I know it's Hollywood and they take liberties with everything, so that wasn't much of a surprise. I also thought that the visual effects would be stunning, but they really weren't. When I saw "the watchers" I was absolutely amazed. I didn't remember anything even remotely like this from the Bible story. Clearly it was time for me to reread the chapters in Genesis. My NRSV Bible mentions the descendents of Cain. Perhaps I misunderstood what they were calling the movie's bad guy, but I thought it was Jubal-Cain. The Bible mentions Jubal as a descendent of Cain and associates him with music (lyres and harps). Hardly seems like a bad guy. Another descendent of Cain, Tubal-cain, is associated with metal work. While a skilled metal worker can produce weapons, producing or possessing a weapon doesn't automatically make you a marauder.
When I saw "the watchers" I was stunned. I'd never heard of them. The Nephilim are mentioned in the Bible, and while it's fairly unclear about who or what they were, I didn't get the impression that they were huge animated stones. Perhaps this is my mistake, but somehow I doubt it.
I was also surprised at their clothing. It looked almost like jeans. Why not? The Bible doesn't actually describe the clothing of the day and in all actuality, it probably wasn't the gleaming white robes depicted in the paintings we're all familiar with. (If those paintings are to be believed there were no style changes from the beginning of time until the time of Christ. What are the odds?)
Then there's the issue of Noah's children. I'll admit that I mistakenly thought that Noah had daughters as well as sons. However, according to the Bible, all three of Noah's sons had wives who boarded the ark with the family. There would have been no reason for Ham to be out scouting for women and Japheth was clearly not the child the movie portrays him to be. (And according to my re-reading of this text, Ham is the youngest, not Japheth, anyway.)
And then there's the character of Noah. I hadn't realized he was Methuselah's grandson, but he sure enough was. Just not much made of that in the Bible story for some reason. Nor is there any reason to think that Methusalah had any mystical powers - just the wisdom that comes with old age. And as we all know, "with age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone". But I guess he was playing the part of Gandalf. The Bible story is very clear that Noah knew what was going on. He knew that it was his job to save the animals and humanity. Russell Crowe's Noah seemed to think that he was supposed to save the animals and kill off humanity.
I read one article that described this movie as being the Gnostic story of Noah. The article was interesting, but I truly don't know enough about Gnosticism to make a judgement. Others have said that the movie is a good "conversation starter", enabling Jews and Christians to speak with non-believers about their faith. I just can't imagine what direction that conversation would take. Talk about the movie, or talk about the Bible story - there's not much common ground.
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