Prisoner of Bad Transitions
Jun. 4th, 2004 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaWell, we went to see Prisoner of Azkaban tonight.
Note: Here Be Spoilers, both for book and movie. Read no farther if you haven't read the first, or seen the second (unless you don't plan on seeing it at all).
Okay. I got half my dream cast for Moony and Padfoot, and I think Oldman did a great job with what he was given. I still want to see what Tim Roth would have done with Lupin, but Thewlis did a perfectly adequate job. Spall was not what I imagined Pettigrew to look like, but I think he nailed the part. It'll be interesting to see what he does with the graveyard scene in Movie IV.
However, a non-trivial part of the reason I wanted Roth as Lupin was cut from the movie! Dammit, ever since Rickman was picked to play Snape, I've been waiting to see him completely lose his shit just after they've freed Sirius. There's no hint that the scene was even filmed. It had better be a godsdamned DVD extra, or I'm going to have to kick Kloves from here to Alaska.
In fact, a lot was cut from the book to make the movie. I understand why - I know that some sequences simply wouldn't film well, and others just had to go to cut the run time down to less than LotR epics. In most of the cases in which two similar scenes were compacted into one, I think it was done well. However, I think what they chose to cut altogether was poorly chosen. An awful lot of Snape was cut, for instance. So was everything involving Fudge after Buckbeak's "execution." So was the entirety of the Secret Keeper plot, which is going to make parts of Movie V a bitch to explain. So was Cho Chang, ditto. We barely got a glimpse of Cedric Diggory, and never got his name. Oliver Wood doesn't appear at all, and the Quidditch Cup plot has disappeared. The scene in which Sirius startles Ron in the middle of the night is cut to absurdity and then changed beyond recognition. Sir Cadogan makes a couple of cameo appearances in paintings, but we never learn his name, and he plays no role in the plot.
And, in their place: a goofy thirteen-year-old-guys-goofin'-off sequence; too much Knight Bus, including a wisecracking Rasta shrunken head (?!?); a chorus; a group of caroling short people; lots and lots of atmosphere shots; a giant clock that tells us that Time is Important in This Movie but serves no purpose other than symbolism; cheesy transitions; and an bizarre sequence in which Draco folds a paper crane and flies it onto Harry's desk. Harry unfolds it to find an animated pencil stick-figure sketch of himself being struck by lightning and hit by a bludger.
Okay, this Draco clearly wants Harry and sees Hermione as his rival. If there's one thin Cuaron can do, it's bring the HoYay!, or in this case BiYay!. I enjoyed Felton's performance, although I kind of would have liked to see more of it. (Oh, and the kid who plays Gregory Gole - Josh Herdman, I think, and IMDB appears to agree with me - is growing up to look too good to play a heavy.) I also wanted to see more Percy.
Dementors do not fly, dammit! They're manifestations of depression - they can glide across water, but they could no more float than low could become high. In this movie, they're really more manifestations of fear, which is utterly untrue to Rowling's vision of them, I think.
That is so not what the Marauder's Map looks like! There is a very detailed description in the book, and they weren't anywhere close! Also, the werewolf effect sucks. After transforming, Lupin looks like a large grey wolf - period. Not this sort of skinny Crinos thing.
The thing that disturbed me most about the movie, I think, is that Cuaron's Potterverse is much more real than Columbus's. It's got a lot more grime and grit to it. Also, being more real, and being magical, it's more Pagan. This Potterverse is full of standing stones, springs, and sacred trees. It is, in fact, rather close to the world I inhabit. And it's clearly fictional. My making the Potterverse closer to mine, it feels as if my world has been called less real in the same proportion as the Potterverse has been made more realistic. It's vaguely insulting.
A few good things:
Cuaron's Ron is a lot closer to book-Ron and spends far less of his time making funny faces for no discernible reason.
No shots of children screaming at the camera.
Matthew Lewis, the kid who plays Neville Longbottom, is looking sharp!
