breaking GoF in half for two movies

[GulPlum]

At 15:28 17/02/03 , Jeremy Davis wrote:
>I very rarely post, and will probably get flamed for this but.....
>
>Couldn't the Quiddich Championships get greatly shorted to fit everything in
>the one film? I found the first half of the book a bit boring to be honest.
>:-) Controversial I know, so sorry, peace!

You certainly won't get flamed by me, Jeremy. :-) I wouldn't exactly say 
that the beginning is "boring", but there is an awful lot of sub-text 
rather than plot going on which can probably fall by the wayside. The HP 
movies to date aren't exactly high on subtlety and I doubt that'll change 
for GoF.

For the record, IMO ending a possible GoF Part I after Harry's name comes 
out of the Goblet is an awful idea. There is no dramatic character arc, 
absolutely nothing is resolved (in fact, very little has been set up to be 
resolved) and there's no impelling reason why anyone would want to come 
back for Part II. Apart from that, it's barely a third of the way into the 
book and as I said above, almost everything is sub-text and foreshadowing. 
Very little actually *happens*, and next to none of it to Harry. 
Furthermore, if, as I've suggested in the past, the whole Yule Ball and 
finding a date sub-plot went out of the window, this would leave even 
*less* for Part II and make both parts even more unbalanced.

As I see it, if GoF *must* be filmed in two parts, after the first task is 
the only possible place to end Part I. There's a happy ending (of sorts) 
because Harry and Ron are friends again, we've had some Harry-centric 
action, the main questions the book poses have been asked  and there's a 
reason to come back for Part II.

However, overall I'm with Jeremy: this is a single story and it makes zero 
sense to make it into two films (apart from the money the studio might 
make). What the production team needs more than anything is to sling Kloves 
out on his ear and get someone who can take a little distance from the 
text, not treat it as Holy Writ and actually *adapt* the plot instead of 
undermining all the characters the way he did in the first two movies. Gone 
With The Wind was more successful as a film than as a (very long) book, 
ditto The Godfather and countless other examples. What's so special about GoF?

Besides, this would set a dangerous precedent for the filming of the later 
books (well, we don't know how long 6 and 7 will be, but 5 looks like it's 
going to need *3* movies at this rate!) and if a two-part GoF were to do 
well, there'll be even less reason for the production team to do anything 
intelligent and cinematic with the rest of the series.