Ask Daily: Which Harry Potter movie so far is the best adaptation of the book its based on?

Dec 04

JeremyMovies , Comments Off

Question:  Which Harry Potter movie so far is the best adaptation of the book its based on?

Answer:  Hmmmm.  Tough choice.  What does “best” mean?  For my money, the first two were the most faithful to the source material, but I’m not sure that means “best.”  The characterizations and plots were taken straight from the books with little change.  I thought they did a good job with compressing the story down and relocating a scene here or there so that important material was still covered.  But I don’t think they are the best entries in the series because the child actors simply weren’t mature enough to have any real level of craft yet.

I can tell you right now that the fourth (Goblet of Fire) was the “worst” adaptation; there’s no question of that in my mind.  A lot of the plot decisions were questionable in my mind.  They kept Rita Skeeter in, but made zero use of her or her subsequent plotline, which I think they did solely because they announced Miranda Richardson’s casting before the script was even written.  As a result, they cut Dobby who plays such an important role later on.  And that was just the beginning of bad choices.  To me, this film is the Star Trek: Generations of the Harry Potter movie world.

Accordingly that leaves me with two choices for the best adaptation:  the third or the fifth.  I think I shall have to choose the fifth (Order of the Phoenix) because such a long novel required so much adaptation to fit in two hours on screen.  The script for this film showed the finesse that the fourth film did not.  The important plot points were all met or exaggerated in a way that made them real visually.  I mean, the wall of Umbridge edicts was just amusing and the visual effect of them smashing to bits was great.  The production team chose to highlight all the right pieces and cut away the additional plotlines that didn’t serve the core of the film franchise.  Yup, number five is definitely my choice so far.  We’ll see about the coming attractions.

Potter Gets Pushed Off to May

Aug 15

AndrewMovies , , Comments Off

Script problems on the last two installments of Harry Potter (both from the same book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) has forced the studio to move back the release date of the next installment, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. A strange move, chalked up officially to a desire to release the flick during the summer rush.

Clearly, that explanation is just fluff. Usually when studios move movie releases, it is because they either don’t want to compete with a movie opening at the same time, or they do want to compete with another movie opening at the new release time. But any Harry Potter flick would blow any movie out of the water regardless of the time of year, even if the film sucks.

The script problems were attributed to the writer’s strike that last 3 months (and didn’t affect the Half-Blood Prince), but maybe the real story is that Warner Bros. is having a harder time than expected of dividing Deathly Hallows into two fully-formed movies. It’s been done (Kill Bill comes to mind) and done well, but there was already a lot of consternation about splitting Deathly Hallows in two. Even more interesting, the release date for the first movie installment of Deathly Hallows is unchanged. It’s still November 2010 (though that date is officially “tentative”).

Another plausible reason for the delay: Half-Blood Prince the film isn’t as strong as they would have liked (the book is a bit of a throw-away) and they need another 8 months to shore up some of the editing.