HBP and the movie snob
Jul. 15th, 2009 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
averygoodun42Saw it. Will probably see it again on DVD (which, for me, is pretty high praise). It's now my second favorite HP movie, with Azkaban topping it only because Azkaban is an awesome movie. Period.
I liked:
- Ron. Rupert Grint did an awesome job the entire way through. He was NEVER Rupert Grint, he was always Ron. And the love potion scene is very possibly my favorite scene in the entire movie. "Girls are going to kill me." LMFAO!
- The felix scene. Scenes, really. The quidditch game was really well done and portrayed everything it needed to perfectly, characterwise. When Harry actually takes the potion... that was perfect comedy, there. I did not like... no, I'll leave that for the other section.
- The special effects. The memory taking shape in the pensive was beautiful, if not true to my vision in the book; the inferi were chilling and threatening; the death eater attack on Muggle London was incredible; WWW's shop was astounding... You get the idea. They did a good job. Even if the colors were a bit muted. (Again, not in this section.)
- Slughorn. From his introduction as a chair (and they did that FABULOUSLY!), he was just awesome. Not at all like the book's Slughorn, I would say, but perfect in a non-slippery kind of way.
- Draco. By the end, I could believe his character. He didn't get nearly enough screen-time, but what he had, he used extremely well. Well done, Tom!
- I'm sure there was other stuff I liked, but I want to move on to my complaints.
I didn't like:
- Snape. Or rather, I liked him far too much. He wasn't threatening. He was not particularly mean. He had NO character. (Though his giving detention to Cormac was hilarious.) His lines were intoned. Sorry, people, but Alan was phoning in the performance in this one. His voice was great, his delivery sucked ass.
- The editing, and I don't mean the scenes they left out but how the movie was constructed. It was choppy in the extreme. Each scene (though not all) held its own, but transitioning from one scene to another threw me out of the movie. There were very few exceptions.
- That Harry uses all the Felix for Slughorn's memory. I've seen why they didn't have the battle scene, but I think it was a mistake. That was one of the most intense scenes in the book, and it was completely and totally LAME in the movie. I mean, the DE's aren't even running out, because, well, there's no need to run if there isn't any opposition! (And all I could think of Bella's mad stint was that she was going to have hell to pay for destroying Voldy's One True Home. Pointless destruction.) Totally lacking in tension. Totally drained of emotion. It was a dead scene, and that almost ruined the entire movie for me. Actually, the last quarter of the movie was pretty... dead.
- The ending. Again, it's all about emotion, or the lack thereof. Harry is supposed to be utterly crushed and furious and a seething ball of stupid teenage angst with an ounce of sense kicked into him. In the movie - not there. He had the sense, but not the sensibility. The raising of the wands was good. It was very good, actually, but otherwise... dead weight. Until Fawkes flew away. That was... nice.
- Their choice in colors. I liked the muted tone throughout - it suited the feel of the book, what with the dread hanging over the Wizarding world. I wish they had taken a bit more notice of the colors mentioned in the book, however. I think the lake scene would have been improved had the potion actually been acid green, for example. There was another scene where the colors were off, too, but I can't remember it at the moment. Little details - nitpicks, really - but they add up. The main reason I think the green would have improved the potion scene is that it would have been really bringing home how vile the stuff was, how dangerous a situation it was.
And that's the thing. Only once or twice did I feel genuine tension where danger was concerned. Yeah, the atmosphere was darker and spookier, and the events were more devastating to the characters, but on the whole, it was a fun movie that you could take a ten-year-old to without a problem.
Would I like the movie better if I hadn't read the book? Maybe. The editing still sucked, and the the emotion - the connection! - was still missing, so I don't know if I would. I wasn't drawn in often, and when I was, I was usually ejected forcefully.
Will I see it again? Probably. And this time, not just for the giggle factor.
I should note, however, that the theater we saw it in had a crappy sound-system. I'm assuming that the soundtrack did not wobble in and out of tune for most of you. That was rather distracting, and i might have colored my experience a bit more than it would have otherwise.
