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Well, fans of the books will be happy to see the final one split in two. So far I have yet to see any HP director top Cuaron's contribution to the franchise. He was able to stray from the plot a bit and make the movie somewhat independent from the book, along with adding some extra props that created a nice aesthetic to the film (i.e. the giant clock pendulum). It has seemed to me that the sequels following the third have tried and failed to capture Cuaron's style. I suppose I'll be dragged to see this, despite my misgivings about seeing films that are direct adaptations of books.

Here's the Japanese trailer [for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince].

New trailer [for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince].

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the biggest fail, followed closely by Goblet Of Fire (albeit the source material is arguably worse than Order Of The Phoenix).

perkizitore wrote:Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the biggest fail, followed closely by Goblet Of Fire (albeit the source material is arguably worse than Order Of The Phoenix).

Speaking of source material, these books were written to be movies. They are probably the most convenient books the producers had ever seen. Whenever I've tried to read one I've always had the growing impression that Rowling was not creating a world out of words but was rather transcribing the movie playing out in her head. Next time notice how often she records various movements--characters walking around desks or past things or people--that do not contribute an actual description of the character or the space. After a while you realize such movements are only noted because they are what you'd see if you were there, watching it, a spectator, and not because they reveal or enhance anything.

Concerning the movies: with the exception of number 3 (rather good) and number 2 (terrible), all of these movies seem exactly the same to me, same structure, same themes, same villain, same useless adults, same plot, same lessons. It's like someone took a late Bunuel plot, where you get the same scenario played out fifteen different ways, and tried to film each variation as its own film, and worst of all, played it straight.

Also I've grown weary of a world where the school books can eat you but Harry's never allowed to haul off and punch that annoying blonde kid in the face.

Hermione busted his nose in one of the books, can't remember which or if the film put it in there, but the kid did get the crap beat out of him at least once.

knives wrote:Hermione busted his nose in one of the books

Yes, she did that in one of the movies, too. I might have found it more satisfying if I wasn't acutely aware that they had the girl do it so they wouldn't have to worry about the consequences of the violence (be it retaliation or administrative punishment or plain physical/psychological damage).

Mr_sausage wrote:the consequences of the violence (be it retaliation or administrative punishment or plain physical/psychological damage).

Rowling actually did finally try to deal with this (with Harry and Malfoy) in the sixth book, though the movie toned the scene down considerably. If it played out as written, that one moment alone probably would have been enough to push the film to a financially unacceptable R-rating. In any case, I agree that the movies run together. Although I can see the business sense in settling on one director for the rest of the series, for freshness' sake I think it might have been a better idea to keep switching them out. Now they just seem to hire a new internationally renowned DP for each outing (Idziak, Delbonnel, and now Serra) and leave it at that.

To bring this back to the trailer, the vast majority of its content comes from what would have to be Part 2, unless they've drastically changed things. I'm surprised they decided to show so many "money shots" from a film that still has over a year to be released.

Two things turned me off of the Potter books the most: Rowling's long-winded descriptions and that exasperating way she has characters retell events to other characters ("Harry told Hermione of all the crazy shit that had just happened and Hermione was speechless by the time Harry had finished telling her about all the crazy shit that had happened."); and how utterly dull the title character is, if the books had just been about Ron and Hermione and their blossoming relationship/fighting forces of wizardly evil I would have enjoyed them much more.

The third movie was best because Cuaron didn't stick strictly to the text, something the other films have been too afraid to do. This last entry looks to be more of the same, I can't even tell the last three apart. Although I do love Rickman in the films, he's become the only reason I keep seeing them.

What annoys me to no end is how her characters act almost exclusively in adverbs. Adverbs, by themselves, are the least descriptive and helpful forms of character notation you can imagine. When someone says something "smilingly," what precisely are we to take away from that? How does one do anything "smilingly," and if one were to manage it, what kind of smile is it? Is there a meaning beind the smile? Is it empty, or full, or coy, or clear, or sinister? Does she mean the character is saying it with a smile, or is there some metaphysical or abstract quality of 'smile' the words have been imbued with? When you think on it, you realize you have no idea what it's describing.

Once you're aware of the adverbs, you cannot stop noticing their frequency nor help your rising irritation. From random pages from the third book:

"'How's scabbers?' Hermione asked, timidly, as they stripped fat pink pods from the plants and empitied the shinging beans into a wooden pail.
'He's hiding at the bottom of my bed, shaking,' said Ron angrily..."

"'Noble men, working tirelessly to help a new generation of law-breakers,' said Fred solemnly.
'Right,' said George briskly, 'don't forget to wipe it after you've used it-'
'-or anyone can read it,' Fred said warningly."

"'There nothing wrong with Malfoy's arm!' said Harry furiously.
'He's faking it!'
'I know that, but we can't prove it,' said Wood bitterly.'"

