Entry 3: The Films

             I’ve mentioned before how I believe the films really expanded on the popularity of Harry Potter when I was a child, and I stand by the thought that they are what really expanded it into what it is even today. While the books were no doubt popular on their own, we live in a world today where, sad to say, people really don’t read as much as they used to. When a child is assigned a book to read in school, they are likely to either look up a summary or just watch the movie. It really is a lot easier to just sit down for a couple of hours and visually take in a story rather than spend, I don’t know, eight or nine hours (it really depends on the length of the book) reading through all of the nitty gritty details. But what is it that makes people not want to experience that extra level of detail? If they really love the movie, shouldn’t they want to read the book and take in all of those little extra bits of story that the book provides? Is it just because watching the movie is faster (simply a matter of time)? Is it because they aren’t that great at reading (skill levels really do vary)? But then even in that case, I have a friend who just listened to all of the books on tape to ensure that he wasn’t missing out on anything.

            The thing about these movies is that they really do give a decent representation of the books. They aren’t like the typical movie to book transition where half of the story is lost or changed (although the movies do have some changes, they are minor to the overall story). I personally thought the first and second movie did a fantastic job of adapting the books to the big screen. They covered pretty much all of the important details, many minor ones, and even have available extended editions for people who wanted even more out of them. But it’s after these first two films that we really start to see some bigger changes. More scenes are altered or left out in later films. Yes, someone who has watched the movie can probably still have a conversation with someone who has read the book, but they will be missing chunks, or some parts of the story may not line up the same. Why the change from the first two? Well, the first two were really much smaller books than any that followed. Later books in the series became rather large, around 800 or so pages, so more and more needed cut. But I didn’t see anything changed that overly bothered me… Not until the Half Blood Prince anyway.