I don't think he was at all surprised at how bad the films were, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't complain about them. I think it's easy for many people who

I don't think he was at all surprised at how bad the films were, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't complain about them. I think it's easy for many people who are used to a diet of truly terrible adaptations to mistake one which is merely bad for something excellent. (I think pretty much everything about those films was very good, except for the script, which was poor on both a large and small scale.)