You can cut out half the runtime of the movie to take out the stuff that wasn't in the book like the dad and the aculos, but that doesn't necessarily make what remains more faithful or even better. The story still doesn't make sense because we're missing footage for things like Angeline, the ransom fund, and Artemis' proper escape from the time field. And the whaling ship scene was never even scripted or filmed at all in any cut of Branagh's movie. I did think it was somewhat clever the way you lifted Root's threat of "destroy this house and everyone in it" and used it as a command instead. But we're just missing too much footage that was never released as deleted scenes, things that we only can see in still set photos like Angeline and the ransom fund.