No lingering shots of Emma Watson's blossoming bosom, despite what must have been great temptation, as the paparazzi have been snapping nothing but.
While their Trelawney didn't look like the one in my head, I think this is a valid interpretation of the character.
Fiona Shaw nailed Aunt Petunia's reaction to Aunt Marge's complete dissing of her side of the family.
The Twins look like a strawberry-blonde Tom Petty and his mirror.
Alan Rickman in a dress.
Overall, I was disappointed in the extreme. I'll get it on DVD because I'm a completist, and because I'm hoping for cut scenes for some of what we didn't see, but I doubt I'll see it in theaters again. Better luck with Goblet of Fire, I hope . . .
Note: Here Be Spoilers, both for book and movie. Read no farther if you haven't read the first, or seen the second (unless you don't plan on seeing it at all).
Okay. I got half my dream cast for Moony and Padfoot, and I think Oldman did a great job with what he was given. I still want to see what Tim Roth would have done with Lupin, but Thewlis did a perfectly adequate job. Spall was not what I imagined Pettigrew to look like, but I think he nailed the part. It'll be interesting to see what he does with the graveyard scene in Movie IV.
However, a non-trivial part of the reason I wanted Roth as Lupin was cut from the movie! Dammit, ever since Rickman was picked to play Snape, I've been waiting to see him completely lose his shit just after they've freed Sirius. There's no hint that the scene was even filmed. It had better be a godsdamned DVD extra, or I'm going to have to kick Kloves from here to Alaska.
In fact, a lot was cut from the book to make the movie. I understand why - I know that some sequences simply wouldn't film well, and others just had to go to cut the run time down to less than LotR epics. In most of the cases in which two similar scenes were compacted into one, I think it was done well. However, I think what they chose to cut altogether was poorly chosen. An awful lot of Snape was cut, for instance. So was everything involving Fudge after Buckbeak's "execution." So was the entirety of the Secret Keeper plot, which is going to make parts of Movie V a bitch to explain. So was Cho Chang, ditto. We barely got a glimpse of Cedric Diggory, and never got his name. Oliver Wood doesn't appear at all, and the Quidditch Cup plot has disappeared. The scene in which Sirius startles Ron in the middle of the night is cut to absurdity and then changed beyond recognition. Sir Cadogan makes a couple of cameo appearances in paintings, but we never learn his name, and he plays no role in the plot.
And, in their place: a goofy thirteen-year-old-guys-goofin'-off sequence; too much Knight Bus, including a wisecracking Rasta shrunken head (?!?); a chorus; a group of caroling short people; lots and lots of atmosphere shots; a giant clock that tells us that Time is Important in This Movie but serves no purpose other than symbolism; cheesy transitions; and an bizarre sequence in which Draco folds a paper crane and flies it onto Harry's desk. Harry unfolds it to find an animated pencil stick-figure sketch of himself being struck by lightning and hit by a bludger.
Okay, this Draco clearly wants Harry and sees Hermione as his rival. If there's one thin Cuaron can do, it's bring the HoYay!, or in this case BiYay!. I enjoyed Felton's performance, although I kind of would have liked to see more of it. (Oh, and the kid who plays Gregory Gole - Josh Herdman, I think, and IMDB appears to agree with me - is growing up to look too good to play a heavy.) I also wanted to see more Percy.
Dementors do not fly, dammit! They're manifestations of depression - they can glide across water, but they could no more float than low could become high. In this movie, they're really more manifestations of fear, which is utterly untrue to Rowling's vision of them, I think.
That is so not what the Marauder's Map looks like! There is a very detailed description in the book, and they weren't anywhere close! Also, the werewolf effect sucks. After transforming, Lupin looks like a large grey wolf - period. Not this sort of skinny Crinos thing.
The thing that disturbed me most about the movie, I think, is that Cuaron's Potterverse is much more real than Columbus's. It's got a lot more grime and grit to it. Also, being more real, and being magical, it's more Pagan. This Potterverse is full of standing stones, springs, and sacred trees. It is, in fact, rather close to the world I inhabit. And it's clearly fictional. My making the Potterverse closer to mine, it feels as if my world has been called less real in the same proportion as the Potterverse has been made more realistic. It's vaguely insulting.
