Saturday, June 12, 2004
Just got back from Harry Potter 3...
...and I'm wondering, is it possible for a nearly two-and-a-half hour movie to seem short?
They tried to pare the book down - which is fine, really, as it is a book and not a movie. And besides, the friggin' things keep getting longer, so they'll have no choice. But rather than liberally cut scenes and characters, the filmakers tried to cram as much in as possible. And by doing so, they had to compress the main story so much that they left a lot of important details out.
Anyway, I liked the film overall, but it was not as good as the previous two. The acting and direction were very good - much better than the earlier two - but the adaptation of the novel was so poor it detracted from the good stuff. As with Attack of the Clones, Ryan and I could have done a much better job.
It will be interesting to see how they handle the next film, as it is 600+ pages long. (I'd cut most, if not all, of the World Cup sequence. I dug it in the book, but I don't know how you could fit it into a 3-hour long film.)
They tried to pare the book down - which is fine, really, as it is a book and not a movie. And besides, the friggin' things keep getting longer, so they'll have no choice. But rather than liberally cut scenes and characters, the filmakers tried to cram as much in as possible. And by doing so, they had to compress the main story so much that they left a lot of important details out.
Anyway, I liked the film overall, but it was not as good as the previous two. The acting and direction were very good - much better than the earlier two - but the adaptation of the novel was so poor it detracted from the good stuff. As with Attack of the Clones, Ryan and I could have done a much better job.
It will be interesting to see how they handle the next film, as it is 600+ pages long. (I'd cut most, if not all, of the World Cup sequence. I dug it in the book, but I don't know how you could fit it into a 3-hour long film.)
