Changes from the book

First off, let me say that I'm the kind of person who prefers that adaptations remain as faithful to the original material as possible. If you're going to "improve" on an author who has a billion copies of her books in print, they'd better be some seriously good improvements.

That being said, I don't mind most of the changes made to the various remakes of Ten Little Indians. It doesn't matter to me whether the third woman is an elderly spinster (Emily Brent) or a glamorous actress (Ilona Bergen/Morgan). I don't care if the General's name is MacArthur or Mandrake, and I don't care if the drunk is an English Bright Young Thing, a Russian prince, an American rock star, or a French lounge lizard. Those are minor details, and don't tremendously affect the story.

Likewise, I don't care that the ending in the movies doesn't match that in the book; Christie approved it, and that's the end of that.

However, the characters' crimes should, in my anything but humble opinion, remain as true to the book as possible, because they add another layer to the murderer's plot. In the confession chapter at the end, the murderer lays out the reason for the order of the crimes. The deaths occur in the order they do for a reason (I'm using the original names, but you should be able to figure out who they are in the movies):

NOT REALLY RESPONSIBLE
Anthony Marston: "born without that sense of moral responsibility the rest of us have"
Mrs. Rogers: "acted very much under the influence of her husband"

JUSTIFIABLE
General MacArthur: kills his wife's lover--still a murderer, but as much sinned against as sinning

INDIRECT
Rogers: allowed employer to die
Emily Brent: drove someone else to suicide

Now, by this time, the survivors are basket cases; death will almost come as a relief. In contrast, the drunk and the cook die almost immediately, the general soon after that, and the butler and "third woman", while they have a full day of nervous tension, don't get the extended terror the rest do.

The five who are left--Justice Wargrave, Doctor Armstrong, Blore, Lombard, and Vera--are left until the end because they have not only committed murder, but abused their positions by doing so. The judge sentences an innocent man to die, the doctor kills a patient through negligence, Blore sends an innocent man to prison by committing perjury, Lombard abandons men under his command to starve, and Vera kills a child entrusted to her care. Vera's crime is far more heinous than that of Mrs. Rogers, so Mrs. Rogers dies on Friday night while Vera has to spend the weekend looking over her shoulder and wondering which of the people eating dinner with her is going to try to kill her.

However, this movie changes the General's and Emily/Ilona's crimes and keeps the changes made to Lombard's and Vera's in the previous movie. Instead of killing his wife's lover, the General now abandons men under his command (the same crime for which Lombard, in the book, is left by the murderer for the end). Instead of driving a pregnant teenage girl to suicide, Emily/Ilona drives a grown man (and a soldier) to suicide--not very nice, but military officers, by and large, are more able to weather emotional storms than teenagers of either gender are. Vera, rather than killing a child, kills an adult--again, not very nice, but certainly not worse, from the murderer's point of view, than Blore's crime.

Also, starting with this version, the rhyme itself is altered, and some of the alterations simply do not make sense. Take the original:

"Nine little Indians sat up very late, one overslept himself and then there were eight.
Eight little Indians traveling through Devon, one got left behind and then there were seven."

This dovetails with the deaths of Mrs. Rogers and the General. After being given an overdose of sleeping powders, Mrs. Rogers dies in her sleep ("oversleeps herself"); the next to die, the General, does so alone and isolated from the rest of the party ("left behind").

However, for this version, the rhyme reads:

"Nine little Indians sat up very late, one ran away and then there were eight.
Eight little Indians traveling through Heaven, one met a pussycat and then there were seven."

The lines simply don't make sense this way; staying up late and running away have nothing to do with each other, and the pussycat line seems thrown in just to have a cat in the movie.

If these seem like nitpicks, it's because Ten Little Indians is more than your average whodunit; there are layers to it that elevate it above its many imitators. Removing those layers reduces it to the level of every other mass murder story; nothing special, easily forgotten.