Movies as canon?

[Deidre]

At 02:03 PM 1/6/03 +0000, Jo Serenadust wrote:

>I wonder if this makes as much difference to people who came to know
>Harry Potter through the movies first, before reading any of the
>books?

I like the idea that has been set forth, that of the movies being an 
alternative canon. That being said, I am one who came to the Potterverse 
through the first movie. As a life-long fantasy fan I should have read the 
novels long ago, but hadn't, mostly because the over-hyping, esp. from 
well-meaning friends, had about placed me in a corner on the whole issue, 
esp. when they would claim that JKR was a better writer than Tolkien. 
(Please note that I am a rabid Tolkien fan and have been most of my life. 
<g>) After reading both Tolkien and JKR, I found that comparing their books 
is like comparing apples and oranges--they have completely different styles 
(Tolkien is very formal, and JKR rather contemporary), and vastly different 
subject matters. (He was trying to create a new mythology for Britain, and 
she has concentrated on a few kids in a boarding school--very different 
points of view.)

Having seen SS as a movie, I rushed out and got the book. Upon reading it, 
I realized, that as lovely as the first movie is, it's mostly a highlights 
of the novel. I still think, however, that it is a more faithful adaptation 
of the book than the movie CoS was of that novel.

I do see the books as canon, and was quite steamed up about all the things 
I thought were wrong with the movie version of CoS. <eg> I do see the 
movies and books as very separate things, and can't imagine how the next 
two books are going to be filmed in any fashion that I, or most other book 
fans, consider proper. I've read all four novels several times this past 
year, and see vast differences between them and the two movies that have 
been made so far. Had CoS been a better movie (IMHO, and YMMV), I could 
have forgiven the changes. I have probably ranted about those already. 
However, if I can forgive Peter Jackson for his changes to LOTR in his 
movies, then I ought to be able to do the same for any directors of HP 
movies, or so one would think. <g> I think what must be kept in mind is 
that these films are *based* upon the books, and aren't going to ever be 
straight adaptions of the novels. Pity about that, but that's how things 
often work when translating from one media to another. I suppose that is 
why it is so hard for me to get over the changes in the HP movies, since 
JKR already did such a good job in her books of *showing* us the whole 
story, up to this point. Tolkien did more telling of his story, and in 
making a visual adaptation of a told story, as opposed to a shown story, 
more changes have to be made, in order to have one of the basic concepts of 
drama: that the characters grow and change throughout the story--they are 
not static. In the end, this is what steams me about the HP movies, we 
already had the showing, and it just needed to be translated to the screen 
better than it has been, esp in CoS. *shrugs* Oh well, I could go on this 
point all day. <g>

Deidre, who likes canon as well