It seems that when Hollywood attempts to make a big screen adaption of a popular book, the movie is never better than the book. This is the case with all of the Harry Potter movies. Don’t get me wrong, I love all of the movies, but they always seem to get screwed up in certain ways. Being a Mass Communication major, I understand that taking books that are an average of around 500 pages and putting them into a two and a half hour movie is difficult. However, Steve Kloves, the screenplay writer for every Harry Potter movie, screwed up quite a bit.
It’s not all to be placed on his shoulders though because throughout the seven movies so far, there have been four different directors. Chris Columbus started off the franchise by bringing the first two Harry Potter’s to life. He did an excellent job, there is little I can say that I don’t like about the first two installments. He chose excellent actors, took Hogwarts and brought it to life and stayed pretty on target to the books.
Then Alfonso Cuaron came in and changed the look of the Harry Potter movies. He added a giant bridge and clock that are now in every movie that a lot of Harry Potter fans dislike. Also, Richard Harris the original Dumbledore, passed away so they had to choose another one. Michael Gambon was chosen to replace Harris and that changed the feel of the movie. Harris as Dumbledore was exactly as I envisioned him. He had the gentle nature, voice, look and demeanor that was Dumbledore. Gambon’s Dumbledore cannot hold a thing against Harris’s version. Gambon just doesn’t have the right it factor for Dumbledore. He plays Dumbledore too aggressive. Cuaron also changed Professor Flitwick’s character into something completely different and essentially made him a band teacher.
Cuaron only directed the third Potter movie, next Mike Newell took over. He was probably my favorite director. I think that he did a great job with the fourth movie, but Klove’s made a few mistakes writing the screen play. I wish Klove’s would have made the maze during the third challenge as it was in the book. That is with different magical obstacles, instead of the maze just trying to crush them. That was lame, but I guess time restraints were the problem there. This is also the movie where we first actually get to see Lord Voldemort! Newell choosing Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort was an excellent decision. The ending when he got his body back, was amazing and dramatic. All in all, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is up there as one of my favorites.
Like Cuaron, Newell only did one movie as well and then David Yates took over. Yates was the smart one. He kept going until the end of the franchise, which is what I would have done. Why would you let something as awesome as directing Harry Potter go? I would have taken it and done every single movie. However, if I was directing, I also would have had the book on set with me every day and referred to it whenever I needed too. J.K Rowling should have dropped the books on Klove’s desk and been like here’s the deal, this is your script, just make it work. No rewrites, no additional scenes, dialogue is all in there, get going. Yates in my opinion has taken to many liberties with the movies. He has added at least one scene that was never in the book and put them in the movies. That valuable time could have been used to add things from the actual book!
Order of the Phoenix is the movie I dislike the most, even though I love them all, if that makes any sense. There were just too many things wrong with it. I could go on for a long time. However, he did make up for it with The Half Blood Prince. Even though there were a lot of things wrong with that movie as well. However, The Deathly Hallows part 1 was by far his best. For the most part it was true to the book. Though, that may be because they split the last book up into two parts.
That was an excellent idea on their part. There was just too much stuff in the last book to put into two and a half hours. They should have done that with every book! Actually, what they should have done is just made four hour movies. I would sit there for that long for Harry Potter and I am pretty sure most of the other millions of Harry Potter fans would as well. At least make a non-fan short version and a super-fan long version. That would be amazing!
It seemed that as the movies progresses and got more and more adult in content that the movies began to slip. The film makers were still trying to market them to children, instead of staying true to the books. Columbus should have stayed for the entire franchise, then there wouldn't have been so many shifts in style and opinion. The movies would have been eight pieces that create a whole system of epic proportions. Or to put it simply, Gestalt.
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