In Defense of the Harry Potter Film Franchise

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I am just pissed by the recent movie. They could of easily added an intermission and put the rest of book on in about an hour. It was not that long. I have watched long movies/shows and that was not one of them.

 

[Enigma6667]

I call bullshit on all of the fanboys who hate them because of how they "changed shit" and how one user on here wished for a "7-hour movie".

It's a movie, not a book, and as such, a film should stand by its own merits. In comparison to alot of adaptations I've seen, the Harry Potter series is quite possibly one of the most faithful adaptations ever made. All of the changes were necessary to the pacing, the structure, and the overall entertainment value.

If an adaptation cuts stuff out while at the same time, managing to still keep everything engaging and accessible for the newcomers, than it's done it's job, and it's done it well. They're not my favorite films, nor are they my favorite books, but you have to admit just how well-made and well-crafted they are.

 

[MassiveGeek]

I like some of the movies, particularly the first one because of the very impressive impact it makes by being the first, and also the third one because it is just awesome, the visuals and the characters are really getting into it by now and growing as they go.

Then the movies(and the books) start turning more into teenage drama, which for me is a turn off - but you can't deny the visuals or Rowlings fantastical writing style.

Personally, I'm just rather tired of Harry Potter by now. It's an awesome book series, some of the movies are really good, blah blah. But I can keep drinking the same drink forever, eventually it'll just not be as appealing.

First and third, both movie and book, nommy nommy nommy.

 

[Wow they sure are generous with the usernames]

I personally am against movie adaptations of books in almost all cases. There is so much lost in the transition that it is almost never worth the final product. All the passive descriptions that help formulate the images in the reader's mind are given over to actual depictions, leaving the the person watching to spend less mental work on the experience, which in my opinion reduces the emotional attachment to characters. Only in a select few cases can movie adaptations be very good, and these are when the something is substituted for the ambient narrative (e.g. The Lord of the Rings, where five page descriptions about trees was replaced with massive and well-done battle scenes). Also, it can't help but feel like lazy screenwriting. It obviously is a challenge to compress a lengthy book into a watchable-length movie but it's much harder to create a completely original work. What I think filmmakers should do is make more movies based off the books they're taken from. Imagine a movie about wizards and witches in the Harry Potter universe that introduces us to completely new characters, is paced the way a movie should be paced, and still gains the benefit of being tied into a great book series. Everyone is happy: the filmmakers make money, the fans of the books get a film experience without losing anything the books provided, and the haters of the books might even find something to like in the movie, seeing as it would have different characters and plots and all.

 

[Canid117]

Wait there was Harry Potter hate on the Escapist before? I had never seen any until this thread.

 

[Infinatex]

Also, I once went to a midnight showing where they served butterbeer. There are very few situations in which that's appropriate, and the seventh of those situations opened in theatres today.

Hey nice! I finally saw the latest film last night and they had Butterbeer on the menu there too! It goes without saying that I got one because hey, when will I ever get a chance to do that again!

(yes it was pretty damn tasty!)

 

[Vampire cat]

Harry Potter hardly needs defending, it's become so huge it's scary thinking about it. And I never hear anything bad said about it. I do not know a single person personally that dislikes Harry Potter, be it the books or the movies.

I think why the latest movie hasn't got much attention is that there's been a bunch of them now. It doesn't feel any newer and fresher than another episode of CSI: Miami when your told theres a new HP movie, at least when you don't know how it goes from having read the book.

Personally I'm pleased that HP seems to be drawing to a close. Maybe I'll finally get around to watching all of the movies. I have yet to see one I didn't like, but for some reason haven't been all that motivated to watch most of them..

 

[Dimensional Vortex]

J.K. Rowling is a terrific storyteller.

And this is where you lose credibility, because for the first four books her writing was absolutely atrocious. Compare it to some legitimately good books like Speaker for the Dead or the Pendragon series, and you'll see my point. Obviously there are some writers significantly worse than her *coughpatrickcarmancough* but she's not nearly as good as people say she is.

It has so many genres: fantasy, supernatural, romance, horror, tragedy, action, adventure, school life, mystery, and a bit of slice of life.

