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The Harry Potter Discussion Thread

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Here you will find a place to discuss all things Harry Potter: the books, the movies, the theme park, anything.

I started off my HP with the first movie. My girlfriend-at-the-time's family always went to a movie on Thanksgiving, so in 2001 they went to see HP1. The theater's sound was really quiet, but I got enough out of it to know that I liked it. I forget where I saw HP2, but I remember HP3 blew my mind. The twists and turns throughout the movie showed that there was some real depth to this series. I vowed not to read the books, but only experience them as movies.

However, in the time between HP3 and HP4, I met my wife, who is a big fan of the books, and I knew that if I were to be able to spend any time with her in the next 7 years without having to cover my ears and yelling "SPOILERS!" I had to read the books. So from HP4 onward, I knew what was going to happen in each one. Or not happen, as most of the cases may be.

I loved reading the books, but sometimes I wish I could experience the whole thing as just movies. As for the differences, I avoid the "that's not how it happened!" feeling by treating the movies as their own slightly different continuity.

What about everyone else?

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Never read a single word.

Saw the first two movies because my wife is a big fan who has all the books and sees the movies as close to opening night as she can arrange.

Meh.*

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The first two movies are meh, I'll freely admit. So unswervingly close to the books, filled with scenes that are included just to say "see, we built it JUST LIKE YOU IMAGINED!" Even having not read the books at the time, I could tell that was the case.

Its with the third one that carp gets real. In fact, I think that the more freedom the director feels, the better the movie. I'd give the the third movie a try, TV's. It's one of my favorite movies in general.

Besides, there are Rifftrax for the first four. Well worth seeing if only for those.

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Isn't enough web space for my Harry Potter story.

"The other versions will disappear. Even the 35 million tapes of Star Wars out there won’t last more than 30 or 40 years. A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD version [of the Special Edition], and you’ll be able to project it on a 20’ by 40’ screen with perfect quality. I think it’s the director’s prerogative, not the studio’s to go back and reinvent a movie." - George Lucas

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EyeShotFirst said:


Isn't enough web space for my Harry Potter story.
Intriguing. Perhaps the short version?

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Good idea.  I think I was starting to take over the movie thread too much, lol.

There is a lot of good stuff in the third movie, particularly the artful visual presentation and the lovely music.  But I can't consider it one of the best movies because they completely chopped out all explanation of who Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs actually were, why they made the map, why Snape hates Lupin and Sirius, how Sirius escaped from Azkaban and how he identified Pettigrew as Ron's rat, and why Harry's Patronus looks like a stag.  I know it's a lot of information to present, but chopping it completely wasn't the answer, because without it the plot simply fails to make much sense at all.  Also, Hermione's characterisation is bordering on Mary Sue-ish at times, misrepresenting her actual personality, in part because any reference to her extreme stress at going back in time over and over to take so many classes was simply removed altogether.  Having her be the one to say "If you want to kill Harry, you'll have to kill us too" is just the last straw, because in the book this line was spoken by Ron, signifying his bravery and loyalty even with his broken leg, while the movie just makes him look fearful and goofy.

Pretty much all these mistakes are at the screenwriting level, and it's annoying because Prisoner of Azkaban is my favourite of all the books in the series, being the best written and most emotionally meaningful and nuanced.  Still, at least the music is so damn good, and the casting and so forth are splendid.

Of course, the third movie looks like writing gold compared to the fourth, which is a choppy mess whose plot ends up making even less sense from having a huge amount of essential material removed . . .

 

My association with Harry Potter goes back a long way--read the first four books in just a few weeks about ten years ago (I was 16) as a deal I struck with my sister; I read them in exchange for her reading Lord of the Rings.  At first I was sceptical they'd be any good, but I'd already fallen hard only a few pages in, and it got even better as it went.  It was tough waiting three years for the fifth one to come out, I can tell you!

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Quick question - which number film is the one where Harry faces off against Voldemort for the first time?  That's the last one I saw.

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Ok, I guess four was the last one I saw.

Still meh.

I suppose it's possible I'd be much more interested if I had started with the books first.  But that ship has sailed.

Anyway...

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hairy_hen said:


There is a lot of good stuff in the third movie, particularly the artful visual presentation and the lovely music.  But I can't consider it one of the best movies because they completely chopped out all explanation of who Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs actually were, why they made the map, why Snape hates Lupin and Sirius, how Sirius escaped from Azkaban and how he identified Pettigrew as Ron's rat, and why Harry's Patronus looks like a stag.
Well yeah, but I didn't NEED to know all of that when I saw it, and in the movie continuity none of that really enters into it. Sure, its disappointing, but unnecessary in the view of the movies as a whole.

At least that's how I see it.

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yeah,  I must be among watchers of the Harry Potter movies.    I liked the earlier movies better.    I have only read the first book, and that was long after seeing the first two movies.   Its seems to me that the later books were probably longer and more involved than the earlier ones.   I think the later movies try to squeeze in to much.   The results in that Harry Potter 5 and 6(I haven't seen 7.1, so I can't say if this is true about it as well) look very rushed.   Also, even though I haven't read those books, I can still tell that a lot got cut out.    The pace for those movies just feels too fast for me.   I wonder if it would have been better to do the Potter books as individual mini series.   That way, they could make each story run as long as they had to, instead of having to squeeze and cut everything into two hour theatrical releases.   I realize of course, that would me cheap special effects and what not, but it would allow for a more complete depiction of the books.  

