The Requisite Harry Potter Post (Part 2)
I’m all but too late in posting this, because Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes at midnight tonight. I wanted to have a trio or perhaps a full quartet of posts on this topic, but events have conspired against me and I just haven’t had any time until now.
The subject of Part 1 was essentially a timeline of my reading of the books, which I admit is hardly an engaging read. Part 2, however, is about the Harry Potter movies and I hope that I can make it a little more interesting.
I actually didn’t see “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” when it was released in theaters, and was forced to rent it at a later date. I’ve seen all of the subsequent films on the big screen, however, and have been pleased, if not bowled over, each time. At the time of my last post I actually had not yet been able to see the fifth film, but that problem has now been happily remedied.
Most people who have read the books will tell you that they also love the movies. The thing they usually dislike is that the movies stray so far from the book. I can understand this, but I also have to tell these people: get over it. Film is a different artistic medium than the novel. Each has its strengths over the other. Books are excellent for explaining systems, such as the rules of how magic works in a particular fictional world. Explaining this is a film would be both tedious and confusing. Books are also better, most of the time, if the author wants to tell what a character is thinking. Movies, on the other hand, are excellent for depicting action sequences. They can show a complicated maneuver that would be boring when read. For example, a gymnastics routine or a sword fight is much more fun to watch than to read.
In short, movies are objective for the audience, while books are subjective. These simple facts effectively control the media and dictate what can be accomplished through them from an artistic viewpoint. There are, of course, other parameters. Readers are willing to invest hours upon hours in a book, something an audience will never do in the case of a movie. Movies also require massive amounts of money and coordination among individuals working on the whole. Money is usually not paid for a book until it is finished. If it doesn’t work out up to that point, only the author is affected. That’s really all there is to it.
What makes the Harry Potter films interesting, artistically, is that we actually see a group of child stars growing up from one film to the next. That has never happened before, at least as far as I know, on this scale. What’s sad about that is that the previous films look progressively more outdated. Not only are the kids older, but the special effects are better too. Why should we watch “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” with its scratchy CGI and poorly acting 11 year olds when “Order of the Phoenix” is new and improved with smooth graphics and fewer cracking voices? Another drawback with the films is that the various directors seem almost to operate on the assumption that their audience has already read the books, which is usually, but not universally, the case. This leads them to poorly explain things. Readers of the books may not even notice these skips because they were expecting the unexplained thing to happen anyway.
Spoiler Warning: Don’t say I didn’t tell you because you just read it.
That said, I’ll admit that “Order” didn’t quite agree with me. I thought too many liberties were taken with the story and too many events left unexplained. It was clunky for Cho to have betrayed to D.A under the influence of veritaserum and then Harry not forgive her for it. Also, Ron and Hermione didn’t become prefects, Ron wasn’t attacked by a brain, a Death Eater didn’t have his head turned to a baby’s, we never saw St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, and Helena Bonham Carter, who could have been an excellent, sinister Bellatrix Lestrange, just acted like a female Jack Sparrow, with her hair in a big wad on top of her head. Additionally, we saw extensive use of montages, which, while sometimes useful, is something I hate.
On the other hand (which is a phrase I use far too much) I particularly enjoyed the Patronus scene in the Room of Requirement and Evanna Lynch was a great choice for Luna Lovegood. She was amusing and sympathetic at the same time, which is difficult to pull off.
All that said about the most recent film, my favorite so far would probably be “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” which also diverted from the book, but in all the right ways. This would probably be followed a near three-way tie between “Chamber”, “Goblet”, and “Order”, with the first film being a definite last. I also don’t care for Gary Oldman as Sirius. When I read the books now, I still don’t see him as Sirius. He just doesn’t fit the illustrations or the descriptions. He’s too old. However, Maggie Smith is good as McGonagall and Fiennes is decent as Voldemort. Another plus for the first three films was John Williams’ music. It’s unfortunate that he couldn’t or wouldn’t continue for the entire series.
Alright, that is pretty much it for Part 2. Part 3 will hopefully appear later today and will cover my thoughts and predictions for Book 7, which will be here in a matter of hours.
To Be Continued…
