Consider this my review for HBP

[trinityvixen]

I can't really say that this wouldn't be a great idea. Obviously, we'd need a break of about a decade or two, and I don't think this could be reliably done with live action unless a lot of things about doing television change any time soon. But an animated series would be good, and it would do better than the films have done.

As for Half-Blood Prince, what can I say? I did not like the book. I think the movie missed a lot of points of emotional resonance--it felt rather like it was hitting marks, but not making me care that it did. I had a sorta similar reaction to this as I did to the Wolverine movie; I knew what was coming, and I couldn't get that excited about it. At least they managed to make the romance subplots somewhat bearable. I also credit Tom Felton with making me care, at all, about poor widdle Draco Malfoy. I don't think JK Rowling did half so well by him in the book, but she was hindered by not being able to show things he was doing from his own point of view. The movie, wisely, showed just how scary it was for him to be doing evil work. I did kind of pity him. Effective distraction, but still a distraction.

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the movie yet, don't know if I will. But my two big problems with the book, which are related to each other, are:
1 - The entire book is exposition
2 - The interesting stuff, with Draco, is off camera, meaning Harry goes through no emotional arc with respect to his view of Draco. Harry standing at the end of the book and saying he always knew Draco was a bad seed was just insulting. Why not let Harry (and us) see Draco's dilemma?

Rowling did really badly by her morally ambiguous villains, both Snape and Draco.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

As to your first point: it's funny that I came out of the movie going, "What happened to all that exposition?" like it was a bad thing. Seriously, there were quite a few scenes that, while my Potter timeline isn't as perfect as it could be, I think were left out and will make it all the harder for them to do even two Deathly Hallows movies. I won't say what got axed, but, yeah, much as I loathed how late Rowling left the exposition of the whole set of books, at least she, you know, got to it.

As to the second, like I said, the movie made the choice to let us see what happens when neither Harry nor the others are around. This was a powerfully good idea, as Draco comes off as the ambitious, grasping, yet ultimately cowardly creature we're meant to believe he really is. The threat on Draco's head is much more tangible, and it really explains why his mother is so desperate to secure Snape's help at the beginning of the story. Had Draco ever been as complex a villain before this story, it would have been even better.

Snape is better served than Draco by the books, though, oddly, in this movie, it is too obvious (I think) where Snape's loyalties lie. It seemed in the book that Snape allowed no question of his support for Voldemort in killing Dumbledore--the better to be the mole among the Death Eaters. In the movie, there is conflict and even regret. While that's fine if you know how it ends, it does give away the game sooner than the books do. (Unless you're one of the ones who never questioned but that Dumbledore was always right.)

[saikogrrl.livejournal.com]

I think this is an AWESOME idea, and one we also discussed after the movie. I would totally watch that. But it would have to be live action, I couldn't get as emotionally involved with the characters otherwise. But instead of Tony Head as Snape I would cast Alan Cumming. XD

I loved the movie, despite awkward moments like the trio tower scene, and their leaving out Snape's best moment howling don't call me coward. I think they are getting better at capturing the emotion in the books. Even though they skipped the dumbledore funeral scene (mistake), I was still moved by the wand raising scene. I'm not saying it's a perfect adaptation, far from it, but it is better than all the other movies, IMO.

And I loved the book! Teenage angst XD and awesome Snape moments, what's not to love?

[saikogrrl.livejournal.com]

Also why a decade? I think a couple of years, like the OP said...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

In general, with reboots, the longer you wait, the better the odds that the new generation will be receptive to the material again. Also, after about ten years of Harry Potter movies, people are going to want a nice long break. Having that time off leaves space for people to maybe forget enough about the books to support a TV show that would be more suspenseful if you don't know the story already.

And any reboot would probably have to change a lot of things, if only to keep people interested.

[saturn-shumba.livejournal.com]

Random thought: That article you linked too took a random swipe at Michael Crichton. That article is now my favorite thing. :D

The 6th book is my favorite, actually, so I was really looking forward to this movie. But then movie made me realize that the 6th book is really just a whole bunch of exposition. Which isn't really a bad thing. I still like the 6th book. But the movie felt vastly different from the book for me, something I've never thought about the movies, ever, and it's probably cause the exposition chunk of the novel wouldn't translate well to screen. I agree with them there. Also, I think they rearranged stuff so that all the punch will be packed into the two part finale, which I'm actually kind of looking forward to now. At first, I thought it was the biggest mistake cause the 7th book is my least favorite--it felt like JK was just packing in too much shit into too few pages--and I was hoping that a single movie would cut out all the bits that dragged. But the setup of the 6th movie made me think that the two part finale won't be that bad.

You make excellent points about Draco though. I think as the books went on, JK's distinct morals about what's good and bad became a bit ridiculous, especially considering the way she handled characters that were always a shade of gray. Draco? Ridiculous, and the movie did it better. Snape? Totally fucking ridiculous. She's very good at giving us a straight villan, but like you said, she obviously has no idea how to give us a complex one (Snape was her big effort, and I even thought that fell short.)

Which is probably why one of my favorite scenes in the 7th book is when Dudley and Harry reconcile somewhat, despite the cartoonish villainy of his Aunt and Uncle. It was probably the best villain turnaround in the whole fucking book.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

the movies give the story the short shrift and often require the audience to have read the books to follow along.

Honestly? I never had this problem. I read book 3 (and watched movies 3, 5 and 6) and haven't had any problems following along. Hell, I haven't even needed most of the stuff I picked up from cultural osmosis.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Random thought: That article you linked too took a random swipe at Michael Crichton. That article is now my favorite thing. :D

It's true: once you get the exposition dump that is the point of a Crichton novel out of the way, the rest of the story tells itself, really. I remember reading Timeline and totally grooving on the science-y set-up and then falling asleep for the rest. He made Clive Cussler seem subtle with his plot developments in that one.

