The Three Musketeers (2011)
Paul W. S. Anderson's 2011 The Three Musketeers takes the boldest structural swing of any adaptation covered on this site: rather than simply modernizing the tone, it relocates the entire story into an alternate-history "clockpunk" setting complete with airships, submarines, and Da Vinci-designed superweapons. It's a strange choice for adapting a nineteenth-century historical adventure novel, and reviewers were sharply divided on whether it works. But underneath the spectacle, the film's actual plot skeleton is more faithful to Dumas than its reputation suggests.
The Diamond Studs Plot, Rebuilt Around Airship Blueprints
The novel's central maguffin, Queen Anne's diamond studs given to Buckingham as a token of forbidden affection, survives in modified form, but the film adds an entirely invented subplot involving stolen airship designs that Milady and Buckingham conspire to use for a French-English war. This is a significant addition with no basis in Dumas's text, designed to give the film's steampunk hardware a plot reason to exist. Despite this large invention, TV Tropes and other close comparisons of the film note it retains the broad shape of the original story more than viewers expecting a straight parody might assume: d'Artagnan still duels all three musketeers in quick succession before uniting with them against Rochefort's guardsmen, and Milady's core function as a duplicitous agent working both sides remains intact.
The Musketeers, Introduced as Disgraced Rather Than Active
A meaningful change: this film's Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are introduced already disbanded and living in obscurity after Milady's earlier betrayal, rather than as active, respected members of the King's guard as in the novel. This gives the film a "getting the band back together" structure closer to a heist movie than the novel's more straightforward coming-of-age narrative, and it recontextualizes Milady's betrayal of the group as backstory rather than something the audience witnesses unfold across the story, as the novel's own gradual revelation of her history does.
Milla Jovovich's Milady: Physically Formidable, Differently Motivated
Jovovich's Milady is reimagined as a physically dangerous double agent working for both Buckingham and Richelieu, a more overtly action-heroine take than the novel's version, whose power operates almost entirely through psychological manipulation rather than physical combat. This tracks a broader trend across modern adaptations of giving Milady more direct physical agency, though it changes what makes her dangerous: the novel's Milady is frightening because of what she can make other people do, while the film's is frightening because of what she can do herself.
Richelieu and Buckingham, Reassigned Roles
Christoph Waltz's Richelieu retains real political scheming ambition, while Orlando Bloom's Buckingham is pushed into a more overtly villainous role than the novel's sympathetic duke, whose doomed love for Queen Anne the book treats with real tenderness. The film needs a clear antagonist driving the airship-war plot, and Buckingham, rather than Richelieu alone, absorbs much of that function, a reassignment with no equivalent in Dumas's more politically ambiguous original.
Surprisingly Faithful in Structure, If Not in Texture
What's truly interesting about this adaptation, per multiple close comparisons, is that beneath the airships and anachronistic dialogue, the film hits many of the novel's actual story beats in something close to their original order: the triple duel, the mission to England, the siege dynamics, Milady's betrayal and consequences. This puts it in an odd position relative to other adaptations on this site: considerably less faithful in tone and setting than the 1973 or 1948 versions, but arguably more structurally complete than the significantly rewritten 1993 Disney film.
A Sequel-Baiting Ending With No Equivalent in the Novel
The film ends by setting up a sequel that was never made, introducing plot threads (including an appearance by Christoph Waltz's Richelieu positioning himself for further schemes) that don't correspond to anything in Dumas's actual story, since the novel's own sequel material, covered in Twenty Years After, picks up decades later with an entirely different political backdrop, the Fronde, rather than a direct continuation of this film's invented war-with-England plot.
Read the source material at The Three Musketeers, or see how the more grounded 2023 French version handles the same story on this site's dedicated comparison page.