Harry Potter (Wizarding World Universe) Book • Page 8

Yeah, watching Goblet of Fire yesterday especially they cut out at least 50% of that book. It was nuts.

 

The first couple I feel were very good and the final 2 films were great. Films 3-6 run the gamut of bad to awful adaptations but boy do I love them all.

 

I'm sure if I grew up with this series and the movies I would view them completely differently. But when compared to other fantasy adaptions *cough*lordoftherings*cough* Harry Potter comes across competent at best.

 

I grew up with the series and I thought the second film was so bad I refused to see the third one at the cinema, ha!

 

I agree the movies rock

 

For me I thought movies 4 & 5 were there worst, my wife says the 3rd movie was the worst

 

I’m only two books in so i can’t speak to how well most of the books are adapted but even with not having read them I’ve always felt the movies were hollow which is why I’ve always craved reading the books. That said Death Hallows, Sorcerers Stone and Order of the Phoenix are four of my favorite movies ever

As I said I totally understand the distaste for the movies if you’ve read them first, but i just think it’s an impossible task. Chambers extended version is three hours and still comes nowhere close to the books effectiveness.

I think 1 and 2 are adapted well for the movie medium. The casting was incredible. The music, set design, sound design and effects are things I think added to the universe greatly. Both movies flow very well. The action so far is obviously expanded and they did a great job with all of those scenes. Most importantly I think they captured the heart and spirit of the wizarding world and the characters.

I think these movies could’ve easily been way worse.

 

Maybe I’ll change my tune once I read it but I really don’t get the hate for Phoenix. I think tat movie does the best with Harry’s inner turmoil and struggle with his connection to Voldy. Umbridge is a great villain. Luna was a great addition. Some of the best action of the series.

3rd favorite movie

 

So I havent seen Crimes of Grindelwald and kind of want to splurge and buy it since it just came out digitally and want to see it, but Im apprehensive because Ive heard bad things. Wanted to ask fellow potter fans. Is it not worth purchasing?

 

I haven't seen it but bought the first blindly and enjoyed that one. I'd likely do the same with this one too

 

Finished Chamber a couple weeks ago but haven’t been up to writing my thoughts and going over all my notes.

First off I’m so impressed how both the books and movies do a great job of time jumping seamlessly. It usually feels so disjointed to me when there is so much jumping around but both versions manage to squeeze a whole school year into such a short period of time that feels like a month time has passed.

Once again, with Chamber I can easily say that I love the book much more than the movie. I do love the movie, but it is my least favorite of the original 8, so it did expound on my love for this story to an even greater extent than reading the Philosophers stone did for that story.

I will say that this book flowed less well than TPS did for me. It felt somewhat meandering in the beginning and while it was intentional and necessary to the story and themes, I couldn’t help getting bored with the amount of Colin and Lockhart. I felt like it took awhile for the story to really get its footing and really it was only until the end of Chapter 8 until I was really engaged with the story when Harry, Ron, and Hermoine found Mrs. Norris. I could’ve used that a smidge earlier. After that though I was hooked and couldnt put the book down.

One of the most salient aspects that stood out to me after reading is how deep the thematic and symbolic elements in this book are. Just going over all of my notes and trying to organize all the the storylines and characters and how they relate to the themes, Id say its much more complex in its philosophies than TPS was. It’s taken time to really gather my own interpretation of it all and I truly appreciate that journey.

That said, as some may have noticed I tend to be long-winded in talking about things I love lol due to my mental health and physical health which are both in terrible place, I’m not going to into all my notes and philosophical interpretations for the rest of the books. I know nobody gives a shit but I just need to mention this to give myself an excuse because it hurts me I can’t give 120% and go as deep as I want. Yeah I’m that crazy.

But anyways I really loved book two a lot. Since the book is better at basically everything as it usually is, I’ll just quickly end this by going into what I thought the movie improved upon. Once again the action scenes are more pronounced and naturally more engaging because of the medium. The Forbidden Forest and the Spiders, the Chamber of Secrets itself, the incredible practical effects with the set design and the basilisk enhance those scenes so much.

