How can motifs be handled differently?

[Nlangdon27]

For some reason this is hard for me to wrap my head around and it's driving me crazy. Lets say you have a book and you have a movie based off of that book and there's a motif reoccurring. How could the motif be "handled differently" when comparing the book and the movie? I just need some examples. Thanks!

[Emmi]

I bet you've read books and gone to go see the movie based off the book, and there might have been times where you thought, "that wasn't like the book! They left out X! They didn't talk about Y!" A director has creative license in the film and can choose to interpret the text however they wish. That means they can give more emphasis to some parts and less to others that they feel don't contribute as much. Also, given the time constraints of a standard movie, they cannot possibly talk about everything in the book. This means they have to focus on the primary scenes and characters that help people who may not have read the book understand what is going on, and small symbols or motifs might be reinterpreted or left out because they don't affect the outcome as much.