Maybe it didn't feel anything like the original TO YOU, but to many of us, it felt just fine. As for the things that were cut? Adding the squid and the backstory to that would have added another half hour (at least) to an already lengthy film. Adding Bernie scenes and the Black Freighter stuff would have been another hour.
I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm glad he changed those things. The squid alien thing never sat well with me in the book. It wasn't that it was bad, it was just sort of a "Huh?" moment at the end and even though it made sense, I still felt it was an odd way to wrap things up. The Bernie/Freighter stuff was interesting but after a while, I felt like it started to detract from the story because I didn't particularly care about the Bernie characters or the pirate story. It's all relevant to the story, but I also don't think you lose anything by removing it.
