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Originally Posted by Theo  Enjoyable discussion, but I guess I better not get too comfortable around here. When a teenager, I was the "fastest finger in the west". We won't go into how long ago that was, but it was definitely pre-Giget (sp).
Anyway, I stand by my comment that the movies should have been longer to give both scenes and characters more depth in interpretation. But then, who knows what got left on the cutting room floor? |
If length would have been increased to appease even the general audience of readers, we'd have a piece of film so long we could use it to tie the earth in a bow -- presumably as a gift to J.K.R., for bringing us such a controversial, debate-inspiring story.
Which scenes do we lengthen? Whose favorite characters do we bring to the foreground? Which sequence of events should have been given more line from Yates's cinematic fishing pole? As popular as this series has become, selling close to 400 million copies, it's safe to say that quite a few (I'd even go so far as saying the majority) of the movie-goers are also fans of the novels. If that is even remotely close to the truth, anyone that walks into the theater should view the films as a Cliff's Notes to the literature. If you walk in as a critic, you'll leave as one, and your impression of the movie will be arbitrarily skewed in that direction. Sometimes I wonder if fans of the series continue to go see these films simply to berate them, to weigh them against the source material, on principle alone. Where book-to-film adaptations are concerned, there are very few of them that get it right, and the Potter films have done a good job of capturing the charm of the books, while at the same time trying to remain cinematic experiences. I'd love to see a Jackson-esque extended edition of these movies, I bet even the fans would be bored by the outcome, having to watch what was better left to prose.
In the end, of course, it's a matter of opinion. In a perfect world I'd imagine everyone going to see these movies and paying credit to the filmmakers for doing the best job possible, within the alloted time given to them.
(No offense Theo, this was a general response, rather than a direct rebuttal to your post)