Mehitabel:
Harry doesn’t say “Not!” – he says “Nox!” – which is the command to turn out the wand light.
Anybody besides me annoyed that they identified Warwick Davis’s character as “Wizard,” in spite of having gotten it right in the first two movies?
umm… “they” being the IMDB. :smack:
I get you now, Ethilrist, but I was starting to wonder what you were on about. Have to say I didn’t notice until you brought it up but it is quite a stupid mistake, considering they link him to all of the films. Maybe it is the fault of the credits guy, rather than IMDB. They have to put down what’s on the credits after all.
Sorry about the double post but I want to get this down before I forget again. The question has been asked as to why Draco Malfoy comes off as quite the wuss in PoA compared to the books. Is he meant to be that much of an enemy of Harry’s? I mean really, the Malfoy’s might have a lot of “respect” in the Wizarding world but they don’t really have much to back them up. I just think of Malfoy as that one kid you love to hate. All mouth and no balls, you know.
No, he was in the credits that way…I wondered about it myself.
I think that nockturnal_tick’s point about Malfoy is interesting, because it brings up one of the themes in the books: evil vs Evil.
Speaking of the books here, Draco Malfoy is a bully. He would be Harry’s biggest rival and enemy within Hogwarts in any “normal” situation. (Well, normal for a bizarre wizard world, but let’s not go off on that tangent.) He’s evil with a lower case e – a banal selfish evil, that just doesn’t like Harry, and would humiliate or beat him any chance he got.
Harry’s not normal in any sense of the word, though. He’s got Vold – er, you know who after him. Eeee-vil, with a capital Eeee and an unhealthy dose of malignancy. Voldy wants revenge, wants to take over the world, and wants to kill Harry, not just humiliate and beat him. Draco simply doesn’t rate.
While Rowlings has her faults as a writer, I do like this theme she tries to put in – there are some large Evils that takes everyone to fight, and there are smaller, more mundane evils that aren’t connected that have to be fought. Compare the idea with Umbridge in the fifth book – she’s a much bigger problem then Draco, but even she isn’t in Voldy’s league.
In the movies, they are so busy with trying to cram the big “E” evil plot line in that they don’t have time for the little “e” of Draco. So he gets short shrift, and doesn’t come across as well. I think it’s just the time constraint, and recognition that he has lower priority to the main story line.
(I just noticed that “Voldemort” said really fast with a bad accent sounds suspiciously like “Wal-Mart”. Anyone else notice this? No? Bueller?)
… and you would think that with nocturnal_tick’s name right there, having cut and paste it once, that I wouldn’t misspell it after that. Sorry, '_tick.
Something that kinda bugs me in this film is that whenever a teacher does a spell ( Snape stalking into a room) they don’t use any words. They just wave their wand.
It’s like they are telepathic or something.
Draco kind of reminds me of Biff in the Back to the Future movies: they both want to make friends, but they don’t know how and they can’t figure it out on their own. Draco’s head has been filled with so much “mudblood” crap for so long, even when it clearly doesn’t mean anything (Hagrid tells Hermione, “There isn’t a spell you can’t do”), that he can’t see anything else. He has long been established as the bully-coward type who brags about his father, his money and his family tree, but when push comes to shove he’s a sniveling, useless twit.
I did think Hermione’s socking him in the nose was a bit much (in the book she only slaps him), but hey, it’s a crowd-pleaser, no doubt.
NE Texan:
OK, I now see the post you’re talking about. I guess I didn’t catch on that you were wishing it wee in the movie; it just seemed to me you were listing it as a scene associated with a Quidditch game. My mistake.
In any case, I don’t think there’s a single disagreement in this thread that some very signifcant parts of the book were cut from the movie. Maybe they should consider doing the longer books as a “Vol I” and “Vol II” along the lines of the “Kill Bill” movies. I sure hope that there’s plenty of deleted scenes on the Prisoner of Azkaban DVD.
I imagine there probably would be. The problem is that these books are just getting longer and longer and having a Vol 1 and Vol 2 wouldn’t work, because you wouldn’t just need it for GoF, but also for OoTP and Books 6 and 7. If you simply had one long movie focusing on the main story and cutting the rest, you’d have a good movie, but one which may lose some of the subtext… but that’s what the books are for, right?
I thought PoA was by FAR the best movie because they focused on the story line and left the side stuff to the book.
I’d like to add that I think Book 4 will be worse than Book 5 in this regard. I think that it will seem like there is a lot more of book 4 missing than book 5. The reason I feel that way, even though Book 5 (Order of the Phoenix) has many more pages than Book 4 (Goblet of Fire), is that more unique (and plot-important) events happen in Book 4 than 5.
A lot of book 5 seems, to me, to be Harry moping around because they aren’t talking to him much, or him acting like a sullen teenager. I already feel that the book goes on too long about this (I kept thinking, “get on with it, already!”). They can show this much more visibly on the screen in a short time, so that’s many, many pages reduced to little screen time.
Book 4, on the other hand, has a lot of sequenced events, most of which (in my opinion, need I add) are important to the plot, making it harder to remove them. They’ll have to, anyway, to make it fit. I’m predicting it will feel choppy as a result, and will leave people who haven’t read the book confused at some point. I don’t feel Book 5 will come off as poorly.
