While what you say might apply to others, I do know Rowling’s characters as written. I do know the course of the story. I’ve read the books multiple times and will be in line at midnight to get the last one. But I also have the perspective of someone who saw 4 of the 5 movies without having read the books, and I had/have no problems with what appeared onscreen. I’m re-reading Order of the Phoenix right now, and will re-read Half-Blood Prince in this next week. On every page of OOTP are things that were cut out of/changed in the movie, but it doesn’t bother me. That’s because I have the book, and I can open it at any time in my life to experience Rowling’s original version.
I don’t accept the mythical attitude of “If you aren’t bothered by the changes/deletions/additions in the movies then you’re not a real fan of the books” (not quoting you directly of course, but it’s an attitude I’ve been aware of for a couple of years now). I reject that attitude absolutely. It was the movies that got me to read the books! They’re different. I accept that. I accept it in the same way I accept that the Lord of the Rings movies are different from the Lord of the Rings books (though Jackson changed a hell of a lot more in his version than the Harry Potter writers/directors).
I’m glad that you generally like the movies, and I do understand your problems with the movies. But not every book fan feels that way.
It’s hard to watch the (de-) evolution of Dumbledore, but I think it’s good for the series. In each movie, as Harry Potter ages and matures, Dumbledore sheds a bit more of his aura of calm/invincibility, as though the 15-yr-old Harry sees more of the real man than the starry-eyed 11-yr-old could.
The final battle in OotP is the last time that Dumbledore will save the day. It will soon be time for the protege to step up and eclipse the master.
It’s in the scene at the cave. The locket was at the bottom of a cauldron filled with some potion. To get at the locket, Dumbledore had to drink the potion. After the first few mouthfuls, Harry has to force Dumbledore to continue drinking.
Words dictated by script, yes–but actions? That is up to the director and the actor. The script may say Dumbledore turns to face Harry, but the manner in the motion and the body language etc --those are up to the people involved.
There is tons of interpretation (I didn’t say improv) with scripts done–a good scene in a movie that shows this is in Tootsie, where Terri Garr is trying to “do” the Southern soap opera star (audition). There are a million ways to deliver the lines that she does-and they show her trying many of them. Dustin Hoffman is there to “piss her off”.
The escape of Bellatrix is in the movie, but it all happens in about two seconds, so it is easy to miss. After luring Harry to the hall where Voldemort will attack him, away from his friends, Bellatrix runs to one of the hearthplaces in the Ministery, crouches down and disappears in green fire through the Floo network.
In another in book scene left out of the movie. Hagrid fights his way out of the castle with ministry stun spells bouncing off of his skin. Giants, even half like Hagrid, are not just incredibly strong and durable. They’re magic resistant as well. I think an army of tree and boulder throwing magic resistant ambulatory buildings would come in handy no matter how retarted they may be.
Saw it yesterday. Didn’t think I’d get the wife to another one after we both thought that GoF stunk up the hemisphere.
I, too, as a non-reader of the books, thought it was the best yet. Other ones seemed to have prolonged action sequences just for the hell of it, ESPECIALLY GoF.
One thing that was bugging me:
Why was Grumpy Dwarf given so much gravitas in this movie? They really seemed to focus on him, and focus on Harry focusing on him. Or, am I just overstating it? Did he have a bigger role in the book, or in the next book/movie? Like he maintains some connection to Sirius?
Loved it. In a way, I liked it better than the book (heresy!), because so much of the book shows Harry being an adolescent, self-obsessed asshole, and that makes him unlikeable. Not so much of this in the movie, although enough to make him more than a goody-goody saint character.
Stuff I Liked Especially:[ul][li]Umbridge steals the show![]Luna Lovegood got it exactly. Spacey, more or less an outcast (apart from the DA), but not particularly upset by it. We didn’t need the whole Quibbler subplot.[]Harry’s First Kiss - full of that awkward adolescence, followed by the inevitable post-game discussion with Ron (and Hermione? Hmmm…I guess to make it clear that it is Ron and Hermione for certain, not Hermione and Harry).[]They actually did some business to show genuine affection between Sirius and Harry. In the books, they never spend all that much time together, and so Sirius’ death is sort of anti-climatic. In the movie, enough screen time shows them together that the viewer can believe they really love each other.[]Bellatrix Lestrange - creepy hot![]Arthur Weasley’s scene where he is wandering around clueless but impressed by a subway and a telephone booth, but then reacts as mundane to the Ministry of Magic with flying memos and elevators that go sideways.[]Some of the editing - Cho as the betrayer of the DA worked great as a condensation.[/ul][/li]Stuff I Didn’t Like:[ul][li]Some of the editing. I realize it was a long book, and much had to be left out, but if I hadn’t read the books I am not sure I would have been able to follow along. []The whole prophecy was dropped, apart from a token reference. []Kreacher appeared, but why? What is established in his film appearance that could not have been done with the same two lines in HPatDH?[*]The whole theme of betrayals was not dealt with adequately. Lots of HPatOorP deals with betrayal, ending with the major betrayal that Sirius commits by dying.[/li][/ul]
The Major One: [ul][li]They did not include the speech by Nearly Headless Nick about how death is final for the truly brave. This is a major philosophical and (IMO) dramatic point, because it means that death is real in the HP universe. It can’t be candied over and made safe by saying, “Oh well, now he is a ghost but still a major character”.[/ul][/li]
Still and all, a fine effort, and the omitted plot points were not significant enough (at least to this obsessed fanboy ) to mar the flow. I was a bit worried that I would not like the movie, and that this would spoil my enjoyment of the last book to some extent.
