PoA/Marauders (was Re: GOF movie opinions)

[Richard]

At 23:04 18/11/2005 , hickengruendler wrote:

>I liked PoA, therefore I might not be the right person to answer you
>here, but in spite of the fact that several scenes were cut (due to
>the length of the book), I think it is closer to the books than the
>PoA movie was. IMO; everything they cut in GoF were things they could
>cut or simplify, while the biggest flaw in PoA was that they cut the
>Marauders explanation, of all things.

<snip GoF discussion>

I can't find it right now, but I defended the decision not to name the 
Marauders in PoA at the time by saying that it could have come up in GoF 
during one of many possible Harry/Sirius bonding scenes, especially as the 
"motivation" behind so much of the GoF plot is about fathers and sons. For 
anyone who needs an explanation, the Diggorys, the Riddles, the Crouches, 
Harry and James via the Priori Incantatem, and to a lesser extent the 
Weasleys (inasmuch as the QWC was partially a bonding exercise). And in a 
very subtle way, we have the Longbottoms to top it off, and a few 
non-biological parental relationships, which could be summed up as Harry's 
search for a father figure: Dumbledore? Sirius? Moody? Voldemort (he'd want 
it!)?

Of course, there were no bonding scenes and so the whole thing is academic. 
Some of the comments I've read since seeing GoF (I've been working my way 
through a LONG list of bookmarks which I've been keeping instead of 
reading/watching stuff over the last month or so) from Heyman and Columbus 
in particular, indicate that removing the Marauders explanation wasn't a 
universally popular decision, but it seems that that had been the plan 
pretty much from the start of Cuaron's involvement.

Even so, if anyone involved in the movie-making process (notably, Heyman - 
he is, after all the producer, and the buck stops with him!) wants to 
re-insert the information into the plot at any future point, they can do 
so. There are plenty of opportunities in OotP to include that information, 
seeing as Lupin and Black are (or at least should be) pretty actively 
involved in the plot. Whilst adapting OotP might be a little difficult, my 
personal view is that whole swathes of the book can be dismissed out of 
hand and I predict that the movie could actually be considerably better 
than the book, if done properly.

On the other hand, the team managed to tell the story of GoF (more or 
less...) without using the Map at all, and off the top of my head, it isn't 
REALLY significant in the two books we've had since, so they might just 
drop the whole thing, and this will be the one thing which PoA leaves 
unexplained - each of the movies to date has left at least one gaping hole 
in the middle of the plot, and this is PoA's (see my review for my view on 
GoF).

The interesting thing is that the "MWPP=RPSJ" appears to have caused 
considerably more fan discontent than any other missing element from any of 
the films (well, we're not yet able to generalise about GoF) - could this 
be because so many fans have such a connection with Sirius and/or Remus? :-)

So whilst I can understand that attachment to the characters leads to a 
major disappointment with that missing explanation, what I can't understand 
is the number of people for whom that element is sufficient to dismiss the 
entire movie out of hand.

As people may have noticed, I've closed down the polls I started 18 months 
ago about rating PoA and the fact remains that of the approx. 120 people 
who voted (c'mon, this list has got almost 3,500 members - why so few 
votes?), over 70% rated the movie highly in one poll (versus around 25% 
disliking it, and only 4 people going so far as to hate it); at the same 
time, in the other poll, closer to 80% of people named it as their 
favourite of the 3 movies to date.

I'm not entirely sure what conclusions I'm actually drawing from this 
juxtaposition, apart from the fact that those who actively detested PoA 
seem to be considerably more vocal than those who actively liked it, 
despite being a tiny minority. Or, putting it the other way, liking PoA 
isn't the "minority sport" that some people seem to believe it is: the 
majority of people seem to be able to forgive the one (if considerable) 
lapse of omitting the Map's authorship and see other values in the movie 
and its adaptation - although I must admit that GoF has done an even better 
job.

I don't believe anyone should feel the need to apologise for liking PoA - 
the numbers certainly indicate that we're far from being alone! :-)

--
Richartd AKA GulPlum, who's beginning to ramble and had better shut up