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Is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets underrated?


Josh500

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets   

67 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you think the score (as a whole, apart from the movie) is underrated?

    • Yes
      53
    • No
      14
  2. 2. Do you think the OST album Chamber of Secrets is underrated?

    • Yes
      37
    • No
      30
  3. 3. Do you think the movie Chamber of Secrets is underrated?

    • Yes
      25
    • No
      42
  4. 4. Do you think the way they score is incorporated into the movie Chamber of Secrets is underrated?

    • Yes
      26
    • No
      41


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Regarding the film, I suppose. It's fun, and I had a good time seeing in the cinemas when I was younger, but I'm not sure I consider it one of my favorite Potter films, if anything it's a good thing Columbus left when he did, his style wouldn't have fit the later films at all. 

 

As for the score, yes. It's more then just a "Sorcerer's Stone rehash". There are actually quite a few new themes, and most of them are really strong, Fawkes's theme being a particular highlight, but I'm also a fan of the Lockheart theme. It's a solid score in general. 

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It does seem like the actors, young and old, learned how to work with Columbus better.

 

But on the whole, I like it far less. If only because I can ignore pacing issues in an establishing piece, but not in a sequel.

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Well, it does have a more straightforward structure: Sorcerer's Stone doesn't really have a plot until the 1:20:00  mark or so. Chamber of Secrets, while being the longer film, has a plot from the beginning, but than loses sight of it for a good forty minutes.

 

To me, it feels its length and than some.

 

And again, to praise it for moving faster than the previous film, is like saying that a sloth is fast, because he can outrun a turtle....

 

Of course it should be a faster moving film; the question is how much faster.

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Deja vu..... oh right!

 

On 2/9/2018 at 12:30 PM, Chen G. said:

Sorcerer's Stone essentially doesn't have a three-act structure because it doesn't even have a real plot until about the 1:20:00 mark.

 

Chamber of Secrets does have a premise from the very beginning, but it loses its way multiple times and ends up being the more numbing of the two, to me. I can only watch it if I'm making fun of it throughout the entire run-time.

 

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:lol:

 

Just making a point...

 

I'm quite amazed with how forgiving the community is to this film's drawbacks, I must say. I can understand it with Sorcerer's Stone because its the establishing film, but this?

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For me, the HP series loses its magic and charm after COS. Things seem to get more serious and darker starting with POA (which is my favorite one - film and score).  After that, I find each film gets less and less interesting.  I didn't see the final two until years after release.

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4 minutes ago, someonefun124 said:

For me, the HP series loses its magic and charm after COS. Things seem to get more serious and darker starting with POA (which is my favorite one - film and score).

 

But that darkness gives the films that follow a sense of weight and stakes, which are lacking in the Columbus' entries. They feel like a safe, padded room for children.

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I think most of the films have their fair share of levity.

 

Its not like I'm saying that the most grim Harry Potter is the best Harry Potter. I also find Cuaron's entry to be the best, and its FAR from the darkest. But it does have a sense of foreboding, which is entirely missing in the previous two films.

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Weight and stakes are fine, but at the cost of fun, soul, continuity and basic visibility? (OK, those last two are not really directly connected to it but most of my memories of the last 3 are how I couldn't differentiate Harry' face from his robes or the wall - and that bloody Burrow burning, it added stakes all right, only to take all of it away when it's all fine and rebuilt in the next one!)

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Hey, I'm not saying the later Harry Potter entries are brilliant cinema. If anything, I have a dislike to several of them (not least of which being the last entry) but they are better than the Columbus entries, to my mind.

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It's probably nostalgia and Williams music, but I prefer the first two over any of the films after POA.  They have that rewatchable factor that I feel the later entries lack.

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On 2/10/2018 at 3:48 PM, Richard said:

 

H-BP is very pretty to look at, but honestly, Josh, you haven't missed much.

HBP is actually my number two. Can't tell you what it is, but that one hit all the right marks for me. I know a lot don't love it and even more hate the Hooper scores, but I have a soft spot for them. I rather like his Half-Blood Prince score.

 

For me, the films are 3, 6, 7, 1, 2, 4, 5, 8

Scores are 3, 2, 1, 4, 7, 6, 8, 5

 

EDIT: Title versions:

Films - PoA, HBP, Dh1, PS/SS, CoS, GoF, OotP, Dh2

Scores - PoA, CoS, PS/SS, GoF, Dh1, HBP, Dh2, OotP

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I really recommend 3byThree's discussions on the Harry Potter films. I may not feel as strongly as they do about the Chris Columbus films, but I generally share their preferences, and there's a lot to pick up, as far as film-theory goes, from their discussions.

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Films: 3..1-2(nostalgia overload)...4..5.............................................................7................................................................................6 and 8

Scores: 3..1&2....4..5, never bothered with the other ones.

