You can't strip the novels of characterization and make the plots work either. The plots hinge on the people in them being a certain kind of people with a certain mode of behavior - that's why turning Anne Elliot into a snarky, messy extrovert doesn't work, because the plot requires Anne to be depressed, repressed, and the only sensible Elliot ever born.
Whereas someone who respects both the characters and the original work - I'm never forgiving the ignorant shit coming out of some movie directors - can do amazing things with adaptations.
My favorite Austen adaptation is Pride and Prejudice: Atlanta. Not only did the writers lose a lot of the original pressures by moving it to modern day Atlanta and shifting race, the original was written for Lifetime, which, among its many rules, does not permit depictions of underaged sex, major villains, or unhappy marriages.
Now, you'd think this would entirely gut Pride and Prejudice. How can you maintain that plot in a world where Bingley could just divorce Jane if they don't get along (neutering Darcy's disapproval), the Bennets are happy, the girls don't have to marry to survive, and Wickham can't be, well, Wickham?
Only the author Tracy McMillan and director Rhonda Baraka understood the assignment!
Mr Bennet is now a clergyman, so his home, the rectory, is dependent on remaining employed by his parish. (Enter his young protegee, the oily Stevie Collins, who promises to keep the whole family in the house when Mr. B retires... if he can marry one of the girls.)
Mrs. Bennet wrote a book about Godly marriage and None! Of! Her! Girls! Is! Married!!! How humiliating! How bad for her reputation! How awful for book sales! GIRLS, YOU GOTTA GET HITCHED!
Mr and Mrs B snark at each other, but this time it's loving.
Bingley and Jane? Well, Jane's a war widow, you see, with a little kid, and Bingley has been known to come in too strong and then lose interest. Darcy breaks them up to force Bingley to think hard about letting that child get attached to him and then bouncing.
Lydia and Wickham? Well, he's a bit of a wild child but just like the book, it was Lydia's idea to throw herself at him - only this time she's 18 and the big moment of doubt is "will he or won't he marry her now that he's knocked her up?"
Darcy? Oh, he's running for office, funded by the rich and biracial Catherine de Bourgh, and if that snotty little community organizer Lizzie doesn't stop showing up at rallies and disrupting them by yelling about how Darcy's gentrification policies are going to destroy historic heritage sites, then CdB's gonna make her daddy lose his house, understand? You are not Our Kind, girl, know your place.
Lizzie's bestie even marries Collins, not because she needs to, but because she thinks he's got some redeeming features that Lizzie refuses to see.
In a situation where you would expect every character and every plot point to be gutted beyond all recognition, Pride and Prejudice: Atlanta keeps every bit of the beating heart of the original novel. And it does so by respecting why those characters were Like That and how they navigated the restrictions and freedoms of their world.
"Oh, all the women in Austen cry and fall down and then meet a handsome man" could never.
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