 

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Well yeah, but I didn't NEED to know all of that when I saw it, and in the movie continuity none of that really enters into it. Sure, its disappointing, but unnecessary in the view of the movies as a whole.

You can follow the on-screen action without knowing those things, but much of the emotional resonance vanishes along with their removal.  "I saw my dad," Harry says, thinking his dead father had reappeared to protect him by conjuring the world's best Patronus.  Well, in a very real sense he did--the moment when the stag comes back to him and Harry realises that its appearance is actually that of Prongs, James Potter in his animal form, and he reaches out to touch it only for it vanish--well quite honestly that was one of the most moving scenes I've read in any book ever.  To quote TV Tropes, it was the Crowning Moment of Awesome for the whole series in my view; but in the movie that element is simply not there.

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Nothing that was cut out of 5 or 6 was too important to the major plot. I thought 5 was too slow (mostly because I had read it and was looking forward to the end), but did cut out a club Hermione started to stop House-elves from being treated as second class citizens which takes up a surprising amount of the book. 6 cut out almost everything to do with the Half-Blood Prince, which I would almost say deserves a title change.

I think the screenwriters did the right thing by looking at every plot point and asked themselves "Does this affect Harry or his battle against Voldemort?"

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I'm reposting this so we don't lose it in the Last Movie Watched thread:

HP7.1 really highlights a problem I found with the entire series: an almost complete lack of foreshadowing. When Rowling wants to bring in some element to the magical world, the book it's needed is the first and probably only book you'll find it. Portkeys? Introduced in Book 4, only because she needed a way for Harry to be teleported somewhere without anyone knowing who did it. Horcruxes ? Thrown into the end of Book 6, overshadowed in Book 7 by the Deathly Hallows which we don't hear a single word about until halfway through Book 7 where it takes the characters the rest of the book to realize that 2/3 of the Hallows were in Dumbledore's possession for years but he never used them to defeat Voldemort for good, and even gave one of then to an 11 year old boy! Thats not foreshadowing, that's needing a way out and using elements you already created in a new, completely unexplained light. I can't go back and read the earlier books and find some kind of hint that was there the whole time because there isn't one.

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doubleofive said:

I think the screenwriters did the right thing by looking at every plot point and asked themselves "Does this affect Harry or his battle against Voldemort?"

 I think this is linked with what you posted next: no foreshadowing.

The kids's's's''''s interaction with Snape seemed to be the first thing on the chopping block for most of the Book -> movie conversions.  And then given Snape's role in the finale... I think the movies so shortchanged Snape that it fundamentally changes how the viewer reacts to him at the end of the story.

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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I think a big part of the problem is that the film series began when the fifth book hadn't even been written.

It would have been far better for the series overall if they had waited until all seven books had been released - then they wouldn't have had to deal with the whole "If we cut X, will it affect Y later on?" thing.  They'd know.

Of course, WB wanted to cash in on the series ASAP, so they did.

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005 and anyone else who saw 7.1 and wants to discuss it:

I'm curious about Book 7, Movie 7.1/7.2 and the 3 Act Structure.  We can move this to the 3 Act Thread, but here's my simple question:

Does the 7th book have 3 clear Acts?  Does movie 7.1 have three clear acts?  In what way were the acts modified from the book to create 3 acts just for movie 7.1?

(http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Act-Breaks/topic/11489/)

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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well, I've re-watched the first 6 Harry Potter movies,  I am now ready to see the new one tonight.  

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If the seventh book has three acts, the second would begin with the trio going to hide in the forest, and the third would be all the stuff at Hogwarts.  So the first movie pretty much ends on a somewhat cliffhangery note while the second act is still going on.

 

Most of the HP dvd's look pretty good, but the sixth definitely got shafted on the transfer.  While the Bluray version is said to be excellent, the dvd is inexplicably soft, way too dark, and desaturated.  It was a bit dull-looking in the theatre anyway, but the standard definition image quality is dreadful for no apparent reason.  A fair amount of Warner Brothers dvd's have been rubbishy in appearace lately, which probably speaks to the studio just not caring about the format anymore.  This is very unfortunate for those of us who are not yet in the HD game.

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btw, that deal I linked to above was apparently a 1-day thing.  Price went back up from $39.99 to $69.99.

:-(

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One and five are my favorites. Number one has a real sense of magic about it, and it did cut out a fair amount (the non-duel at night, Peeves etc.). Five just had a sense of magic that I felt was missing from three and four.

Also, 7.1 was okay. Not fantastic or bad by any means, just kind of there. Although the one major thing they cut was VERY minor, being the whole "Voldemort-is-a-trigger-word" thing which explains why Harry uses you know who in this movie instead.

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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7.1 is great and all, but 5.1 is plenty enough for me.  Hell, even 2.0 has its place.

;-)

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bkev said:

Also, 7.1 was okay. Not fantastic or bad by any means, just kind of there. Although the one major thing they cut was VERY minor, being the whole "Voldemort-is-a-trigger-word" thing which explains why Harry uses you know who in this movie instead.

Just saw the movie (DH1) last night, and I was very pleased with it.  I'm reserving overall judgment until the last one comes out, and I can view Deathly Hallows as one long movie, but I really, really liked what I saw so far.

But you just reminded me about the Voldemort trigger, and now I'm irritated that it wasn't in the movie.  Damn it.  I was so happy with it, too.  :-(