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Potterdom Film/Score Series Thread


John Crichton

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The number of Emma Watson fans outnumbers the outrage mob!

 

It's funny how people will shit on Rowling for her retroactive additions to the series (through Pottermore and Twitter) but have little to no problem when she suggests Hermione could be black. When Rowling revealed Dumbledore was gay, people were outraged - 'Where's he gay in the books?', 'You can't say that and not have it be a prominent part of the books!' Somehow ironically shooting themselves in the feet believing one's sexuality is meant to define their character. 

 

This is what happens when you let open the floodgates for these entitled fans, just like in the Star Wars fandom, who believe they are now the proprietors of the franchise - it only gives them more to take ownership of. Rowling has nothing to apologise for.

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Just have Emma do it in blackface. 

 

4 hours ago, TheUlyssesian said:

What's more they are going to plunder this property and milk and squeeze it for all its worth.

 

It most definitely won't be a single movie. It very likely will be at-least 2 movies, and very likely a trilogy.

 

Isn’t the play like 4 hours and you have to see it two nights?

 

Edit: 4.5 hours plus two 20-minute intermissions lol

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7 hours ago, crumbs said:

Still, as long as Rowling stays away from screenwriting duties

Well, she didn't write the script for this thing, it's authorised fanfiction and it's trash.

 

I always wondered how much these actors are a fan of the universe, didn't they have enough clout and money to bitch about the script and threaten leaving production, or couldn't they say "fuck this idea, get another Ron/Harry, you did onstage" now?

 

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8 hours ago, mrbellamy said:

I’m glad she’s been fucking with them in other mediums so that whatever happens doesn’t have to directly touch the novels. 

Hear hear! In some way I'm glad the films after 3 (4?) go so far away from the books, makes them way easier to ignore and forget when rereading the books and go back mentally to what I first imagined 10+ years ago. I had that exact same experience with The Hobbit, actually, images not from the movies but from my first read in 2012 came flooding back, it was great.

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10 minutes ago, Holko said:

Hear hear! In some way I'm glad the films after 3 (4?) go so far away from the books, makes them way easier to ignore and forget when rereading the books and go back mentally to what I first imagined 10+ years ago. I had that exact same experience with The Hobbit, actually, images not from the movies but from my first read in 2012 came flooding back, it was great.

Yes, however upon returning to the films (after rereading the series) it becomes intolerable in how they treat some of the material - especially in the later films. 

 

On The Hobbit - if you have the visuals of An Unexpected Journey in mind, I think it makes for a fine adaptation of the novel without major derailment! The other two are lost causes!

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Solution is not to return to the films. Only remember some more egregious parts when people keep bringing them up, get pissy, bitch a little on a forum, go back to forgetting them.

 

I'm actually not a huge fan of the visual style of AUJ either. My "pure" original vision (I purposefully read Hobbit as a tester, then read LotR, and only then watched the movies for the first time!) trumps all.

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21 minutes ago, Arpy said:

if you have the visuals of An Unexpected Journey in mind, I think it makes for a fine adaptation of the novel without major derailment! The other two are lost causes!

 

I do like the cinematography of An Unexpected Journey possibly the best of all six. The more naturalistic and vibrant look was a breath of fresh air among the heavily-graded look of the other entries, and the large-format digital photography is crystal clear and sharp: its effectivelly the equivalent of having shot the film on VistaVision. The choice of using longer takes, too, is always a good one when your story is set in a lush, imaginary world, and is not unlike Cuaron's choice for Prisoner of Azkaban.

 

But as an overall film I think its the least of the six. Too oddly-paced for the cinema (the extended edition, being meant for TV, is better), and quite simply not as compelling as the Thorin-centric narrative of the other two films. Yes, it more closely resembles the tone of the book - again a nice refreshing change of pace - but its quite simply less compelling as a film.

 

Which by the way is a funny to say on this thread, because I feel the same way about Harry Potter: The first two films I find poorly paced for cinema (although the first one is still charming) and the darker, more heroic later entries I find more compelling. How they measure up to the books? Dunno and don't care - I'm judging them as they should be: as films.

 

I'm not averse to making multiple films in either series. But the distinction is that The Hobbit is a direct prequel - not a spinoff like Fantastic Beasts and definitely not a sequel like The Cursed Child. I think any film set after The Deathly Hallows Part 2 (admittedly not a film I care for) is doomed to fail, no matter how well-made it is and regardless of how many parts it may be split into or not.

