Study Guide compares the novel The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton to the movie The Outsiders (1983) starring C. Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, Diane Lane. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Warner Brothers. This is the only movie version of The Outsiders. Chapter 11 of the book is omitted from the movie, but the film remains one of the best book-to-screen successes. The plot, characters, themes, structure, symbols, and settings are accurate. The dialogue in the movie is almost all word-for-word from the novel.