Harry Potter reactions

I haven’t read the books or really know anything about Harry Potter but I ended up going to the midnight showing last night with Mahaloth and a couple of friends.

It is a good movie that I thought was fairly well paced, great acting, even greater special effects, and fun to watch. The kids were excellent but the scene stealer was the giant who’s name I can’t really remember. It was midnight for crying out loud.

The only possibly bad thing was that the movie setting was generally dark or spooky so the little kid behind me was getting all scared, complaining to her mom, and kicking my chair throughout the movie. I wouldn’t take really little kids to see the movie for two reasons: it might scare them and it’s 2 1/2 hours long.

[hijack]Who takes a little kid to a midnight showing? It seemed they were there more for the parent then the kid. Quite distracting at times.[/hijack]

There seemed to be a lot of foreshadowing for the future books/movies. Was there this much in the books? Also, anybody see the movie AND read the book? I assume it was very accurate but what were the differences and did they help or hurt the story?

Hello!

I, too, cought a midnight show. I didn’t know about it until the late news came on. I was wide awake and thought “why not?”

I thought the kids did well, but Hagrid was great. It was mostly true to the book, and only a couple of things that I wanted to see that weren’t in there.

I loved the chess game and Quidditch.

To me, it didn’t seem like 2.5 hours, the pacing was quite good. It may well be scary for the younger kids.

Differences, well, I can tell them, but they would give away some movie stuff, so if you don’t want to know, don’t read further! lol

The early scene with Drace trying to shake Malfoy’s hand happened on the train in the book, at school in the movie.

No Peeves the Poltergeist in the movie.

Norbert the dragon. This was quite involved in the book with the 3 heroes helping smuggling it out via Ron’s brother Charlie. In the movie, Dumbledore sends him straight away to Romania. The part with Malfoy was about right in it. There were more centaurs in the book detention and Harry rode on one, whereas it was more simple in the movie version.

The final series of challenges. There was a whole challenge left out with Hermione being the focus and solving the riddle (in the book, not the movie.) The devil’s snare part was slightly different as well.

The only part that bothered me was the missing challenge that Hermione solved.

Percy seemed much more palatable in the movie than in the book.

All in all, I felt it stayed true to the message.

I am going to see it later so I will post my own reactions then.

A couple of comments though, the books are dark in places and as the film purportedly follows the book closely so I would expect this.

I am going to mention some comments that were made by (none doper) friends of mine who saw the advance screenings last weekend.

All of Rik Mayells scenes were cut from the film as well as a lot of other things. I think it’s a shame but it is a children’s film and I think any longer than 2.5 hours would be too long.

I’ll post again after seeing the film.

This was Rik Mayells* part, scenes were filmed but cut from the final cut.
*I’m not sure of the spelling of this name.

I have not seen the movie but Chris Columbus, the Director, has said that Peeves will be in the future movies, and he was supposed to be in this one briefly, but they couldn’t get it to look right in time so they just excised it.

You sure they didn’t exorcise Peeves for this movie? :slight_smile:

Quick question, what is the purpose of the other balls and people in quiditch(sp?)? As far as I could tell, they’re useless because only the seeker needs to grab the gold whizzer ball.

(SPOILERS, I guess…)
Well I saw the movie today, a 11:30 showing.

The movie was awesome!! But, of course, did I expect anything different? I am sort of disapointed, but only because it feels like the day after Christmas, you know? You build up and build up excitement for an event and then, awwwww, it’s gone.

There are some things that I kind of wished for, but I understand that they needed to cut back some because of time: 1) More of the Dursleys. 2) More of Harry’s delight upon leaving the Dursleys. 3) More Snape!! 4) More Neville Longbottom. That is all. The part where Lily Potter is killed was interesting. Richard Harris was good as Dumbledore. Daniel Radcliffe seemed to have only three faces; not very big on the showing emotions part he is. Rupert Gint, who plays Ron, is wonderful, as is Hermione. But, like their characters, they will be overshadowed a bit by Daniel. The Quidditch game (pity there was only one) was one of the best parts, and I know that if it were a real game I would follow it with enthusasim (I hate sports normally). I have read comparisons to the famous Pod Race of Episode I, but then I always thought the Pod Race was cool. Another great scene was the chess scene. Especially the music to the chess scene.

All in all, I highly recommend those to see it.

The gold whizzer ball is called a snitch and i believe it is worth 150 points and the game ends when it is captured. The other balls are used to score lesser points or to attack (I hope I am remebering this correctly. I always thought the rules were a bit dodgey, simply because basically capturing the snitch is enough to win…or should be, making all ther est of the game somewhat meaningless.

