A note on the third Harry Potter movie
Jun. 19th, 2004 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
womzillaAs noted in my previous post, I'm working through a two-week backlog of Friends Lists posts, and a post from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
negativeq about the film helped me realize one thing that I quite liked about the film but which might be off-putting to many viewers.
nellorat said that she saw a number of reviews which said the film was pitched completely at the cogniscenti, that only people who had read the book could possibly understand what was going on. We have a solid counterexample of that in our own family; supergee, who has read none of the novels, had no problem at all following the third film. However, I do agree that the film moves very quickly from point to point and often leaves it to the viewer to make significant connections. The incluing is done at a ferocious clip, and people who aren't familiar with the
This does make me wonder how anyone is ever going to make an even remotely satisfying version of Order of the Phoenix. The pre-Hogwarts section alone--the first two hundred or so pages of the American version of the novel--could easily take two hours of film to handle properly. Maybe a series of films per novel, the Kill Bill of the wizardly world? I'm not as worried about the adaptation of Goblet of Fire; the plot in that is more bloated and less intricate, and I suspect it will compress down to a satisfying 150-180 minutes. But Order of the Phoenix--man, a lot happens in that, and almost all of it is important....
(As to things I missed from the book: I hadn't noticed untilsarah_ovenall mentioned it, but, yes, the shape of Harry's petronus isn't explained, and that's a shame. A bigger shame is not explaining the origin of the Maurader's Map. Either of these would have taken only a sentence or two from an appropriate character and would have, imho, added significantly to the film's development of the theme of Harry's deep-rooted connection to his father. But the film wasn't a poor one for those gaps, and otherwise I thought that the handling of the material for adaptation was very skillful. I wasn't sad to see Quidditch's role tremendously reduced, although Prisoner is the first of the novels in which Rowling can be seen to understand exactly how little sense the rules of Quidditch make. I also agree with Sarah's observation that the main characters spend far too much time in muggle street-clothes and not enough in their classroom robes.)
negativeq about the film helped me realize one thing that I quite liked about the film but which might be off-putting to many viewers. nellorat said that she saw a number of reviews which said the film was pitched completely at the cogniscenti, that only people who had read the book could possibly understand what was going on. We have a solid counterexample of that in our own family; supergee, who has read none of the novels, had no problem at all following the third film. However, I do agree that the film moves very quickly from point to point and often leaves it to the viewer to make significant connections. The incluing is done at a ferocious clip, and people who aren't familiar with the This does make me wonder how anyone is ever going to make an even remotely satisfying version of Order of the Phoenix. The pre-Hogwarts section alone--the first two hundred or so pages of the American version of the novel--could easily take two hours of film to handle properly. Maybe a series of films per novel, the Kill Bill of the wizardly world? I'm not as worried about the adaptation of Goblet of Fire; the plot in that is more bloated and less intricate, and I suspect it will compress down to a satisfying 150-180 minutes. But Order of the Phoenix--man, a lot happens in that, and almost all of it is important....
(As to things I missed from the book: I hadn't noticed until
sarah_ovenall mentioned it, but, yes, the shape of Harry's petronus isn't explained, and that's a shame. A bigger shame is not explaining the origin of the Maurader's Map. Either of these would have taken only a sentence or two from an appropriate character and would have, imho, added significantly to the film's development of the theme of Harry's deep-rooted connection to his father. But the film wasn't a poor one for those gaps, and otherwise I thought that the handling of the material for adaptation was very skillful. I wasn't sad to see Quidditch's role tremendously reduced, although Prisoner is the first of the novels in which Rowling can be seen to understand exactly how little sense the rules of Quidditch make. I also agree with Sarah's observation that the main characters spend far too much time in muggle street-clothes and not enough in their classroom robes.)
