Rackhir said:
The butterfly is deliberately anachronistic. This is another thing that comes out a bit more in the book, is that there's almost a breaking the 4th wall kind of awareness to some aspects of the story.
And that's the problem - if you have a theme in the book that gets reduced to an isolated incident in the movie because all the other unifying elements ended up on the cutting room floor, what you're left with is a jarring moment that no longer fits.
You need to either retain the theme, or smooth out the jagged edges left behind when you rip the theme out. If you rip out the theme but leave the jagged bits untouched, someone's going to end up with a nasty scratch...
The butterfly may have been a brilliant touch in the book, but in the movie, he's out of place. And not having read the book, I've no sentimental attachment to the character to soften the slap to my suspension of disbelief...
... the man she was willing to give up being a Unicorn for, the man she was willing to surrender immortality for...
Hmm... is this another part that's clearer in the book? The impression I got from the movie wasn't that she'd made a decision that Lir was more important to her than immortality... it was that she'd been in human form so long as a result of Schmendrick's spell that she'd forgotten she'd ever been anything else.
I'd have to watch that bit again. How did the lyrics go... "Once, I can't remember, I was long ago, someone strange"?
Other bits that felt rushed, as though things had been chopped roughly from the book to fit into the film:
Molly's reaction to the talking cat. The cat doesn't talk, then the cat does talk, and she doesn't even seem surprised...
The firing of the King's old wizard.
The big-breasted tree. (Eek!)
And, of course:
King: I know you're a unicorn in disguise! But I'm not going to do anything about it.
Later...
Odo: Unicorn! Uuuu-unicorn!
King: What?! Where?! How dare she!
I don't doubt that the book is a lovely story. But the movie, to me, feels disjointed, choppy, and amateurish.
-Hyp.