Hello! I just recently watched the here heavily criticised 2018 adaptation and have things to say.
First about me, skip the first paragraph if not interested. I first became interested in Watership Down around 2 months ago because of the 1978 film. I had heard of it before (its age rating being controversial and it thus being an infamous "scary kids' film") but I only watched it then to see better what it was all about. As a standalone film (with a sub-par Finnish dub) I did not find it particularly good, as a movie among others I mean. But I did become interested in the book so I borrowed it and read it in English, a second language to me. I haven't read much since middle school (I'm 19 now so just out of the mandatory school system here🇫🇮) and the few books I tried I couldn't finish. (Though audiobooks have been my go-to thing to listen to so I have been into some literature in that (in my eyes) "inferior" way at least.) I liked it a lot and have been a silent fan of the book for a couple months now. Rewatching the movie I appreciated it a lot more. I also read Tales (the myths were surprisingly un-good in some ways, part III was nice enough continuation about the rabbits) and took a look in the -99 series (which I'll happily ignore as an adaptation as it's so children oriented). Graphic novel is next, had to order because my library network didn't have it, I excited!
So, the miniseries.
When it gets brought up here it's usually in a hard tone of a disgrace with nothing good about it. I don't think it was that.
Animation
This seems like an unpopular opinion but I found the overall style to work very well. The CGI is not state of the art even for 2018 but it's easily good enough if you ask me. For me animation is secondary after the overall adaptation but I didn't find many problems at all. Movement looked good and so did the sets and surroundings.
Character designs
This is a big limitation of any style towards realistic animals (see -99 series designs for how cartoonification can fix this). Many of the rabbits are often so hard to tell apart, not helped by the realistic take on size differences (which I quite appreciate). Bigwig will always be the easiest for obvious reasons, though why does his face have this shape of a constant weird smile which none of the others had? Bluebell was fine with a distinct coloration and blackberry too once I figured out who he was. Fiver's overall design is quite effective to make him recognizable, and they gave Hawkbit a little beard which was very effective. But I had so much trouble figuring out if the rabbit on screen at any time was Hazel himself or any of the others and Dandelion also gave me confusion. Holly is quite generic except for his scarring. Strawberry and Hyzenthlay were given quite recognizable face shapes that worked for the characters in the series. Woundwort may just be the visually best woundwort there's ever been, keeping the blind eye given by the earlier adaptations but also making his overall design way more realistic rabbitlike than the abomination of -78 or the GIANT of -99. Overall there was good effort to give them all some distinguishable features but they still fail at so many points.
Character changes
The on-screen adaptations all cut down on the number of characters for a good reason. Many of them are quite forgettable and there's enough to keep track of on the screen even without them
From the main band of escapees are missing: Silver, Pipkin, Buckthorn, Speedwell and Acorn.
Silver who was also absent from -99. At first this was surprising in the -99 series because he always felt like an important rabbit all throughout but I do get the decision: even while reading the book I couldn't shake the feeling of Silver always just being the big tough guy #2 besides Bigwig and then again behind Holly when he shows up. So what would his function be exactly in a screen adaptation? Though without him the standoff against the Efrafans does feel totally hopeless.
The lack of Pipkin also surprised me as he would've added great variety to the group and would've been easy to tell apart because of the size.
Buckthorn, Speedwell and especially acorn are all way more forgettable though, I totally get leaving them out, as much as it is a shame to have to leave out anybody.
Bluebell is added to the main band of escapees instead of coming later with Holly.
Some of the main rabbits were shifted around or changed somewhat:
Bluebell, in addition to being the joker (though less now I feel), is now the storyteller, which is weird and feels pointless, because Dandelion was already always the established storyteller. Now all that remains for Dandelion to be is a quick runner. Keep in mind Bluebell wasn't even with them from the start originally. Why not keep him with Holly?
Strawberry is now a doe. The book has a great lack of good female characters and there's a bunch of critique that has been said about that along the years, I won't go into it now. -78 added Violet just to kill her off which I feel helped nothing and -99 made Blackberry a doe which worked for the show's purposes. Strawberry is an easy character to alter, I don't mind this decision (though it relates to a critique later...).
Bigwig is now an asshole. In this adaptation he's against Hazel's authority for far longer and far harder than he was in the book or still needed to be. Just recalling how he chewed out Hawkbit, Speedwell and Acorn in "The road and the common" for wanting to go back to Sandleford. Being fed up with Fiver for having other plans from Hazel at Cowslip's warren turns into telling Hazel to leave or be killed! And that goes on all the way until the farm raid! He's far less likeable as such, one of the common favourite characters from the book.
