Kevin's Watch

Wrong forum. You wanted to post this in the Star Wars forum, right?

LOL! So true!

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Matrixman wrote: What really was the point of this movie? What were the stakes?.

The Point was to make a hellfire load of money as fast as possible on a series of books that held four of the top ten spots on the NY Times Best Sellers list for over two years, before a new fad rolled along and people lost interest.

The Stakes were high !! Billions in potential income fro the first to capitallize !

D'oh! Now I see the point! Thanks, TRC!

The reason why they are so crap IMO, is that the filmmakers weren't doing it for their passion and love for the books... But rather for their passion for and love for cash...

Agreed. But the source material itself is was hardly conducive to quality viewing; the first book in particular meandered along with no sense of anything happening until the last few chapters, when genuinely creep stuff (for a kids' book) began to occur. Even the second still had that sense of directionlessness, but that seems to diminish with each book, so hopefully the same will be true of the films. Sadly, the books gain direction at the expense of focus - Goblet of Fire was one of the most needlessly drawn-out books I have ever read, and I am informed the Order of the Pheonix is even more so.

So I would have to say the unfortunate combination of an unenthusiastic adaptation combined with a somewhat comatose book is probably what scuppered the films.

I couldn't hack more than a couple of chapters of the first book (literally), and haven't bothered since. Therefore, the films seemed bloody brilliant in comparison!

CovenantJr wrote:Agreed. But the source material itself is was hardly conducive to quality viewing; the first book in particular meandered along with no sense of anything happening until the last few chapters, when genuinely creep stuff (for a kids' book) began to occur. Even the second still had that sense of directionlessness, but that seems to diminish with each book, so hopefully the same will be true of the films. Sadly, the books gain direction at the expense of focus - Goblet of Fire was one of the most needlessly drawn-out books I have ever read, and I am informed the Order of the Pheonix is even more so.

So I would have to say the unfortunate combination of an unenthusiastic adaptation combined with a somewhat comatose book is probably what scuppered the films.

hmmm... you haven't read the Order of the Phoenix yet Roger... You shopuld.... I think it's an excellent book, and you get to meet Umbridge... who is the nicest woman you'd ever meet...

I saw the third Harry Potter movie last night and I was disappointed. It seemed really flat.... no tension, no excitement nothing new that hadnt been done in the previous movies.

The LOTR movies got better and better as they progressed. The Potter movies dont. The HP books on the other hand do get better as they progress, although Im still yet to read the last one

This is definitely a case of the books being waaaaaaaaay better than the movies.

Matrixman,

give the third movie a chance. It's pretty different from the first two and far superior IMO - it actually feels like a movie.

I might be alone in this, but I actually liked the third movie a lot more than the first two. It told an actual story, whereas the first two, to me, seemed to more of a series of scenes from the books...

Add to that the fact that the first book itself was just a series of scenes...

duchess of malfi wrote:I might be alone in this, but I actually liked the third movie a lot more than the first two. It told an actual story, whereas the first two, to me, seemed to more of a series of scenes from the books...

Yeah, I think they should do in the Harry Potter films what they did in the Lord of the Rings films... that is... to have slightly different material... but the same story... It seems shoddy to me when scenes are copied out of the book...

I'm the other way. I prefer to see the scenes as they are in the book. The Shrieking Shack scene for example in PoA should have been alot longer and more in depth than the movie protrayed. Alot was left out.

On the whole tho, I love the movies. They bring Harry Potter to life, and I'm a big big fan of his story.

I worry about GoF though. They are going to hack it to death in order to put all that story into a 2 hour movie

I think the reason the Movies seem to get worse, is that the books each get longer--I found the first movie almost (but not quite) word for word, and scene for scene--by the third, in order to keep the movie at around the same length, they had to cut scenes...and since one scene leads to another in the books, they had to change the scenes they kept, in order to make it flow.

bah, the third one was 20 minutes shorter than the first two..they could have used that time to make the story alot more intelligible, and explain why hermione was gone and kept popping up out of nowhere all the time...and a few other things too...

If a film tries to stay to close to the material it suffers.

They're different mediums and they convey things differently.

HP would have been better had it been reworked a little more, IMnHO.

I've enjoyed all the films.

POA was my fave, COF my least fave. COS was a little better than PT but OOTP was very good.

Like the book, the thing I liked most about SS/PS was the introduction to the wizarding world. That first impact of Hogwarts as we see the First Years crossing the lake; the first look at the Sorting Hat, etc.

COS, meh. I liked learning about Lucious Malfoy and house elves. While I grew to love Dobby later, for me he was a bit of an irritant in COS.

POA...as I said in my post in response to the sinTempter in Flicks, like Zahir it is my favorite. For the films, not necessarily the books. And while I disagree about some of the decisions he made, I attribute that almost entirely to Cuaron. The darkness of the movie was perfect for the plot portrayed.

Also agreed on GOF being my least favorite, up until the graveyard scene. I do feel that was very well done.

And yeah, OotP would be my second favorite of those so far released. The thestrels, the prophecy globes, the silence of Sirius' end...

I felt the silence of that scene took what I saw as a weak point in the book (Jo, surely you could have done something a little more impressive) and wrenched our hearts with it.

I am anticipating HBP eagerly. The books only get darker from here on out. I do hope the movies do the books justice...