Conclusion
Cloud Atlas (2012)
The structural shift from novel to film provides meanings and insights that are indirectly implied in the novel, but which the film is able to explore much more deeply by developing new concepts and ideas through interconnectivity. While the book's themes and characters remain, the film expands upon the original story and creates complex ideas that the novel never had the capacity to address.
“One of the dominant metaphors that runs through a lot of stories in literature and myths and religion is that we’re all on a journey or some kind of a quest in life, we’re trying to go from one stage to the next and figure out how to behave ethically on that journey and the myths are just a great storehouse of knowledge about that, techniques and ways to survive on the road of life, so to speak.”
- Christopher Vogler (author quoted in The Matrix Revisited, 2009)
