bkev said:
Really, Gaff? It may be just a generation thing, but I've always found a lot of people preferred Columbus' take on the movies. At least for me, I know they feel more... magical. Less emphasis on dumb action movie trends - seriously, people, not even Harry Potter is safe from this stuff anymore! Although they were more liberal with what they cut than some, I felt they worked best as movies.
Feel free to disregard as irrational nostalgia.
That's the impression I got. Most people I've talked to regard them as amateurish and shallow. I never had a problem with his two films, although I don't know if that style would work for the later ones. Although I do have to disagree with the Columbus movies liberally cutting stuff. If his films had any tangible thing going for them, it's that they were the most accurate to the books of any of them. Granted, working with the shorter books helps, but putting them side by side to Cuaron's Prisoner of Azkaban gave fans plenty to think about, as they were completely different. Cuaron's was much more stylized and original at the cost of being much less faithful to the book and leaving out lots of pertinent information. It was when Mike Newell came along in Goblet that I felt a Potter film adaptation of one of the long books could be both its own identity as well as capturing everything important from the book. Order felt the same way to me. I never saw Half-Blood.... so I don't care.
And, yes, I agree that the first two films felt "magical."