Currently, I am waiting around to go see the final installment of the Harry Potter movie franchise. I have always been of the opinion that the books are way better but the movies were always a nice way to relive the glory that was the books. And the movies become increasingly more important in the summer of 2007, when there were no more books to be read.
But I'm going to be brutally honest and say that, as far as movies go, the Harry Potter movies aren't all that good. Many may think this is blasphemy but lets look at a few points.
1. Without a doubt, the books are way better than the movies which effected how much one could really enjoy the movies. If you read the books, the movies are nice but you always know what's coming as far as major plot lines (which takes away from any real cliff hangers that occurred for those who didn't know what would happen next). Furthermore, you are always watching the movies and thinking, "Wait, that's not what happened in the book!" This perpetual thought process constantly deterred me (and others I would assume) from enjoying the movies' narratives.
2. The acting from the younger cast members was always questionable and though it has slowly but surely improved, it isn't at a high enough level to carry a movie. I'm sorry but Radcliffe and Grint were at times quite brutal early on. Granted, they were young and inexperienced and probably selected mostly based on their physical appearances, but they were never overly impressive, even in the later stories. Watson has shown the most promise of the three in my personally opinion but it still took her a while to get the hang of it. Meanwhile, you have experience actors like Alan Rickman and Gary Oldman which contribute to this strange talent gap between the younger and older actors involved. It made for a strange juxtaposition which was, at times, very distracting.
3. The fact that over an 8-movie span, 4 different directors were used creating a drastic change in vision and tone. This lead to a change in the approach to characters, appearance of costume and scenery, and use of dialogue that often left the series too segmented for my liking. While Rowling's tone and approach were constants in the books, the direction of Columbus or Yates or Cuaron or Newell were splattered across the narrative of Harry's schooling. It really bothered me at times. Some of the installments were a lot darker than others. While this could be contributed to the books getting darker over time, it is always pretty easy to tell which movies were directed by different people. One consolation is that Yates did direct 5-7b which gave the darker part of the series a more consistent vibe but I thought that the director merry-go-round always detracted from the success of the series.
4. In my honest opinion, the Harry Potter books, even with all their action, plot twists, and range from moments of humor to strong sentimental emotion, aren't the best books to adapt to film. They are too long, at parts are lacking in action too much (basically the middle part of all books don't translate well to the big screen besides Quidditch matches which were often not shown in the films), and create too complicated of a world to fully illustrate in the limited amount of time available to the directors. Vital parts in most of the books' stories were often omitted due to length. People who have only watched the movies can easily get lost (especially in the latter stages of the series) while essential parts of the narrative are explain either too quickly or not at all. I think this seriously decreased the quality of the films by making them seem, at times, thrown together and disconnected. The reason (besides money) that the final book was split into two movies was everything happening was so important, that they knew they couldn't just cut out things within the narrative like the did in some of the earlier books. Everything happening in the last one is so important to the story line, the only option was to either create a 5 hour movie or two parts.
Most people probably won't agree with me and that's OK. The billions of dollars in worldwide gross Harry Potter continues to collect (which I also contributed to) would contradict my uneasiness to declare the movies "good." But when comparing the HP series to another popular epic novel(s) adaptation like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, one was obviously done a lot better than the other. Granted, Peter Jackson only had to adapt three books (as compared to seven) but the acting, cinematography, and storyline were just superior in every sense.
Regardless of these opinions of mine, I continued to watch all the movies. I went to theaters to see all of them (except for the Half Blood Prince, I can't remember why). And I'll admit I enjoyed them. But I don't think they are really all that good.
No comments:
Post a Comment