Harry Potter and the Film Adaptations
There is a cliché that claims, “You shouldn’t see the movie until you’ve read the book.” The trouble is, that advice doesn’t really work in every situation. There are some film adaptations that come from best sellers that will draw the attention of those who (sadly) prefer to see the work rather than read it, or inspire those who don’t haven’t had time to read to pick up the written work and see how it differs from the film.
I admit I am a big fan of Harry Potter. The films initally attracted me to the novels and predictably, I enjoyed the novels more. My appreciation of the novels did not diminish my enjoyment of the film adaptations but with the release of the film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (HBP/f) last month, I can understand the criticism of the film.
The criticism I hear most often are for the films not directed by Christopher Columbus, Philospoher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone (PS-SS/f) and Chamber of Secrets (CoS/f); many key elements in the books were glossed over or omitted completely. Alfonso Cuarón’s adaptation of Prisoner of Azkaban (PoA/f) and David Yates’ Order of the Phoenix (OotP/f) and HBP/f are the Harry Potter films that receive the most raised eyebrows from both camps: those who read the books and those who haven’t. For example, the scene in PoA/f that reveals which of Harry’s parents’ friends betrayed them felt incredibly rushed. This is a sentiment shared by mostly everyone I know, regardless if they’ve read the book or not. There are similar criticisms for OotP/f and especially for HBP/f.
In the case of HBP/f, the film focused not on the backstory of the main antagonist Lord Voldermort but had a more scattershot feel to it: a little about Voldermort’s past (but clearly not enough), a little about relationship between Harry and Dumbledore, and a lot about the romantic relationships between Harry and the rest of his classmates. Voldermort’s backstory and the master/protégé dynamic of Harry and Dumbledore are especially important in the final novel The Deathly Hallows (DH) and I am curious how they will treat the amount of omissions from the previous film(s) as the producers adapt the final novel into two films similar to Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill (the producers claim this will allow them to wrap things up nicely).
I do not want to bash the treatment of the Harry Potter novels in film form though. I simply argue the films, since four different directors have worked on them, created a universe parallel to the one J. K. Rowling created. Similar to Rowling’s clever gift of dropping small hints in previous works that become major plot developments in later novels, the directors have done the same thing in the films. They are not the same hints since films rarely recreate the vision of the original work, but they have the same effect. Harry’s last words to Dobby the House-Elf in CoS/f (“Never save my life again.”) and Neville Longbottom’s discovery of the Room of Requirement in OotP/f are excellent examples if the producers of the film version of DH decide to follow the novel as closely as possible. Given that, I will still see the two movies when they come out during the 2010 holiday season and during the summer of 2011.
I admit I am a big fan of Harry Potter. The films initally attracted me to the novels and predictably, I enjoyed the novels more. My appreciation of the novels did not diminish my enjoyment of the film adaptations but with the release of the film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (HBP/f) last month, I can understand the criticism of the film.
The criticism I hear most often are for the films not directed by Christopher Columbus, Philospoher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone (PS-SS/f) and Chamber of Secrets (CoS/f); many key elements in the books were glossed over or omitted completely. Alfonso Cuarón’s adaptation of Prisoner of Azkaban (PoA/f) and David Yates’ Order of the Phoenix (OotP/f) and HBP/f are the Harry Potter films that receive the most raised eyebrows from both camps: those who read the books and those who haven’t. For example, the scene in PoA/f that reveals which of Harry’s parents’ friends betrayed them felt incredibly rushed. This is a sentiment shared by mostly everyone I know, regardless if they’ve read the book or not. There are similar criticisms for OotP/f and especially for HBP/f.
In the case of HBP/f, the film focused not on the backstory of the main antagonist Lord Voldermort but had a more scattershot feel to it: a little about Voldermort’s past (but clearly not enough), a little about relationship between Harry and Dumbledore, and a lot about the romantic relationships between Harry and the rest of his classmates. Voldermort’s backstory and the master/protégé dynamic of Harry and Dumbledore are especially important in the final novel The Deathly Hallows (DH) and I am curious how they will treat the amount of omissions from the previous film(s) as the producers adapt the final novel into two films similar to Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill (the producers claim this will allow them to wrap things up nicely).
I do not want to bash the treatment of the Harry Potter novels in film form though. I simply argue the films, since four different directors have worked on them, created a universe parallel to the one J. K. Rowling created. Similar to Rowling’s clever gift of dropping small hints in previous works that become major plot developments in later novels, the directors have done the same thing in the films. They are not the same hints since films rarely recreate the vision of the original work, but they have the same effect. Harry’s last words to Dobby the House-Elf in CoS/f (“Never save my life again.”) and Neville Longbottom’s discovery of the Room of Requirement in OotP/f are excellent examples if the producers of the film version of DH decide to follow the novel as closely as possible. Given that, I will still see the two movies when they come out during the 2010 holiday season and during the summer of 2011.
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