Just finished Half-Blood Prince. I've never read the books either. I don't know what the general opinion on these movies are now, but I feel like they've been overall getting better and better for me. Prisoner of Azkaban was probably the first of the movies to really grab me, I found the first two a bit boring but that might be because I've caught them on TV several times before. Half-Blood Prince may be my favorite one yet. I'm excited to get to the Deathly Hallowses.
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Half Blood Prince is a steaming pike of feces, but I'm just bitter about what they did to the book. As a whole the series is enjoyable. How you enjoy the last two films.
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I've only read a few of the books but as the series progresses there is less and less stuff from the books in the movies due to time constraints. From what I know Goblet of Fire is the first one that doesn't have some really important stuff from the books in the movies (I've read up to Prisoner of Azkaban). Also, sometimes how an event occurs can change from book to movie. The movies do this to get as much of the important plot details into them as possible and to ensure that the pacing isn't too slow.
The general opinion isn't consistent, but only the purists consistently prefer the first two over the rest. From what I know, the best films are considered to be Deathly Hallows Part 2 and Prisoner of Azkaban. After that, opinions are varied.
edit: and by purists I mean the people who want the movies to be exactly like the books
I might as well say right now that Deathly Hallows Part 2 and Prisoner of Azkaban are the only ones I haven't heard a huge amount of hatred towards, especially Prisoner of Azkaban.
If I had to rank the movies I have seen right now, it would probably go Half Blood Prince > Prisoner of Azkaban > Order of Phoenix > Goblet of Fire > Chamber of Secrets > Sorcerer's Stone
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I read up to the fifth book, and when I watched all the movies something felt really off about them. I couldn't shake it. Maybe it was the script. I didn't think it was very good.
While I'm at it, reasons why people would hate each movie:
First two: long, boring, too close to book Goblet of Fire: lacks important plot details, focuses too much on comedy Order of the Phoenix: longest book shouldn't equal shortest movie, lacks the "magic" of the other films Half-Blood Prince: too much comedy and romance, doesn't focus on the darker things enough, anti-climatic ending Deathly Hallows Part 1: hardly anything happens
I've been a little interested in the books, but I don't think I could ever get through Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets. Maybe if I could start at Azkaban, but I doubt the first two movies would be enough to go by.
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whatisurnameplz posted... I might as well say right now that Deathly Hallows Part 2 and Prisoner of Azkaban are the only ones I haven't heard a huge amount of hatred towards, especially Prisoner of Azkaban.
That's because it's the best there is!
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I felt Half Blood Prince did have a weird tone to it at first, everything seemed a little too cheery. It picked up in the second half, I thought.
Goblet of Fire also had this weird thing where Ron and Harry were mad at each other, but it wasn't really explained why. And then the reconciled and THAT was also not really explained.
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You beat yourself up with your past. Don't blame yourself, blame the world. Blame God. Blame me.
Also, I guess I got this from some trailers or whatever but I thought Half Blood Prince was going to focus a lot more on flashbacks and Tom Riddle then it ended up doing.
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You beat yourself up with your past. Don't blame yourself, blame the world. Blame God. Blame me.
Prisoner of Azkaban is notably better than the movies around it, just in terms of the direction. The camera choices and script are just flat out more clever, and there's less "lets do some silly comedy slapstick".
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When Prisoner of Azkaban came out there was a huge amount of b****ing because "they changed things wahhh." It's true they totally glossed over the best mystery/twist in the series, but otherwise it's a good film.
From: GANON1025 | #016 I felt Half Blood Prince did have a weird tone to it at first, everything seemed a little too cheery. It picked up in the second half, I thought.
Goblet of Fire also had this weird thing where Ron and Harry were mad at each other, but it wasn't really explained why. And then the reconciled and THAT was also not really explained.
I think Ron was jealous of him because he got picked for the Triwizard Tournament despite him not being a 7th year student and therefore getting a ton of attention. Ron also acts like a jerk to Hermoine at the Yule Ball because she went to it with Viktor Krum.
edit: also, I remember in the movie there was a scene where it's implied that Ron grabbed a French girl's ass or something, which, as far as I know, isn't in the book at all.
GANON1025 posted... Also, I guess I got this from some trailers or whatever but I thought Half Blood Prince was going to focus a lot more on flashbacks and Tom Riddle then it ended up doing.
And this is a large part of my gripe against the movie. They cut out a significant amount of the Tom Riddle back story, which was basically the driving force of the novel, and added an action scene that doesn't even make sense in the story.
I'm in the minority here, but DH1>DH2. I'm not going to spoil anything so I won't go into details. Maybe once you've finished the series.
