The Jupiter ready to take off.
This 1962 Film Actually Told a Better Story
Jules Verne’s first published novel was Five Weeks in a Balloon. It details an expedition across Africa and was very well received by his readers. It reads more like a travelogue than an adventure though. Verne’s publisher, Jules Hetzel, would later ask him to include more adventure and even romance in later works. The story of Aouda, the woman Phineas Fogg rescues in India, is in answer to that criticism.
The Twentieth Century Fox film, made in 1962, adds adventure and romance to Verne’s original novel. Rather than a mapping expedition, the trip as rewritten in Irwin Allen’s screenplay becomes a race to stop slavers from occupying a piece of territory. The cause becomes more heroic.
As to romance; Verne’s original story includes the rescue of a missionary. In the movie, Barbara Eden is the missionary who is rescued. BarBara Luna plays a rescued slave girl. Add Fabian as Professor Fergusson’s assistant and Red Buttons as an American reporter and the stage is set for something more than a mere documentary.
