I can see that but I think you could have Harry and Ron simply talk about or tell Herminonie about the QWC.
And the pay off really doesn’t matter in the end. We find out who sent up the Dark Mark, but he dies by the end of the book so who cares? Since the character dies we don’t need to really even understand his motivation.
Now I know in the sense that the book is a whole story we can’t cut that stuff out but on the other hand when making a movie from a novel you have to cut stuff. I can’t imagine the character getting enough screen time to really make an impression.
So with the movie looming, I thought I would check in and see where other parents sit with this one.
Personally I was not really a Potter fan but my wife was, so I hadn’t been following the series until she asked me to take over reading HPGOF to our 9-yr-old. Then I got to the graveyard scene, and I thought, wow. This is pretty heavy stuff.
My kid is a little more sensitive to dark imagery than most kids are. She’s very sturdy in general and even has a particular interest in this kind of subject matter, but then when she goes to bed it’s a different ball game. She’s up for hours, thinking about stuff, worrying, calling for reassurance, etc.
At this point it would be pretty much impossible to not let her see the movie, but I’m still curious to know how other parents are reacting.
And since I’m on the subject, Narnia is also around the corner and I suspect they may not pull their punches with some of that material either.
I’ve long suspected that Rowling is aiming for these books to be age appropriate along with Harry, that is to say, book one is appropriate for 11 year olds and book seven will be appropriate for seventeen year olds. It’s one of the reasons I fully expect someone to get laid in the next book. Considering the viseral nature of movies verses the written word, I am leaning to making my daughter wait. Of course, she’s only two right now, so I think by the time she gets nearly old enough, Pottermania will have subsided enough to make the wait not be such a big deal.
As someone who’s never read any of the books, but been dragged to all the movies [size=1]pussywhipped[/size] - the first two are like watching CliffsNotes, but the third one was pretty good.
Starts out well. No real ending (10x worse than Empire Strikes Back). Too freaking long. Hermione’s acting was too much of a caricature. Potter managed to remind me how much being 14 years old sucked.
I hear the entire subplot with Hermione and the house elves got cut out. Which is understandable, since it’s really just a side plot in the book, with no (or little) relevance to the main story.
As a casual reader of the books, it seemed that very little of the original story was trimmed.
Damn, you must have been a REALLY casual reader.
All the things I can list: SPOILERS
Harry’s surrogate parents (petunia and vernon), most of the Quidditch world cup, the entire character of Dobby, all of Harry’s Care of Magical Creatures class (blast-ended skrewts, anyone?), the entire maze fights (the sphinx, the massive blast-ended skrewt, and others), most of Barty Crouch’s scenes, Harry getting the money at the end and giving it to Ron’s brothers to start Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, the gleam in Dumbledore’s eyes when Harry says Voldemort is back…
They zoomed through a lot of stuff, and that’s only the things I can remember after not reading the book after several years. They left out a LOT.
They should have left out more. The impression I got from the very start was that it was zooming along incredibly fast in a way that made it almost nonsensical to someone who hadn’t already read the books. Indeed, my wife, who hasn’t read the books, kept leaning over to me with one “WTF?” moment after another. There was WAY too much stuff in the movie. It was tripping over itself at points.
SPOILERS!!!
The Quiddich World Cup should have gone. Sure it served to establish portkeys and the Dark Mark, but those could have been communicated other ways. The Rita Skeeter stuff, entertaining as it is, should have been left out. She’s just window dressing. The whole conversation with Sirius in the fire? Mostly pointless.
The movie should have been about three things:
Ron, Harry and Hermione’s relationship and the changes it goes through.
The Tri-Wizard Tournament and the excitement therein
Voldemort’s return.
Everything else was just pandering to the hardcore fans.
I will say, though, that the scenes with the dragon were awesome, as was Voldemort’s return. They pegged his look completely and did very well on his manerisms, too. Very similar to how I pictured it while reading the book.
Nevile Longbottom, though, is completely wrong. Well, for me anyway. I always pictured him as pudgy, short, and shy, but ultimately likeable. Not the tall, goofy guy who was playing him in this movie. Given his expanded role in OotP, not a trivial point.
Still, fun movie and the visuals were great. I can’t imagine how they’re going to cram the next book into even a 2.5 hour movie, though.
Oh, yeah, I didn’t mean to imply that they’d changed him. I’ve felt that way about him all along, but in GoF he seems to have aged to the point where the differences are much more pronounced.
Nevile Longbottom, though, is completely wrong. Well, for me anyway. I always pictured him as pudgy, short, and shy, but ultimately likeable. Not the tall, goofy guy who was playing him in this movie. Given his expanded role in OotP, not a trivial point.
Well, he WAS pudgy in the first two films and still looked kind of goofy in Goblet, but I guess the kid grew out of it. On that note, what’s really funny is everyone seems to have passed puberty EXCEPT Harry.
I saw this last night with the family. I thought this was the best movie in the series to date. I’m GLAD they cut out so much; they learned their lessons from the first two movies. A straight chapter to chapter retelling does not make a good movie.