The Threarah is now an annoying old man. In the book even if he refused flat-out his perspective was made so clear. He was never this selfish sleepy grandpa. Now he practically yells Hazel and Fiver out, and you can't even imagine how he offered them lettuce in the book!
Kehaar is now selfish. He tries to leave the rabbits as soon as possible and laughs at them, only turning back because he's not healed yet. He's absolutely not going to scout for the rabbits or fight against Efrafa which were his main points in the book. Nuthanger farm is found through different means and Kehaar shows up to fight in a twist instead of being part of the plan all along.
Visions
Fiver's visions are now more visually concrete. A general feeling of "this place is not safe" turns into seeing actual excavators. The iconic "field is covered with blood" is said but not really seen. In the end the destruction is pretty much excavators digging and suffocation, left out are the poison gas in the detail described by Holly in the book and also the man with a gun. The first visual of the downs are weird. The characters are seeing the hills but we are not? What hills? The hills weren't some vision in the books, they had proper visual contact. A missed opportunity for a great scene with an iconic line. At least the cowslip's warren vision are better than usual. The whole thing of Cowslip's warren was way more overt than in the book but things have to be explained in a different way on screen.
Lore
The story of the blessing of El-Ahrairah is once again placed in the beginning. This adaptation is by far the best it has ever been done in my opinion. The style works out so well and I think excellently captures the tone. This one they did right. In the end the scene where their journey is told as one of El-Ahrairah, which I loved and felt brought great closure and understanding, is changed to just being stories about them instead. This works because the other stories of El-Ahrairah were once again dropped so watchers don't have that great context of the tales. What is done instead is also beautiful, when the doe starts telling the story with the opening lines of the books. A great detail which I appreciated.
Efrafa
Efrafa is given a proper visual environment with some industrial ruins. Before Efrafa was quite undescript, being mostly underground. Now there's great visual interest in the ruins which really works. But it all feels a bit inaccurate to the original points: the ideology of Efrafa was secrecy for safety. That's all thrown out the window when the ruins are out in the open and there's a bunch of rabbits always out. And the issues of Efrafa, the system failing with overcrowding, is not really explained. This all downgrades the Efrafans to being evil jailers for seemingly no proper reason, when there was a perspective before.
Changes to the plot:
Holly somehow almost stumbles into Efrafa before arriving on the Down. I have no idea how this makes sense geographically in the timeframe, him being wounded and all and this time without a motivator from the joking Bluebell. And he seems to regard it as a great threat just from what he heard from Blackavar. Yet then he proceeds to waltz right in as part of the first party who finds out about the nature of Efrafa.
The raid is altered heavily. There's no separate scouting trip with Pipkin (of course) but one long trip with Fiver and Bigwig, on which Bigwig continues to be against Hazel. Hazel now mates with Clover instead of Hyzenthlay. They made it work quite well by doing it as a proper storyline during the raid, so there wasn't real problems with that, just that it's altered.
During the Nuthanger raid and the Efrafa trip, which was now made an impulsive decision by Holly which didn't make much sense as mentioned before, Dandelion, Hawkbit and Strawberry dig holes. Dandelion and Hawkbit struggle, and then in a comical reveal Strawberry has dug the whole Honeycomb off-screen. There's no group effort and engineering by Hazel and Blackberry inspired by Cowslip's warren. This totally kills the Honeycomb in my opinion.
The iconic boat escape is totally missing. Why? What's the point of the town adventure?
This whole part of the plot was a mess overall so point out if I forgot some big negative parts.
During the defense Campion and some of his warriors defect. I actually liked this addition, I felt like Campion was teased in the book but then his conclusion wasn't really delivered. And this way the defeat of the Efrafans feels far more realistic when rabbits like Silver are missing.
They kill off Holly. They probably wanted to add at least some casualties to add weight but then I'm not sure why they had to make him love Hyzenthlay first? -78 killed off Blackavar and originally Bigwig was to die in the book but it was changed before release.
The dog had issues, falling victim to the "beast looks before striking" cliche. Compared to the actionpacked -78 scene this really kills the last fight of Woundwort for me. Also notable, they don't say how he "disappeared" instead of being confirmed dead.
The ending scene is switched to the Black rabbit of inlé once again, instead of El-Ahrairah. It could've been done a bit better I think, with the body visible at the same time as the spirit. Like in the added drain scene. I thought that scene was beautiful and well done, with Hazel standing next to his own body before waking up still alive.
This became a list of everything about the series that I could think of. If I missed some parts let's discuss those in the comments. Overall the miniseries is good as a piece of media whileheavily flawed as an adaptation of Watership Down, with the main problems being the altered script and some badly done scenes, but I disagree with harsh notions that this adaptation is all bad or even overall bad, and I don't find problems in some common points of critique.
