Netflix's Altered Carbon butchered its source material

VICE

"Yes, I know," says  Matthew Gault. "'The book was better than the movie/show' is something we could say about almost any adaptation, but I truly can’t enjoy Altered Carbon because I read the books they’re based on and it feels like Netflix gutted the story of everything that made it interesting. The three Takeshi Kovacs novels are weird books about eldritch alien horrors and revolutionary politics in a world where no one dies. Altered Carbon took that raw material and stripped out anything complicated. The books are stories about power and revolutionary politics. The show is an action adventure love story with some light class critique. Adaptation is hard. Television is a different medium than books and things are going to change, I understand that. Game of Thrones did a mostly great job of adapting George RR Martin’s books. I think the Lord of the Rings films are better than the novels. So too with The Princess Bride. Sometimes adaptations make large changes from the source material for the better. The novel Jaws is based on has an entire subplot about the local Mafia that landed on the cutting room floor for the film. But Netflix’s Altered Carbon feels like it butchered its source material."