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I once re-watched the entire series determined not to think about the books and was surprised to find that 5-8 held up rather okay. Things only become annoying when you insist on comparing it to the source material.

 

And speaking of source material, people are probably right that this won't just be one movie. What I wonder, though, is how they're going to extend this abomination of a story. And as has already been pointed out, the fact that Rickman is no longer here should have been enough to veto the entire project. But if they're going to recast Snape, I suppose nothing could stop them from recasting Hermione...

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43 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

I once re-watched the entire series determined not to think about the books and was surprised to find that 5-8 held up rather okay. Things only become annoying when you insist on comparing it to the source material.

 

The biggest problem with the films and their relationship to the source material is that they're too dependent on the novels! What I mean there is they assume the viewer has acquired knowledge from the novels, so the filmmakers felt pretty laid back about cherry picking some of JKR's plot set-ups, but forgetting to give them a pay-off. Sometimes it'd happen the other way around and we'd get a pay-off that had no set-up! But no worries, the audience members have each read the novels 468 times anyway, so who cares? Why should the movies stand on their own? They're just supplementary fan art to the novels, so we don't need to do this properly.

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Just now, Arpy said:

Didn't notice they'd changed the logo to the book/film version! 

 

Yes, that’s just happened. I like it and the addition of “JK Rowling’s” above the name. 

 

It certainly drives home that this is canon. 

 

Im seeing it on my birthday in London (October 5th). Can’t wait 😬

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Well I have the screenplay thing but haven't read it after hearing what it was about.

20 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

Good. Continue to ignore it.

 

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It's frustrating because I am a Potterhead, I have been since the first film was released, yet this 'unofficial-like' official sequel sounds like it's taking a shit on everything I love about the franchise. 

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I adore the books and first couple of movies, have no problem not getting into anything JK did or assisted to after destroying the good old Pottermore.

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The old one was a journey chapter to chapter through the books, adding new art, backstories and short stories to all kinds of things as they show up - you could click/read through the organised supplemental material as you read the books. It dropped you into a sorting quiz as you read as far along, then came the community features with your House and all. It was cool. The new one is some sort of lifeless unnavigatable... thing.

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Yeah, I seem to remember it wasn't bad in the early days, and yes, it really is unnavigable now! I think Rowling just left it to some group and just posted things whenever 'Yeah, yeah, here ya go ya lousy rats, now leave me alone!'

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7 hours ago, Thekthithm said:

The biggest problem with the films and their relationship to the source material is that they're too dependent on the novels! What I mean there is they assume the viewer has acquired knowledge from the novels, so the filmmakers felt pretty laid back about cherry picking some of JKR's plot set-ups, but forgetting to give them a pay-off. Sometimes it'd happen the other way around and we'd get a pay-off that had no set-up! But no worries, the audience members have each read the novels 468 times anyway, so who cares? Why should the movies stand on their own? They're just supplementary fan art to the novels, so we don't need to do this properly.

 

Yeah especially Half-Blood Prince and the two Deathly Hallows movies. Once the last book was out they really played fast and loose with those info dumps. Thinking of that wedding scene in Part 1 when Harry’s talking to two random old people we’ve never seen and never will see again talking about a lot of crap that will never be brought up again either.

 

The mirror is pretty lazy (I always thought it would have been an easy fix for Harry to just find it broken on the floor at Grimmauld Place, catch Dumbledore’s eye, and pocket a shard) It’s silly to see Harry get so irate to Aberforth about it being stolen from Sirius.

 

Also Harry just casually mentioning Lupin’s son like we all knew about it lol. But really, anybody who hadn’t read the books were bound to be zoning in and out anyway, so even things that were dutifully laid out was probably a lost cause. In the end the simple adventure plots work on their own terms and they did a fair job getting the meanings of the various gibberish terminology across. The rest is white noise. 

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You cuold argue that we didn't need to hear Lupin telling Harry Tonks was expecting and that we didn't need a scene where Sirius was holding that mirror. As for the Dumbledore plotline, I always thought they were going for 'you don't need to know everything about the people you admire'. It's nice that the books have the entire backstory, but in real life, you're bound to remain stuck with questions about people you knew.

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The only film where I was having difficult tracking the plot - as someone who gave up on reading Harry Potter very early on - was Deathly Hallows Part 1, and I still like that film.

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Many of the movies weren't adapted well from the books. They threw in unnecessary scenes that had no payoff and didn't even make sense and left out things that were more important or would have been more entertaining.