It's kind of addictive to keep finding examples and listing them. Anyway, the above, plus her continual cliches, makes the movies, however blandly directed, edited, and shot, still much sturdier examples of craftsmanship than the novels, meaning there's no reason to read the books at all.

Murdoch wrote:Two things turned me off of the Potter books the most: Rowling's long-winded descriptions and that exasperating way she has characters retell events to other characters ("Harry told Hermione of all the crazy shit that had just happened and Hermione was speechless by the time Harry had finished telling her about all the crazy shit that had happened."); and how utterly dull the title character is, if the books had just been about Ron and Hermione and their blossoming relationship/fighting forces of wizardly evil I would have enjoyed them much more.

Rowling can't even write a high school romance subplot. The Ron and Hermione thing has been lame. Blushing when their fingers touch? (okay, that was a movie touch) Pained grimaces when they're near each other? COME ON, 6 books and they haven't even gotten to first base yet! And don't get me started on Harry's "romances"...ugh. Cho Chang? Good lord, what a way to shoe-in and shoe-out a token asian character.

The funny thing is that it's actually more logical to put Hermione and Harry together because they seem to have the best chemistry of any pair of characters. Oh, but they're just "friends".

And Rowling doesn't understand a damn thing about male characters.

Don't get me wrong. They're cute books for kids but they are so rigid and formulaic that I wonder how people keep coming back to them over and over.

mfunk9786 wrote:

perkizitore wrote:Deathly Hallows

This looks particularly great, and this is coming from someone who thinks these films have gotten better as they've gone along (with the exception of the abysmal waste [or folly?] of a great director that is Prisoner of Azkaban). I found the seventh book particularly grating and difficult to get through and comprehend, partially because the glue that holds these books so firmly together is the location of Hogwarts and the interactions of the students and teachers within, and without it being there for a large portion I felt the book meandered oh so much. Even more reason to be excited for the films - everything can be edited for the purposes of telling a sensical and entertaining story - the cliffs notes approach to the other films (particularly the fourth) have benefited Rowling's rambling text more than any crazed fan of the books is ever going to admit.

Though I'm not really interested in defending Rowling (I was totally addicted to the books in an unhealthy way, to the point that I may never be able to accurately judge their literary merits), I have found the increasing Cliffs Notes approach to be grating and sadly un-epic. The films have come to rely on special effects sequences and not on childlike wonder and mystery. I completely agree that Hogwarts is the glue that holds the whole series together, and in only the first three films did I see Hogwarts treated as a castle that people actually live in. In fact, I saw this reaching an apex with the third film, which I'm surprised you didn't like. (I'm also surprised that you called Cuaron a great director - did you see Children of Men?) The main flaw in that film is that the kids have jumped from being wide-eyed 12 year olds to world-savvy 15-year olds, and the series doesn't recover. The fourth movie was supposed to be the turning point, not the third, so if Columbus had stuck around for one more and gave Goblet to Cuaron, that would've been ideal. The movies instead got darker and more violent at a faster rate than the books, which are just as much about schoolwork and high school social life as they are about Voldemort, even up to the 6th. That balance was lost by the fourth film, where Hogwarts has become a bland and drab place to be, defined more by its outrageous events than its inherent character. This only increases as the movies wear on. Not coincidentally, the chosen directors got less and less interesting (David Yates is the guy we landed with? REALLY?) while the dark blue Twilight-esque color scheme has come to dominate the visual style. Half-Blood Prince is perhaps my favorite book in the series, and the movie was not only drained of color and life, but ran roughshod over the major points that make the thing epic at all (nerd alert: apparating inside Hogwarts just cause Dumbledore is Dumbledore? Gimme a break. The whole point of that scene was that Dumbledore and Harry are on a journey, and they must walk to Hogsmeade and then apparate. By skipping that travel, and removing the attack on Hogwarts, we lose all dramatic tension and just go straight to the Dumbledore/Snape scene. BORING. And they replace that shit with a werewolf attack on the Burrow? wtf? And the relationship between Dumbledore and Harry was not developed nearly enough in Order of the Phoenix for any of the final stuff in Half-Blood Prince to make sense. And all the goods are IN THE BOOKS.)

So, in short, I wish they had stuck with people like Cuaron or even Columbus, and skipped the British directors of no repute. The departure of John Williams is an indicator of the decline. Instead of him, we get Alexandre Desplat and 3-D. Ugh. The first three movies are in my mind classics of discovery and wonder, while the remaining three are modern teen action/romance adventures with giant special effect scenes every 20 minutes. Yawn. Splitting the last one into two movies is a good idea. I wish they had started to do that with Goblet of Fire.

What bothered me about the depiction of Hogwarts in the third film is that the vast spectacle of the location is majorly scaled down from the first two films (or at least it seems that way). I could elaborate but I'd probably need to see it for the third time and I don't know if I have the stomach for it. And I can't help but completely hate the whole rastafarian talking bus thing. Woof.