A few good things:
Cuaron's Ron is a lot closer to book-Ron and spends far less of his time making funny faces for no discernible reason.
No shots of children screaming at the camera.
Matthew Lewis, the kid who plays Neville Longbottom, is looking sharp!
No lingering shots of Emma Watson's blossoming bosom, despite what must have been great temptation, as the paparazzi have been snapping nothing but.
While their Trelawney didn't look like the one in my head, I think this is a valid interpretation of the character.
Fiona Shaw nailed Aunt Petunia's reaction to Aunt Marge's complete dissing of her side of the family.
The Twins look like a strawberry-blonde Tom Petty and his mirror.
Alan Rickman in a dress.
Overall, I was disappointed in the extreme. I'll get it on DVD because I'm a completist, and because I'm hoping for cut scenes for some of what we didn't see, but I doubt I'll see it in theaters again. Better luck with Goblet of Fire, I hope . . .
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I'll try and respond gently, but i have so say a couple of things
Date: 2004-06-07 01:04 am (UTC)We knew that Colombus' timid Cliff Notes/Reader's Digest versions of the books were not quite working. We knew that someone would have to figure out how to tell a cinematic story. We also knew that when a charismatic director came in and added his (or her) unique signature on the product it would feel weird.
I feel Cuaron told the story in a way that was wildly inaccurate to the details, but totally on target in getting the feelings and characters. I KNOW Dementors don't fly, but Cuaron's visual imitation of Dore's famous Angel and Devil drawings were an interesting way of evoking the spirit of the beings. I can see your interpretation of Demetors as depression as valid, but they are so visually similar to depictions of death, fear, sleep, and disease that they worked on many more levels than pure depression for me. Cuaron said in an interview that he wanted kids to wet themselves when they saw these things for the first time. He wanted them to be deeply disturbing. I think he succeeded, and it wasn't inconsistent with what I got from the books.
Like the flying demetors, the map is transformed in such a way as to be visually dynamic. It's kind of like turning th diamond slippers into ruby ones because your have a new technicolor process that you want to show off. I won't try to defend it, but I don't think the creative team meant for their interpretation to be seen as canonical. The Lego line, and the book illustrations, and other sources that WB has approved (WoTC cards, EA games), all interpret each detail of the HP world in a totally different way.
Stuff that was cut:
Fudge had a scene in the hospital wing. Much of his denomont was removed for no reason.
Cho was in the screenplay. She may have hit the cutting room floor, but she was cast. I don't know if they shot her scene.
Sir Cadogan had a speaking part in the drafts I saw. I don't know why he was cut. Ditto with Diggory.
A bunch of stuff happened in Hogsmeade in the screenplay that was cut.
Stuff that was added:
Shrunken heads. I don't know either. I thought it was dumb.
Knight Bus. William's score needed more time to play up the brass section, I guess.
The clock. Cuaron carefully revisits several locations in such a way as to make the Time Turner sequence much easier to follow. Without those oddly paced scenes earlier, you would not understand the spacial/temporal relationships in that already dense material. I thought the pacing for all that was very poor in the book.
Draco's origami. We don't have time to let Draco dress up as a Dementor at the Quiddich game. This was added to give him that chance to tease. I agree is doesn't quite work, but i don't think it is out of place in the HP world.
The guys eating candy in the dorm room. This is a scene which reestablishes the 'old' parts of Hogwarts, which we don't see again in the film. Only the Great Hall and DADA classroom remain from the other films. Cuaron dramtises the rest of the film in the 'new' spaces around the clocktower.
I LOVE the improvements to Hagrid's hut, the grounds around the school, the 'bridge', and the stunning examples of old magic which populate the edges of this new Potterverse. I can see how a Pagan might take offense, but I felt that the more Natural Magical landscapes were a kind of sign that the films were growing up.
