Wood/Quidditch

[GulPlum]

I'm not quoting anyone. Just putting my oar in with a few thoughts...

First, regarding the suggestion that Wood might be introduced into PoA 
electronically. Please note what Biggerstaff said on his site:

"Oliver Wood will not feature in Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban. 
Obviously this means that I won't feature in it either. When putting a 
novel of the scale of PoA into a two hour movie, cuts have to be made. This 
time Oliver was one of them."

Cause and effect are clear: his reasoning is not "I wasn't asked to be 
involved and thus  assume that there's no Wood", but "there's no Wood, so 
I'm not involved".  I think that's a pretty clear and conclusive statement 
that Woiod will not appear in the movie in any form, other than perhaps 
referred to in dialogue.

Second, regarding petitions.

As someone who has been involved in social/political activism on one 
subject or another for most of my life, petitions are only good as a 
gimmick. In themselves, petitions have no effect on decision-makers 
whatsoever. They are, however, very good at focusing mass attention on a 
particular issue or increasing a campaigning organisation's mailing list 
(!), but in the case of pen-and-paper petitions, they are usually used as a 
physical object to be handed over at mass rallies, meetings, etc.

The popularity of online petitions astonishes me, and what astonishes me 
even more is that their authors seem to think that whoever they are 
addressed to will take a blind bit of notice (apart from anything else, the 
addressees need to know of their existence!). And from another angle, 
considering the online population, any petition will only make sense and 
come to public attention if a *MASSIVE* number of people sign it. In the 
case of HP, with several millions of copies of each book sold worldwide and 
several million more cinema tickets sold, such a petition would only start 
developing wings once it had, as a round number, one million signatories.

Considering the worldwide online HP community, a little over 4,100 
signatories in the couple of days since that petition was launched is, 
frankly, laughable. If you want a comparison, in the first 24 hours of my 
Borough Market filming report's going live, it had over 5,000 distinct 
visitors. The next day, once Mugglenet and a couple of other popular sites 
linked to it, that went up to about 18,000. In other words, at this stage, 
if people felt strongly about this issue, I would expect *at least* 10,000 
people to have heard about the petition. Why have fewer than half of them 
signed it?

The only kind of protest that has any kind of sense in these kinds of 
circumstances is writing to the decision-makers by snail mail (e-mail is 
pointless; first there's no real way to determine exactly how many people 
have sent in e-mails without examing each and every one very carefully), 
and an electronic inbox is easy to overlook. However, sackfulls of mail are 
not.

In other words, my  advice to anyone who feels strongly enough about this 
to be heard is to write to Leavesden by snail mail, and not even to bother 
with electronic communication. Furthermore, writing to Warner Brothers is a 
complete waste of time. It's in the production team's hands, not the 
executives'.

Third, my feelings on this issue in general, and why I won't be signing any 
petitions, writing to Leavesden or even getting hot under the collar.

Movie-making is a collective enterprise which starts with a script. We have 
no idea what that script contains. At a rough estimate, in order to make a 
~2.5 hour movie (plus credits) out of PoA, the book's narrative has to be 
condensed into something half its size. Some characters have to be 
compounded, some characters have to disappear, some characters need to swap 
lines, and half of the events described in the book have to disappear by 
the wayside.

I repeat: we have no idea what the script contains and which shortcuts were 
made. I agree that Wood's function in the book is very largely to be the 
driven and obsessed Quidditch captain who pushes Harry to find a way to 
deal with the Dementors. Considering Wood in the first two movies was 
reduced to less than a cameo (his main function was to describe the rules 
in PS/SS to an audience which hadn't read the books) and there was no great 
indication of his obsession  (except for one line in CoS: "You can't cancel 
Quidditch, Professor!"), introducing it now would require beefing up his 
character, for which we simply do not have time. I'm sure that few would 
disagree with me that Sirius, Lupin and Pettigrew are far more important.

Wood's drive for the Gryffindor team to win can easily be transferred to 
Ron (and the Twins). They're already around, they have more of a connection 
with Harry than movie!Wood has ever had, and their interest in the sport, 
and Gryffindor's status against Slytherin, has already been established.

I know that (fan)girls of a certain age want to see as much of Wood as 
possible, and I can't say that I blame them. However, as Biggerstaff 
himself said, something has to give, and this time it's him. whilst the HP 
movies are being made as little more than eye candy, there *is* more to 
them than that, and you can't have *all* the eye candy in the world.

In any event, just what does anyone think that venting their spleen will 
accomplish? The script is finished and filming is underway. Apart from a 
few tweaks here and there, no amount of ranting at Cuaron & Co will change 
the structure of the movie.

Four, as to the suggestion that no Wood equals no Quidditch, I find it 
frankly bizarre. Except for saving a couple of goals in the first two 
movies (and a "look out, Harry!" in the second, which I found especially 
out of place - what was he doing away from the goal hoops?), we saw none of 
him on the pitch, so it's perfectly possible to focus on Harry's problems 
with the Dementors without showing Wood.

I'm slightly disappointed that this means that there will probably only be 
one match (and I'm prepared to guarantee that there will be *some* 
Quidditch; see my old posts), and I will be bitterly disappointed if we do 
not see Harry missing the Snitch and Gryffindor losing a match. 
Movie!Harry's enough of a superhero already without the implication that 
Gryffindor have never lost. However, I'm prepared, albeit reluctantly, to 
wait and see just how Cuaron and Kloves have got around this.

If I don't like what I see next year, then I shall certainly be venting my 
spleen at Heyman, Kloves and Cuaron (and JKR for letting them do it), but 
until I know what's in the movie, I'm adult enough to accept that it is 
counter-productive (and indeed churlish) to complain *in the absence of ALL 
the facts*.

--
GulPlum AKA Richard, who is getting just a little tired of the moaning.