This has always seemed like a terrible idea from the start bringing a nuanced, long, drawn-out, British parlor game about the media and politics to America and condensing it to 2 hours—and the clip Ben Affleck brought with him to Leno didn’t help things This piece is the nail in the coffin.

Two choice points:

“Entire characters were dropped, like a brash young journalist with father-son issues, played by James McAvoy in the original. “That was gut-wrenching,” Mr. Hauptman said. And one of the last things to go was an affair between Cal McAffrey, the lead journalist and a friend of the accused member of Parliament, and the M.P.’s wife. It was probably the single strongest story line in the original, because of the way it moved some of the story’s larger themes into the bedroom.”

So, cutting the single strongest story line from the original. Good call. And also:

“[Director Kevin McDonald] added that he was particularly pleased at the way the movie beefed up the character of Della, a young Scottish reporter played by Kelly Macdonald in the original, and turned her into a blogger (played by Rachel McAdams) who is somewhat at odds with Mr. Crowe’s old-school, shoe-leather character. “You’ve the blogosphere versus the print media,” Mr. Macdonald said. “If ‘All the President’s Men’ was what it was like in 1974, this is the way it is now.”

Oh christ.