OOTP review
Will and I saw
We went to the midnight premiere, which turned out to be totally worth it. As lots of people seem to be saying, this was one of the strongest adaptations . . . IMO *the* strongest. Obviously not everything was exactly like the book, but the *essence* of the book was preserved in all the important ways. Like, they didn't show Neville's parents, but they had a little scene between him and Harry that managed to convey a lot of what we got out of the actual book scene (although not, unfortunately, the true horror of the Longbottoms' madness). I missed some of the things that they left out; the whole hospital thing, for example, and Dobby and Winky and S.P.E.W., but I loved Luna and loved-to-loathe Umbridge, and the Filch bits were awesome. They brought some much needed humor to what's really the darkest chapter of the saga, IMO. The only thing I really didn't like was using Cho as the traitor. It wasn't out of character due to the Veritaserum, but it totally changed the dynamic of Harry and Cho's split. In the book, Cho's difficulty in dealing with Cedric's death, Harry's role in it, and Harry's controversial claims about Voldemort lead her to choose her friend over Harry. That's a definite split, and one that makes the Harry/Ginny stuff in book 6 make sense. (Maybe I'm not overwhelmed with H/G, but at least there was a bit of *logic* there.) With Cho now something of a martyr, Harry avoiding her takes on a whole new meaning.
However . . . the Weasleys as a whole were awesome. I loved the scene where Ginny blows the crap out of whatever that was and Fred, George, and Ron are just standing there looking flabbergasted. I loved that Percy was visible, even though letting him talk or having Ron say something about him or *something* would have been nice. If you weren't up on the books and didn't remember the actor, you'd have no idea that he was even a Weasley. McGonnagal (sp?) was truly, truly awesome, as was Tonks. I wasn't as impressed with Snape, but that may be that he just makes me want to smack him even at the best of times, and he's absolutely not at his best in this installment. But then, there's also the fact that Alan Rickman plays him much the same way he played the Sheriff of Nottingham, so I'm constantly hearing "I'll cut your heart out with a spoon!" whenever he talks. And Sirius . . . another one I wanted to smack, although not due to Gary Oldman's performance. It drives me up the wall when a character's fatal flaw is one that could be overcome by being as smart in that area as they are in all other areas of their life, and that just about defines Snape and Sirius both.
The one thing, though, is that I really want to see this movie from a head-on perspective. I was on the next to last seat of the front row in the theater, and I'm pretty sure that explains why the entire thing looked like it was shot on a slope and like they were doing their best to make Daniel Radcliffe look shorter than *everybody*, to the point that the Weasley twin standing behind him was shorter than the Weasley twin standing over to the side of him. Surely that was just my angle, right? (I mean, if Daniel Radcliffe really is that short, that's fine. It was the fact that it looked like everyone was standing on tilted floors for the entire movie that I'm kind of "eh?" about.)
All in all, that's a movie I'm looking forward to on DVD.
We went to the midnight premiere, which turned out to be totally worth it. As lots of people seem to be saying, this was one of the strongest adaptations . . . IMO *the* strongest. Obviously not everything was exactly like the book, but the *essence* of the book was preserved in all the important ways. Like, they didn't show Neville's parents, but they had a little scene between him and Harry that managed to convey a lot of what we got out of the actual book scene (although not, unfortunately, the true horror of the Longbottoms' madness). I missed some of the things that they left out; the whole hospital thing, for example, and Dobby and Winky and S.P.E.W., but I loved Luna and loved-to-loathe Umbridge, and the Filch bits were awesome. They brought some much needed humor to what's really the darkest chapter of the saga, IMO. The only thing I really didn't like was using Cho as the traitor. It wasn't out of character due to the Veritaserum, but it totally changed the dynamic of Harry and Cho's split. In the book, Cho's difficulty in dealing with Cedric's death, Harry's role in it, and Harry's controversial claims about Voldemort lead her to choose her friend over Harry. That's a definite split, and one that makes the Harry/Ginny stuff in book 6 make sense. (Maybe I'm not overwhelmed with H/G, but at least there was a bit of *logic* there.) With Cho now something of a martyr, Harry avoiding her takes on a whole new meaning.
However . . . the Weasleys as a whole were awesome. I loved the scene where Ginny blows the crap out of whatever that was and Fred, George, and Ron are just standing there looking flabbergasted. I loved that Percy was visible, even though letting him talk or having Ron say something about him or *something* would have been nice. If you weren't up on the books and didn't remember the actor, you'd have no idea that he was even a Weasley. McGonnagal (sp?) was truly, truly awesome, as was Tonks. I wasn't as impressed with Snape, but that may be that he just makes me want to smack him even at the best of times, and he's absolutely not at his best in this installment. But then, there's also the fact that Alan Rickman plays him much the same way he played the Sheriff of Nottingham, so I'm constantly hearing "I'll cut your heart out with a spoon!" whenever he talks. And Sirius . . . another one I wanted to smack, although not due to Gary Oldman's performance. It drives me up the wall when a character's fatal flaw is one that could be overcome by being as smart in that area as they are in all other areas of their life, and that just about defines Snape and Sirius both.
The one thing, though, is that I really want to see this movie from a head-on perspective. I was on the next to last seat of the front row in the theater, and I'm pretty sure that explains why the entire thing looked like it was shot on a slope and like they were doing their best to make Daniel Radcliffe look shorter than *everybody*, to the point that the Weasley twin standing behind him was shorter than the Weasley twin standing over to the side of him. Surely that was just my angle, right? (I mean, if Daniel Radcliffe really is that short, that's fine. It was the fact that it looked like everyone was standing on tilted floors for the entire movie that I'm kind of "eh?" about.)
All in all, that's a movie I'm looking forward to on DVD.