What's wrong with the first movie (VERY long)

[GulPlum]

I've been inordinately busy over the last few days and although I started 
writing a reply to Matt's original post, I decided I was going off on the 
wrong tack and deleted it. Furthermore, many people have said stuff I'd 
have wanted to say, so my original thoughts have become redundant. On the 
other hand, this new set of thoughts will also tie in to a few other issues 
which have been raised recently.

This post was originally entitled "What's wrong with the first two movies", 
but having spent the last four hours on this (I'm writing this sentence 
during proof-reading), I've decided to leave my comments about CoS until 
tomorrow (with any luck; it may have to be later).

Overall, I agree with what almost everything Alicia said yesterday. BTW you 
should definitely post more, and not just lurk, Alicia. :-)

There are two separate issues at stake here, and the debate thus far has 
all but  completely overlooked one of them. This is, after all, an HP fan's 
forum and comparisons with the books are clearly valid arguments for or 
against the movies, but we should also think about how these films stand up 
on their own merits, *as movies*.

 From comments which I've seen thus far in this conversation, I think I'm 
unique in that I saw the first movie without having read any of the books 
first, and thus have a different attitude towards it. I'm therefore going 
to present my views of the first film as a voyage of discovery; my views on 
the second (and beyond) will be slightly different seeing as I've already 
read (and analysed) the books. :-)

So, attempting to think back to my ideas prior to reading the book, what 
can I say about PS/SS? From the hype (heck, although I'd not read any 
Potter books, it was impossible not to have a vague idea of what they were 
about!) I knew the names, if not a lot more, of the main characters who 
were going to be driving this franchise. I also knew that this was an 
"introductory" movie/book, where the story/plot played second fiddle to 
setting up the characters.

And *boy* were there a lot of characters! And every one an archetype, if 
not stereotype. We have the charming, intelligent and sanguine orphan who's 
been brought up by nasty step-parents. We have the step-family: the abusive 
pater familias, the mother doting on her natural child while using the 
step-child as slave labour and the bullying step-sibling.

Our hero is rescued from this environment to discover the avuncular 
mentor/headmaster; the strict-but-fair teacher, the nasty teacher, the 
sporty teacher, and the childlike adult who relates to Our Hero on his own 
level. And we have Our Hero's mates: the studious and bookish one, the 
funny one, the fat one who's the butt of many jokes, the incompetent one, 
the one from another ethnic background; not forgetting the class bully and 
his cronies. Then we have various older pupils whose purpose is to stay in 
the background but underline that Our Hero is in his first year of a new 
school a needs to be shown the ropes: the handsome older one, the bossy 
one, the slightly rebellious one(s).

There are also a few other characters who help Our Hero understand that he 
has a great destiny and much is expected of him.

The plot is another archetype: Our Hero discovers that the Really Evil guy 
who killed his parents is in the background somewhere, and perhaps is now 
after him (Our Hero chooses not to seek vengeance, but tries to show the 
Really Evil guy just how Evil he is and tries to defeat his Evil ways). The 
Really Evil guy has his henchman whom Our Hero has to identify and show for 
what he is. Of course, Our Hero is apparently the only one who realises all 
of this, and with the help of his motley class-mates, embarks upon 
unmasking him. Of course, Our Hero mis-identifies the henchman at first; 
the "suspect" is in fact on his own quest to bring down the Really Evil guy 
and unmask the henchman. The henchman is killed, the Really Evil guy 
escapes (this is, of course, just setting up the franchise, so the Really 
Evil guy can't be dead), but not before telling Our Hero just how The Plan 
was meant to have worked. The Really Evil guy is a caricature of humanity, 
and is little more than a cartoon character. He's larger-than-life while 
being completely two-dimensional.

So far, so formulaic, and completely unoriginal. So the thought occurs: 
what on earth possessed so many people around the world to embrace this 
re-hash of so many legends and stories and to make it the phenomenon it had 
become? This film is *so* unoriginal, *so* simplistic, and *so* much geared 
for under-10s (including the marketing: the toys which have flooded the 
market don't seem to cater in the slightest for the infamous adult fans of 
the books; all advertising and hype on British TV is exclusively part of 
children's programming) that I wonder how the book upon it was based 
managed to grab a worldwide adult readership. Not only that, but the plot 
fails to answer one question the formula requires: *why* does the presumed 
bad guy (who is proved to be nothing of the sort) put himself into the 
position where he can be suspected?