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The Harry Potter series includes two films which can be considered brilliant cinema:

The Deadly Hallows Part 1

The Prisoner of Azkaban

 

Two further films aren't necessarily brilliant, but the essence of the story is really well captured and they don't feel superficial at all:

The Half-Blood Prince

The Order of the Phoenix

 

Then there are three films which recreate the events in the books very precisely, but also bury the depth and substance of the story under the action and the effects, more or less:

The Goblet of Fire

The Chamber of Secrets

The Philosopher's Stone

 

The last entry is sadly quite rushed, contains merely what it has to contain in order to connect all plots logically and feels more like The Avengers than Harry Potter:

The Deadly Hallows Part 2

 

This is my ranking of the films, when I try to restrain my personal preferences. Of course this can be traced in a more detailed way, but this is just for you to roughly know, why I chose this order.

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40 minutes ago, mstrox said:

As a personal rule, I am required to jump into a pit of poisonous spikes and die before I watch any YouTube channel dissecting movies.

 

38 minutes ago, Philippe Roaché said:

You're about to go into the snake pit. What are you plannin' to wear?

 

A whole bunch of sequins!

I'm from the Confidential Committee On Moral Abuses.

Don't do anything that's lewd, or unsavoury, or otherwise...repulsive to your person.

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3 hours ago, Brundlefly said:

The Harry Potter series includes two films which can be considered brilliant cinema:

The Deadly Hallows Part 1

The Prisoner of Azkaban

 

Two further films aren't necessarily brilliant, but the essence of the story is really well captured and they don't feel superficial at all:

The Half-Blood Prince

The Order of the Phoenix

 

Then there are three films which recreate the events in the books very precisely, but also bury the depth and substance of the story under the action and the effects, more or less:

The Goblet of Fire

The Chamber of Secrets

The Philosopher's Stone

 

The last entry is sadly quite rushed, contains merely what it has to contain in order to connect all plots logically and feels more like The Avengers than Harry Potter:

The Deadly Hallows Part 2

 

This is my ranking of the films, when I try to restrain my personal preferences. Of course this can be traced in a more detailed way, but this is just for you to roughly know, why I chose this order.

So glad I'm not the only one who appreciates Dh1 and HBP. I know someone who told my girlfriend to straight up skip Dh1, because it was boring and didn't matter.

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11 hours ago, someonefun124 said:

For me, the HP series loses its magic and charm after COS. Things seem to get more serious and darker starting with POA (which is my favorite one - film and score).  After that, I find each film gets less and less interesting.  I didn't see the final two until years after release.

 

It probably doesn't get any more magical than PoA. Just because it isn't childish doesn't mean it's not magical.

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On 13/2/2018 at 10:32 PM, Brundlefly said:

Then there are three films which recreate the events in the books very precisely, but also bury the depth and substance of the story under the action and the effects, more or less:

The Goblet of Fire

The Chamber of Secrets

The Philosopher's Stone

 

The Goblet of Fire doesn't recreate the events of the books very precisely. The book is basically a very well-crafted Agatha Christie whodunnit. Complete with murders, false identities, red herrings.

The movie... I don't know wtf is going on.

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Movies aren’t supposed to recreate the book. They are supposed to hold the contour of the plot at its most basic form; the main cast of characters; the tone, style of dialogue and themes of the work.

 

With regards to anything beyond that - it should be treated as an original screenplay, and to hell with the source material. Faithful adaptations honor the source material by being good movies, not by slavishly following the book.

 

Hell, you can even re-interperate and re-imagine the novel entirely when you film it, rather than just adapting it.

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19 minutes ago, Once said:

I agree. I was just pointing out that Goblet of Fire is not[...]a good adaptation.

 

Its one of the lesser films, but I wouldn’t call it a bad adaptation. The ending finally gives the menace of Voldemort some weight: the Chris Columbus films didn’t have menace, and the third film isn’t about Voldemort, so this film was crucial to the central conflict of the series.

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Ralph Fiennes’ performance is magnificent.

Most of the adult cast is wonderful in this series regardless of the overall quality of the movies themselves.

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  • 1 month later...
3 hours ago, Brundlefly said:

There's differences in quality, but none of them qualifies as "bad".

 

It depends on your tolerance, but one could very easily make a case for the Columbus entries being bad. 

 

I’m far more forgiving to the first entry, it being the first of the lot, and Columbus and the screenwriter not knowing what will be important for upcoming installments, but since I can’t easily forgive the second entry for that, I would say it is a bad movie.

2 hours ago, Pieter_Boelen said:

But are any of them "good"?

 

The third and fifth films are very, very good. It was never going to be a cinematic masterwork, I think. But I enjoy those films greatly.

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41 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

It depends on your tolerance, but one could very easily make a case for the Columbus entries being bad. 

Those are the ones I liked best.

The ones that clearly showed the potential that the following films never lived up to.

 

42 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

The third and fifth films are very, very good. It was never going to be a cinematic masterwork, I think. But I enjoy those films greatly.

