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Everything The Firestarter Remake Changed From The Stephen King Book
Firestarter keeps the same premise as the Stephen King novel from which it is adapted but much of the plot is changed in the Zac Efron led film.

Everything The Firestarter Remake Changed From The Stephen King Book

Warning: SPOILERS for Firestarter!

2022’s Firestarter reboot makes some major changes from the 1980 Stephen King novel on which it is based. The book follows the story of a father and daughter on the run from a government agency due to the daughter’s psychic ability to spontaneously create fires. Zac Efron stars as Andy McGee as he attempts to protect his daughter, Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), from both the agency and herself.

Firestarter was previously adapted for the big screen in 1984, starring a young Drew Barrymore in the role of Charlie. This rendering of King’s story follows the source material very closely but the film isn’t considered among the best King adaptations. King himself dismissed the movie at the time by calling it “flavorless”, leaving plenty of room for the 2022 remake to try to improve on the story.

The new film makes some major choices in what to change and cut from King’s novel. Some of the changes are pretty conventional when compared to similar cinematic novel adaptations: Minor characters are removed while others are rounded out to replace those who are cut. The time period of the film is updated from the 80s to the present day. But a few of the changes alter the overall course of the story from King’s original vision. Here’s everything the Firestarter remake changed from the book:

Charlie’s Mom Has a Bigger Role In the Movie

Charlie’s mother, Vicky (played in the movie by Sydney Lemmon, best known for her role as CRM soldier Isabelle in Fear the Walking Dead), is an important character in Firestarter but the beginning of the book finds Andy and Charlie already on the run a few months following Vicky’s death. Her story is told largely through flashbacks, with the book lending a portion its pages to Andy and Vicky’s meeting during experimental drug tests which gave the pair psychic abilities. The movie remake squeezes these tests and the horrors the drugs wrought on other participants into the space of the opening credits.

Instead of beginning the Firestarter remake during Andy and Charlie’s flight from the DSI, the whole family is trying to maintain a low profile in an attempt to live as normally as possible. Vicky argues with Andy about training Charlie to use her pyrokinetic abilities, although she doesn’t very often tap into her telekinetic abilities. She receives severe burns on her arms after getting in the middle of an outburst from Charlie aimed at Andy.

Vicky doesn’t survive to the end of the story in either the book or film versions of Firestarter, killed in cold blood by government operatives in each. But the remake does allow viewers to see more of the relationship between Vicky and Charlie, which doesn’t get much attention in the book. This makes her film death slightly more effective than the retrospective explanation of her absence provided by the novel.

The Movie Changes Several Aspects Of The DSI

In both book and movie versions of Firestarter, Andy and his pyro-kinetic daughter are chased by a government agency. The secret operation funded the experimentation of the “Lot 6” drug that revealed and enhanced the psychic abilities (which include premonitions like that of Lorraine Warren in The Conjuring) of Charlie’s parents. The agency claims that it simply wants to study Charlie’s abilities but their underlying plan is to attempt to weaponize her power for their own use.

In King’s Firestarter, the agency is simply known as “The Shop”, an ominous title that brings the idea of examining, prodding, and tinkering with machinery. But instead of inanimate pieces of metal, The Shop tinkers with people and has little to no empathy for its subjects. The agency has a sprawling headquarters complete with a horse barn and lake, located in a Virginia suburb outside of Washington, D.C. and is helmed by a man named James Hollister. Much is learned about Hollister over the course of the novel as he fears losing his job should the McGees escape (like another King character, Andy Dufresne) and expose the Shop for its inhumane treatment of them. While held there, Charlie and Andy are provided comfortable living quarters but are separated and not allowed to see each other.

The 2022 version of Firestarter is very vague regarding details about its version of The Shop, in comparison to King’s rich characterization in the novel. As adapted for the screen by director Keith Thomas, the Shop is renamed the DSI without any explanation of what the acronym stands for. Its location is left unknown but the compound seen in the movie is a single nondescript building hidden in the woods, where subjects are kept in small cells. The film gender-swaps the role of Captain Hollister by casting Gloria Reuben but the character is one-dimensional, merely a driver of the plot in her pursuit of the McGees.