While liking the scene where Draco calls Hermoine a mudblood more with the crowd having way more of intense reaction, I did like how in the movie Hermoine knew what it meant and was the one explaining it to Harry in Hagrids hut. It was more effective how harmful the word is when seeing how hurt she was through Emma’s great performance. As opposed to: “He did,” she said. “But I don’t know what it means. I could tell it was really rude, of course.”

Also the last thing is I think the movie really enhanced the Great Hall ending. In the book it goes: “Harry didn’t know whether the best bit was Hermione running toward him, screaming “You solved it! You solved it!” or Justin hurrying over from the Hufflepuff table to wring his hand and apologize endlessly for suspecting him, or Hagrid turning up at half past three, cuffing Harry and Ron so hard on the shoulders that they were knocked into their plates of trifle...”

In the movie John Williams score makes Hermoine entering and running to Harry and Ron this incredibly poignant reunion. Then Hagrid comes back and he gets a huge spotlight as if he’s the hero of the movie. It’s almost like the school was apologizing for how he had been expelled and blamed twice for something he hadn’t done. Harry’s hug and the slow clap leading to a huge standing ovation was another beautiful moment. It kind of actually bummed me out how the book kind of doesn’t give Hagrid any kind of reparation. The entire scene in the movie makes me cry every time and loved what they did from just one sentence in the book.

Also my favorite line of the book was probably by Draco: “Honestly, if you were any slower, you’d be going backward.”

 

I’m halfway through Azkaban. It is soooooooooooooooo different. Not surprising since it is a lot longer than the first two books but just wow. As much as everybody loves Azkaban the movie something always felt empty about it for me and that emptiness is getting filled in with so much detail that makes this story so much better. Also the depression aspect symbolized with the dementors and the patronus stuff is way more fleshed out and considering I’m going through the hardest shit in my life, I’ve never felt more connected to Harry than I do through through this story.

 

Finished chamber of secrets today. Even tho I had scene the movie the part where Tom morevelo riddle becomes I am Voldemort still surprised me haha

 

Nice! What’d you think overall?

 

It was an exciting, fun read. Takes a while to get going but once it picks up it really goes. There’s a lot more insight into the character development in the books, especially with Ron. He doesn’t seem as dumb in the books so far and actually contributes a lot to the 3 main characters dynamic a lot more.

 

Finished reading Azkaban.

WOW. WOOoOoOoOoOoOW.

So to start off I do love the movie but many consider it the best of the series and it’s always felt hollow to me. For me it feels like it forms these little separate clumps of an unfinished puzzle just enough that you could see what the picture was supposed to be. But reading this book was like I found the remaining stash of the puzzle to connect and bridge all those disjointed clumps to see the full picture. Now that I see the whole picture I can finally see it’s utter fucking BRILLIANCE.

I can’t even fathom going into every single thing I learned that finally makes sense now. The whole shrieking shack scene blew my mind. Three separate times I yelled: “What!!!” “Oh my god...” and “holy shit!”. I ended up not being able to put the book down at all. I finished at 4 am, and the shitty day from lack of sleep was worth every second. Its my favorite of the three so far and my favorite fiction book I’ve ever read (which is isn’t saying much seeing as though Ive only read about 12).

I finally get the map. I never knew those four created the map. I never knew why they created the map. I never really got the animals connections. I knew Padfoot was Sirius and Wormtail was Pettigrew, but really wasn’t even thinking about the other two names or the connection between them all. once I pieced together the names to the animagi forms and realized what “prongs” symbolized (even a chapter before Harry realized it) I teared up.

Everything coalesced so perfectly. The Marauders Map. Sirius. Lupin. Shrieking Shack. Pettigrew. The newspaper. How Snape was involved, how Sirius got out of Azkaban, how he was getting in to Hogwarts, The 7 Secret passages which are only briefly mentioned in the movie and only I think during Deathly Hallows Part 2.

It all makes sense. In a story I already knew, I genuinely didn’t know what was going to happen next. There was a portion of the book that I actually thought Crookshanks was an animagus as well for Lupin lol especially when he jumped on Sirius’ heart to protect him from Harry

I learned why Wormtail remained a rat with the Weasley’s. His plan to kill Harry waiting for Voldemort to come back. I got the payoff to knowing why Hagrid has Sirius’ Bike. I got the payoff to James saving Snape. It’s all making sense!