On a technical level, the film is very mixed: the sets and cinematography 
are sumptuous, but several other elements make this thing look like a rush 
job done on a shoe-string budget, not a major blockbuster: the end-to-end 
overblown John Williams music (the main theme becomes frankly boring by the 
tenth time one has heard it), digital effects which look like they were 
done by a bored ten-year-old with no imagination on a slow computer and 
acting which goes from the sublimely camp through the sublimely ridiculous 
and acting-by-numbers from people who should know better, to cringingly bad 
by some of the young actors. In terms of style, I actually resent 
Columbus's over-use of close-ups of Dan's face. OK, he's cute, but the 
number of close-ups really was well OTT. At some stage, I'm going to have 
to count them...

The script appears to have no knowledge of the characters or the archetypes 
they represent - again, I am baffled by the fact that adults might possibly 
be interested in these cardboard cut-outs and the machine-written plot. For 
adults to be interested, the characters and plot would need some kind of 
knowing/post-modernist twist: "you know these people, you know this plot, 
but it's not *quite* what you expect".

Other than the smarmy, scene-stealing Alan Rickman and the odd absolutely 
magical image, this film has absolutely *nothing* to recommend itself.

Then, in circumstances and for reasons I've talked about at length before, 
I decide to read the book (to summarise for those who've not seen those 
reasons, the main reason is to discover why Snape hates Harry and why he's 
the one trying to unmask Quirrel). I discover that the characters, while 
archetypes, aren't *quite* the stereotypes the movie presents:

Harry is *not* a wilting wallflower. While not openly disrespectful of 
authority (quite the contrary!) he has a sarcastic wit making it clear when 
he feels he's been wronged. While "good", he's far from perfect. He has a 
ready temper, and several buttons which cause him to erupt whenever they 
are pushed;

Ron is *not* a witless, clueless, bungling fool. Sure, he's not 
particularly bright or articulate, but his vocabulary extends beyond 
"wicked" and "cool" (quite possibly, the two youth buzzwords I despise the 
most); Ron would *never* ask about an obviously-broomstick-shaped package 
"I wonder what it is?" Ron is *not* underfed and greedy: look at him during 
the sweets scene on the Hogwarts Express, hogging all the goodies and 
trying to east as many as possible at one, or look at him when the food 
appears, as if he's never had a square meal in his life! (The Weasleys may 
be poor, but the books make it abundantly clear that they always have 
enough food to eat!).

Hermione is possibly the closest to her book self (although perhaps Emma's 
a little too pretty) and has had fewest of her lines re-written. Malfoy's 
pretty much on the nail as well, as are MacGonagall and Snape. I won't go 
into how Dumbledore is completely unrecognisable or how much Hagrid's "I 
shouldn't have said that" grates on me.

I find it interesting that in the various discussions about the first movie 
I've had in several HP forums, I seem to be the only one who thinks that 
it's a Good Idea (TM) that the infamous Potions Puzzle was excised from the 
movie script. Similarly, I think that Norbert's exit from the plot was more 
elegantly handled than it was in the book. Furthermore, frankly, except for 
the fact that they will probably return, I'd have written Norbert, the 
Forest and the Centaurs out of PS/SS completely. In terms of that film, 
they add absolutely nothing. And we've already been introduced to far too 
many characters for those to be added into the mix as well. However, I 
shall reserve complete judgment on their presence in this fillm, and and 
alternative way of introducing them, until their inevitable return

Matt mentioned that we have more films which can deal with character 
development. My main problem with that is: "what character?"! The main 
characters have been mis-drawn and all those things which make them 
*characters* have been excised from the script. They are cartoons, 
stereotypes. They are not "characters"! Besides, the remaining movies have 
so much *plot* to squeeze in that there is little or no time for character 
development, at least the way in which they develop in the books. They can 
continue with the characters as they are, but these are not recognisable 
from the books.

Then there's the comparisons with LOTR. As it happens, I really, really, 
really, dislike the LOTR books. I got through "The Hobbit" when I was about 
10 and found it "interesting". I re-read it about 10 years ago and from a 
new perspective, found it boring, unoriginal and derivative. I've tried 
reading LOTR on and off for the last 30 years and have never managed to get 
beyond around page 80 before being thoroughly bored and pissed off that I 
was wasting my time. I therefore can't compare the books to the movies but 
what I can say is that the movies (while not exactly my cup of tea in terms 
of subject matter) are very well done and make sense. From what I 
understand from the books' fans, a lot of things have been changed but I 
sat gripped through the extended DVD version of FOTR in a way neither of 
the HP movies has managed to grip me. I wasn't quite as impressed with TTT, 
but again I think I'll reserve judgment until I've seen the extended 
version (the cinema version of FOTR missed a lot of stuff).

I'll have more to say on other topics which have arisen when I talk about 
CoS...

--
GulPlum AKA Richard, who is beginning to wonder if the above actually makes 
sense.