On film adaptations and the strange criticism of Greta Gerwig’s Amy March

I’ve just seen quite a few comments on Youtube, criticising Greta Gerwig’s Little Women (2019) for “altering Amy March to fit the modern audience”—Amy in the new adaptation, they say, is not Amy in Louisa May Alcott’s book. 
Isn’t this such a strange criticism? 
I cannot compare the 2019 Amy (played by Florence Pugh) to Alcott’s Amy, as I haven’t read the book, but a director has the perfect right to make changes when adapting a book into a film. As some director once said, why would you make an adaptation if you have nothing new to say? 
Even if you give the same screenplay to 100 different directors, you still get 100 different films, because of the different decisions in casting, location, style, look, pace, tone, camera angles, editing, and so on, not to mention alterations to the script (how many directors passively take a script and make no changes?). When it comes to film adaptations, different directors have different approaches to the same material, highlighting some aspects and omitting others, sometimes making changes. A writer-director is under no obligation whatsoever to be faithful to the book—the film is their film, they use the book as a basis, a foundation, to explore the themes they’re interested in, and say what they want to say.
An adaptation is an interpretation of the book, an adaptation can also be, and should be, its own work. A writer-director has the perfect right to modernise a text (Clueless from Emma, 10 Things I Hate About You from The Taming of the Shrew), move the settings to another country (Untold Scandal from Dangerous Liaisons, The Handmaiden from Fingersmith), whilst retaining the essence and spirit of the book. A writer-director also has the right to change the tone/ genre (Dr Strangelove from Red Alert), or simply take an existing work and create something new (Ran from King Lear). The question is whether the film is good, as a film.
Of course sometimes you can watch a film adaptation and think a character is miscast, but it’s not necessarily because of the character in the book—I’m sure that there are times you watch a film not based on anything, and think some actor is miscast. Or sometimes you watch a film adaptation and see the changes, and feel like the filmmaker thinks they’re improving on the book but they actually make the story a lot worse, but that is because the changes don’t work, not because there are changes.
To go back to Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women, I don’t know the novel to know that she brings out more depth and emphasises the clear-headedness and practicality in Alcott’s character, or expands and changes Amy to make her a more complex and likeable character. In either case, she has the right to do so, and Amy March in her film works well as a character.
Amy can be a spoilt, selfish brat as a kid, and grow up to be the Amy we see in the film. Amy in the new film is still practical and not at all romantic, and she is mercenary, but if you place the 2019 film next to the 1994 film (I have nothing else for comparison), Amy in Greta Gerwig’s writing is deeper, for knowing her own place in the world and knowing what she wants. Florence Pugh in her performance also brings a groundedness to the character, and makes her a perfect toil to Jo. Both Jo and Amy know what they want, but they want different things, and go different ways.
The new depiction of Amy also explains why Laurie chooses her in the end—she is clear-eyed, sensible, ambitious, and straightforward, she is better for Laurie than Jo is.
Moreover, I like that Greta Gerwig tells the story of the March sisters, not only Jo, which shows women’s limited options in the 19th century. If you have talent and want independence, you can have a writing career like Jo, or have to choose between marrying for love, like Meg, or marrying for money, like Amy (if you don’t sit at home and die, like Beth). I can’t help thinking of the book I’ve just read, No Name. Wilkie Collins’s book and Little Women are nothing alike, but No Name also shows women’s limited options—the 2 sisters get disinherited and cast out on the world with nothing, one schemes to get her money back whilst the other resigns to her fate and works as a governess, and they depend on being rescued by rich husbands.
But I’ve digressed.
I like Florence Pugh’s Amy, and I like that the feminist statements don’t only come from Jo, but they’re shared between her and Amy.
Now watch this clip from the new Little Women: 


Isn’t that fantastic? Such good lines. I don’t know why some people are complaining.