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Azkaban was a great movie, but they changed/left out too much stuff. For example, (spoilers blah blah blah) the scene at the end with Harry getting the Firebolt actually happened towards the middle. McGonagall actually got it for him, not Sirius. Not to mention they chose to never explain the Padfoot, Prongs, Mooney, and Wormtail thing on the map. Obviously fans know who they are, but it would have made more sense overall if they talked about it.
Half Blood Prince was badly torn to shreds. Whole chapters from the book were left out, not just scenes. I could rant about this for days but I won't.
Hallows Part One decided to skip the whole thing altogether of Voldey's name being made taboo to say out loud. It was included as a deleted scene on the DVD >_>
Hallows Part Two was good except for Blaise replacing Crabbe. If they wanted to give Blaise more screen time, it should have been in Half Blood Prince. Oh and Voldey and Bellatrix going poof when they died bugged me too. The book described their corpses hitting the floor, not fading into dust.
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1 and 2 were pretty bad imo, and they were probably the closest adapatations to the books, so go figure on that one.
For me:
DH 1 > HBP = PoA > DH 2 > GoF > OotP > CoS > PS
DH2's a very fun movie, it just had too many things that annoyed me which put it below HBP and PoA. The first four are what I would call legitimately very, very good movies. GoF and OotP are like "pretty good" tier, and I really struggle to rewatch 1 and 2. That said, I gave all 8 of them a free pass because "it's Harry Potter", so.
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Another thing I felt, without having read the books, was that in OotP Umbridge's role was truncated. I remember people being very opinionated about her, they felt strongly one way or the other about the character. Maybe this tarnished my expectations a bit, but I was expected her to be more prevalent in the movie.
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StifledSilence posted... Azkaban was a great movie, but they changed/left out too much stuff. For example, (spoilers blah blah blah) the scene at the end with Harry getting the Firebolt actually happened towards the middle. McGonagall actually got it for him, not Sirius. Not to mention they chose to never explain the Padfoot, Prongs, Mooney, and Wormtail thing on the map. Obviously fans know who they are, but it would have made more sense overall if they talked about it.
Half Blood Prince was badly torn to shreds. Whole chapters from the book were left out, not just scenes. I could rant about this for days but I won't.
Hallows Part One decided to skip the whole thing altogether of Voldey's name being made taboo to say out loud. It was included as a deleted scene on the DVD >_>
Hallows Part Two was good except for Blaise replacing Crabbe. If they wanted to give Blaise more screen time, it should have been in Half Blood Prince. Oh and Voldey and Bellatrix going poof when they died bugged me too. The book described their corpses hitting the floor, not fading into dust.
Say what? Sirius bought the Firebolt for him anonymously. Hermione reported it to McGonagall, guessing that Sirius sent it and had attached a curse to it, so McGonagall confiscated it, sparking a fight between Harry/Ron and Hermione. McGonagall returned the broomstick later when they didn't find any curses on it, and at the end of the book they get a letter from Sirius confirming that Sirius paid for and sent the Firebolt to him.
Also, Hallows part 1 and part 2 were terrible, not because they failed to follow the book, but because they tried to keep the basic plot intact with the Hallows, but didn't explain any of the connections that made them relevant. The Cloak mattered because it was what convinced Ron and Harry that the story might actually not be entirely loony. It explained Harry's ancestry, linking Ignotus with Godric's Hollow. It explained why Grindelwald approached Godric's Hollow, and the link between Dumbledore and Grindelwald. The stone mattered because it was what inspired Dumbledore to work alongside Grindelwald and turn a blind eye, and because Harry remembered the marking on the ring seen in the ministry employee's memory.
In the movie, they may as well have dropped the Hallows. They don't do a good job explaining the connection between Dumbledore and Grindelwald. They shorten the conversation between Harry and Dumbledore, glazing over the backstory behind Dumbledore and his pursuit of the Hallows. It could very well had just been a movie about Voldemort chasing a powerful wand, finding it, and failing to wield it properly, and the movie would've worked out better for it IMO.
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- In HBP, on of the big plots was Dumbledore and Harry trying to figure out the manipulated memory. And what did that memory show? That Voldemort thought about making horcruxes as a kid? Dumbledore already knew that though, he found two of them already. The number of them? Couldn't Voldemort make more? I guess that's my main question, what is stopping Voldemort from creating many more horcruxes? I think I'm not understanding something that's done in the creation of them.
- "Of course, the place where my parents died! It's important to Voldemort, what better place to hide a horcrux?" Wait no what, why would he do that? Why wouldn't he hide them in completely random places with an insane thing to do to get them? That locket in the cave was a good place. I guess they did find anything at that town, so it doesn't matter. Just something I noticed.
