POA - Book vrs movie

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 100269

Larry wrote:

Having just seen the movie POA, I must say I was quite disappointed.
The move was just an outline (threadbare at best) of the book. <snip> 
The two remaining books are too complicated to
put in a simple 2 hour 20 minute film. An example is LOTR and how
Peter Jackson faithfully told the story of the ring (Minus Tom
Bombadil and what happened to the SHIRE after the ring was
destroyed). As fans of the books, should the movies capture the
story of the books or would "poetic license" with the story upset
book fans?


Neri:

I avoided watching the first movie for a whole year for fear of 
contamination. Then I was visiting a friend who just got the DVD so I 
couldn't avoid watching it, and besides, curiosity won :-) . To my 
relief it wasn't a problem at all. I mean, the movie was horrible as 
expected, but I find it doesn't affect me. I still see most 
characters and places as I imagined them when first reading the book. 
JKR's power of description is mightier than W&B's. I saw the second 
movie also in somebody else's DVD and I thought that as a movie it 
was much better than the first, but still only average. Maybe I'll 
see the third movie just out of curiosity.

I don't have any problem with movies taking the "poetic license" to 
shorten, paraphrase and interpret books I love. It is practically 
unavoidable because the movie media being so different. I thought 
Jackson did an impressive job with LOTR (but still when I read LOTR I 
automatically see the characters the way I first imagined them). It 
is not a question of being accurate about the details, but being true 
to the spirit of the book. In the case of HP the interpretation was 
clearly driven too much by $$$ and too little by respect for the 
spirit of the original work (the respect that Jackson had in tons 
even as he was changing plot and characters). I particularly don't 
like the movie kids looking so cute. JKR's kids are NOT cute, which 
is one of the main reasons I like them. Emma Watson especially is 
just not "my" Hermione. I mean she is a pretty young lady and a good 
actress for her age, but she's just too cute to be the annoying, 
bossy, know-it-all Hermione. Ron's character was murdered by the 
scriptwriter, who eliminated his sarcastic humor and made him a cute 
dupe. Rickman is certainly not my Snape, but at least he does a good 
job of interpretation. Maybe the new director did a better job with 
POA, but then again POA is perhaps the most complex of the five 
books, so it would be the most difficult doing justice to it.

Neri