I loved all of the Crookshanks and Scabbers stuff and how much more dramatic the fight was between Heroine and Ron. They weren’t speaking to Hermoine for a couple months! That was crazy to me. On top of that it added so much to how stressed Hermoine was with her classes. I felt the pain she was going through and how it added to her trying to help Hagrid in Buckbeaks case. Really fell in love with Hermoine in this book even more than I already was. Love how much more attention she gets in the books.

One of my favorite aspects was the Dementors and how much more obvious it was about depression and isolation. Jo’s writing behind that theme really hit deep with me with everything I’m going through right now.

Only thing I was disappointed with was not getting the rules of the Time Turner. I thought I read somewhere that it had more rules that werent explained. I looked it up though and supposedly its mentioned in OOTP and HBP so hopefully Ill get my answers to why it wasnt used later on.

The Movie
The movie took more liberty with the werewolf fight and everything up until the dementors which I did enjoy more (The pebbles Hermoine throws to warn them of the ministry. Heroine howling saving Harry’s life.)

It’s hard. As I’ve said in my last two book reviews almost EVERYTHING is better as it should be. But even with that said I think with this book that disparity between the effectiveness of a lot of aspects between the book and movie is even wider. I think the movie could’ve expanded on its 2-20 run time and added some much needed connective tissue that was removed.

I really am so grateful how much more depth Remus, Sirius, the map, the history, and really all of it had that I never knew. I never knew I’d get this much new information when reading. It’s almost like a whole new story. This book makes me so much more excited to continue finding the remaining pieces of the puzzle and finally getting to see the full Harry Potter story.

How I feel going into Goblet of Fire:

 

Over the weekend I watched all 8 of these movies in a row in a theater. It was...an experience lol.

 

Damn. I saw them last year in about a weeks time. One weekend is intense. Finally seeing them in a theater was a dream come true for me though.

 

Not just one weekend. 1 day lol. 24 hours straight. I’m not sure how I survived...

It was overall really fun though lol. The theater was decorated with floating candles and all kinds of stuff and was selling butterbeer (alcoholic or non). They also ran trivia in the short 10-15 minute breaks between the films. Would do it again.

 

That is incredible and im so jealous but yea thats intense. What did you eat?!

 

There was a one hour break for breakfast and a one hour break for dinner. So we grabbed real food at nearby restaurants at those times, and all other times subsisted on popcorn lol.

 

I think this is my favourite book in the series and I loved reading your update. Great stuff and, for me, highlights why the book trumps the movie. It's those details (such as the map and who the four creators were) that falls between the cracks in a film and I feel we miss out on the whole. As you say, it's almost like a whole new story. For me, that's where JK Rowling's genius truly was (I say 'was' because I feel she's missed some of that consistency as the universe has expanded into the theatre and Fantastic Beasts). I don't think that the films necessarily captured Rowling's true talent, but they certainly brought the whole magical world to life and that's good enough.

 

Agreed, but to be fair I think any movie adaptation will always fail to beat any book in character and story just because of the time restraints and inability to hear what characters are thinking. For Azkaban I think too many important details and history was excluded though.

Agreed with the movies bringing the world to life. They did an extraordinary job and it’s why I’ll still always love the movies. Been watching the special features for the first three and the work done on the sets and creatures to make it feel real is incredible.

As far as the adaptations i don’t think they can be blamed on Jo. She barely had anything to do with the movies. Just kind of a consultant role to Steve Kloves the writer. But I agree Fantastic Beasts was a step down. Haven’t seen COG yet but I hear it’s not great. I’m kind of nervous since a lot of people are saying it retcons things already established

 

I’ve been listening to Binge Mode lately and it got me thinking: if Hollywood ever remakes the movies, I hope it’s turned in to a tv show. Each book could be a season and it would give the writers room to breathe and include more of the story that was cut from the originals

 

Been wanting this forever, I hope it’s a BBC show.