Okay. This is a rough one. Because, on the one hand, Alfonso Cuarón created perhaps the most artful Potter film. One that expanded the universe on screen with a depth of character that no one really managed after him. It’s a beautiful piece of work.
On the other hand, this movie makes exactly 0% sense.
So, originally, Chris Columbus was set to direct all the Potter films. Story goes, after the second film he realized that he would probably miss out on watching his kids grow up if he was always so busy. He ducked out, and a slew of awesome names were thrown into the ring to replace him. Alfonso Cuarón was a shocker when he was announced because some needlessly concerned people were all “Have you see Y Tu Mamá También? There are sexual teenagers in that! And experimentation!” Meanwhile J.K. Rowling was all, “I think he’s a great choice!” And the rest of the world was either “I don’t care” or “He also directed The Little Princess, which was good and had kids and no sex in it, you guys really need to calm down.”
Things were already off to an interesting start.
Cuarón was not a fan of the limited sound stages where so much of the first two films were shot. He wanted more locations, so he found an area in Scotland where he could build a large portion of the Hogwarts grounds. This resulted in reorientation of various landmarks and a few moments of set re-appropriation. Some of this came off awkwardly: the place where Remus trains Harry to produce a Patronus is a redressed Dumbledore’s office. Some of this was perfect: moving Hagrid’s hut to a more remote location made sure the school grounds didn’t feel claustrophobic. In the previous films, the Forbidden Forest seemed to be located about 20 yards from the castle doors.
The thing that Cuarón excelled at above all was worldbuilding. We had a very tight lens on the wizarding world in the first two movies, and outside of Diagon Alley, nothing really looked or felt lived in the way it should. Cuarón did away with that. He showed us what The Leaky Cauldron looked like as it was closing down for the night. He told the young actors to wear their Hogwarts uniforms however they pleased, rather than up to inspection standards. He filled the wizarding world with vibrancy and plenty of influences outside of the British traditions Rowling built it on.
Side note: While I don’t necessarily take issue with the trio in their street clothes (the idea that wizards always dress in robes and don’t know what trousers are is amusing, but not even slightly practical on Rowling’s part), I dearly, desperately wish that they’d gone true to era, and put them in 90s street duds. I know it’s not really important, but it would have made my life.
Cuarón also made something of an effort to show Hogwarts as a more diverse community; there were more students of color in this film (all two of them) than in the previous ones. But sometimes that desire to showcase diversity was tackled… so very wrongly. Like, you know, having a shrunken head with a Jamaican accent in the front of the Knight Bus that exists solely to make funny comments and razz the driver. Showing how different areas of the world use magic would have been a welcome addition, an aspect that the books themselves could have done so much more with. Having wizards who herald from not-the-UK hanging about is absolutely something we should see. But a shrunken head using an island accent for laughs? Can we not do this?
With that in mind, I would like to make a list of Okay vs. Not Okay additions that Alfonso Cuarón (and sometimes Steve Kloves) made to the Potterverse—
YES:
- Moving Hagrid’s hut.
- Showing the boy’s in Harry’s dorm, up after hours, hanging out and having fun with novelty candy. (Most “real” moment in all the films? Maybe.)
- All the asides that students give in the dialogue.
- The Fat Lady trying to impress the kids with glass-breaking pipes. I want paintings at the school to interfere with daily activities more often.
- Showing what happens when a ghost runs through a student all nonchalant. Poor Dean. (We saw this earlier in the first film, but nothing was made of it, which was a mistake.)
- SPINE CANDLES.
- The Whomping Willow killing wayward birdies because that’s what Whomping Willows do.
- Not having time travel occur with a location jump.
- All the artistic direction. All of it. Well, most of it.
- Changes in the school uniforms. (Better scarves are better.)
- The school choir! Singing Macbeth! Was Shakespeare a wizard?
- Showing the kids all done up for the Quidditch match, with their face paint and their banners.
- All the dialogue between Remus, Sirius, and Snape in the Shrieking Shack. Married couple. Chemistry set. (Muggle insult! Buuuuuuurn.)
- All the dialogue that Dumbledore ad-libs to get Fudge to look away from Buckbeak while Harry and Hermione free him. One of the old headmasters had strawberries planted over there! No, there, see them? Riiiiiiight there.
- Buckbeak eating ferrets. I distinctly remember the majority of the theater hollering with laughter at that point—you could immediately see who read the books and who didn’t.
