Why did they bother calling this Captain Corelli's Mandolin?

You;re right; after changing the ending, the writer and director should never be allowed to to touch a great book again...

The possible reasons why people are hesistant on calling its full title are...

1. The title is too long

2. The story is so far from the one in the book

and

3. That film sucks so bad it's just a waste of time calling it in it's very lengthy title. We'd rather call it "That Big Fat Greek Movie Flop."

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I agree with everyone who says this movie is nothing like as good as the book, but the fact is that there's just too much in the book to fit into one movie, so the result was only ever going to be disappointing.

I'm not sure I entirely blame the makers of the movie, because in reality they had an impossible task on their hands; they could only ever have given us a skeleton of the full story. However I do think the casting is a bit shoddy.

The best chance this story has of being successfully filmed is if it were made into a big-budget mini series, split up into around six to ten episodes. I'm thinking along the lines of Band Of Brothers here. Done right, it could be amazing. Fingers crossed!

By the way, another book I think would work well as a series but not as a movie (and which has a lot in common with Captain Corelli's Mandolin) is The Singapore Grip by JG Farrell. It's more dense and maybe has a bit less humour, but I still recommend it.

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Sometimes--quite often--it's not the screenwriters' fault how the storyline changes. Someone--an actor, producer, wannabe producer or director or wannabe director--will option or buy a property. He, she or it gets the next step greenlighted with money, and gives it to a writer.

The writer turns out his draft and gives it back. Then this is where the fun begins. Potentially, dozens of people can be involved in the so-called writing process. Tensions rise. Names are called. People drop out or drop in. New personnel don't like the script, or like the script except should be 15 per cent funnier--whatever the heck THAT means--or it should be more like or less like Gone With the Wind. Or maybe, someone decides, it's Gone With The Wind meets Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

The point being that writers virtually never have the final say on what direction the script goes, or even if it's finished.

There's why the auteur theory is hogwash. Directors and others who consider themselves auteurs will get to step 25 before engaging a writer. Then the auteur blames the writer if his movie goes bad. The writer is simply trying to please an ego and all those who answer to the director's ego.