PoA MOVIE DISCUSSION.

[Carol]

Eggplant wrote:
>
> Carol wrote a very interesting post:

Carol responds:
Thanks!

Carol earlier: 
> > having Harry cry when he hears about Sirius Black's supposed betrayal [
] is completely out of character. 

Eggplant: 
> Yea that's true, Harry doesn't cry a lot, but on the other hand sadness and anger are similar emotions and for me the scene is salvaged when Harry says "I hope he finds me because when he does I'm going to kill him". That is in character. 

Carol responds:
I agree that sadness and anger are similar emotions, or maybe closely related emotions, but I think that many people (mostly men and boys and Harry in particular) express sadness *through* anger. (Book!Harry's reaction to Sirius Black's death in OoP is one example.) I agree that the line you quoted is in character, but I don't think that the tears are. And Dan Radcliffe at that point was starting to become a pretty good child actor, but he couldn't cry convincingly and I think it was a mistake to force him to attempt it.

Carol earlier: 
> > toy trains, shrunken heads, or Tom the Barman. 

Eggplant: 
> I had no problem with any of that. I think you need to distinguish between stuff that isn't in the book from stuff that couldn't be in the book. For example, there isn't a Hogwarts Clock tower in the book, but there should have been. 

Carol again:
As I said earlier, I do like the clock tower. But Tom the Barman had already been played by a different actor without any of the "Igor" nonsense, and toy trains have nothing to do with the story or with Lupin as a character or with DADA. Why the 1920s atmosphere? I don't see the need. Art for art's sake? And leave the shrunken heads with their Jamaican accents out of the film, please. (Again, as I said upthread, it's a matter of taste.) I did like the way that the *portraits* were handled for the most part, Fat Lady aside, even the giraffe, which took up no more than half a second of screen time and was mercifully silent, unlike the stupid "talking heads." And I was glad to see that PoA continued the motif of moving stairways from the earlier films even though it played no role in the plot this time around. 

Eggplant: 
> By the way, in CoS I thought it was a great line when Ron said "Spiders, why did it have to spiders? Why couldn't it have been follow the butterflies?" JKR didn't write that but I'll bet she wishes she had.  

Carol:
Yes, that's a memorable film moment, geared to Rupert Grint's comic talent. 

Carol earlier: 
> > exactly, was Snape doing while Harry was running after Sirius? Still protecting Ron and Hermione when Harry was in danger?

Eggplant: 
> In a word yes. Snape knew that Sirius had protected people from Lupin in the past and no reason to think he couldn't do it again. 

Carol responds:
How could he know that? He didn't know that Black was an Animagus until that moment. (In the books, he still didn't know it until Black transformed in front of him in CoS.) But I suppose he thought that Black had it covered and since he couldn't be in two places at once, he'd better remain with the injured student. (Possibly he conjured a stretcher and told Hermione to escort Ron to the hospital wing and then ran after Harry, arriving just in time to see the Patronus and conjure stretchers for Harry and Black, but we don't see any of that. There's no explanation for how they got to the hospital wing, only the shifting figures in the background.)

Eggplant:
> Anyway, did you expect Snape to abandon Ron and Hermione with a werewolf running around who knows where?

Carol responds:
But the werewolf wasn't "who knows where." He was being chased by Sirius Black in Animagus form and followed by Harry. And though Snape does protect the students in general (for example, searching the dungeons for Sirius Black), it's Harry that he's sworn to protect (the filmmakers, of course, didn't know that)--and it's Harry, not Ron and Hermione, who's in danger from the werewolf at the moment. But I've already proposed a what-Snape-might-have-been-doing scenario that works for me even though it feels forced and unnatural. (Had Book!Snape been conscious when these events happened, he would have literally flown after Harry and conjured his Patronus--and DH would have been ruined. JKR had to keep his abilities and loyalties under wraps. The filmmakers were somewhat similarly constrained: Snape had to be kept offscreen doing who knows what so that Black and Harry could be seriously endangered and Time-Turned!Harry could cast his Patronus.)

Carol earlier: 
> > They never explain how Lupin knew that the Marauder's Map was a map or how to work it, for one. 

Eggplant: 
> I agree, the very important Marauder's subplot was given very little time. <snip>

Carol responds:
And it's not just the Marauder's Map but the whole Snape/MWPP dynamic that's unclear. All they needed to do was add a few lines of dialogue to make things clear. Instead, we have Lupin on the bridge talking about Lily's (uncanonical or extracanonical) kindness to him and James's (canonical but unspecified) talent for trouble. <snip>

Carol earlier: 
> > it's uncanonical, and we have the altered Flitwick <snipped by Eggplant>

Eggplant:
> At no point does JKR say that Flitwick is not interested in music and it makes no contradictions to the story if he was. 

Carol:
I don't mind his directing the chorus (I said earlier that I liked the song), but the filmmakers seem to have eliminated his role as Charms professor and altered his looks and costuming so drastically that, except for his small size, he's not even the same character. No Hogwarts professor would wear a tuxedo! If we can't keep Dumbledore's colorful robes, why not at least keep Flitwick looking like a miniature Merlin? And I can't recall specifically whether any Charms classes are specifically mentioned in PoA (the book), but a lot of the humor occurs there--for example, Flitwick being tossed around with the cushions when the kids are learning Summoning or Banishing Charms. Why bring in extraneous humor (the Fat Lady, the cleaning lady, the shrunken heads, Rosmerta "hammering" Fudge) when similar elements are built into the story? (Hagrid's accidentally ripping the door off Fudge's sleigh is all right--it's more or less in character--but Wizards wouldn't use Muggle transportation.)

Eggplant: 
> The problem I have with Azkaban is not what is on the screen, in that regard I think it is the most skillful of all the movies;

Carol:
Yes and no. Most of the CGI is pretty good (the werewolf excepted), but the added elements were unnecessary and took up time that could have been used to prevent holes in the plot. And I forgot to mention that unkown Gryffindor boy who seems to know everything and steals everybody's lines. He appeared from nowhere in PoA and was never seen again (thank goodness!).

Eggplant:
> my problem is in what they decided not to put on screen and in that they were the most incompetent. If the movie was 20 minutes longer it would have been great, and if they then just cut out the closing credits the total running time could have been the same.

Carol:
I agree that they needed twenty more minutes to get in the crucial plot elements, but I think that the closing credits are clever--and I almost never watch the credits. I'd have made my cuts elsewhere, and I'd have followed the book more closely, especially the Wolfbane Potion and the bedcurtain-slashing scene. 

Carol, who still wonders whether Cuaron actually read the books (does anyone know?)