Films filter out less important scenes

[GulPlum <hp@plum.cream.org>]

Steve Binch wrote:

> We all know that there are scenes in every book that seem
> irrelevant at first, but then becomes important in another book. 
> When the screenplay is written, they have to eliminate many of the 
> scenes in order to get the film with 2-3 hours. But they must be 
> careful not to eliminate scenes that will play a greater importance 
> later on.

<snip 2 examples, to which I suppose I can only add the importance of 
duelling and knowing Expelliarmus>

> Can you think of any more? And who wants to speculate on scenes
> that are setting up for books 5-7?

First, a couple of lost opportunities from PS/SS to CoS.

A prop of Tom Riddle's Special Award was made, and indeed glimpsed in 
PS/SS (to the right of the Gryffindor Quidditch plaque during 
the "your dad was a Seeker too" sequence; there's more of it in the 
full screen version)

As I've said before, I was baffled that the CoS movie didn't make use 
of this excellent bit of forethought; no mention was made of Ron's 
having served detention, nor what he did. This could have been done 
with no additional running time by moving the outdoors sequence when 
Ron says "I don't like the sound of this Tom Riddle..." to the trophy 
room and he could point to the trophy. This would have had the 
aadditional effect of making Riddle sound like even more of a good 
guy.

The second one is that in PS/SS Nearly Headless Nick gets a line not 
in the book when we first see him about having been refused entry to 
the Headless Ball. OF course, the Deadthday party wasn't filmed for 
CoS, but some reference could ahve been retained. John Cleese's role 
in CoS is another of those things which irritates me: it's cut down 
to several instances of people introducing him or his introducing 
other characters.

Things from the first two movies I think will return in books to 
come, though, in no particular order:

The Put-Outer 
Dumbledore's watch
Nearly Headless Nick 
The Centaurs (or rather, Firenze, as the other Centaurs were excised 
from the movie)
The Weasleys' clock
Knockturn Alley
The Hand of Glory
Filch's personal hatred of Harry
Skele-Gro
Aragog

I can't decide whether we've seen the last of Norbert, and I suspect 
the Chamber of Secrets will be revisited.