There are four balls in Quidditch:

  1. The Quaffle, the red ball used to score goals (10 points each).

  2. The Golden Snitch, the tiny winged golden ball whose capture ends the game, and gets the capturer’s team 150 points.

  3. The two Bludgers, the moving black balls which try to knock players off their brooms, and are beaten back by the two Beaters on the team.
    The rules aren’t all that complicated, really. There’s a Keeper, whose job is to prevent the goals, three Chasers, whose job is to score goals, the aforementioned Beaters, who beat the Bludgers away from their players and toward opposing players (with bat-like things), and a Seeker, whose job it is to capture the Snitch.
    Back to the OP: Haven’t seen it yet, but I got my tickets this afternoon for the 10:15 showing (earlier ones were sold out). I’m really excited!

I agree with Wolverine. Kids shouldn’t be at a midnight showing.

Anyway, the movie was really good. It was exactly what I expected and no less, no more.

I was particularly impressed with the girl who played Hermione. She really seemed to have her act together and played the little brat role quite well.

Am I the only one that thought the special effects were only okay? Granted, the movie doesn’t rely heavily on FX like Star Wars, but it overused the blue/green screen effect too much and it was obvious. This is a relatively minor point, since the movie itself was good.

Everyone overacts and this is good, since this movie requires a bit of overacting.

I’d give it three out of four stars or 7.5 out of 10. Go see it. Few movies make that high marks these days.

Well, yes, it should be, but it isn’t, necessarily. If one team is ahead of the other by more than 150 points, then even the capture of the Snitch wouldn’t help the losing team win. Shouldn’t happen often, but if one team has really good offense and/or really good defense, it’s possible…:wink:

Sorry about the continued hijack; just excited that I got to explain all this. :slight_smile:

I guess I always thought that the game shouldn’t necessarily end once the snithc was caught. It seems that if you were develping a game like this you would make it so that the rule would be something more to the effect, “Catching the snitch shall be worth 150 points. If this is enouht to put the team in the lead then the game shall be deemed over. However, if the team catching the snitch does not go into the lead, then the snitch shall be rereleased for another attempt at re-capture and this rule shall be re-invoked upon it’s capture.”

Maybe I have thought too much about it :slight_smile:

Something I noticed about the supposed Satanism angle – when they were talking about that old alchemist who created the sorcerer’s stone (forgot his name, “Neil” something?) they said he was “665 years old last year.” HMMM how old is he NOW I wonder??

Until now I thought the Satanism controversy was a load of hooey but doesn’t that seem a little too explicit?

And wasn’t there supposed to be a Star Wars EP2 trailer? They sure didn’t play one at my showing…although they did play the LOTR trailer, but it was exactly like the one I downloaded months ago.

It’s Nicolas Flamel.

Well, it would depend on the month. If my birthday were in December, adn I turned 665 last year, I’d still be 665.

I already want to see it again to catch the finer points, lol.

After reading bean_shadow’s post, I have to agree that more Neville would have been nice. It would better explain his role in the end of the movie.

Yeah, I thought the scenes all seemed “cut off,” as though the movie was in a dead hurry to get on with it. Of course, my husband (who hasn’t read the books) didn’t notice any of that.

Anybody else miss the crazy ride through Gringotts? I guess that would have been too expensive to set up and film. Would’ve been fun, though.

I didn’t think Hermione looked right at all (she’s very pretty, and she’s supposed to be rather plain) but she got the personality right on. Not really bratty (that’s Dudley), more good-hearted but bossy and sort of a know-it-all. Ron stole the whole show, IMHO.

They didn’t explain Quidditch too well, did they? Oh well, I guess the finer points aren’t necessary to enjoy the scene. That part was EVEN BETTER in the movie than I imagined it from the book! Amazingly cool!

There was a lot left out, I suppose to avoid overexplaining and taking too much time. Oh well, the book is always more complex than the movie, isn’t it…they didn’t mention, for example, that each of the protection spells for the Stone was done by a different professor…or who the other ghosts are. I guess those were just cameos for Those Already In The Know.

I asked my hubby if he understood the plot, given that I already knew what was going to happen. He said, quidditch was a bit fuzzy, although it looked great, and he didn’t catch most of the names, but he could follow the plot easily. Afterwards, he didn’t believe the movie was over 2 hours! A good sign, I think.

And, darn it, I always said “ALohoMORa” not “aLOhoMOra.” Mustn’t argue with Hermione though.

And lastly…didn’t the first book reveal who had sent Harry the Invisibility Cloak? Or was that revealed later? They never said in the movie.

Gonna see it again, if only for the Quidditch match!!

