Like a total jackass, I listened to Stephen Fry reading Deathly Hallows yesterday and this morning. I am an asshole. Because when the original story is heard, it brings up the mind pictures you'd created. At one point when he was telling the part about Snape in the Shrieking Shack, I truly thought to myself, "Wait, I've already seen this scene." The whole thing was visually implanted in my head. So once again, Austan ruins it for herself. They always make them crappier than what Rowling's imagination coupled with your own create.
Halfway through the movie, I thought, "Well, I'm going to have to see this a couple more times before I like it." I brought a hankie, but only used it once to blow my nose, when Sirius spoke and I choked up. Rickman I'm sure did a better job than I even noticed, because it was SO not the scene in my mind. I couldn't suspend disbelief. The fight scenes at the Battle of Hogwarts were very game-like and automatonish. Again, not what I'd had in my mind movie.
But the changes that really put me off were the hundred little things. Snape's tears, not ever in the book- it's his memories, the silvery strands just like all the other friggin memories for the pensieve; the omission of Luna bucking Harry up; Harry telling Neville to kill Nagini (not Ron & Hermione); Fred's death scene totally gone. He's just laying dead in the Great Hall, and then a cold shot of Tonks and Lupin nearby. Hermione kisses Ron when he says they can't ask the house elfs to die for them, not the insipid throwaway kiss they did. It's like the heart was taken out. All the touching, human scenes. Which is basically my complaint about all the HP movies since PoA.
And the final insult? They made Harry's son Albus look like Justin frigginass Beiber.
I want remakes, remakes that are the book stories. I'll volunteer all my life to whoever will do it and do it right. The HP books are better than this, they deserve, the fans deserve, better than this.
I know why my nephew didn't like it now. Neither do I. Dammit.
MYSTERIOUS GARDEN
10 months ago
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2 comments:
I never see newly released movies, but on Friday night I made an impulsive call for us to scoot over to the drive-in as they were playing Deathly Hallows Part 1 and Part 2. I haven't read the books (probably because I went and saw Movie 1 and 2 before reading them and wasn't really into the 2nd movie), though I am intrigued to read the series to see exactly how much better they are and how Rowling pulls it off. We went for the nostalgia of the drive-in more than anything, and because Roz liked the 3rd movie we taped off the tele and said she "loved Harry Potter and wished she could meet him some day". I got lost in all the action/fight scenes a bit... a lot of crazy wand action. I read somewhere that they concentrated more on 3-D and effects (which was useless on a grainy drive-in screen) rather than executing the scenes with "heart". So you fought your way past that truck and everything. Shucks, eh. (Bieber... LOLOL!) Did you even get to see it 3-D?
Oh man, the marquee was stripped down to the struts and frame! Old, old wood and what looked like an old gas line...
We didn't do the 3D. My niece said it wasn't a big deal. I hadn't thought along those lines, but that by itself may be the reason it seemed so shallow and game-ish! Do read the books, Carrie, they're fabulous in the classic sense.
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