Anyone who knows me, or has bothered to ask about my taste in books, will know that I have a guilty pleasure in the form of the Harry Potter series. I had decided, back when they first became popular, that anything reaching that level of feverish popularity, read by that many people, could not, in any way, be good. Then the mother of a friend forced me, quite literally (by shoving the book into my bag one day) to read the first one. I grudgingly opened the first book and, like magic, I was hooked. Now, don't misunderstand me, I may be a huge fan, but I was never one to participate in any of the crazy line camping. I did anticipate the release of each book after the third (since that was when I started reading them), but, come on, I wasn't an addict.
Now we come to the movies, which have been a fantastic disappointment on the whole. The only movies in the series that can actually be called good are the first and second. And by good, I mean passable. And by passable, I mean I watched them all the way through. The third movie turned me off with the change of Dumbledore (necessary as it was, they didn't choose somebody with even an iota of the talent the earlier actor had played) and a werewolf that seemed nothing like the one in the book (or even the standard idea of werewolves as being either big and powerful or more wolfish/dog-like in appearance). In the fourth movie, Dumbledore nearly throttles Harry after his name comes out of the Goblet of Fire, further showing how little the actor had read the books, which, upon searching, was more true than I had guessed. I found out that he hadn't studied the character at all, he played Dumbledore how he wanted to, and not how the character is actually written. A dangerous, abusive, angry Dumbledore goes against almost every encounter readers have with him in the books.
I can't remember what turned me off about the Order of the Phoenix, but that's a bad sign in and of itself.
Now we come to the most recent movie, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I had high hopes; the movie was taking a turn down a darker, more adult road. I'm a sucker for romance and the romance that blooms between Harry and Ginny was one of my favorites because you almost want it to happen from the end of book 2 onward. The movie takes this bit of plot, rewrites it with an inky scalpel and some frayed duct tape, and then stuffs the whole thing into the room of requirement (room of hidden things edition). Ron and Hermione's romance bit was done well enough, which is perhaps the only thing I can give the movie credit for.
One of the overarching problems that I have had with most of the movies is the lack of special effects. Yes, they've shown some things flying, they've shown us dragons, people on broomsticks, and the occasional magical malady or two, but the real lack of ambient magic in the movies makes the scenes seem like hollowed out versions of their distant book cousins. For a book series that has grossed as much money as this one, and for all the merchandising and movie sales, it seems odd to me that there would be no money in the budget for bigger, better, more vibrant, and more visible magic in what is supposed to be a magical world. Half-Blood Prince was no exception.
Let's talk about things that they just plain left out. The pivotal, action packed last scene, where the death eaters are fighting DA and Order of the Phoenix members, Snape whisking Malfoy away from the astronomy tower and out onto the grounds while the battle rages around them, Harry tearing past everybody in his efforts to reach and inflict serious harm upon Snape's person, was awesome...IN THE BOOK!
The movie, incomprehensibly, just leaves it all out. The death eaters show up, they do their business, and then they run away without so much as a single expelliarmus from any member of any army or order. Harry gives chase through empty halls, he gets thrown around, Snape says a few things, and the whole thing is over. Not only did this lackluster scene fail to communicate the desperate urge of Harry's to seek revenge on the man who killed his mentor, it was not climactic, it was not exciting, it was bland, it was the vanilla ice cream of magical climaxes. Then as if to underline the lack of a battle and the flippant mistreatment that his character received from movie 3 on, they don't even have a funeral for Dumbledore. One of the most important characters in the series with one of the most gut wrenching moments in the book and all we see is the school working together to make the dark mark disappear.
What about Grawp comforting Hagrid? Harry telling Ginny that they can't be together? Hermione crying openly on Ron's shoulder? The merpeople singing their song of tribute? The respect of the centaurs shown from just inside the Forbidden Forest? The white tomb where Dumbledore is laid to rest? A character that was central to pushing the story forward is given all the farewell fanfare of a red shirt from a Star Trek episode.
The next movie is being split in two but I have little hope that being 4-5 hours long is going to make me like it. They've left so many holes in the plot with the movies that they'll be forced to avoid certain parts of the final book. Horcruxes or Hallows? How are viewers supposed to know why Voldemort goes to Dumbledore's tomb? How are we even going to recognize it?
No comments:
Post a Comment