NONONONONO:
- Unnamed black student whose entire purpose is to say dire, scary things when the plot requires it. (I am not saying that he shouldn’t be here. I’m saying he should have better lines. And a name. And a character.)
- Tom from the Leaky Cauldron being distilled down to an Igor-esque stereotype.
- Harry shoving over a choir of people in Hogsmeade, so he can get to a rock in the woods where he can deal with his boypain.
- The werewolf design—THE HELL IS THAT MALFORMED FURRY ALIEN THEY SHOW US?
- Sirius’s prison tattoos. I know it seemed like a cool idea, but it really doesn’t make sense.
- Snape being awake and trying to protect the kids from the werewolf. I get it, he shouldn’t let them die, but the move is so paternal, and makes Snape look like he cares on a much more emotional level than he really does.
- Harry seeing Sirius in the crystal ball before the prediction from Trelawney because… why?
- Hermione freaking out about how her hair looks from the back because REALLY?
It’s known that when Cuarón was hired, he’d not read a single Potter book. (Neither had Michael Gambon, for that matter.) Which, you know, that’s fine really. Except we get little dumb things that shouldn’t happen. Like Dean Thomas immediately knowing that there’s a boggart in the wardrobe in DADA class when we know Dean is Muggle-born and wouldn’t know about them. Like Flitwick’s look changing entirely because there was no part for the character in the script, so Cuarón decided to dress him differently and make him the “choir director.” (Why can’t Flitwick just be the choir director? Goblet of Fire director Mike Newell preferred the character’s look as the choir director, so he decided exactly that.)
Screenwriter Steve Kloves continued his mission in this film to make Ron a camp, useless sidekick, while morphing Hermione into the stock definition of “Strong Female Character” in this film. She’s smart, but she’s also cool! She’s braver than literally everyone! No, slapping Draco isn’t good enough—this time she’ll punch him! (The punch actually wasn’t in the script—apparently Watson just decided to do it.) The added flirting between Ron and Hermione was pretty adorable and set the stage well for their continued development throughout the films. But watching Ron sob his way through half the movie is grating. There were other little additions Kloves asked Rowling about in the script as well—such as Lupin’s fond memories of Lily.
David Thewis is… well, Thewis is a great actor. He’s just not really how I see Remus Lupin, and that seems to be a pretty common sentiment among the fandom. On the other hand, I really appreciated the decision to depict lycanthropy as a debilitating disease on film, rather than just a monthly grievance. We can see how Lupin’s condition affects his day to day life on screen, how it is more like a chronic illness than a once-a-month inconvenience. Gary Oldman makes a pretty excellent Sirius Black, and his manic delivery when he first appears on screen is delicious. He’s also cuddly as all get-out with Harry, which is nice given how little time they actually have to talk in the book. Book Five came out while they were filming this one, which meant that Oldman found out Sirius was going to die then. Apparently, he wore a black armband to work.
Of course, we lost Richard Harris and gained Michael Gambon as Dumbledore. And it makes me sad that Gambon is often only remembered for his “DID PUT NAME GOBLET FIRE” shouty-ness because I adore his hippie-grandpa take on the character, and his read of “I would like a cup of tea, or, a large brandy” is one of my favorite line readings in the history of movies. He’s just a bit more sparkly. He’s indiscernible, but not by being inaccessible. Mostly I’m just a fan of his comic timing, I suppose. And speaking of comic timing, Emma Thompson is just the greatest and manages to make Trelawney a bit lovable despite how admittedly goofy the character is. (Although I recently found out that Tilda Swinton was contacted for the role, and now my brain cannot stop considering that possibility.)
I have to mention the score because it’s the final Potter film that John Williams composed for and he just nails it to the wall. Everything is gorgeous. Every idea is inspired, from Marge’s inflation being an accidental waltz to the drums that herald Harry and Buckbeak’s first flight. It’s just a great soundtrack all the way around.
That’s so much to say, and I haven’t really even gotten to the core of my beef here—that the film is utterly nonsensical. And no one seemed to care. Like, the movie starts with Harry practicing magic under cover of night at the Dursleys, lighting up the room with his wand. And then the Aunt Marge Incident happens, and Harry’s confused over not being expelled from Hogwarts because “underage wizards aren’t allowed to do magic outside of school” and you’re like THEN WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU JUST DOING, HARRY, WAS IT SLEIGHT OF HAND, I WOULD JUST LOVE TO KNOW.
