Pottermore

[Minty]

(27-08-2011 05:07 AM)breebree711 Wrote:  They mostly did the best with what they could. Meaning, the director had to make the movie appeal to all viewers, and because many haven't read the books, they had to create a crutch for them to understand :/

The impression I've had since "Goblet Of Fire" is that its directors don't trust the abilities of their cast to act - despite Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Tom Felton all showing they can cut the mustard away from HP - and are more interested in special effects and making the film look as much like the video game spin-off they always shove down everyone's throats afterwards.

It was the bit where they had Neville giving that long droning sollioquy with all the emotional range of a drugged opossum upon Harry being dead that convinced me they didn't trust their cast. Why didn't they do it more like the book - have him go over to Voldermort (as if to chance sides), but then telling him "I will join you when Hell freezes over!" and killing Nagini (and thus looking initially like suicide on his part, reinforcing the "sacrifice for a better day" theme of the 7th book). My suspicion is they didn't because they didn't think he could cut it. They could have at least let him try.

Instead they saved Nagini's demise for after yet another meaningless piece merely to inflate Emma Watson's role (yet again!) - doubtless at the insistence of JK. I've grown to utterly loathe her in the last four movies thanks to the interference in the scripts to inflate her role so that it's pretty obvious her part had become more JK relieving her teenage years through a beautiful young girl the world adores (most of it) - everything JK wanted to be at that age instead of a spotty unpopular nerd with an inability to get on with people (as she herself confessed).

Don't get me started on Helena Bonham Carter. She played a heartless bitch brilliantly and chillingly in Enid (about Enid Blyton, who was a total cow to her own children). Why couldn't she do the same in the biggest films of her career. Half the time she looked like she was taking the pi$$ out of the whole series by doing it as badly as possible, as if it was just a skiffy film to top up her pension pot with before doing a season of Joyce's "Ulysses" or whatever with the luvvies in the West End or whatever to 10 people a night, two of whom are tramps in for a kip and another an escaped lunatic from Broadstairs, with after show sherries at the Connaught and lickfawn reviews in The Guardian supplements.

All of those I know who did watch the movie but hadn't read the books found a lot of it confusing. They know Harry "won", but don't get how he got there, because the directors seemed more interested in rushing through a checklist of bullet-points they needed to tick off to satisfy those that had read it and would "know" what was meant at every stage - like it was Movie Orienteering. I've a feeling that sooner rather than later the Harry Potter films will be remade as a TV series where there will be more scope to expand on what was in the books.