Sorry, forgot to mention: we need more Fred and George! And Percy was so pleasant and helpful! Weird, eh?

I went to the theatre at lunchtime today to buy tickets for the 4:15 performance. I took my two sons (ages 5 and 9.)

I thought it was very well done, and stayed true to the books. My sons and I enjoyed it very much. I don’t know if others who haven’t read the books will have the same affection for it that we did, though. I found the books truly enthralling to read, and got very wrapped up in the stories while reading. I don’t think that the movie, on its own, is quite the equal to the books. I think it is still a very enjoyable movie for someone who hasn’t read the books; I just think that it’s not quite as engaging, and may leave many of the people who haven’t read the books wondering why the readers fell so in love with them.

Several of the characterizations were spot-on. Ron Weasley and Draco Malfoy were just as I had pictured them, and Hermione was very good (though prettier than I’d pictured her.) I think Dumbledore was very good, and again, though Hagrid was not quite as I’d pictured him, he was well done. (Although I think they overdid it a bit on his catch-phrase of "Oh, I guess I shouldn’t have said that.) I thought Fluffy was beautiful, and I wish we’d had a chance to see more of Norbert. The scenes in the great hall were absolutely stunning and very close to what I had visualized from reading the book. I don’t see how an author could be more pleased by the attention to detail that was given to her books on the visual end of things. (Though, like others, I felt Hermione’s contribution in assisting Harry at the end was given the short shrift.)

We all thought that the owls were cool, but I was a little disappointed that nobody received a howler.

My 9 year old and I are both big fans of the books. They’re what really inspired him to start enjoy reading recreationally last year in second grade. We both feel a twinge of regret, though, that my younger son won’t get quite the same thrill from reading them since he will already have seen the movie. (Oh well. Maybe he’ll be reading them before the third movie comes out…)

I just got back from an 8:00 showing of Harry Potter. Kinda last minute, but that’s okay. I went with a batch of friends who are, to put it mildly, obsessed. (Even worse than me, which is really saying a lot)

We had our hopes running pretty high and the movie reached most of our expectations. I agree that a lot of the scenes seemed cut off, but I would not have noticed if I hadn’t read the books. (I have much more memorized than I thought, apparently) One of my friends and I were quite disappointed that Sirius Black was not mentioned in connection with the flying motorcycle, as we wanted to hear how his name was pronounced. :slight_smile:

Snape was a bit out of character, as was Hermione. Hermione had a nice/mean thing going on for a little while. It was confusing. Some of Snape’s lines just didn’t work with his character. Can’t be evil if you’re wishing your least-liked pupil luck.

The stone scenes were a bit overdone, I think. Flames in the doorways? A bit much, really. Just seemed more stereotypically demonic than anything. I didn’t like them much. I closed my eyes. I can’t imagine the movie for the 4th book now. If the first book is this horrific, what’s that one gonna be like?

But, all in all, I liked the movie a lot. (5 out of 6 teenage girls agree: Oliver Wood needs more screen time in the next movie.) I’m going to see it again on Tuesday with some classmates of mine. They’re recent converts and don’t quite have the books memorized yet. Those reactions should be interesting.
jessica

I don’t even know where to begin. It was fantastic! I am a huge fan of the books (I’ve read the first one twice now). I was a bit bummed about some of the little differences (Hagrid tells Harry more about his wizard past while still in the shack with the Dursleys), but I saw everything I was hoping to see. A few thoughts:

  1. The Quidditch match was even more exciting than I could have ever hoped! The way they were flipping around and dodging the bludgers…that was amazing!

  2. They must have drawn Ron straight from my imagination. Where did they find that kid? He was awesome, and just as I pictured him.

  3. Hagrid…unbelieveable! Robbie Coltrane did an excellent job! He was better than I could have ever wished. From the moment his motorcycle appeared, I was astounded.

  4. Hermione stole the show, IMHO. Emma Watson is a great actess and totally played Hermione for all she’s worth (which is quite a bit…she’s one of my favorite characters). I was a little disappointed as well that her role in the end was diminished. I really wanted to see her shine.

  5. John Hurt was great as Mr. Ollivander. He made that part even more interesting (IMHO) than it was in the book, and I didn’t think that was possible.

  6. I was afraid that Voldemort would look cheesy. I was pleasantly surprised.

  7. The chess game was incredible!

Okay, I am running out of adjectives and I’m rambling now. Suffice to say, they did a helluva casting job, the special effects deserve an award (I’m still reeling from that Quidditch match!), and it lived up to every expectation. I am seeing it again on Sunday :slight_smile:

Oh, one more thing: Fang? I want that dog (er…boarhound).