Werewoves need to appear distinct from Animagi. I agree that it looked a little freaky, but it was scary. Buckbeak more than made up for Lupin's slightly weak animal form IMHO. The effects should be considered seperately from the art direction. This film didn't have bad effects, it had a few strange descisions. The previous flicks suffered from both technical AND artistic shortcomings. Remember Aragog? Remember Hermione's cat transformation? Remember The lame Pod-Racing ripoff of a Quiddich match from CoS? Remember the moray eel that they passed off as a Basilisk?
Re: I'll try and respond gently, but i have so say a couple of things
Date: 2004-06-07 02:39 am (UTC)Part of the reason that I'm upset at what was cut is that it tells me what will have to be cut from the remainder of the series in order for the films to make any sense. That means:
1) Most of Snape's backstory, his previous history with the Marauders, and his history with Lily is going to have to be cut or trimmed down. This particularly irks me because I think Snape is the most interesting adult character in the series.
2) Much of the Marauders' backstory. Hell, in this film we don't even know why Lupin understands how the Map works, much less that he's one of the manufacturers!
3) Much of the tension with Fudge and Percy in book 5, unless they do an awful lot of catching up in Movie IV. Given that they seem to have decided to try and cram it all into one movie (Cuaron's idea, apparently) rather than spread it over two, I doubt that they will. This is going to make the tension between the Ministry and Hogwarts in Movie V very difficult to understand.
4) Cho. Cho, Cho, Cho. I guess she'll just spring out of nowhere in Movie IV? There's no way to do book 5 without her.
5) Cedric. Without learning who he is in this film, we won't have the right sort of connection with him when he dies in book 4. This suggests to me that he won't be in the graveyard sequence in Movie IV, which is going to screw up Harry's motivation further in Movie V. (Then again, they have to bring him along - otherwise they'll have to omit the Thestrals, and why omit another cool effects sequence?)
(Continued below)
Re: I'll try and respond gently, but i have so say a couple of things
Date: 2004-06-07 02:41 am (UTC)If it were really necessary to show the five Gryffindor boys with the candy in the dorm room, they could have at least used one of the many magical sweets that are actually described in the books. Heck, they could borrow one of the Twins' Wheezes from a later book. The one shown does not exist in the Potterverse as we know it, and it seems like an excuse for the actors to mug for the camera - almost like "oh, sorry, we're not going to have Rupert pull a face every ten seconds like the last movie, so we'll cram an entire movie's worth of faces into one scene here." There were plenty of opportunities not to have so big a shift from the previous films; if that's what this is, it's a wretched way to pull it off.
Part of the point of the Marauders becoming Animagi s that, visually at least, Animagi are not immediately recognizable as different from werebeasts. Indeed, they saw fit to include that in Snape's DADA lecture in the movie - it takes a sharp eye (like Hermione's) to catch the difference. If they were going to make Lupin's wereform this weird ape-greyhound thing, they could at least not have made Snape lie about it. (I didn't find it scary, but I generally don't find therianthropes scary.)
I wasn't thrilled with Buckbeak, either, but it didn't pull me out of the story the way the bad were-form did. Similarly, I didn't think Aragog was that bad in the previous film. And if Rowling is going to go to all the trouble of describing something in detail - like the Map - the least they could do was be true to her description.
While I'll agree that this film is a better film artistically than Movie II, I enjoyed it a lot less. The art direction and the changes to Columbus's Potterverse kept yanking me out of the film, when the parts cut from the book didn't do so. I feel that a lot of what the adult fans enjoyed about this book (except for the Remus/Sirius slashiness, which Cuaron did leave in) was cut out, and if Rowling put her seal of approval on this script, that means some of the things we've been counting on to pay off in the last two books are really not that important. That's where a lot of my disappointment comes from.
