Thadlerian
Riftsound resident
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2005
- Messages
- 989
Boy, this was a bad movie.
This movie more than the others made me want to ask what these filmmakers actually want. What is their goal with making the Harry Potter movies?
Is it...
A: To tell the Harry Potter story in a different medium?
B: To make money?
Or, perhaps, it might be...
C: That the filmmakers have submitted to the franchise, the hype, as an institution that exists for its own sake; that they, having entered the HP universe, are succumbing to the endemic impulse of ever aiding the limitless expansion of the "Harry Potter" theme in today's cultural reality?
So...
Let me just clarify this: I don't need anyone telling me that "making a movie is different from writing a novel; even the silliest HP purists have to accept that things have to be left out."
I don't have a problem with things being left out (that's in fact their problem; not showing the locket in Black's house is going to cost them dearly when making movies 6 and 7). I do, however have a problem with what is being kept, and, most of all, the logic Yates moves along when deciding what is to be left out and what is to be kept; it is starkly obvious that elements aren't kept to maintain a comprehensible narrative, but simply for their solitary effect, like the individual and independent numbers of a show.
Instance: The whole Cho Chang sequence. It could easily have been cut away, without altering the movie the slightest. In fact, it made the movie less consistent: Did Harry dump her because she had been forcibly fed Veritaserum? Wouldn't he, who is so full of "love" (as advertised at the movie climax) have done the oppsite; show her even more care, supported her, after such an experience? And why didn't the kiss show up in the "love"-themed video collages near the end? Clearly, the sequence was of no relevance whatsoever for the plot, and could easily have been omitted. But the one thing everyone knows about HP book 5 is that there's a kiss. So, it's gotta be kept.
OotP is a movie that more than any of the others shows that the movie industry by default applies a pre-defined frame for conveying the HP stories. When the actual story diverges from the parameters of the frame, then the story is ditched. The parameters are numerous, but the three foremost are as follows:
1: Spectacle: The movie needs to convey primal emotions; endless use of BOO! events and lots of relatively cheap and unsubtle instant laughs (of the kind that you laugh at in a theatre, when the socially powered impulse to do so is greater than when you watch it alone in your living room, unable to recall why this joke was so funny).
2: Modernism: Everything is physical, and must thus be comprehended as correlative to our percepted physical reality. In the OotP movie, the Room of Requirements can be entered by means of crude physical force (come on, is the great Hogwarts of the books that easily subdued?). It isn't a question whether the room exists in the universe of the individual who wants to enter it, it's simply a question of whether it's physically possible to pass through the wall. The idea that existence can be relative, which is such a fundamental rule in visualizing, understanding the concept of Hogwarts, seems to be utterly incomprehensible to the adult directors of the HP movies (as seen when depicting the "mobile stairways" alternating between only two close destinations in the first movie), whereas a child instantly understands what Rowling means.
3: Methodic reaction: You shall not be creative. Rather, everything supernatural must be conveyed in baroque, excessive, and, most of all, tangible CGI; majestic flyby views of Hogwarts, sparks, lightning effects, spells disrupting the transparency of the air, explosions. The industry has had CGI close at hand for at least a decade, but the idea of trying to do something new with this wonderfult tool seems an impossibility. You can use it for anything, really be crazy and experiment, but there is no room for this within the frame.
Parameters 2 and 3 often depend on each other, for instance in movies like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (mechanically folding rocket engines on the glass elevator) and Lord of the Rings (visible shockwave whenever Sauron dies/is destroyed).
So, in the end, why do they adapt these books when there's noting left of the stuff that makes the story unique? Why do they force them into this inflexible, narcissistic framework? Just for the money? Sure, that would be such a comfortable explanation; the capitalism accusation which never seems to be far away when Harry Potter is concerned. But I believe there is a different reason they made this move so bad. The movie industry's inability to change, to experiment, the idea that something that is popular must also be made simple. Again, not necessarily a symptom of ill will, it's just the default. A default that has been able to root itself in the absence of criticism.
