Just to give you an idea:
- They added a female warrior that goes from hill to hill, dressed like Legolas, to shoot arrows at Bernardo Gui (the inquisitor)
- They made Gui a crazy fanatic with visions and such. The scary thing of Gui is that he was exactly very analytical, intelligent, and a person of his time. He was scary because he believed in the logic of what he was doing.
- The important discussion about laugher has been reduced to a 5 seconds idiotic scene.
- They created a totally fictional background story of the unnamed girl (which they named)
- Worse offense of all: they made Adso and the Unnamed Girl see each other multiple times. They make Adso get out of the monastery to go to the girl. Now, THE most beautiful thing of that story in the book and the movie is that he doesn’t know her name, who she is, and they see each other only once, yet true love remains forever, if not in name (hence the name of the novel).
There’s more but this should give you enough nausea.
You have convinced me to forego this series, don't worry.
And your arguments convince me that subjecting myself to it would achieve nothing other than appal me.
Actually, I hate it when movie or TV producers decide that an already excellent book needs to be "sexed up" (while, what is philosophically important in that story is reduced to platitudes of a couple of seconds) all because they fear that an audience with a limited attention span will not be able to follow the tale, stay focussed, let alone retain an interest, unless it has the clarity and lack of subtlety of a children's story (some of which, in reality, were a lot deeper, darker, and more nuanced than the modern sanitised versions would permit us to see).
In a bizarre way, to my mind, this shows something suggesting a contempt for an audience (and this is one of the reasons I very rarely see a movie; so many of them are too obvious, too unsubtle, too unintelligent in how they choose to tell a story. They disdain complexity and nuance - the proverbial "grey areas" which are what are of interest - and favour sensation, and a blunt approach to narrative).
Now, while I quite liked the movie adaptation of The Name of the Rose, - above all, I liked the fact that many of the actors resembled characters in a 14th-15th C Renaissance painting, in that they weren't improbably good-looking with perfect features and amazing teeth - I deeply disliked the reduction of the important discussion about laughter (that is a key part of the book, philosophically) to next to nothing.
However, as with your totally pertinent remarks about Bernard de Gui - why reduce an antagonist to someone who is merely a maniac and a moron? Chilling, intelligent, informed, analytical antagonists who believe in their cause, coldly, with intelligence and thought are much more unnerving - this is exactly why Clifford Rose's portrayal of Ludwig Kessler in Secret Army was so compelling - another thing I deeply disliked about the movie was the motivation the movie gave to William (that he had been tortured by the Inquisition).
Personally, I thought this totally unnecessary, and, as usual, utterly unsubtle and completely forced. And, it didn't sit with how his character had been written.
For, William didn't need to have been physically threatened and traumatised, as a person, for the story of why he had changed his approach and some of his beliefs - to work as a story.
His growing horror at what he was serving and his dawning awareness of the fact torture didn't always elicit truth - remember that wonderful quote (some centuries later, obviously) from Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, to think it possible you may be mistaken" - was a motive that was more than sufficient. To me, at least.
Psychologically, philosophically, ethically, morally, his motivation in the book, what had driven him to become a more humane and tolerant yet still somewhat sceptical, intelligent - almost wise - cool, and detached man - namely, that he had become disgusted with both himself and his work as an inquisitor - was much more satisfying, much more in keeping with his character, much more credible in terms of driving him to seek truth, (rather than seek revenge) and - candidly - much more believable to the narrative.
