Re: Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince discussion...
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Ray H
What I found in rewatching them, however, is that occasionally they lose my interest and large bouts of yawning step in. Maybe it's largely me or even my over-familiarity with the story.
|
I think it's a personal thing. For me, there is definitely surplus in the first two films, but relatively little surplus, and never
intolerable surplus. But they're definitely paced like older films. That doesn't work for some people, which I totally respect. I can only say that it does work for me.
Quote:
| The first film is lacking in style. It's wonderfully designed but it just feels very sterile. There's no energy or real excitement. It's just Harry walking around and gaping at everything he sees. |
The first film has the best sense of wonder, but its near or at the bottom of the list for me because it never really coalesces into a film. It's two and a half hours of introductions. I love the way Columbus opens the film, and I love the visuals of the film, but it's never allowed to be its own independent story. I think, though, that that was perhaps inevitable. All the setup in that film took a large burden off the ones to follow.
Quote:
| COS is superior to it in that it looks more interesting, but the movie just ends up reeeeally long. Some of it plays out more interestingly, while a good section just comes off as the kids walking down hallways and corridors in hushed tones. |
I disagree. That was one of the things I was afraid of going back to it, but it didn't ultimately prove to be the case. It definitely spends the most time in Hogwarts of the five, even more than OOTP, but quite a lot happens in that time. The structure is actually pretty similar to GOF: car chase instead of Quiddich World Cup, Dueling Club instead of dragons, spider chase instead of merpeople, Chamber of Secrets instead of Maze/Graveyard. While there is more padding in between each set piece, it's used to effectively lay out the mystery. You're given everything you need to solve it before the big reveal, but it's not pushed in front of you like the Moody/Barty Crouch revelation was.
Quote:
| POA is much more stylish of a film and it holds my attention better. But I see what you mean about the film though. It rarely relaxes or gives the audience a chance to relax. Most scenes give off the feeling that the wheels are turning and that something's happening that'll culminate in the film's finale. There's not really a fun sequence in the movie that allows you relax. GOF, on the other hand, cuts a load of material from the book that allows it to ease up on the pace. It also benefits from having a more straightforward storyline. Harry's entered into the triwizard tournament, he needs to finish all three tasks, and in the meantime has to ask a girl to the dance. Like the others, there's a mystery, but it's mostly working in the background. The three tasks and the Yule Ball allow the audience to relax and enjoy the film as opposed to a more uneasy and rushed feeling from POA and OOTP. |
I agree with all of that.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Chuck Mayer
Each of the films has their own strengths, but I still prefer POA because it's the first to not have the trio be KIDS, it's the first to actually explore their relationships beyond "BFF", it's the first to give Harry a strong relationship with an adult (Lupin), and most critically, it's the first film that doesn't FEEL like a kids movie (sets and all).
|
Maybe that's the key difference. I LIKE the family movie feel. Everything doesn't need to be so dark and serious. The books have their cruel splash of reality, but not until the last book does Rowling really drop the feeling of whimsy. Since the three protagonists are kids, I liked that the early movies allowed them to be kids. While I also really like the relationship between Harry and Lupin as executed in POA, I disagree that it's the first strong relationship Harry has with an adult. Dumbledore was very much a surrogate father in COS; if he hadn't been, Harry never would have been able to call Fawkes to himself. In many ways, Lupin filled the void left by Gambon's more distant and imperial Dumbledore. I also think the visual sense across the first four movies was very strong, but the first two movies more closely matched my vision of Harry's world. Rowling's book was full of the same colorful flourishes on the periphery that Columbus delighted in, and I always pictured the Wizarding universe as a technicolor world. By contrast, POA and OOTP exist in a largely cold and dreary universe. POA, especially, feels more real because of that — I think I'd be hard to argue that Cuarón has had the most on-screen flair — but I'm not sure I'm looking for magic made realistic. I enjoy a little pagentry to my fanstasy.
Quote:
| That said, I like all of the films to one extent or another, but the quality of the films (directorially and art direction-wise) took a huge jump with Cuaron (and Newell and Yates readily admit that), so they had that to build from. |
The quality of the films took a definitive left turn with Cuarón, but I'm not sure it's all for the better. Directorally, the performances weren't always the deepest with Columbus by they were always dead on to the characters as written. I don't recognize some of the characters in the latter films when compared to the book. And while no other director could the dementors as rendered by Cuarón (looked at OOTP; Yates tried and failed) I'm not sure any could have executed Fawkes with such wonderful simplicity as Columbus did.
Quote:
| Oddly enough, Newell's film is one that most felt like scene/sub-plot->done, and next, and next, etc. I still enjoyed it. It felt the most rushed to me. |
I just watched it again last night, and I will concede that point. To my surprise, Newell cheats just as much as Cuarón and Yates when it comes to jumping ahead within scenes. Two things help Newell's edits over Cuarón and especially Yates: GOF, while framed by the three tasks, weaves character threads in and out throughout the film. This breaks up the linearity that gives POA and OOTP the two-hour+ montague feel. We keep coming back to the same characters and storylines. The second thing Newell's edits do, which was started by Cuarón and furthered by Newell, is he edits to a rhythm and gives every major cut a meaning. When we cut away before the match starts the World Cup, it works because we've been given everything we need to fill in the blanks. When we cut from the Dark Mark in the sky right to the train, it works because Hermione is reading the Prophet with that image on the front page. All of the cuts are connected. By contrast, Yates cuts against the rhythm. This not only highlights the cheats in continuity, but it leaves the scenes feeling disconnected from one another. The scenes don't flow into one another the way they do in GOF and to a lesser extent POA.
Quote:
| Chamber felt the least rushed, but it had the best page-to-minute ratio of the five films. |
That's a very good point. Newell and Kloves had to work a lot harder in GOF than Columbus and Kloves did in COS. Cuarón had the disadvantage of being the first director with the necessity of really compressing the material down. Newell almost certainly benefited from what Kloves learned on POA. Goldenberg got dropped in on the middle of the thing with the colossal tasks of turning the longest, least cinematic book into the shortest film. If anything bodes well for HBP, it's that Kloves (who nailed the balance on GOF) is back for a book that is both more linear and shorter in length than GOF.
