1) About the soundtrack, yeah, John Williams was really good. Hedwig's Theme still gives me this nice excited shivery feeling when I hear it. :) But Patrick Doyle isn't half bad! Hedwig's Theme got a bit of a makeover, it's done with strings now I think, but it's still good. Of course musical tastes can vary loads from person to person so I don't know if you'd like it.
2) Now that you mention it, I would have to concede that he looked kind of frail. Actually I can't remember the first two films too clearly, I should revisit them sometime soon. Ian McKellen would've been great as Dumbledore, no doubt. But there would have been that problem you mentioned. Again I guess everyone has their own actors in mind for each role (like how I think Johnny Depp would've been awesome as Sirius Black!). But I've more or less grown used to the current actors playing each role now and I think it would feel a bit strange if the characters were suddenly played by someone else. In GoF Angelina Johnson is played by someone else and even though she's barely on screen, it did make a difference. I think the actors have grown into their roles anyway- IMHO nobody's gotten worse at playing their character. But I'm rambling.
3a) I started out liking the HP books for the plot, actually. But I started to pay more attention to characterization upon reading the books again, and especially so when reading GoF and OotP because the characters undergo a lot of changes, not only because of growing up but also because Voldemort rises again and events take on a darker tone. (and also because OotP was rather draggy and full of CAPSLOCK!Harry) Dumbledore is definitely an interesting character, though I never dwelt upon him that much. I didn’t like or understand why Dumbledore shook Harry like that and I thought something was rather odd about his expression when Harry pulled out the Horntail as well. Even my sister, who is a really, really big fan and quite protective, shall we say, of the books and films ;-) thought the former was weird. But in the scriptwriters’ defence, like I was telling you, he’s quite alright during the later scenes so that sort of “redeemed” their portrayal of him in my eyes (I tend to forgive quite easily though). I think we see that in the books, starting from GoF, Harry sees (and we see) that Dumbledore might be one of the greatest wizards that ever lived and one that Voldemort himself feared, but he’s not infalliable. Neither is he immortal, as we unfortunately see in HBP. He has flaws, like his quality of trusting people and giving them second chances and that ultimately leads to his downfall (though admittedly Snape did a pretty good job of hiding the fact that he was still on the dark side if he was bad all the way through PS to OotP, or it could even be that Snape is good and Dumbledore planned it with Snape to kill him because he’s growing old and is an obstacle to Harry who is old enough to deal with stuff- you know, those conspiracy theorists. Personally I think it sounds too much like a Tamil movie script for my liking!). And perhaps the scriptwriters wanted to show this, but they just didn’t go about presenting it in the right way, or Michael Gambon didn’t do it exactly as they hoped. Dumbledore definitely looks more weary and helpless in the GoF film though. Furthermore, the film is quite tightly-packed. MILD SPOILER The Quidditch World Cup was cut to less than fifteen minutes altogether and they skipped the Sorting at Hogwarts entirely tooEND SPOILER. The supporting cast is growing with each film too and they’re all competing for screen time, as the review in Life! said. So the scriptwriters probably couldn’t flesh out each character as much as the books did.
Anyhow I also thought the script was quite good otherwise. There were lots of funny bits that had the audience laughing out loud, though those focused more on the angst-of-growing-up theme. Y’know, the kind of stuff that would more or less resound with people our age. I’m a sucker for humour anyway, especially the British variety, so I enjoyed that. :>
1) About the soundtrack, yeah, John Williams was really good. Hedwig's Theme still gives me this nice excited shivery feeling when I hear it. :) But Patrick Doyle isn't half bad! Hedwig's Theme got a bit of a makeover, it's done with strings now I think, but it's still good. Of course musical tastes can vary loads from person to person so I don't know if you'd like it.
2) Now that you mention it, I would have to concede that he looked kind of frail. Actually I can't remember the first two films too clearly, I should revisit them sometime soon. Ian McKellen would've been great as Dumbledore, no doubt. But there would have been that problem you mentioned. Again I guess everyone has their own actors in mind for each role (like how I think Johnny Depp would've been awesome as Sirius Black!). But I've more or less grown used to the current actors playing each role now and I think it would feel a bit strange if the characters were suddenly played by someone else. In GoF Angelina Johnson is played by someone else and even though she's barely on screen, it did make a difference. I think the actors have grown into their roles anyway- IMHO nobody's gotten worse at playing their character. But I'm rambling.
3a) I started out liking the HP books for the plot, actually. But I started to pay more attention to characterization upon reading the books again, and especially so when reading GoF and OotP because the characters undergo a lot of changes, not only because of growing up but also because Voldemort rises again and events take on a darker tone. (and also because OotP was rather draggy and full of CAPSLOCK!Harry) Dumbledore is definitely an interesting character, though I never dwelt upon him that much. I didn’t like or understand why Dumbledore shook Harry like that and I thought something was rather odd about his expression when Harry pulled out the Horntail as well. Even my sister, who is a really, really big fan and quite protective, shall we say, of the books and films ;-) thought the former was weird. But in the scriptwriters’ defence, like I was telling you, he’s quite alright during the later scenes so that sort of “redeemed” their portrayal of him in my eyes (I tend to forgive quite easily though). I think we see that in the books, starting from GoF, Harry sees (and we see) that Dumbledore might be one of the greatest wizards that ever lived and one that Voldemort himself feared, but he’s not infalliable. Neither is he immortal, as we unfortunately see in HBP. He has flaws, like his quality of trusting people and giving them second chances and that ultimately leads to his downfall (though admittedly Snape did a pretty good job of hiding the fact that he was still on the dark side if he was bad all the way through PS to OotP, or it could even be that Snape is good and Dumbledore planned it with Snape to kill him because he’s growing old and is an obstacle to Harry who is old enough to deal with stuff- you know, those conspiracy theorists. Personally I think it sounds too much like a Tamil movie script for my liking!). And perhaps the scriptwriters wanted to show this, but they just didn’t go about presenting it in the right way, or Michael Gambon didn’t do it exactly as they hoped. Dumbledore definitely looks more weary and helpless in the GoF film though. Furthermore, the film is quite tightly-packed. MILD SPOILER The Quidditch World Cup was cut to less than fifteen minutes altogether and they skipped the Sorting at Hogwarts entirely tooEND SPOILER. The supporting cast is growing with each film too and they’re all competing for screen time, as the review in Life! said. So the scriptwriters probably couldn’t flesh out each character as much as the books did.
Anyhow I also thought the script was quite good otherwise. There were lots of funny bits that had the audience laughing out loud, though those focused more on the angst-of-growing-up theme. Y’know, the kind of stuff that would more or less resound with people our age. I’m a sucker for humour anyway, especially the British variety, so I enjoyed that. :>
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