Reading a book stimulates our imagination, we imagine how the characters look like and the places where the actions develop. Totally different is when we see a movie; we see the characters, and the places, so there is no place for imagination. But what happen when a book that you have read is adapted for a movie? Ideally, a book and its movie version have to complement each other, but sometimes it change things that you have imagine, while you have been reading the book. However, movies can accomplish things that books can not, and vice versa; and movies have limitations that books do not have. This seems to be the case of the movie and the short story, "The Man for Mars" written by Margaret Atwood. Although the story and the movie share many similarities, there are two clear differences regarding the main character of both formats, Christine. .
One of the differences is the place where Christine relaxes and meditates. In the short-story, she let her imagination run wild while she is in the bathtub. She imagines that she is "a dolphin" ("The Man from Mars" – Page 19) , and then when she starts losing weight due to her day-to-day running to escape from "The Man from Mars", she imagines that she is "an elusive water-nixie" or "Marilyn Monroe" ("The Man from Mars" – Page 29). In the movie, she relaxes when she is in the swimming pool of her university. At the beginning, she wears a swimming costume, and then she uses a bikini. We do not know about her thoughts while she is in the swimming pool, as we see in the story, but her attitudes show that she enjoys swimming. This shows that, in both, the short-story and the movie, she does not feel attracted, at the beginning. Afterwards, as a result of losing weight, she feels confident and attracted. .
Another difference is the number of sisters that Christine has.