History TheyChangedItNowItSucks / Film

** YourMileageMayVary on this one. ''TheLionTheWitchAndTheWardrobe'' (ironically the one that's most faithful to the original plot) makes a complete mess of the characterisation. In the book and the BBC adaptation, Peter is the sensible older sibling, Lucy is a sweet-natured ordinary girl, Edmund is a spiteful bully who sells out his family for a few sweets and a fancy title (at least until his HeelFaceTurn) and Susan is, um, the fourth one. In the Disney film, Peter is a domineering bully, Lucy is a precocious brat, Susan is a selfish snob and Edmund is a put-upon middle child who throws in his lot with the first person to show him affection. (Best demonstrated by how in the book and BBC adaptation Lucy is so focused on looking after Edmund that Aslan has to heavily prompt her to help the dying Narnians, whereas the film Lucy gives a smug grin and skips off.) Fortunately, things got better after that: ''PrinceCaspian'' takes the basic plot and characters and fashions a decent film out of them (even if Caspian is at least a decade older than in the book), where the new characterisation and subplots can be judged on their own merits, whilst ''TheVoyageOfTheDawnTreader'' takes a fairly weak book and gives it a plot, makes Eustace what Edmund should have been in the first film and remembers Lucy is meant to be fallible.

* In-universe example is poet Lallafa, whose work was [[DeadArtistsAreBetter re-discovered long after his death]] and was subsequently, through time travel, brought to future. This resulted in him not being actually able to write the poems, which is why he was sent back to past to copy them [[StableTimeLoop so they could be discovered]]. Some argue that this makes his poems worse, while other argue they're the same.
** This troper does not understand this example's relevance to film.

** YourMileageMayVary on this one. ''TheLionTheWitchAndTheWardrobe'' (ironically the one that's most faithful to the original plot) makes a complete mess of the characterisation. In the book and the BBC adaptation, Peter is the sensible older sibling, Lucy is a sweet-natured ordinary girl, Edmund is a spiteful bully who sells out his family for a few sweets and a fancy title (at least until his HeelFaceTurn) and Susan is, um, the fourth one. In the Disney film, Peter is a domineering bully, Lucy is a precocious brat, Susan is a snob and Edmund is a put-upon middle child who throws in his lot with the first person to show him affection. (Best demonstrated by how in the book and BBC adaptation Lucy is so focused on looking after Edmund that Aslan has to heavily prompt her to help the dying Narnians, whereas the film Lucy gives a smug grin and skips off.) Fortunately, things got better after that: ''PrinceCaspian'' takes the basic plot and characters and fashions a decent film out of them (even if Caspian is at least a decade older than in the book), where the new characterisation and subplots can be judged on their own merits, whilst ''TheVoyageOfTheDawnTreader'' takes a fairly weak book and gives it a plot, makes Eustace what Edmund should have been in the first film and remembers Lucy is meant to be fallible.

** The post-Azkaban movies are much more faithful to the story than the ChrisColumbus crap. He changes just as much as the later movies (e.i. Harry's hair, the "trap" steps and the absence of Peeves.) but he also manages to mess up the feel of series and instead creates something very bland.

*** Possibly because, if LotR is anything to go by, loads of Tolkien's original stuff will have to be cut for reasons of space at the same time as this completely gratuitous character and her associated sub-plot is dragged in.

** The post-Azkaban movies are much more faithful to the story than ChrisColumbus crap. He changes just as much as the latter movies (e.i. Harry's hair, the "trap" steps and the absence of Peeves.) but he also manages to mess up the feel of series and instead creates something very bland.

** The worst offense of all has got to be the Warg Riders battle en route to Helms Deep which didn't exist in the book. Also pretending to kill off Aragon (We know he's not dead! WE READ THE BOOK!) and the floating lust dream in the River all of which didn't happen. It's one thing to take stuff out of sizable books when making a movie but if your going to do that don't <b>add</b> irrelevant scenes

** Ironically, when the film actually came out, people found out that the "minor things" looked absolutely pristine in comparison with the stilted dialogue, ExpositionFairy narration, wooden acting and SpecialEffectsFailure.

