Reply #10: I didn't vote [View All]

I agree with what an above poster said about the longer the books get, the harder the movies have to work to catch up.

I thought Goblet of Fire had some of the best scenes, but the plot was pretty compromised for the sake of the length of the film. Whole plot lines were missing here, and some major characters. Fleur, for example, had virtually no dialogue, which makes setting her up for 6 and 7 tough. Ultimately, I thought GoF was the most true to the spirit of the source book of all the films.

Prisoner of Azkaban, Cuaron definitely made it his own... some of the imagery and symbolism was inserted into the movie by the director that wasn't so much in the books, and it was a real departure from Columbus's style. Some of the back story on the Marauders was missing, sadly. 10 more minutes would have filled in a lot of the missing gaps, while with GoF, 10 minutes could have filled in some missing scenes, but not the missing plot lines.

I think Chamber of Secrets is the weakest of the books, and the movie shares some of that weakness. There are a few things missing, but frankly the plot of the book jumps around a bit so if the movie jumps a bit too, it's not Columbus' fault. I thought the ending was a bit weak, but I thought many of the movies tried to tack on a feel-good ending to books that had darker closing chapters.

The first movie was okay. The chess scene dragged a bit long.

All in all, I think it's really hard to make films out of these books. I think it was a mistake to start making the movies before all the books are written, because details are lost like for example the vanishing cabinet which shows up in book 2, 3, and 5 before playing a major part in book 6.

I think the casting has been brilliant, with a few exceptions. I'll give an extra shout-out to Kenneth Branagh as Lockhart.

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