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7 hours ago, mrbellamy said:

 Thinking of that wedding scene in Part 1 when Harry’s talking to two random old people we’ve never seen and never will see again talking about a lot of crap that will never be brought up again either.

 

I thought that was fine it did at least create some sense of mystery, but I guess they had to condense several pages from several different scenes to lead into that in an already dense film. I seem to remember they skipped almost entirely over the Arianna and Albus/Aberforth/Grindelwald backstory and is only alluded to in one scene. 

 

 

6 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

 As for the Dumbledore plotline, I always thought they were going for 'you don't need to know everything about the people you admire'. It's nice that the books have the entire backstory, but in real life, you're bound to remain stuck with questions about people you knew.

That's the juiciest part of the story, though, and is important in understanding Dumbledore's choices.

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2 hours ago, Gruesome Son of a Bitch said:

Many of the movies weren't adapted well from the books. They threw in unnecessary scenes that had no payoff and didn't even make sense and left out things that were more important or would have been more entertaining.

 

The films are largely indifferent adapted.

 

They are largely imagined from a set piece point of view. Basically a series of set pieces strung together by some exposition dump scenes. The plots in the movies don't come together in any coherent way.

 

The movies still work relatively well is because the actors are largely engaging, the simplistic presentation of good v evil makes them easy to follow and on the blockbuster side of things, the production values are the best money can buy and the set pieces are usually on point.

 

It's an easy formula and you can't really go wrong with it. 

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The set-piece approach is basically how films operate because it's a visual medium - many scenes in the Potter books are conversations, ruminations, descriptions which just can't be adapted without compromising on time and pacing. 

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There are several ways to make conversations compelling and suspenseful. Many great film-makers have done that. It's just not this series forte.

 

You could argue the conversations is where the plot really moves along but it takes something greater than blockbuster skill to bring those to life.

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4 hours ago, TheUlyssesian said:

There are several ways to make conversations compelling and suspenseful. Many great film-makers have done that. It's just not this series forte.

 

You could argue the conversations is where the plot really moves along but it takes something greater than blockbuster skill to bring those to life.

Problem is many of the conversations are just...conversations, and when adapting them to film, there's only so much you can do. The films have to show multiple different perspectives in order to fill out the world, whilst the books are routed in Harry's point of view: What he's thinking, feeling, seeing etc. 

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  • 1 month later...

So this is a thing that I’m doing. 
 

Even Steef’s people are represented so far! English and American aren’t shown because they’re in their respective full sets. 
 

18 languages down, 71 to go!

31495757-90AE-4863-AB04-5A666E8CEE40.jpeg

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There were a lot of words changed between the editions, including the title! 
 

It’s more a transliteration or adaptation than a translation but it’s among the 89 (90 after Maori is released next year). 

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I’ve never actually sat down to read the American edition.

 

The Scotts edition is hilarious. You should look it up on Amazon it google and read the first page 

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  • 5 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Heads up, since there are fans of the Video Game scores here, thought I'd mention that it appears EA has reissued James Hannigan's video game scores for Harry Potter 5 & 6 as entries in their "EA Music Composer Series". Haven't seen it mentioned anywhere on the forum, so here you go.

 

They're certainly better quality and have more dynamics than the versions I previously had.

"Return to Hogwarts" Original

HPVidGameComp - Original.jpg

 

"Return" New Release

HPVidGameComp - New.jpg

 

However, comically, you'll note that they seemed to have had to scrub all trademarked terminology from the track titles and of course have no reference as to which score is which. Naturally, 6 has been released as Volume 1 and 5 has been released as Volume 2.

 

Order of the Phoenix:

 

Half-Blood Prince:

 

Some of the title changes are relatively harmless, but some of them are quite a stretch. My favorite non-trademark track title abbreviations:

  • "Quid" instead of "Quidditch" (from HP6)
  • "Combat W" instead of "Wand Combat" (from HP5)
  • "D and V" instead of "Dumbledore and Voldemort" (from HP5)
  • "Get There" instead of "Get to Quidditch" (from HP6)
  • "F and G Return" instead of "Fred and George Return" (from HP6) [This one is odd, because they left these names in HP5's program]

Seems EA is jumping through a LOT of legal hoops putting this out. Certainly to avoid paying licensing fees. I assume that's probably why they pulled all the OSTs originally to begin with.

All the tracks appear to be here and match in length to the originals though so I also assume if there were any Hedwig's Theme statements, then they're still here.

 

Nice to have these in better quality and not overly compressed!

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