- So Voldemort goes on about his and Harry's wands being matching wands and so they can't kill each other with them, so he takes Villainous Malicious' wand but that doesn't work so he spends the whole movie trying to wind the elder wand. Boy is he going to be embarrassed when he finds out Harry's wand was broken by some random thing.
- Dobby was pretty important in this movie, which is a little odd. From the perspective of the movies, he was in Chamber of Secrets and kinda forgotten until now. I remember hearing that in the books he and the elves had a bigger part, but they were ultimately side plots that the movies left out.
Overall, I enjoyed part one but it really does feel like the first half of a bigger movie. I thought the first half was great, the second half slowed down with the camping stuff or whatever you call it.
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You beat yourself up with your past. Don't blame yourself, blame the world. Blame God. Blame me.
- In HBP, on of the big plots was Dumbledore and Harry trying to figure out the manipulated memory. And what did that memory show? That Voldemort thought about making horcruxes as a kid? Dumbledore already knew that though, he found two of them already. The number of them? Couldn't Voldemort make more? I guess that's my main question, what is stopping Voldemort from creating many more horcruxes? I think I'm not understanding something that's done in the creation of them.
Creating a Horcux is supposed to an incredibly horrible thing. Not only requiring powerful dark magic, but the act itself is supposed to be unthinkable. While people had made Horcruxes before, no one had gone as far as making as many as Voldemort did. Dumbledore probably already mostly knew everything Voldemort did, but I guess he wanted confirmation because it seemed impossible to believe. Also, I think the reason Voldemort wanted to split his soul specifically into seven pieces was because seven is a powerful magical number.
- "Of course, the place where my parents died! It's important to Voldemort, what better place to hide a horcrux?" Wait no what, why would he do that? Why wouldn't he hide them in completely random places with an insane thing to do to get them? That locket in the cave was a good place. I guess they did find anything at that town, so it doesn't matter. Just something I noticed.
Voldemort is incredibly vain. It's kind of a cheap way to give him some weaknesses and allow the main characters to gain an advantage on him, but it's an established part of his character. He never even considered that anyone would figure out what he did, he was too arrogant to believe that someone else was as clever as him and knew as much about magic, so in his mind he had no reason to place extra precautions with the Horcruxes he made.
- Dobby was pretty important in this movie, which is a little odd. From the perspective of the movies, he was in Chamber of Secrets and kinda forgotten until now. I remember hearing that in the books he and the elves had a bigger part, but they were ultimately side plots that the movies left out.
Yup. Dobby roles in the fourth and six books were swept aside in the movies.
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I enjoy all of the movies to varying degrees. I despise some PARTS of some movies simply because some of the deviations from the book seem completely nonsensical.
I do not mind movies being different from the source material as a rule. Sometimes its necessary and sometimes certain changes simply make a store more compelling on the big screen. But some of the changes they decided to implement do not feel like they fit either of those criteria.
From: whatisurnameplz | #025 Blaise replaced Crabbe because the actor who played Crabbe got caught with pot or something, so he couldn't take part in the filming.
Well I really liked DH2. It might be my favorite Harry Potter. I thought it ended the series pretty well. I know I heard a lot of gruff in particular about the epilogue and horrible it was that was in the movie, but there was nothing bad about it at all?
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You beat yourself up with your past. Don't blame yourself, blame the world. Blame God. Blame me.
From: GANON1025 | #043 Well I really liked DH2. It might be my favorite Harry Potter. I thought it ended the series pretty well. I know I heard a lot of gruff in particular about the epilogue and horrible it was that was in the movie, but there was nothing bad about it at all?
The Epilogue was written before even the first book, I think, so it's writing was criticized for being a huge step down from what was expected of Rowling at that point. Plus, some people thought the names of Harry's children were stupid, and that in the movie the adult versions of Harry and everyone else didn't really look like they got older.
My fiancé read the books and was waiting for the 8th movie, so I did the same thing you did to go the the premiere. I think my tastes in the movies are more or less the same as yours. I was excited to see how it all ended and thought I probably enjoyed DH2 the most. Meanwhile she has _____ gripes about _____ movie because it was different in the book(s) and I just look at her and usually go, "I thought it was neat."
Readers gonna read, and subsequently hate.
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From: ViviffTheMobile | #046 My fiancé read the books and was waiting for the 8th movie, so I did the same thing you did to go the the premiere. I think my tastes in the movies are more or less the same as yours. I was excited to see how it all ended and thought I probably enjoyed DH2 the most. Meanwhile she has _____ gripes about _____ movie because it was different in the book(s) and I just look at her and usually go, "I thought it was neat."
Readers gonna read, and subsequently hate.
I never understand the point of posts like this
are people not allowed to compare pieces of work to their source material and say it's not as good or they didn't like what it changed? It doesn't mean people thought the film was bad on its own