So, has anyone seen the new HP movie? Planning to see it? I’m a little surprised there’s not more buzz among this geeky crowd. It’s at 94% on RT.
I’m looking forward to it, but I probably won’t go until the crowds die down a bit.
When there were doubts about the viability of the franchise after the last book, I scoffed at them.
Now that we’re coming close to the first post-Hallows movie, I’m wondering if they might not be right. I’m sure the movie will do well, but a lot of people I knew who were hyped to see the last movie and in there on day one are saying that they can wait on this one. Some say ‘wait until the crowds thin’, some say ‘wait until DVD’ and some say ‘wait until it shows up on the ABC Family channel some night when nothing else is on’.
It can’t help that the last book was probably the worst of the series.
Oh well. I’m going to see it!
I know someone who saw it two nights ago and said it was the best HP movie yet and that it was a work of art and simply amazing. I have no problem believing it’s a great movie, but she really is kind of an idiot, so everything she says is suspect.
I’m going to see it today. I don’t expect too many crowds since they’re going to show the movie every half hour.
Saw it last night at midnight, 'cause my wife’s a big Harry Potter fan. It was pretty good. The pacing seemed a bit off at times. I haven’t seen the other movies recently enough to agree or disagree with “Best Harry Potter movie yet,” but it was certainly on par with the rest.
The theater was packed. Several groups of people said they’d been there since 7 or 8. I got there at 10:45 and had trouble finding four seats together for our group that weren’t down toward the very front (like, row 4 I think, but it wasn’t terrible.)
I’m curious how it did at the box office, 'cause I think it was more crowded than Transformers 2…
I thought the last book in the series was fine, and the last movie was really well-done, so I’m hyped about this one.
One of them has to be the worst, though. In my estimation, that’s the last one.
Saw it yesterday morning (not sure how we got to see it early but I didn’t complain). There were at least 100 people lined up at 8am to watch it at midnight.
I’m not a big Harry Potter fan but the movie was pretty enjoyable. I’d read up through book 5 and I felt like I would have gotten more out of the movie if I’d read the book. It seems like a lot of the plot motivation and character motivation is skimped on with the movies just because they assume that you already got that from the books.
Still I enjoyed the darker feel of this one and it was a cool movie.
SPOILER
For example I don’t think they did a very good job of motivating Hermione and Ron’s little romance. I was told by others that it was better motivated in the book but just from the movie it seemed completely arbitrary. Another example was drinking the water from the bowl in the cave with the zombies. It was just like, “ok, Albus has to do this now” without any justification. Again I was told by people who read the book that it was better justified there.
For me, the worst book in the series by far was Half-Blood Prince. Without going into spoilers for the current movie, it was because I was bothered by what I thought were implications of certain characters doing things that I thought were very out of character based on earlier books. Plus I thought certain plot developments were very poor attempts to garner sympathy from the reader and didn’t work for me at all.
But the last book fixed all that. At least for me. It brought a lot of things that happened in Half-Blood Prince into the correct context so they made sense. But most of all I loved the last book because of the relationship between Harry and his two closest friends. His self-doubts and his friendships were two areas which made it one of my favorite books in the series, if not THE favorite.
MORE SPOILERS FOR THOSE THREE PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T READ THE BOOKS YET:
I never really bought Ron and Hermione’s relationship, frankly, even in the books. It seemed to be mostly motivated by a Harry/Hermione pairing being too obvious as opposed to any real emotion on the part of the characters.
Of course, I generally thought the romance stuff was the weakest part of those books.
MORE SPOILERS, I GUESS?
The movies actually hinted at a Ron/Hermione relationship long earlier than the books. It wasn’t 'til the 4th book that the intent was made fairly clear, but in the 2nd movie there’s a hint of a crush brought about by a completely spontaneous moment on set which Columbus decided to keep in.
Hahahahah.
I’m seeing it tonight. I wasn’t into the Harry Potter books until the gf got me into them. I read this one (the book) a few months ago. Looking forward to it!
Oh please, the Order of the Phoenix is by far the worst book due to Harry being such an irritating tit for the entirety of it.
Books? I’d say #2 was the worst.
Movies? #1 or #2, although #3 was far too short.
Preach it.
I felt the same way. There’s no chemistry, no shared interests, nothing but a mutal tie with Harry and some bonding through adversity. My wife, who’s much better tuned into such things than I am, agrees. He’s just not right for her.
The movies have been getting better, one and two were far too dry and lacked all the stuff from the books showing the kids between classes which fleshes out their relationship and the magical world of Hogworts. Three started the change but it wasn’t until the fourth film that I think they really hit their stride.
The obvious change in the mood of the books from this point probably suits the big screen too.
I seem to be the only person who thinks that Goblet of Fire is easily the worst of the books, thanks to its astoundingly dumb plot - “Why yes, I will arrange an overly complicated scheme to kidnap Harry that will take an entire year to come to fruition, and be executed with hundreds of people watching, rather than quickly and quietly spirit him away once I have his confidence a couple of weeks after the start of the Autumn term. Nothing can go wrong with this plan.”
Yeah, I had the same plot hole issue with Goblet. Or why they didn’t just steal one of Harry’s shoes one night, portkey-ify it, then put it back and the next morning he’s instantly zapped away.
But I love the world and the characters and Rowling’s writing tone enough that I just insert some hand-waving MacGuffin-y reason why they had to have some uber complex plan (which, actually works in the book despite the craziness…). I can’t just do that to get around Harry’s incessant whining in Order of the Phoenix, so it takes the worst book prize for me.
Quite looking forward to see the movies though… but I really hold on to hope that someday HBO or the like will do the full on TV series treatment with the books, like 1 season = 1 book…
$22m from the midnight shows, which is more than The Dark Knight did…