Now why'd they go and make a kids movie out of a kids book?
Posted on Wednesday, December 19, 2007
So I finally saw the newest Harry Potter movie. I must say I’m a bit disappointed.
Unlike many people, I actually really liked the fifth book. I realize that Order of the Phoenix is mostly just a big information dump to advance the plot of the whole series and as a result is too long and kinda slow, but I really liked it.
It’s probably the darkest of all the books, and all the reviews I saw of the movie mentioned how dark and “grown up” it was. What bugged me about the movie though was that they seemed to overcompensate for the darkness of the overall plot by over-disneyfying the upbeat scenes. With silly happy music and bright colors everywhere, it felt more like the first two movies than the last two movies in many places. Also many of the new characters in this movie (esp. Kingsley Shacklebolt & Bellatrix Lestrange) were just way more cartoony in the movie than I’d imagined them, and it seemed like they were more so than a lot of the characters introduced in previous films too. I haven’t seen the first four movies in awhile though, so maybe I’m not remembering them very well.
This is the problem with “kids movies” vs. “kids books”. You can read the Harry Potter books as an adult and create your own vision of them that is quite different from the internal vision of a kid reading the same story. Movies force more on you & they end up being a lot less flexible and dynamic as a result.