** Adams was a merciless self-editor. During the radio show, one of the producers said that Adams would start the day with a full page of script and after working on it all day he would have half a page. He would rework a joke until it was razor sharp. It's pretty much a given that while he did write (at least some of) the film script, it was far from finished by his standards. Furthermore, the concept of the Hitchhiker's universe having ''anything'' that could legitimately be called Original Text is laughable at best.

** Yet more fans complain that the DVD's "Original" version of ''The Lion King'' still has [[http://www.ultimatedisney.com/thelionking2.html some differences]] from the version presented in 1994, such as an updated Disney logo, redrawn crocodiles during "I Just Can't Wait to Be King", and a reanimated pollen cloud that doesn't spell [[strike:[[UnfortunateImplications SEX]]]] SFX. Even though none of these changes affect the plot, some fans have accused Disney of "false advertising" for not telling them about the changes sooner.

* Adams was a merciless self-editor. During the radio show, one of the producers said that Adams would start the day with a full page of script and after working on it all day he would have half a page. He would rework a joke until it was razor sharp. It's pretty much a given that while he did write (at least some of) the film script, it was far from finished by his standards. Furthermore, the concept of the Hitchhiker's universe having ''anything'' that could legitimately be called Original Text is laughable at best.

** The poor fan reaction was more likely due to the movie having had almost all humour and Adams' sharp dialogue removed. The original radio shows/novels/TV show had a minimal (and nonsensical and directless) plot and only really hung together because of the jokes and dialogue. Removing them was CompletelyMissingThePoint.
*** Adams was a merciless self-editor. During the radio show, one of the producers said that Adams would start the day with a full page of script and after working on it all day he would have half a page. He would rework a joke until it was razor sharp. It's pretty much a given that while he did write (at least some of) the film script, it was far from finished by his standards.
*** Furthermore, the concept of the Hitchhiker's universe having ''anything'' that could legitimately be called Original Text is laughable at best.

** Admittedly it is a pretty bad adaptation as it ignores pretty much completely the source material. This, however, doesn't mean that it is an amazing movie.

* StanleyKubrick's version of ''TheShining'' is quite different from the book, and gets a lot of StephenKing fans saying how much it sucks. Even Stephen King himself considers it the worst adaptation of one of his movies. Outside of them, it's considered one of the best horror movies ever made.

** Much of the criticism of ''Beowulf'' had to do with the totally pointless and unnecessary motion capture animation, which made every actor look like a creepy puppet, not with the changes made to the story.

* The trailers for ''[[PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians The Lightning Thief]]'' are out, and ''already'' the complaints are flying, particularly about Annabeth's hair being brown and, most of all, Grover being black. Hilariously, the complainers of the latter claims they're not racist, but the fact that the actor's race bugs them [[HypocriticalHumor suggest]] [[UnfortunateImplications otherwise]]. Just as you think people couldn't get any [[FanDumb dumber]], there's a couple of people complaining about Percy being in an elevator - which was ''in the book''. [[{{Wallbanger}} Cue giant holes in the walls]]. And note that this movie is being directed by ChrisColumbus, who made the two most faithful films of the ''HarryPotter'' franchise.

* It's amazing to see how much criticism the ''Film/{{Watchmen}}'' movie received '''before its release'''. It seems people couldn't even wait to see it to start complaining. This is, of course, because the movie is based on an AlanMoore comic book, which have traditionally been subject to AdaptationDecay (or [[AdaptationDistillation Distillation]], depending on your viewpoint). Moore himself is quite vocal about how much he thinks the previous movies based on his works suck, which doesn't help matters. Furthermore, ''{{Watchmen}}'' especially has been long considered a work that any adaptation would struggle with effectively bringing to the screen whilst remaining faithful to the source material. However, this doesn't prevent the complaining from being very premature.