DegenerateDave wrote:
I am (ashamedly) a Potter freak and have read, re-read and re-read again all 7 books. I stood in line for about 2 hours at the release of the 7th book and have seen all the movies.
While that certainly doesn't qualify me as an expert, in my opinion, this movie stayed more closely to the book than any previous adaptation.
They left some stuff out but as a film it worked, and I think the same happened with "Order of the Phoenix". In any event, these past two films have been *much* better than the previous 4. The worst I'd still say was "Goblet of Fire" since the book was my favorite of the series, and the movie just glossed over way too much, and was really banal. The first movie was weak, too, but there wasn't a lot they could do with such young actors. But it seemed to be more focused on being pretty and nice than effective. The first book was a lot deeper.
Quote:
Understandably, in a 2 and a 1/2 hour movie, there is no real way to translate a 700 page plus book in that timespan, so I kind of understood that they turned Weasley into a hero right away during the quidditch match and took other liberties to shorten the length of the movie while not losing much in translation.
As I recall in the book, Weasley got into someone's face and told them to name a "time and a place" where he could show him what a real man was like.
Quote:
I couldn't agree more with Watson's ability to find a job after this series is over - she offers nothing to the role. I think Rupert Gint (or Grint?) might be the only one of the three that will do anything after this - I think Radcliffe is going to be way too typecast as Harry Potter to ever amount anything closely resembling a career.
For some reason, though, I think Radcliffe has a good chance of shaking the HP thing if he gets into the right groove of doing independent films. He isn't an established actor, so he has the chance to do some roles that would alter the perception of him, if he does it right. Emma Watson has no hope. She just isn't an actress. And she's not turning out as pretty as I thought she would. She was cuter as a kid.
Quote:
It's a shame that the Dumbledore character had to die at this juncture in the movie to follow the books because I also was just starting to accept Gambon as a viable Dumbledore.
I'd give it 3 out of 4 stars and I am really interested in seeing what they do with the 7th movie given what happened in the book. There was a lot of time in the 7th book that was filled with just purely, Harry, Ron and Hermione looking for the horcruxes and I can't imagine them devoting that much of the movie to the search as to the end result.
Spot on there, and I think since they are going for 2 movies in the finale, it does give a chance for the characters to breathe. I've heard the director wants to make the first movie about the characters and the second one about the war. I think that's nice, but you're going to have to keep it interesting at least even if you're going for character development. Plus like you said, most of the book is a search-and-destroy adventure story that climaxes in a "battle". Maybe they play with some back story about Snape, I'd really like to see that.