No New Kids!

[Nia]

Jessica wrote:
> Has anybody else read the article (linked by TLC) about Chris 
> Columbus predicting that the current HP kids will quit after 
Azkaban?
> <snipped a bit>
> I'm about ready to pitch a fit -- and just not because I absolutely 
> love those kids and refuse to accept anybody else as Harry, 
Hermione, and Ron. But, honestly, the pure impact of Goblet comes 
from the fact that we've grown to know and love Harry and his friends 
and school mates. This is the book where a great deal of the 
emotional interaction between the characters really intensifies and 
becomes more apparent. Harry's fight with Ron. Ron and Hermione's 
(sort of) flirtations. We need to be able to feel comfortable with 
and close to these characters when this stuff happens. That's why GoF 
is so intense -- we feel like all of this change and strife is 
happening to people we care about. 
Me:
I couldn't agree more! It was quite a shock and very upsetting to 
hear Columbus say that, especially after he so vehemently defended 
using the children in all the movies when the press went rabid about 
Daniel and Rupert's voices breaking and them growing a few inches.  
How fickle is the film world!  
You are absolutely right about the characters growing on us.  It was 
difficult at first to imagine the Harry Potter books being made into 
films, now it's virtually impossible imagining anyone else as the 
Trio.  Daniel is such a perfect Harry, I think, because he is first 
of all a child "with a soul"-- he has convinced me that he really 
feels what Harry is going through because he sincerely respects 
Rowling's work.   Daniel has this wonderful haunted quality about him 
that makes him seem so genuine. All three children have established a 
screen rapport and chemistry that will be very, very, very difficult, 
if not impossible to duplicate.  Confidence with a character in a 
screen role comes with long association.  New actors will be (no 
matter how good they are), still feeling their ways around the 
roles.  They will not have any emotional attachment to their 
characters first time out and, I'm certain, we will have no emotional 
attachment to them.  Well, it isn't quite cast in stone is it?  
Perhaps the children will go one beyond Prisoner.  The tone of the 
series will dramatically change with Order of the Phoenix, anyway. 
After GoF would be the best time to make a change, if that's what is 
wanted all around.  I, too, was very much looking forward to the 
original Trio's dynamics in Goblet of Fire.  I think, perhaps, 
though, it will all boil down to whether or not the studio will want 
to continue with the same cast, whether the children want to continue 
and whether their parents will allow them to.  (sigh!)
--Nia