Re: I'll try and respond gently, but i have so say a couple of things
Date: 2004-06-08 03:09 pm (UTC)Not to lick a dead horse, but I was reading for work when I found Rowling's feelings on Cuaron's innacuracies and interpretation:
http://entertainment.news-leader.com/today/0529-Rowlingwow-99351.html
So perhaps we are both right, and his depiction just suffers from being overly visual. I tend to overlook directors like Burton who tell tales without using language, character, and music to convey the ideas. They speak my language at a more fundamental level.
That said, I'd love talk more with you about the whole problem of films needing to use specific images and actors to transmit characters and events which are symbolic in nature. Literature tends to be able to draw out personal reponses that films cannot. Any film version of a book may, by its very nature, alienate a large portion of the audience who loved the book.
Trelawney was an old art teacher I had in high school. Emma was good, but she wasn't my old art teacher. This ruined her scenes for me. (That, and my massive crush on Emma. ;-P)
Re: I'll try and respond gently, but i have so say a couple of things
Date: 2004-06-09 01:51 am (UTC)Jackson seems to have done pretty well. Even those Tolkien fans who feel his films are flawed because of their changes and omissions (and I'll freely admit I think TTT is flawed, at the very least) seem to enjoy the film; only a very small group have disliked them and been vocal about it. A fairly large number of Potterfans are irritated with this movie, mostly because of how much had to be cut and the choices of what was removed. (And the Dementors flying. My opinion on the Map appears to be in the minority.) Certainly you can't please everyone, but I think you can do quite a bit better than Kloves is doing, and I think Jackson proves that - his fanbase is generally older and pickier than the Potterfans are.
I don't have problems with any of the actors (so far - Mad-Eye Moody has been Billy Connolly in my head for a while now, and that he isn't going to be Mad-Eye in the movie irks me no end). And I'm not quite sure what you mean - are you talking about archetypal characters having to become specific actors/portrayals? I really don't think that's an issue very often (obviously, some movies are exceptions, but many of them - like Big Fish, to use your example from earlier, or any of Gilliam's films - are aware of it).
Re: I'll try and respond gently, but i have so say a couple of things
Date: 2004-06-09 05:42 pm (UTC)I wish Jackson could direct more fantasy films, and I'd love to see his take on the HP world. Then again, I didn't like some of his choices in LoTR. I thought his Elves were too physical. They didn't feel like the grand race of immortals I'd always admired. That said, it didn't ruin the films for me. I just had to accept that Jackson saw a different world than I had imagined in my youth. The themes were still there.
I guess that's what my whole thing is. If the themes are there then I'm even willing to let a director modify a world to express the essential nature of the story in moving pictures. Movies are, at best, an impressionist painting, rather than an accurate document of things. I'd say films are to books as trailers are to films.
If many of the Potterfans are upset, then I'd agree that Cuaron may have messed up. His vision worked for me, but I don't have the same relationship to the books that other people do. Perhaps he could have retained certain scenes and details which fans have been wanting to see dramatized without upsetting the pace and tone he was aiming for, but I have a feeling that no two fans could completly agree on where to make all the cuts that had to be made. Perhaps next time they'll bring in a better screenwriter, as well as a better director. This time they used the same guy who penned the last two screenplays, and they DID NOT WORK.
Re: I'll try and respond gently, but i have so say a couple of things
Date: 2004-06-09 07:39 pm (UTC)Having said that, if the cost for all the "artsy" transitions and the too-long sequence where Harry flies on Buckbeak's back (especially when the books make it clear that Harry does not particularly like flying on winged beasties) is losing the end-game with Snape and Fudge, I'd far rather have the latter, both because I'm less visual and because I think they're far more important to the continuing story. And I suspect that's Cuaron's fault as much as Kloves's.
And no, every bit of that book is precious to most of us. It's still the one that gets listed as the favorite of the five most often (although GoF is a close second). We'd never be able to agree on what to cut. But I think we would agree, to a person, not to put in new stuff (talking heads, anyone? choir?) that would squeeze out part of what was written.
(And I thought Jackson nailed the elves - I never liked the idea of them being solidified light, especially the ones who hadn't seen the Two Trees. But that's just me.)