The Manchurian Candidate.

There are two versions of 'The Manchurian Candidate', a political thriller, the first being released in 1962, the second released in 2004.

Comparatively, the two are quite different, in more ways than one being older than the other.

Many of the character roles are different in the later version, for example, the character 'Major Bennett Marco' is fully replaced by 'Ben Marco', who's name is obviously derived from the former.

Another dissimilarity is that, in the earlier movie, the horrific threat is that of the Communist Party, the basis of a few character arc's being only to present a glorified communist witch hunt, which was more realistic during the 60's - this was exchanged for a big internationally corporate company longing to take control of the political system, which may in fact equate to a real life plausible threat of this time.

The CGI capabilities of the modern era also is cause for some changes - the war-zone scenes are much more realistic, due to the budget being much higher than the older version as well.

In general, both of these films served as good psychological, paranoid thrillers, even though they were not to my particular (extremely picky and critical) tastes.

I enjoyed the story of the older version more, I believe it was dynamically superior, and made up for what it lacked in grace and aesthetics with articulation and depth in story telling. I did not like the story changes made within the modern version, the absence of the importance of the character 'Joselyn' was something I particularly did not like the absence of. They also did not specify a trigger for Raymond Shaw, and Ben Marco's whole 'hapless hero' psychological brainwashing to be induced. The specification in the older version of the trigger being a certain card within a game of solitaire induces a certain kind of dread within us every-time we even get a glimpse of a deck of cards, it leaves the watched feeling informed and involved with the plot. The modern version lacked such meaningful detail.

It also made certain events seem unimportant, such as the equivalent of Raymond jumping in the lake – after hearing a person say this in the bar. The inharmonious and discordant soundtrack as he walks to the lake echoes and parallels his confused and troubled state of mind. This is absent from when Raymond enters the lake in the modern film, the dramaticism is instead over-emphasized by a conveniently placed unwitting killing on Raymond's behalf.

In the modern version, I believe they played it safe by not including more explicitly the discomforting incestuous attraction Raymond's mother had to him in the original book, and censorship within movies in modern day allows for such things to be seen.