Entertainment Weekly has a sneak preview and one thing really bothered me. Hermoine is too pretty. She was pretty in the first movie, but at least they kept her bushy hair.
How is she supposed be transformed into a beauty in the 4th movie if she is already a cutie to begin with? What happened to the buck teeth? What happened to the “ugly duckling” pathos?
Why do I care so much?
Never too early to nitpick.
I think Ken Brannagh is a poor choice to play Lockhart. Brannagh probably would’ve made an excellent Lupin, but I always saw Lockhart as more of a Hugh Grant role.
Gotta disagree with you there, Why A Duck. Ask me, Branagh is perfect. I’ve already got a couple of scenes with Lockhart/Branagh running through my head, and they’re great. Grant would be okay, but he just…doesn’t fit. Feh, well. East is east, and all that.
As to the OP, I always felt Hermione was too pretty as well. I suppose, though, that it would be hard to tell an eleven year old girl that she’d make the perfect “ugly annoying git that we’ve been looking for! Oh, don’t worry, sweetie, you’ll get pretty eventually…”
By Hollywood standards, Hermione or whatever the actress’s name is, isn’t particularly pretty. She’s CUTE, maybe. If there is a fourth movie they’ll dress her up in a beautiful gown and make this her “coming out.”
In a way, this strikes me as being a more human way of doing it, anyway. What strikes you as being better character development; Hermoine magically becoming pretty, or Harry and Ron noticing for the first time how pretty she is, as a result of her just dressing up? Seems to me the latter is far more likely, and I’m sure every (straight) guy reading this can remember one time when he was about 13-14 where he saw a classmate dressed up for the first time and thought “Wow, why haven’t I noticed HER before?”
I agree on the Hermoine issue–she was so tranformed in Goblet of Fire that Ron and Harry didn’t even recognize her at first.
As for the Hugh/Kenneth situation, Chris Columbus was quoted in (I believe) this week’s Entertainment Weekly as saying that he’d considered Hugh Grant first but thought that too many people would be looking at him saying, “Look, there’s Hugh Grant!” instead of enjoying Gilderoy Lockhart. Personally, I think Branagh was an inspired choice, but he would be a nice Lupin, and we’d get to see him in more than one movie.
Oh, they will just pull the standard “wearing glasses and ponytail=ugly, take away glasses and put hair down=Babe-O-Rama!!” that all hollywood movies do. Either that, or they can introduce the new actress right at that point when Hermione #1 gets too old. That would freak out the kiddies.
Y’all will probably stone me for this, but…I always mentally pictured Roger Rees as Lupin. You know, the guy who played Robin Colcord on Cheers? He strikes me as just the type to play a gaunt, ragged, but competent professor.
So. Have y’all seen Dobby?
Dobby looks like those hideous paintings of little children with big sad eyes that haunted my dreams as a youth! Yikes!!
I think Rees would be great. Especially since he played the role in Men in Tights that Alan Rickman (Snape) played in the Costner Robin Hood.
BTW, that’s exactly how I pictured Dobby.
Same with me Why a Duck. That image is exactly as I pictured Dobby throughout the books. Just goes to show how good Rowling is at description.
Jman
I disagree…most heartilly. Brannagh is a) a great actor, and b) an exact phyiscal match for my mental image of Lockheart.
Grant is neither.
Never too early to start complaining, especially since it’s probably going to suck as much as the last one. That thing would have made zero sense to anyone who hadn’t read the books.
Not to be negative or anything
I always pictured Dobby as being chubbier and more pathetic and annoying. After all, you’re supposed to feel sorry for him, but wish he would leave.
To paraphrase Frankenfurter:
They didn’t make it for them.
ba ha ha ha.
I always pictured dobby as a more human version of my dog, a Boston Terrier.
Dobby indeed looks like that!
I dunno, I pictured Dobby looking more like a Keebler elf. But those big, sad puppy-dog eyes will work well for the obsequious little whiner.
P.S., where do you think JK is going with the house elves? It seems she’s trying to make the point that some beings like being subservient and it’s wrong to try to change the inherently servile.
That pic of Dobby in Ent Weekly kind of creeped me out.
I’m worried because IMHO The Chamber of Secrets is one of the weaker books. It’s really more of a Scooby-Doo sort of thing and of course
The person who he thinks is his friend is really his foe and vice versa, a lesson he still hasn’t learned by book 4.
and not very much on the larger plot of Harry finding his place in the world, coming to tearms with his legacy from his parents etc…
{heavy sigh}
I have read that Columbus is not doing any more after CofS as he want to move back to America.
GOOD, I think. Maybe some parts can be re-cast. Richard Harris’s turn as Dumbledore had me concerned for his health. I kept expecting him to keel over and expire. The Dumbledore I voice when I read these books to Michaela and kaylasmom is nowhere near as frail as that. Somebody call Albert Finney’s agent, please.
Actually, I understood what was going on pretty well. Not like the plot was terribly complex, or anything. However, not having read the books, I found the movie to be pretty dull. Especially the endless cameos of characters who were either more important in the first book or had larger roles in later books. Way too many pointless “Look, it’s so-and-so!” moments.
Gah, Kyomara, you underestimate people who haven’t read the books. When the movie came out, my girlfriend and I went to see it, and she liked it a lot, even though she hadn’t read any of it. She didn’t think it was boring at all.
Oh, and then a few days later, when it was rainy and gross outside, we stayed inside and read it aloud to each other in bed. Rrrrrowll!
Tenebras
I was more concerned about Richard Harris being around young children and corrupting them more than his health. I can easily see him teaching the kids how to drink scotch and play poker for their paychecks.
