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Harry Potter Again
Orbert:
I understand the rationale for splitting the last book into two movies; there's so much story to tell, and they don't want to cut too much. What I'm wondering is why the change of attitude. The first movie was nearly three hours, and I thought it was great. Harry Potter books are big; not just in number of pages, but in scope. They could (for example) spend half an hour on a quidditch match and a lot of people would be okay with that. So I was all set for a whole series of "epic" movies, a la Lord of the Rings.
But then the movies started getting shorter, even as the books they were based upon were getting longer, which was weird. So why are they now suddenly concerned about giving the last book a proper treatment? They didn't seem to have a problem short-changing some of the middle ones.
0bsessions:
For one, you're mistaken. Half-Blood Prince is actually third longest of the films, only eight minutes shorter than the longest, which is Chamber of Secrets. I will concede that, ironically, the shortest film yet is dedicated to the longest book of the series (Half Blood Prince), but it honestly didn't miss nearly as much important content as the Goblet of Fire, which was only four minutes shorter than Chamber of Secrets. Also, none of the flicks even sniff the three hour mark. Chamber of secrets is almost two and a half on the dot, which is the norm for a blockbuster flick.
The thing you have to remember here are these are movies aimed at children and teens with a principle cast made up primarily of children and teens. When most people are growing up, anything more than that magic 2 1/2 hours is usually way too drawn out (It was almost impossible to get anyone I knew to sit through any of the Lord of the Rings movies). There's a reason blockbusters clocking in past 2 1/2 hours are pretty rare, the average movie going audience doesn't want to sit in a crowded theater for three hours and change counting previews. Hell, I dug the LotR movies, but getting through them in theaters was a chore, and I still don't like to do the extended editions at home in one sitting for any of them.
The final movie is being split up because they have a lot of left over ground to cover, but splitting up the earlier films isn't really plausible either. Again, I remind you, the principal cast of these movies is almost entirely under twenty years old. Logically speaking, if they were going to split up movies other than the latest, the fourth would've been the logical point, which would put the series on pace for eleven movies. Can you imagine filming eleven movies through your formative teen years? That would essentially destroy what little bit of a childhood any of the cast had and probably kill any interest in the series due to over saturation (To keep them on pace with the actors' ages, we'd need a new one damn near every six months).
Logistically speaking, it would've been an absolute fucking nightmare. It essentially couldn't be done without a revolving cast. Comparing it to Lord of the Rings is about the worst comparison possible. The entire cast of LotR was already adults and thus unlikely to change appearance over a lengthy production and the series was only three books long, less than half the length of the Harry Potter series.
BeoPuppy:
--- Quote from: 0bsessions on 09 Sep 2009, 10:55 ---[...] The entire cast of LotR was already adults [...]
--- End quote ---
No way ... those hobbits were tiny!
And I see your logic. It's just that as Rowling junkies we want more.
AanAllein:
The reason they're breaking up the last book rather than any of the others is pretty straightforward if you think about it. The earlier books, while longer, had a lot of exposition/dialogue/subplots that could be comfortably excised without upsetting any but unnecessarily obsessed fans. However, the last book has a lot of actions - scenes that will make for great cinematic pieces - the dragon tearing out of Gringotts, for example. They don't want to cut any of the action down, because they know the audience will appreciate that, and they can't really trim everything else down and just make it a slideshow of action scenes. The only realistic way to approach it is two halves.
At least the narrative naturally splits in two - there are two points in the middle you could do it, but best would probably be after the escape from the Malfoy's.
0bsessions:
Thank you! I've been saying all that since the split was announced. I still don't comprehend all the people bitching that S.P.E.W. was cut. No one here is doing it, but fuck it's around.
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