> I'd much rather see someone adapt a book by using the book only as a boiler plate and doing something original with it.
>

And that's what everyone tries to do.


> but in evaluating a work of narrative fiction the choice of title is rarely if ever a significant enough decision to hold much sway.
>

Sorry; I didn't understand that at all. Holds no sway from whose point of view?


> The choice of title impacts audience expectation, but it doesn't really change the aesthetic merit of the film itself.

I'll say it impacts expectation. If I had known that the actual intent of two films having innocuous titles ("True Romance" and "Paris Trout") was to pile depressingly redundant violence upon violence "in a brilliant depiction of brutality and mayhem," then I doubt I'd have chosen to go see them. After TR, I started to read more detailed movie reviews before seeing any film. *Sigh*