No, you're right, that was terrible. Get past that whole nightmare and the movie is pretty darn great. Plus, it set a totally new tone for the movies, perhaps an unfortunate one: the characters almost never wear robes now and are constantly seen wearing hoodies (no rain in this part of Britain, tho) and jeans.

The ending is pretty horrendous, too. Eh, I'll make a list of awful things from that movie for you sometime.

Destroyed opening day box office records. The fourth one was the last one I saw. The reviews for this one have been uniformly great too. One of you whose kid or girlfriend are making them go needs to report back and let me know if it's worth catching up on the series and checking this out.

It's worth catching up merely because the 5th and 6th films are very strong. Haven't seen 7 pt.1 yet though, but you certainly wouldn't be wasting your time catching up.

I actually didn't like the fifth movie (which is the last one I saw). It's a million miles better than four, but like with the rest of the series it is hurt way too much by trying to stuff the entire book into a single movie which just makes things jumbled and takes out any emotion. The books aren't any sort of great art, but the movies are nothing better than a set of cliff notes.

The fifth tried to tell too much in too short a time. The sixth was great though as the director wasn't bogged down by the material and was able to inject some humor into a series that's been taking itself too seriously.

Saw the last one at midnight in 3D, and it was enjoyable, although the epilogue is still godawful (and having barely 20 year-old actors play middle-aged parents was a terrible idea)

Jeff wrote:Destroyed opening day box office records. The fourth one was the last one I saw. The reviews for this one have been uniformly great too. One of you whose kid or girlfriend are making them go needs to report back and let me know if it's worth catching up on the series and checking this out.

Ha! I have both dragging me to these. Honestly, I get lost in the plot details frequently at these movies because I've avoided the books.

This was my first HP in a theater experience, which happened solely because my 12 year old was desperate to see it since she read all the books and had seen all the other movies. I saw bits and pieces of the first couple of movies when mine or other kids were watching them at family engagements and whatnot, but never a complete viewing of any of them. We rented Part 1 last weekend so the wife and I would have an inkling of what was going on, and then read the wiki summaries of each book. we actually started out with these with me reading the first book aloud to her when she was 5ish and my wife at night, but that was so long ago I don't really remember much. We made it about half way through the 2nd before it just kind of stopped happening the way those kind of things do with the whims of kids' interests.

That said, I was extremely impressed with it as a film. It was a truly exceptional production with just the right tenor of grown up story telling and action that made it anything but a kids film. It almost seems as thought the films grew up as the actors/characters did. I recall the first couple seeming very cheesy and Nickelodeonish....but this was a straight up fun fantasy-action flick. Not a boring bit in the 130 minutes, some good laughs, and great large scale set pieces. Granted, I went in with very low expectations (something you learn as a parent ), but I was sufficiently entertained and it made me want to go back and watch them all. We deliberately saw it in 2D - the wife got a headache the last time we saw a 3D feature and I just think it's a waste of money, especially with those that are retrofitted like I read this was. I simply don't care about 3D.

I gather this is easily the best of the 8 films....but is it a LOT better or is it worth it to watch them all if you found this enjoyable? I'm sure my daughter would be all for it...

I still think Cuaron's is the best, but if you enjoyed this one then the others are certainly worth a look. The sixth one is well shot and perhaps the best looking of the series, it suffers from the same problem as the other later films of trying to pack the plot of a 600+ page book into a two hour movie though. But it moves quickly and is at times very funny.

One might suspect that the world-wide mania for all things Potter resulted in eight cheery, banal mainstream films designed to send it's pre-teen audience out whistling in the daylight. Columbus' first two films are dangerously close to this aesthetic (I would argue that CHAMBER OF SECRETS is the best film Columbus has made although that isn't saying a lot). However, when Cuaron jumped on board for the third film, it signaled a tonal shift which was honored by Mike Newell on the fourth film and, improved upon, by David Yates on the remaining four. Knowing nothing about the series, you would find the last three films especially to be among the most disturbing and frightening films concocted for a young audience. Both GOBLET OF FIRE and ORDER OF THE PHOENIX suffer from trying to cram too much story into a 2.5 hour running time, but HALF-BLOOD PRINCE settled down enough to work really well and the decision to split the final story into two films was something that was really needed - finally, we have the chance to slow everything down and spend time exploring the doubts and sacrifices the lead characters must make. I honestly did not expect ten years after the first film's release to consider this series among the finest children's literature screen adaptations, but it is.

To be fair, the books made a similar turn- it's possible that even without Cuaron's adding some artistry to them, the movies would have darkened as the books did.

Azkaban is far and away my favorite of the movies (thus far, haven't seen the 7s) but I think there's a defense to be made of any but the first two- Cuaron seems to have gotten the kids in the cast to act for the first time, and they continue to give real performances throughout the remainder of the series. I mean seriously, look how terrible Emma Watson is in the Columbus movie, it's painful to watch,