Have to agree to disagree on the third; that's where the series started to become wildly inconsistent.

Within the same movie, there are tremendous high highs and low lows.

But indeed the fifth one is quite consistently good.

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Which potential? The potential to be completely and utterly bogged down by the source material in a vein attempt to slavishly follow it beat-for-beat? In sub-par, borderline theatrical performances? In a complete lack of stakes? In a story structure as flimsy as a house of cards? In uninspired camerawork?

 

I’m being intentionally overly harsh to make a point, which is that it’s most likely nostalgia talking rather than any attempt to view these films through rigorous film theory.

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The first and the second film are atmospheric and cozy mainstream entertainment that follows the book very precisely, but they remain quite superficial throughout.

The third and the seventh film are brilliant and without a hint of a doubt not only the best Harry Potter films but also among the very best films of the 2000s and the 2010s.

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2 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Which potential? The potential to be completely and utterly bogged down by the source material in a vein attempt to slavishly follow it beat-for-beat? In sub-par, borderline theatrical performances? In a complete lack of stakes? In a story structure as flimsy as a house of cards? In uninspired camerawork?

 

I’m being intentionally overly harsh to make a point, which is that it’s most likely nostalgia talking rather than any attempt to view these films through rigorous film theory.

They're honestly not as good as they could and should have been.

Whether approached from a "true to book" or "film theory" point of view, there are very definite flaws.

 

Personally, I don't appreciate the "puffs of smoke doing battle", not just because it isn't in the books, bit because it's BORING.

And that affects all films after the third, with it playing a distracting role after the actual climax of the final one.

 

After all these years, I honestly still don't understand what the directors/script writers/producers were thinking when they made certain choices.

"Uneven" is the most accurate description of the entire series.

Only the first and fifth films seem like they mostly knew what they were trying to be.

The other ones are severely out of whack in several spots (though I like #2 and even, to some extent, #6).

 

If there were one series of films I'd like to use a time machine on to fix properly, it is the Harry Potter ones.

They had the makings of greatness, and very nearly all the right people needed to make it happen, but it still didn't reach the heights it could have done.

Seriously, what were they thinking?!?

 

Actually, I like the first Fantastic Beasts better than any movie past the second.

Thanks, James Newton Howard!

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When they got the rights, instead of jumping into casting the kids (which then of course made their entire production schedule, and they had to rush everything from then on), they should have focused on heavy preproduction, and planning out at least the four movies they knew the story to, looking into different directors, who would be interested, what could they bring. We wouldn't have the main trio played by the same kids as now, but I'm sure they are not the only 3 in Britain who could've pulled it off. Instead, we would have no situations like the director is changing the whole look and layout of Hogwarts, and them going with it, because they were in a serious time crunch on the first one and couldn't come up with anything iconic (the production designer himself said so) because they had to start shooting because of the kids, and had to push it out in December while dealing with preproduction for the second one, because they had to start shooting in early January because those damn kids are growing up, we gotta milk them. Sounds incoherent and chaotic? It must have been crazy.

 

Some closer input from JK would've been nice, too, as of now, she couldn't have cared less which of her characters were totally botched (Ron, Dumbledore), which of her storylines ruined (that whole Horcrux business with a ton of important exposition taken out and replaced with out-of-nowhere bullshit later) and which fundamental core themes of her books shat upon (every single person has to die, and will die, and will lie in the ground with all the other bodies).

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I find the Chris Columbus movies the best Harry Potter movies by far.

 

Prisoner of Azkaban, while certainly visually impressive (and of course well scored by JW), isn't a very good movie overall. It's too convoluted, and slipshod. If you didn't know the novel and the plot already, you'd have no idea what's going on in this movie.... It can't stand on its own, unlike the previous 2 entries.

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I have no memory of reading the book, and I followed the movie just fine. It’s the best of the series.

 

That’s another aspect to a good adaptation: that it’s made for people who have never, and never will, read the source material.

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3 hours ago, Josh500 said:

I find the Chris Columbus movies the best Harry Potter movies by far.

 

Prisoner of Azkaban, while certainly visually impressive (and of course well scored by JW), isn't a very good movie overall. It's too convoluted, and slipshod. If you didn't know the novel and the plot already, you'd have no idea what's going on in this movie.... It can't stand on its own, unlike the previous 2 entries.

As Thor would put it: Factually wrong.

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1 hour ago, Brundlefly said:

As Thor would put it: Factually wrong.

 

What fact?

 

It's called "opinion." There's no right or wrong here.

 

Almost everybody has an opinion, except maybe people who like to quote other people all the time. :D

 

 

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Film theory poses very clear criteria according to which a film is tested, so it’s more than just “opinions.” The Chris Columbus entries effectively don’t have scripts: they have an abridged version of the book. As such, they - objectively - lack the narrative thrust that is required of film.

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