbit each other, their story is a microcosm of what happens to society at large as technology gradually breaks down.
9 Ruth Is G.H.’s Daughter — Not His Wife
Ruth’s Character Change Impacts Leave The World Behind’s Age Dynamics
Leave the World Behind‘s cast of characters remains mostly similar to that of the source material — though Ruth Scott is a glaring exception. In the novel, Ruth is still a character, but she’s G.H.’s wife. In fact, G.H. and Ruth are described as an “older” couple. Much like in the film, they arrive after a blackout sweeps the city and inform the vacationing Sandfords that the rental is their home. Esmail changed Ruth’s character very deliberately, hoping to add a more brash, Gen Z voice to the mix. This not only changes Ruth, but her relationships with the other central characters.
While it’s a shame that the film cut out an older Ruth’s perspective, there is some precedence in the source material for including a third member of the Scott family. In the novel, the older Ruth worries about her adult daughter Maya — a teacher with a family of her own. In a role reversal, Esmail’s film sees a teenage Ruth worrying about her unseen, art-dealing mother, Maya, who’s thought to be dead. Moreover, the generational divide established in the film causes G.H. and Ruth to approach Amanda’s overt racism differently, with Ruth more boldly asserting her dislike of the Sandfords.
8 The Leave The World Behind Movie Is More Clear About Its Apocalyptic Terrors
The Threat Is More Immediate
Thanks in part to Barack Obama’s Leave the World Behind role, the film approaches its apocalyptic subject a bit differently than the source material does. In novel form, it’s a bit easier to get away with vagueness, but, in a visual medium like film, viewers want to see more. Not only is the film more direct, but it brings the action into the characters’ lives more immediately. For example, Amanda and Clay’s peaceful beach day is ruined by a wayward tanker, making the looming threats more tangible and urgent. The novel features a much quieter opening, with the scale of the disaster not being revealed until later on.
7 Clay & Amanda Try To Leave The Vacation House Sooner
Self-Driving Cars Jam Up In The Highway In An Added Scene
The Sandford family’s run-in with a ship isn’t the only example of a machine experiencing life-threatening navigational errors. Pretty early on in the film, Amanda and Clay decide they should leave the vacation house and stay with a New Jersey-based family member. When they try to leave Long Island, however, they encounter a mess of crashed Teslas. Clearly, something went haywire with the cars’ tech, and it only leads to more on-road, nightmare scenarios for Amanda and her family. In the book, the Sandfords stay put. While Clay does some recon, the family doesn’t really try to leave until much later.
6 Tragedy Hits Much Closer To Home In The Movie
G.H. Finds A Nearby Plane Wreck
Director Sam Esmail and author Rumaan Alam cultivate dread in different ways — in ways that best suit their storytelling medium of choice. While Alam’s novel gets a lot of mileage out of the mysterious blackout, Esmail’s film introduces other eerie disasters to unnerve viewers. As the nationwide threat grows, it also hits much closer to home, with Ali’s G.H. finding a smoldering plane crash on a nearby beach. Afterward, G.H. witnesses a second plane crash, which convinces him of the large-scale nature of their slowly unfolding doomsday. The entire sequence was invented for the film.
5 Ruth & Amanda Reconcile For A Team Up
The Duo Scare Off A Horde Of Deer
Of everything in Leave the World Behind, the hordes of quietly staring deer on the fringes of the Scotts’ property create some of the most unsettling moments in the film. One morning, Rose vanishes, prompting Amanda and Ruth to look for the young girl. While on the search, the two at-odds women are surrounded by a herd of unhinged deer. By working together, the two scare the deer off. While it’s hardly a proper reconciliation, the scene — also completely original to the film — demonstrates how people can be forced together by circumstance.
4 The Character Of Danny Changes Between The Book & Movie
Kevin Bacon’s Survivalist Character Helps Clay’s Son
In both versions of the story, Archie falls gravely ill (from either a tick or bug bite). The same morning Rose goes missing, Archie’s teeth begin to fall out, so G.H. suggests he and Clay take Archie to a survivalist, Danny (Kevin Bacon), that G.H. knows. Maligned for his doomsday conspiracy theories, Danny is one of the most well-prepared characters in the film. After an incredibly heated standoff, Danny points the trio in the direction of his apocalypse bunker, which is stocked with medicine. This is completely unlike the character’s novel counterpart, who treats them coldly and doesn’t offer any support.
3 There Are New Character Dynamics At Play In The Film
G.H. & Amanda Grow Closer
Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali make fear feel real in the film, but that’s not the only dynamic the two powerhouse actors bring to the screen. As things progress, G.H. and Amanda grow closer. (The characters are closer in age in the film, which may be part of it.) Although there’s clearly some kind of attraction between them, they don’t act on it. Although markedly different from the novel, another shift gives Ethan Hawke and Myha’la high-stakes stories to tackle too. In an attempt to get the Sandfords kicked out of the house, Ruth offers Clay her vape before asking him a series of provocative questions.
2 G.H. Claims To Know What’s Happening In The Movie
The Government Is Allowing Civil War To Play Out
In the book, strange happenings occur, but there isn’t a huge effort made to fit the puzzle pieces together. Instead, the author opts to draw on the eerie quality of the unknown. The film tries to provide a more concise explanation. Apparently, G.H. has some insight into what’s going on since he performed cost-benefit analysis for various military campaigns. According to G.H., there’s a three-step process that’s capable of “toppling a country’s government from within.“ After wiping out communications and transit systems, those in power would spread misinformation and create covert acts of terrorism. In the end, things would devolve into civil war — step three.
1 The Ending Differs Between The Book & Movie
Rose Chooses The “Friends” Finale Over Supplies
While the country crumbles, Rose Sandford is on a much different mission. Before the blackout, she’d been marathon-watching the sitcom Friends, but never got to finish the series. Wandering the woods, she comes upon an abandoned house. It’s well-stocked — the perfect apocalypse pantry. In the novel, Rose takes what she can and heads back to her family. But the on-the-page version of Rose wasn’t Friends-obsessed. That said, the Leave the World Behind movie plays out differently: Rose scours the house’s DVD collection and finds a Friends boxset. Instead of gifting her family with supplies, she settles in for the show’s finale.
