I had a conversation with a friend where I was saying the whole 'changes will be required to take it from page to screen' and 'John Hodge has scripted some good films'. She wasn't having any of it, preferring to instead just shut off sight and sound of the whole thing. I did not, feeling I could objectively judge the film on its own merits and not simply as an adaptation. Then I saw the trailer. Okay, perhaps it's not representative of the whole, but a trailer is supposed to sell the film. Forgetting the whole Hollywood adapted abortion of a literary classic syndrome, taking away that weight of responsibility and looking on it simply as a film with no weight of fan scrutiny or name recognition... it looks shit. The film looks shit. It's a terrible adaptation, no question, but they didn't even change everything into something different that happened to be good. Still, there's that age-old question - why bother adapting a property and changing everything when you could just make a standalone film? The fans are going to crucify the end result, so you're not guaranteeing they're going to buy a ticket and for those unfamiliar with the property you have to do the same work in marketing the film as you would if it was original. Sure, you can say it's based on a classic, but that's not going to count for much when it comes out that it's nothing like that award-winning book with which it shares a name. Incompetent filmmaking is one thing, but when it's backed up by a wilfully inept business sense, what can you do?