But no thriller... wait, mystery? Since when?

Maybe she is not a great book writer but at least her books aren't dependent on large words and grossly boring topics which will make the reader feel smart when they read it but they slowly die inside, but she can at least make an environment were most of her readers love and wish they could be apart of it, so she may not be as smart as or as good as some other writers but her imagination in writing is what I would rather read in a book than anything else.

Well, sorry you can't handle an adult-oriented book. Your loss.

I can handle Adult-oriented books and in fact I have read some of them but at the end of the day I read a book because I either want to learn something or to throughly enjoy the read and be immersed in the book and thats why I enjoy reading Harry Potter.

P.S. I'm not going to read an adult book just so I can say that I have read an adult book or to make myself feel smart.

 

[Neferius]

The most ludicrous arguements brought against this Franchise are, not surprisingly, Religious ones :-/
As it seems the very mention of Black-Magic and Witches/Wizards still resonate with the word Satanism in many peoples minds.
Whether or not the majority of those people are Christian fanatics is another debate altogether, and one which is not worth delving into at-that.

My Point is, this is NOT the Middle-Ages anymore, when God and his arch-nemesis Satan ruled the Land and fought over your immortal Soul, and the only cure for Satan was to be burnt alive at the Stake.
This is the 21 century. Science and Politics are what shape the World today; and although the world is still far from perfect, I still believe we've come too long a way than to devolve back into mindless Peasants and religious Zealots.

 

[beniki]

People give the books too much credit, and the movies too little. Poor guys took a universe with silly names and made it halfway plausible. And that theme music? Rowling sure as hell can't set a scene as well as that can.

 

[Champion Head Boy]

J.K. Rowling is a terrific storyteller.

And this is where you lose credibility, because for the first four books her writing was absolutely atrocious.

You're right, Rowling's writing wasn't very good in the beginning, and it never got to any particularly artistic level, but the point you're missing, and the point Elizabeth is making, is that good writing and good storytelling are different things. Rowling is a good storyteller, in that she has a fully imagined world with tons of detail, and immersive atmosphere. She is not an especially good writer, in that her language, voice, and style are undisciplined and at times, a little awkward.

While Rowling may never have personally intended her books to marketed to children, her publishers were smart to do so because she tells complex stories in simple writing. Kids can appreciate a complex story if it is told at their level, and once they have developed a taste for it, when they are more accomplished readers, then they will recognize the faults in Rowling's writing and know to appreciate better writing when they find it. I read the first Harry Potter when it came out and I was a freshman in high school. Unlike then, I recognize the writing isn't really great now, but I still appreciate the experience as a good story.

 

[The Electro Gypsy]

I love the books and the movies. The reason the movies leave out details and cut over parts is because if you left all the important stuff in, we'd have seven (or eight), seven and a half hour movies on our hands. It's called adaptation because the stories have been adapted to fit the general population's idea of a decent length movie. And for the most part I like the adaptations.
And you actually LIKED Azkaban? That was really the only one I didn't like. It just drug on and on. And on. And on.... and on......

Errrr no, the films weren't accurate, hence my complaints. Also, Askaban was the best one, it was darker, grittier and just more entertaining than the others, it was also a very short book, so I dunno where you got the dragging on bit from.

There was also a fella earlier who said he's fine with seeing longer, but correct films, and so am I. It's just a shame the general public can't cope with using their brain, trying to figure out some of the plot and think that they're not, in reality, forced to sit there solidly for around seven hours, this is why it's "adapted" so poorly into what could have been a good media but was a downright failure, the whole story was reduced into this vague mess that had massive unexplained plot holes and was massing integral parts of story. Same goes with people not being able to read and get the actual point of something, but hey, why read when you can skim and be wrong?

You're also not taking into account that alot of writing in ALL books comes down to the author describing the scene or the character etc. At least getting the reader to use their imagination, but ALL of this has been done for you, you just need to look at the screen and bam, it's there. There goes a massive chunk of writing in an instant. Not that I'm compaining about that, since I found they achieved the looks, if nothing else, of the story relatively well.

And I'm tired and I've forgotten where I'm going with this. I'll edit the rest in in future if I can be arsed or don't forget.