I am happy I saw it, however. =)
I liked:
- Ron. Rupert Grint did an awesome job the entire way through. He was NEVER Rupert Grint, he was always Ron. And the love potion scene is very possibly my favorite scene in the entire movie. "Girls are going to kill me." LMFAO!
- The felix scene. Scenes, really. The quidditch game was really well done and portrayed everything it needed to perfectly, characterwise. When Harry actually takes the potion... that was perfect comedy, there. I did not like... no, I'll leave that for the other section.
- The special effects. The memory taking shape in the pensive was beautiful, if not true to my vision in the book; the inferi were chilling and threatening; the death eater attack on Muggle London was incredible; WWW's shop was astounding... You get the idea. They did a good job. Even if the colors were a bit muted. (Again, not in this section.)
- Slughorn. From his introduction as a chair (and they did that FABULOUSLY!), he was just awesome. Not at all like the book's Slughorn, I would say, but perfect in a non-slippery kind of way.
- Draco. By the end, I could believe his character. He didn't get nearly enough screen-time, but what he had, he used extremely well. Well done, Tom!
- I'm sure there was other stuff I liked, but I want to move on to my complaints.
I didn't like:
- Snape. Or rather, I liked him far too much. He wasn't threatening. He was not particularly mean. He had NO character. (Though his giving detention to Cormac was hilarious.) His lines were intoned. Sorry, people, but Alan was phoning in the performance in this one. His voice was great, his delivery sucked ass.
- The editing, and I don't mean the scenes they left out but how the movie was constructed. It was choppy in the extreme. Each scene (though not all) held its own, but transitioning from one scene to another threw me out of the movie. There were very few exceptions.
- That Harry uses all the Felix for Slughorn's memory. I've seen why they didn't have the battle scene, but I think it was a mistake. That was one of the most intense scenes in the book, and it was completely and totally LAME in the movie. I mean, the DE's aren't even running out, because, well, there's no need to run if there isn't any opposition! (And all I could think of Bella's mad stint was that she was going to have hell to pay for destroying Voldy's One True Home. Pointless destruction.) Totally lacking in tension. Totally drained of emotion. It was a dead scene, and that almost ruined the entire movie for me. Actually, the last quarter of the movie was pretty... dead.
- The ending. Again, it's all about emotion, or the lack thereof. Harry is supposed to be utterly crushed and furious and a seething ball of stupid teenage angst with an ounce of sense kicked into him. In the movie - not there. He had the sense, but not the sensibility. The raising of the wands was good. It was very good, actually, but otherwise... dead weight. Until Fawkes flew away. That was... nice.
- Their choice in colors. I liked the muted tone throughout - it suited the feel of the book, what with the dread hanging over the Wizarding world. I wish they had taken a bit more notice of the colors mentioned in the book, however. I think the lake scene would have been improved had the potion actually been acid green, for example. There was another scene where the colors were off, too, but I can't remember it at the moment. Little details - nitpicks, really - but they add up. The main reason I think the green would have improved the potion scene is that it would have been really bringing home how vile the stuff was, how dangerous a situation it was.
And that's the thing. Only once or twice did I feel genuine tension where danger was concerned. Yeah, the atmosphere was darker and spookier, and the events were more devastating to the characters, but on the whole, it was a fun movie that you could take a ten-year-old to without a problem.
Would I like the movie better if I hadn't read the book? Maybe. The editing still sucked, and the the emotion - the connection! - was still missing, so I don't know if I would. I wasn't drawn in often, and when I was, I was usually ejected forcefully.
Will I see it again? Probably. And this time, not just for the giggle factor.
I should note, however, that the theater we saw it in had a crappy sound-system. I'm assuming that the soundtrack did not wobble in and out of tune for most of you. That was rather distracting, and i might have colored my experience a bit more than it would have otherwise.
I am happy I saw it, however. =)