I’d like to respectfully disagree with, um, someone (this thread’s way too long for me to go back and figure out who wrote what) that movie #2 was good in that it followed the book. The CoS movie was both bad and didn’t follow the book. Much of what made CoS bad was bad directing. There were awkward gaps and pauses that shouldn’t have been there. And many of the scenes felt like someone said “We need something to liven this up! Throw in some action!” But the action was so poorly done as to be boring.
Case in point: CoS’s Quidditch scenes. They were horrifically dull, and didn’t follow the action in the book at all. Malfoy and Potter zooming around the support bracing of the stands was sleep-inducing, and having seen them I can understand the “less Quidditch” camp. But in the books, Quidditch is exciting. When I saw the Quidditch in PoA, I though “Finally, a director who can actuallly direct this sort of thing!”
Another part of CoS that diverged from the book was the hanging-out-of-the-flying-car scene. Entirely fabricated; the book described the car trip as rather dull. Yet more action thrown in for action’s sake.
I agree with pretty much everyone that the PoA movie seemed rushed. It’s not surprising, since there’s a lot to fit in, and I went in wondering how they were going to handle the Shrieking Shack scene given that it was long and talky in the book. Folks talking for long periods of time doesn’t play well in kids’ movies. Unforutnately, they didn’t handle it all that well.
I was quite disappointed by Peter Pettigrew. I thought he was really wrong for the part. I couldn’t imagine him ever having been friends with Potter/Black/Lupin. I know he was supposed to be a hanger-on, but even that made no sense; why would they ever let him become an illegal animagus with them? Bad casting.
I didn’t like the new Hogwarts’ grounds much. While they were beautiful, they didn’t make a lot of sense in terms some of the action that goes on. In many cases you read of the characters seeing things, from the main building, that go on at Hagrid’s shack. It’s a bit hard to imagine with the new grounds. However, I did like the interiors.
I can understand the choice to focus on one storyline, but I was a little disappointed that the Buckbeak storyline was given short shrift. In the book it’s a big deal, in the movie it seems like an irrelevant side-story. Having Buckbeak’s impending destruction be important makes the end, when they save Buckbeak (which is inextricably linked with saving Sirius) be actually meaningful, rather than feeling contrived.
I wanted to see more of Madame Trelawney. IMHO, what Rowling is saying with her is that, even in a world where magic is as common as dirt, psychics are still full of crap.
See now I imagine Tarantino directing Harry Potter, I’ve got “Stuck in the middle with you” playing in my head right now. :eek:
As for the deleted scenes, it would be nice but then deleted scenes are always poor quality because of lack of post production.
That would be me, I think. The movie wasn’t good because it followed the book, it was just a better representation, IMO, of the story than PoA was. But then I would possibly sit through a 6 hour film just to get every single detail. I’m a sucker for the books in that respect. I don’t see why you thought CoS was any worse than TPS. It had the same direction, the same basic plot and as for the Quidditch,
CoS was totally better. You didn’t even see enough of the Quidditch in PoA, just a bit of Harry zooming around and dodging Dementors. But then that’s just me.
I think the look of Pettigrew was not only because mainly he has lived 12 years (?) as a rat but also because he is the dastardly traitor. While Sirius looks the part of the villain he has good enough looks to pass off being a good guy. Pettigrew on the other hand just looks like the sleazeball he is. As for the becoming an Animagus, that’s just the book, not the film. The point was he believed to have been good, but now that’s all changed.
You must have stopped reading around chapter 5, because book 5 is packed with sequential events. At least Book 4 doesn’t really have too many subplots: Book 5 is chock full of them. Hagrid’s tale, Grawp, Ron’s new position, the trial, the importance of Number 12, the DA, Harry’s dreams, Tonks, the hospital, romance plot for Harry, legilimancy lessons, all the stuff with Umbridge, OWLs, the sackings, Dumbledore’s escape act, the thestrals, Luna Lovegood, the Death Eater Breakout and the big finale (which has lots of different events), and the sad coda (which is the emotional heart of things). You sure you read the same book? Book 5 is great, and there’s tons and tons of stuff. Book 4 is the one that’s mostly focused on the competition without too much on the side.
Sengkelat:
We’ll have to agree to disagree about “bad,” but “didn’t follow the book”? In my recollection, the only thing from the book that was instrumental to the plot that I remember not seeing in the movie was when Ron (I think) was made to polish trophies as part of his detention, and that’s where the name Tom Riddle first turned up. And that was easily enough glossed over…I think Ron made passing mention of it in the movie.
I guess we just have different threshholds of boredom. I definitely enjoyed the action in CoS. I certainly didn’t notice any “padding for action”, except possibly where Harry and Ron take the car to Hogwarts.
Again…dull is a matter of opinion, but in what way didn’t they follow the book?
Just got the chance to see it tonight. I thought it was my favorite of the 3 so far.
As for the buckbeak flying scene. Instead of “I’m King of the World” I thought of Atreyu riding the luckdragon in The NeverEnding Story.
Heh. I never saw Titanic, but what I thought of was Alec Ramsey riding the Black in The Black Stallion. Even though I knew it didn’t capture Harry’s discomfort from the book, the scene made me feel happy.
P.S. Wasn’t it Bastian who rode the luckdragon? Or did Atreyu ride it, too?
Atreyu rode it first, then Bastian rode it when he unpussified himself enough to get with the program and save the (fake) world.