Correction--Stephen Kloves

[caliburncy at yahoo.com]

First off, I would like to make a quick correction from when I wrote:

> And previously, someone else (Cassie?) and I also mentioned that
> despite his being a very talented actor, though, he didn't seem to
> have the opportunity to really capture Wood's character, especially
> the relentless drive and all that.

Actually it was Catherine and Joywitch who were the two other people 
besides myself that commented on this, not Cassie.  "Credit where 
credit's due" and all--and perhaps just as importantly "No credit 
where it isn't desired", since I have no idea if Cassie actually 
*wants* to be associated with the opinion I accidentally attributed 
to her.  Sorry!

*****

Now then . . .

--- In HPFGU-Movie at y..., "David " <davisaacs at h...> wrote:
> I don't post here much, but I just wondered what you think Stephen 
> Kloves added to the film, whether you think he did the book justice,
> whether you thought he improved it etc.

This is a tough question, because it's very hard to separate what is 
ultimately the result of Kloves and what may have been more the 
result of someone else like Columbus or Heyman or the chief editor, 
etc.

But assuming we were to attribute *all* final screenplay decisions to 
Kloves (which is certainly not actually the case) then I would have 
these things to say:

On the whole, a reasonable job for what I do think was a very 
difficult task.  I particularly think he made some good scene 
combinations in a way that might not have occured to me and that 
worked pretty well.  Especially some of the roaming around the school 
scenes were combined in a manner that seemed fairly plausible and 
didn't severely damage the unfolding of the story.  So I must give 
some credit there.

The humor changes and exorcises, though, are a shame.  I was not 
expecting most of the book humor to make it into the movie, but 
really the only character left with hardly any humorous lines that 
were actually from the book is Ron.  Some of the new lines were good 
and some not so good, but ultimately the issue I see here is that a 
lot of the fun in this kind of adaptation (that was clearly designed 
with fans in mind) is to hear some of your favorite lines being 
spoken.  So to replace these with new material is not so much fresh 
and appreciated as it is often a tad disappointing.  Some of the 
changes were done from a kind of created necessity, like the loss of 
the "Are you a witch or not?" line in the Devil's Snare, because they 
had redesigned the Devil's Snare to be Hermione's task (replacing the 
purpose of the potion challenge), characterized by her level-
headedness under pressure.  Obviously, the "Are you a witch or not?" 
situation would have undermined this.  But some other line changes, 
it seemed to me, could have easily stuck more to the original.

Also, the handling of necessary exposition in the beginning (at 
Hogwarts) was rather poor, I thought.  A lot of unnecessary 
exposition was overemphasized, and too much of the necessary 
exposition was glossed-over, making for a lot of "filling in the gaps 
with info from the book" that is simply not possible for anyone that 
hasn't read it.  This is why I feel the movie, strangely enough, does 
not stand on its own well at all.

But I don't know how much of this is truly Kloves fault and how much 
is simply the daunting nature of the task.  Perhaps replacing him 
with someone else would help, but perhaps not; I honestly don't know 
enough to say for sure.

-Luke