Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1 Viewer)

[Adam Lenhardt]

I still think that Gilliam, while the final product may or may not have been better, would have been the wrong choice. This project is above and beyond anything else he'd have worked on prior. Would he, without having the horrible precedent in Home Alone, have taken precautions to make sure that the child leads would manage a happy and meaningful, if not normal, life? Would his set have been as relaxed as Columbus' was? I'm not saying he can't get good performances out of kids because he has before.. I'm just saying that the cast and crew wouldn't have been as enthusiastic about it maybe as they have been.

Besides, I'm not sure I want Harry's world filtered through too much of a creative bent. Considering what Hollywood does to so many works, the result here has hardly been "a by-the-book, take-no-chances approach."

I just hope this third film returns to the books' whimsy and tongue-in-cheek approach.

If Cuaron does, that it will NOT be J.K.'s vision. Certainly, it would have worked well for the first two, lighter installments. But the third book is comparatively speaking, a dark cold lonely book. If the threats in it are played up for laughs, then any sense of drama would evaporate and you would wind up with a parody of the original work rather than an adaptation.

I'm not saying there aren't whimsical and humorous bits in the book... there certainly are, like any of them. However, they are almost set dressing this time around.

 

[Dan Hitchman]

Adam,

Not to start an argument, but Rowling and Gilliam had been in talks. She wanted him to direct and be the outlet for Harry Potter's world on screen, and so did many WB execs.

If that doesn't say something about what she based her writing style on, I don't know what does. Gilliam and Monty Python were her inspirations.

Gilliam, with a Python-esque bent, can do very, very dark stuff (as Johnny Depp attested to, he's a maverick visionary). The look is retro (one thing being that Gilliam usually uses more practicle effects than heavily relying on CGI-- he loathes it just as he should: he even said Jurassic Park to him was the pinnacle of CGI, it pretty much went down-hill from there) and other-worldly (even when depicting real life) in most of Gilliam's past works and also during his directing and writing with the cast of Python on their feature films.

It would most definitely would have worked with Harry Potter, but the head bosses didn't want to go artsy. They wanted the same stale, stamped out product they're familiar with thinking that would make it more palatable for the masses.

The last two didn't work because the movies lacked that certain spark of something that attracted so many fans to the books, and would have given them wings.

I will also say that Harry Potter's score has got to be one of Williams' weakest attempts (perhaps, again because of the pedestrian directing he was given). Just watch the parts that are supposed to show whimsy, and the score just drones rather than staying upbeat and lighthearted.

I just hope the new director can lift Harry Potter into greatness.

Dan

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I just hope the new director can lift Harry Potter into greatness.

As do I. I simply hope that he doesn't try to do it through a whimsical and tongue-in-cheek approach. That should definitely shine through where required, but the tone should never betray the tone of the book it's portraying. Monty Python's Harry Potter would totally betray everything about the stories they'd tell.

 

[Kristoffer]

Aint it cool, has the first pictures of The Dementors!!!
Very cool! Its diffucult to make these, cause they can't look too much like the ringwraiths....

 

[Ralph Summa]

Here's the link for the Dementors.
I thought they were faceless.

 

[William G. Lipe]

Aint it cool, has the first pictures of The Dementors!!!

They're fake. Probably a photoshop alteration of the ringwraiths from LOTR.
WiGgLe

 

[Kristoffer]

Damn, I thought I seen them before! The lighting is LOTR though...
But had me fooled!

 

[Ricardo C]

Definitely a piece of photoshop fan art. However, what a cool visualization I hope the real versions look close to this.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I hope the real versions look close to this.

I don't, for the simple reason that it looks exactly like the Ringwraiths. Also, the faces shouldn't be visible at all except for the one time when it's about to make it's Kiss. And then the head should match the description from the books; mainly no eyes and a gaping hole for the mouth.

 

[Matt Stone]

Part of the problem of not showing a face makes them look even more like a Nazgul. In any event...I can't wait to see what's done with them.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Maybe they look like Ringwraiths because that was an inspiration for Rowling. Not to bash her, but it's not like she couldn't have either taken some great ideas from other works or at least made up some that just so happen to be great ideas (the look of the Nazgul is just amazing and very terrifying, something that anyone could probably come up with on their own).

 

[Malcolm R]

The Nazgul aren't all that original either. They basically look like your generic Grim Reaper sort or the Ghost of Christmas Future from "A Christmas Carol."

 

[Sean Bryan]

Definitely fake photo-shopped Nazgul. Look here

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The Nazgul aren't all that original either. They basically look like your generic Grim Reaper sort or the Ghost of Christmas Future from "A Christmas Carol."

Exactly. The faceless demon is a literary archtype. It's the Black Rider-esque face and the style of the robes that make them look so similiar, which makes since considering they were doctored from an LOTR pic according to Sean's link.

 

[Matt Stone]

Exactly...so they have to walk the fine line between not looking like they're stealing from LOTR, and sticking to the descriptions in the book. Of course, it wouldn't bother me too much if they just use a general Nazgul look...but I'm sure some LOTR fanboys would cry foul.

 

[Kristoffer]

The first picture of Gary Oldman as Sirius black is up at Coming soon.net...minus the glasses which are probably his own.
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/harry...ews.php?id=761
Hopefully we will have a poster soon.

 

[oscar_merkx]

more pictures
http://www.darkhorizons.com/news03/harry1.jpg
and three others

 

[Galen_V]

Personally, I would like to see Tim Burton take a crack at one of these movies (preferably 4 and 5 since they are very dark). While this will probably never happen (I think that execs would feel that he would break the machine completely), it would be really cool to see a Burtonesque, demented, twisted version of Harry Potter, instead of the sort of pretty, cookie cutter/Christmas village vision we have gotten the past two times.

As for the LOTR connections, I am sure you could draw up lists upon lists of LOTR refrences and such in the Harry Potter books, so much so that some things probably will look alike, a la the dementors and the Nazguls. On a side note about the dementors, they are all CGI (from what I gathered from the Newsweek article-that was a bit surprising) so there is no way that face in the dementor pic is not an actor's.

 

[Ricardo C]

I don't know, Galen... I fear that in the end, by "putting his stamp" on the movie, Burton would make the story serve as a showcase for his style, rather than his style serving the picture. The first two Batman movies come to mind. Great displays of Burton's talents, but not very true to the source.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I wouldn't... As much as I like Burton's work, he does the best stuff when he's doing something original. I'm not sure he'd be able to stay within the lines, as it were. As much as I (speaking personally here) like seeing creative outlooks on Harry, I think you still have to stick to the source for it's core. People say the biggest problem with the first two was that they stayed too close to the source. I feel that the only problems were the few times where they strayed.

However, I think Cuarón's going to absolutely nail it. In particular, the picture of them all leaving for Hogsmeade and McGonagall telling Harry to stay behind is absolutely gorgeous. Alot of fans at the-leaky-cauldron.org are saying that the modern clothing ruins the fairy tale atmosphere. I think they're missing the point: Harry's never been a fairy tale.

To sum it all up, I think the creative heads behind the franchise need to maintain that careful balance of allowing the director the freedom to express him/herself creatively on their particular film with maintaining a certain level of integrity to the source. We'll see what happens, but I'm unabashedly optomistic.