I thought it was the biggest mistake cause the 7th book is my least favorite--it felt like JK was just packing in too much shit into too few pages

This was my problem with Half-Blood Prince (the origin of which was not explained at all in the movie ::rolls eyes:: ). Basically, there wasn't enough build-up to that. Horcruxes out of nowhere is not an acceptable plot twist. Yes, she did do some building up with Riddle's diary, but that was it. There weren't really any objects of significance anywhere near that level. I mean, technically the locket was in the Black house, but it was such a minor thing to expect people to remember it? Is like saying they have to remember all the port keys. Because this had not been built up sufficiently before, it felt cheated as an idea. I liked the idea, don't get me wrong, but it needed to have more significant support from the texts prior to HBP.

Which is a shame because the idea of the second-to-last book being the game-changer is amazing. It makes Deathly Hallows more of an extended (and extensive) climax, if you consider the books as one whole story), but it would have been a great pacing idea had it been done better. (For the record, I liked Deathly Hallows but all my complaints about HBP are easily as applicable to DH--too shallow on the build-up, emotional pay-offs cheated, etc.)

Villains are hard to get right, especially when the entire internet is more sympathetic to them than the heroes! I never understood Draco's appeal, period, aside from that typical fandom thing where anyone who is just an unrepentant asshole must be nursing a secret pain that only a good Mary Sue can heal, blahblahblah. Dudley was similar, but he was at least not a cartoonish figure like Draco was. Draco's issues with Harry and vice versa are very adult, which, transposed onto the eleven-year-olds we first meet seems very silly. Dudley was just a spoiled bully. I liked that he could be jolted about by a good turn from Harry because I believe that--it's sort of a twist on the kid-stands-up-to-bully, bully-no-longer-picks-on-him narrative.

And then there's Snape. If you implicitly trust Dumbledore as everyone does, there's no way to ever believe he'd be a villain. Even Harry's immense dislike and distrust of Snape are constantly sidelined by his loyalty to Dumbledore, such that even when Harry decides on Snape as a villain, he still isn't really committed to it, you know? Snape the ultimate double agent might have played better if he'd been just appalled at the way Voldemort was wonton in his destruction instead of hinging it on a seeeeeeeeekrit looooove for Lily Potter. ::rolls eyes hard::

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

We had someone with us for this one who'd never read the books, and he was sort of lost. Granted, he also fell asleep during the movie, which didn't help. But past about book 3? I'd say you'd have to read them to get a better idea of the story.

Part of the problem is, of course, that the movies left out things that they didn't know were going to be needed later. (Horcruxes, for example, were around but invisible prior to book 6.) While I was able to see movies for 1 and 2 without difficulty, there's a real turning point by 3-4 that makes it such that you would benefit from having read the books. I concede that those books didn't need to be quite as huge as they were (4 and 5 particularly), but there was a lot more subtlety and richness to the layering of life and story to them.

Which would lend itself better to a TV season with twenty-odd hours to go into things like Neville Longbottom's reasons for trying so hard to be a genius rebel wizard like the trio. Or the extended Weasley family. Or the woes of Professor Lupin. And so on. These are perhaps non-essential to the story of Harry Potter, but the books make it clear that it shouldn't be all about Harry. These other characters have just as interesting stories and they occasionally affect the story. Without time to go into them in a movie, you work around them, often to a lesser effect.

[saturn-shumba.livejournal.com]

Snape the ultimate double agent might have played better if he'd been just appalled at the way Voldemort was wonton in his destruction instead of hinging it on a seeeeeeeeekrit looooove for Lily Potter. ::rolls eyes hard::

Oh, that. That which was seen a million miles away. I didn't like what that implied either--that Snape was only a good person because of his love for purer that pure Lily. That kinda creeped me out. It also seems a bit lazy to me.

The whole horcrux thing bothered me. I first thought they were clever, but I think JK's eyes were bigger than her stomach--she had way too many. The way the diadem was destroyed was absolutely ridiculous--we didn't even see it! Only got a sentence from Ron and Hermione about how "Oh yeah the diadem's destroyed! Yay!" Wtf.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Same thing with the cup, too. Ron, again, got to be a hero offscreen. Then again, that's always been Rowling's MO w/r/t Ron because she never worked out how to use him as anything other than an illustration of the way a totally wizarding family would be.

[negativeq.livejournal.com]

I was very bothered about how Voldemort's and Snape's mothers were cut out of the movie. The disturbing tale of Merope Gaunt is very interesting in itself, and has connections to the Horcruxes and Deathly Hollows. IIRC, it is in her story that the name "Peverell" first comes up. The HBP movie made the Horcruxes seem even more random that they were already, and I suppose the last movie will do the same with DHs.

And how could not a few lines be spared for the Half-Blood Prince? Hermione could easily have mentioned while walking to Hogsmeade that all she could find was a woman surnamed Prince who married a Muggle.

I had hoped Sectumsempra would be much bloodier. While Moaning Myrtle is goofy, it would have been nice to see her interact with Draco and NOT be disturbed by Harry. It would make Draco more sympathetic - he is stressed, scared, and she is all he has to talk to. I also wished that scenes of Draco using the trio's strategies against them were included.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I missed a lot of the Gaunt story line, too. And I'm with you: WTF is a Half-Blood Prince if you don't go into what that actually means? Are we getting to that next time or what?

The sectum sepra was actually really horrifying to me because of the blood. We've seen Harry bloodied, but never really bleed much. And when people die in this universe it's snap-of-the-fingers quick. To see Draco laid out, bleeding uncontrollably was really shocking.