This movie more than the others made me want to ask what these filmmakers actually want. What is their goal with making the Harry Potter movies?
Is it...
A: To tell the Harry Potter story in a different medium?
B: To make money?
Or, perhaps, it might be...
C: That the filmmakers have submitted to the franchise, the hype, as an institution that exists for its own sake; that they, having entered the HP universe, are succumbing to the endemic impulse of ever aiding the limitless expansion of the "Harry Potter" theme in today's cultural reality?
So...
Let me just clarify this: I don't need anyone telling me that "making a movie is different from writing a novel; even the silliest HP purists have to accept that things have to be left out."
I don't have a problem with things being left out (that's in fact their problem; not showing the locket in Black's house is going to cost them dearly when making movies 6 and 7). I do, however have a problem with what is being kept, and, most of all, the logic Yates moves along when deciding what is to be left out and what is to be kept; it is starkly obvious that elements aren't kept to maintain a comprehensible narrative, but simply for their solitary effect, like the individual and independent numbers of a show.
Instance: The whole Cho Chang sequence. It could easily have been cut away, without altering the movie the slightest. In fact, it made the movie less consistent: Did Harry dump her because she had been forcibly fed Veritaserum? Wouldn't he, who is so full of "love" (as advertised at the movie climax) have done the oppsite; show her even more care, supported her, after such an experience? And why didn't the kiss show up in the "love"-themed video collages near the end? Clearly, the sequence was of no relevance whatsoever for the plot, and could easily have been omitted. But the one thing everyone knows about HP book 5 is that there's a kiss. So, it's gotta be kept.
OotP is a movie that more than any of the others shows that the movie industry by default applies a pre-defined frame for conveying the HP stories. When the actual story diverges from the parameters of the frame, then the story is ditched. The parameters are numerous, but the three foremost are as follows:
1: Spectacle: The movie needs to convey primal emotions; endless use of BOO! events and lots of relatively cheap and unsubtle instant laughs (of the kind that you laugh at in a theatre, when the socially powered impulse to do so is greater than when you watch it alone in your living room, unable to recall why this joke was so funny).
2: Modernism: Everything is physical, and must thus be comprehended as correlative to our percepted physical reality. In the OotP movie, the Room of Requirements can be entered by means of crude physical force (come on, is the great Hogwarts of the books that easily subdued?). It isn't a question whether the room exists in the universe of the individual who wants to enter it, it's simply a question of whether it's physically possible to pass through the wall. The idea that existence can be relative, which is such a fundamental rule in visualizing, understanding the concept of Hogwarts, seems to be utterly incomprehensible to the adult directors of the HP movies (as seen when depicting the "mobile stairways" alternating between only two close destinations in the first movie), whereas a child instantly understands what Rowling means.
3: Methodic reaction: You shall not be creative. Rather, everything supernatural must be conveyed in baroque, excessive, and, most of all, tangible CGI; majestic flyby views of Hogwarts, sparks, lightning effects, spells disrupting the transparency of the air, explosions. The industry has had CGI close at hand for at least a decade, but the idea of trying to do something new with this wonderfult tool seems an impossibility. You can use it for anything, really be crazy and experiment, but there is no room for this within the frame.
Parameters 2 and 3 often depend on each other, for instance in movies like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (mechanically folding rocket engines on the glass elevator) and Lord of the Rings (visible shockwave whenever Sauron dies/is destroyed).
So, in the end, why do they adapt these books when there's noting left of the stuff that makes the story unique? Why do they force them into this inflexible, narcissistic framework? Just for the money? Sure, that would be such a comfortable explanation; the capitalism accusation which never seems to be far away when Harry Potter is concerned. But I believe there is a different reason they made this move so bad. The movie industry's inability to change, to experiment, the idea that something that is popular must also be made simple. Again, not necessarily a symptom of ill will, it's just the default. A default that has been able to root itself in the absence of criticism.
I watched it twice and loved it even more the second time round.
