Last weekend, I was conflicted on whether or not I would rewatch “The Great Gatsby,” the 2013 adaptation that was currently showing on campus. Eventually, I decided against it; I had seen it last May and didn’t particularly want to watch the sad story unfold on screen a second time.

When I heard that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel was to be combined with the exceptional and often flashy skills of director Baz Luhrmann, I expected magic. To an extent, I was not disappointed: The cinematography was excellent, and Luhrmann perfectly captured Gatsby’s superficial, gaudy existence.

However, the excitement inspired in me by these two artists immediately fizzled out when Carey Mulligan’s character, Daisy Buchanan, was introduced into the film.

As I sat in the theater, my head dubiously tilted 90 degrees to the right. I watched, puzzled out of my mind, as Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship morphed into the tender reunion of two star-crossed lovers.

The cause of my confusion was simple: Carey Mulligan’s Daisy was sweet and enchanting.

Don’t get me wrong: My disagreement has nothing to do with Mulligan’s work. I adored her portrayal of this dear, helpless girl.

But that girl was not Daisy.

I will give Leonardo DiCaprio’s Gatsby a pass; the character was written and portrayed fairly close to the mark.

But how on Earth was Daisy written into the film as a victim of circumstance, a fragile caged bird waiting to be released by her long-lost true love? In the book, her character was the source of all the heartbreak; she was an oblivious, selfish girl.

At one point in the book, Nick calls Daisy and her husband, Tom, “careless people.” By the end of the story, he realizes that the couple simply “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Fitzgerald’s novel was poignant to me because it was the story of a man helplessly in love with an idea. In Daisy’s absence, Jay had woven his memories of her into something greater, larger than life. Then he devotes himself to winning her over the only way he knows he can: with money.

When DiCaprio flings a rainbow of silk shirts at Mulligan, causing her to sink onto the bed and weep, she chokes out something about how beautiful the shirts are, and avoids telling him what truly troubles her. The film’s audience is led to believe that she cries for all the lost years she could have spent with Jay.

Honestly, when I read the page on which Daisy weeps into that silk shirt, I knew she wasn’t mourning lost time; Fitzgerald’s Daisy only shed tears for all the marvelous wealth that could have been hers.

The meaning of this story was melted down from a complicated “careful what you wish for” warning about the true nature of humans to a simple “without love, wealth means nothing” message.

This is a much more palatable theme than the bleak, hurtful original: sweetened for modern, sentimental audiences that watch movies to escape from the harshness of reality rather than to dive into it head-first.

While Luhrmann’s film adaptation is a visual marvel and an artful tragedy, it is a far cry from the cold reality of the message in Fitzgerald’s original story; the film turns Daisy into everything Gatsby dreamed she was, and everything she wasn’t.