John Rainbird’s Psychic Abilities Don’t Exist In The Book

The most significant change made in the remake adaptation of Firestarter comes to the character of John Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes, another alum of Fear the Walking Dead). In the book, Rainbird is an expert tracker and assassin for the Shop who is fascinated by looking his victims in their eyes as he kills them. He has never killed a child before and becomes obsessed with the idea of killing Charlie after the Shop no longer has use for her. He gains Charlie’s trust in the Virginia compound in the guise of a friendly janitor to manipulate her into using her power for the Shop’s experiments. After he fatally shoots Andy and attempts to shoot Charlie, she sets him on fire.

In the remake, Rainbird is still a tracker and assassin (but now played by an Indigenous actor, unlike in the original Firestarter) but he is also a victim of the DSI’s drug experimentation. He has his own psychic abilities; primarily telepathy, which he uses to draw Charlie to the compound in the final act of the movie. Although he works for the DSI, he is also imprisoned in the compound after the farm confrontation with Charlie. Following the death of her father, Charlie realizes that Rainbird is also alone and befriends him.

This is obviously a very different version of the Firestarter story but not necessarily for the better. Many of King’s most frightening characters are just disturbed humans with no supernatural abilities, such as Annie Wilkes from Misery or the neglectful and abusive adults in IT. The book gives readers insight into Rainbird’s thoughts and his obsession with death is one of the most haunting aspects of the story. The movie gives no insight into Rainbird’s inner monologue, making his motivations murky at best and turning him into a sympathetic character rather than a scary one.

The Firestarter Remake Shortens The Timeline

Following the first half-hour of Firestarter (which is actually expanded from the novel, presumably to characterize Charlie’s mother), the timeline is dramatically cut down. In the book, Andy and Charlie are on the run from their pursuers for months before the Shop catches up with them at Irv Manders’ farm. Charlie sets off a fire that kills several Shop agents (reminiscent of the prom fire in Carrie), before she and her father escape to an isolated family cabin in Vermont. They are able to remain in hiding there for several more months before Rainbird tracks down and captures them. The psychic father-daughter duo are then held captive by the shop for several more months before the book’s explosive finale.

As is the case with many longer books adapted for film, the Firestarter remake condenses this time period down to just a few days. The introductory scenes that focus on establishing the McGees’ ability and the danger of Charlie’s power occur over two-three days. The DSI’s pursuit of the McGees following the death of Vicky McGee seems to take a similar amount of time, with Andy being captured after a single evening on the Manders’ farm. Andy spends what seems to be just a few days in the DSI compound, while Charlie learns to focus her pyro-kinesis in the woods in a Sam Wilson-esque training sequence. In all, the movie doesn’t seem to take more than two weeks, in comparison to the months spanning across the book. This drastic compression has a knock-on effect on character growth and development, making the movie feel much less fully-formed than the source material.

The Compound Confrontation Is Even More Explosive In The Book

Both versions of Firestarter end with Charlie setting the headquarters of the harmful government agency on fire but the event in the book is far more graphic and horrifying. After the murder of her father, Charlie sets both Captain Hollister and Rainbird on fire, then burns down the barn where their confrontation takes place. The military has been called to neutralize the pre-pubescent girl but she burns their bullets as they shoot at her and blows up their vehicles. She sets the main Shop building on fire, which causes a chain reaction that sends employees sprinting away from the facility where many are mauled by guard dogs, leaving few survivors. The book has a far different ending from the 2022 Firestarter movie, with Charlie returning to the Manders farm to recover before heading to New York to tell her story to the media and expose the Shop.

The Firestarter remake still includes fire and explosions but is not quite as destructive as what King describes in the book. Andy sets off the fires by using his own psychic ability for mental domination to compel Charlie to set both himself and Captain Hollister on fire. Charlie does set several DSI employees on fire before burning down the compound but the result is far less dynamic than in the source material. The climactic event is set off by the same catalyst in both book and film but the flame of the film burns less brightly than the book. As a result, the dramatic Firestarter ending is significantly tempered, making the end result much less impactful.