HP deaths Re: Harry Potter Ending

[cubfanbudwoman]

Carol responds:
> To return to GoF, I wonder--and New Steve is the right person to 
> tell me--how intelligible the Barty Jr. plot is to those who 
> haven't read the books. Was it confusing to have "Professor Moody" 
> show up again in the OoP film when he had been revealed as an 
> imposter named Barty Crouch, Jr., in the previous film? Was it 
> clear who the real Alastor Moody was and what happened to him? (Why 
> call the real Moody "professor" in OoP when he never actually 
> taught?) 
> 
> Is it clear to you what happened to the Longbottoms, Neville's
> parents? <snip> Do you understand from the films alone what 
> happened to the Longbottoms that would make Neville (in the film
> version) want revenge? Also, is it confusing that Barty Jr. is found
> guilty of the crime in GoF, yet OoP shifts the blame to Bellatrix
> Lestrange?
> 
> Those are points in which, it seems to me, the films would have
> benefitted from following the books more closely.


SSSusan:
Obviously, I'm not Steve, heh, and obviously I *have* read all of the 
books.  However, my husband has read none of the books.  Over all 
these years of living with three fans, though, he has heard snippets 
of the Jim Dale audio versions and endured his daughter reading parts 
of the books that she found especially amusing (often involving Fred 
& George or McGonagall).  

Given all that and the sheer number of times we've watched the DVDs 
in our house, I assumed he followed the movies just fine and so was 
stunned when, watching PoA one time, hubby pointed at the TV screen 
and said, about Sirius, "So, WHEN did he decide not to kill Harry?"  

With PoA, most of us big-time HP book fans were most horrified by the 
decision to leave out all the Marauder backstory, and the 
reassignment of a bunch of Ron & Harry lines to Super!Hermione.  Yet 
it had never occurred to me that what a just-the-movies person might 
not get is that Sirius was *never* intending to harm Harry!  All of 
it was, of course, his attempt to get at Wormtail/Peter via Ron, so 
that he could *protect* Harry.  Now, my husband is not dim-witted in 
the slightest, so this made me stop and think about it from his POV, 
and suddenly I could see where the confusion might have come in.  

I don't envy the screenwriters & directors, having to decide what to 
leave in, what to eliminate, and what to entirely change.  Nor do I 
envy their position of having to make us long-time, erm... shall we 
say... somewhat DETAIL-oriented, heh?... fans happy, while still 
attempting to make the story understandable to those who might never 
have read a word of JKR's books.  

Still, as much as I enjoyed a good deal of Cuaron's interpretation, 
the fact that someone like my husband could not *easily* and 
*clearly* get, from just watching the movie, what was going on in the 
Shrieking Shack, makes me think it's a pretty big failure on his & 
Kloves' part.

So, that's a very long way of saying that I, too, am curious what the 
non-HP-book readers among us thought of GoF and OotP.

Siriusly Snapey Susan