Trunk - Kreacher is Sirius’ house elf. He hates ‘blood traitors’ like Sirius, and does a lot to undermine his master, whenever his orders have a loophole for him to exploit. It is supposed that he will have a pretty important role in one of the plotlines of Deathly Hallows. (They wanted to leave him out of OotP, but JKR said ‘you’re going to have a hard time with that decision when you make movie 7.’)
I saw it and liked it - I’d give it maybe a B+. The two ten-year-olds I took to the movie liked it even better than Goblet of Fire, and I suppose they may be right.
*
Stuff I liked:* Luna Lovegood; simply perfect… most of the awkward Cho romance stuff was left out… we see Dumbledore’s Army learning to cast spells together… Daily Prophet headlines zooming by… Umbridge stole the show - great casting!.. her decrees being nailed to the wall by Filch on a precarious ladder… the Black family-tree tapestry… the Ministry lobby with its rows of Floo fireplaces, statues, fountains, and memos zipping through the air… maybe my favorite scene: Harry, Ron and Hermione sitting by the fire talking about Cho, and Hermione has the biggest and most realistic laugh we’ve ever seen from her, in reaction to Ron’s guy-like reaction to Cho’s emotional turmoil… Crookshanks nabbing the spy ear that Fred and George were dangling from the staircase… the unhooded Dementors in the passageway - scary!.. glimpses of the House of Black’s past house elves mounted on the walls of Grimmauld Place… those creepy thestrals…
Stuff I didn’t like: Grawp looked fake - even worse than the cave troll from Fellowship of the Ring, and those SFX are six years old now… not showing the shrieking portrait of Sirius’s mom… omitting the St. Mungo’s scene with Neville’s parents… not nearly enough Lupin, Moody, Shacklebolt or Tonks… not enough of McMonagall standing up to Umbridge (although their footwork on the Hogwarts stairs, showing the ebb and flow of power between them, was well done)… needed more Kreacher… simply bizarre that Harry would give Lucius the prophecy globe… Sirius’s death was handled too offhandedly (a flaw of the book, as well).
Two questions: Did I see one of the kittens on the plates in Umbridge’s office slip out to warn Umbridge when Harry, Ron and Hermione broke into her office? And why didn’t they still use the fireplace to access the Floo Network once Umbridge had been carried off by the centaurs and her minions were dispersed? Would still have been faster than going by Air Thestral.
Am I the only one who didn’t like the performance of the person playing Luna?
The actor tried hard to act spacey and weird–and that’s the problem. The actor’s “trying hard” showed through, making the character look like she was trying hard to be spacey and weird. But that is, of course, completely out of keeping with the concept of Luna’s character. She shouldn’t be trying to be spacey–she should be spacey.
I don’t know how to explain why I say she looked like she was trying too hard. Just something in her eyes–you could read right out of them “Need to be weird… need to be weird…”
[QUOTE=Shodan]
The Major One: [ul][li]They did not include the speech by Nearly Headless Nick about how death is final for the truly brave. This is a major philosophical and (IMO) dramatic point, because it means that death is real in the HP universe. It can’t be candied over and made safe by saying, “Oh well, now he is a ghost but still a major character”.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
No kidding–it preempts the discussion about Dumbledore’s possibly only being mostly dead. Trunk, in the book Kreacher is the one who sets Sirius up to die. When Sirius yells at him to “get out!” or whatever they changed it to, he takes him literally and leaves the house, going to see Narcissa Malfory (or was it Bellatrix?). They conspire to set it up such that when Voldie plants the “vision” in Harry’s head of Sirius captured and tortured, Kreacher will keep Sirius occupied so that when Harry inevitably checks up on Sirius, Kreacher is waiting by the fireplace to tell Harry that “Master is at the Department of Mysteries. Master will not return from the Department of Mysteries.” And cackles. This riles Harry and they race off to Save The Day, where they are intercepted by the DEs. Kreacher plays a major role, and there’s a speech by Dumbledore regarding the treatment of house elves, and while Sirius was never unkind, he regarded Kreacher as a servant unworthy of notice.
Yes, one of the kittens run out a cat flap, presumably to go fetch Umbridge.
Our heroes don’t go back to Umbridge’s fireplace to use the Floo network because (in the book) to get away from the members of the Inquisitorial squad, they had to perform various hexes on them, and to get back to the fireplace, they would probably have to fight another group of people to get to the fireplace, and might be stopped by a teacher or Filch and have to give tedious explanations etc. Also they all meet up somewhere in the Forbidden Forest so it would take them a while to get back to the castle anyway. Finally, flying on a thestral makes for more excitement than just stepping through a fireplace.
I thought they missed out what would have been a quick two-second joke, there. Only Harry and Luna can still see the Thestrals; a Ron (probably would have been Ron) clinging on to nothing in mid-air would have made for a good line.
Actually, that joke happens in the book. They have to boost the others up to the thestrals’ backs, and Harry thinks how weird it must be for them to be flying on nothing. Ron (I think it’s Ron) comments on it.
Also, another two-second joke I missed, when the kids get to the Ministry of Magic, they go in through the visitors’ entrance. The voice asks them their names and purpose for visiting, then spits out badges. Harry looks down at his which reads “Harry Potter, Rescue Mission”. This cracks me up every time.
I happened to see a wee documentary on telly the other week about the film - they had interviews with the girl and she is EXACTLY like that in real life. Apparently they did an open casting call for the role, she’s never acted before.
) to mar the flow. I was a bit worried that I would not like the movie, and that this would spoil my enjoyment of the last book to some extent.