And it keeps going on like this. Snape stops Harry in the halls at night and tries to read the Marauder’s Map. Lupin comes to Harry’s rescue, then pulls the kid back to his office, and is all “I’m astounded that you didn’t turn this MAP in,” and Harry is totally unperturbed instead of asking the first logical question that should have popped into his head, like, “How do you know it’s a map, sir?” Then he ends up in the Shrieking Shack with his dad’s old buddies, and they’re like, Peter and Sirius are Animagi BUT YOU DON’T NEED TO KNOW WHY, THAT’S JUST BORING OLD PEOPLE STUFF, HARRY.
So, they all emerge on the grounds to take Peter in, and Remus turns into an I-don’t-know-what-this-is-but-it’s-not-a-werewolf, then Sirius is all “Remus! Did you take your potion tonight?” And everyone in the audience who hasn’t read the book is like WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT, WHAT POTION, DID I MISS AN IMPORTANT THING WHEN I GOT UP TO PEE? and everyone in the audience who has read the book is like SIRIUS WOULDN’T KNOW ABOUT THE POTION, IT WAS INVENTED AFTER HE WENT TO AZKABAN, ALSO, WHY AREN’T WE TALKING ABOUT WHY HE’S AN ANIMAGUS. And then Sirius goes to Remus and grabs hold of him, and starts shouting out about how his heart is where he truly lives, he’s not a monster, and all the Sirius/Remus shippers in the audience go “awwwwwwww!”
So that’s something, I guess.
But it gets better! After helpfully not explaining anything (including why Snape really hates both Sirius and Remus), Harry time travels with Hermione and realizes that he’s the one who has to conjure the Patronus to save himself and Sirius from the Dementors. And he does and it’s a stag! Isn’t that awesome? Wait, no, it’s not because the relevance of the stag is never touched on or pointed to or even awkwardly explained in terrible exposition. And everyone in the audience who hasn’t read the book is all, SO PRETTY! and everyone who has read the book is trying so hard not to shake every uninformed audience member by the shoulders and cry about how Harry just saw his dad and they don’t even get it.
Sirius has to leave, but before that he tells Harry that the ones who love us never leave us, and you can always find them in your heart, which is a great sentiment, but the whole point of that sentiment was to talk about Harry’s dad, and a significant portion of the audience doesn’t have any idea that Harry’s dad was even a part of this movie, let alone the fact that Sirius is talking about him. (Which he kind of isn’t anyway because Sirius doesn’t know anything about Harry’s Patronus either. These were supposed to be Dumbledore’s lines.) By the way, we also never find out who the hell Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs are, or the fact that the dudes Harry powwowed with all night made that fancy map he’s going to use for the next four years. Whatever. Sirius gets away. Great.
So the whole “explaining the mystery” part? The part that makes Prisoner of Azkaban such a spectacular installment in the Potter series? Is just scrapped. I understand that having your actors just stand around explaining things is low on action, but I would have traded most of the action scenes in this film (especially the Whomping Willow one, it is utterly ridiculous) for one solid scene of Real Talk that properly sets up this host of new characters. Yes, the candy in Honeydukes looks delectable, but there was a very special story here that never made it to screen.
But it’s all fine because it ends with Harry getting to ride on his new Firebolt, right? You know, that super swanky broom that we NEVER heard about in the film? Yeah, it’ll be fine, because Harry is going to end this movie on an awesome broom, having a ball as the FRAME FREEZES ON HIS SMEARED, SMUDGY FACE AND THAT’S IT, WE HOPE YOU LIKED THE MOVIE.
I… am just gonna pretend that never happened.
Emmet Asher-Perrin didn’t even really get into how angry it makes her that the werewolf is designed so poorly. You can bug her on Twitter and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
the idea that wizards always dress in robes and don’t know what trousers are is amusing, but not even slightly practical on Rowling’s part.
Actually it’s only a few eccentric wizards who don’t know what trousers are. In Goblet of Fire it’s explained that the Weasley kids reguarly wear muggle clothes, that their parents don’t, but have no difficulty disguising themselves when the need arises, but that at the Quidditch World Cup they meet a few wizards who haven’t got the hang of it. And we meet a few more later in the series. But plenty of wizards, including purebloods and Slytherins, appear in muggle clothes much of the time – e.g. Slughorn’s smoking-jacket – and this includes some muggle-style clothes which must have been made in the wizarding world, like dragon-skin jackets.
Yes. Tho’ I have a soft spot for this film ’cause it was the one I chose to see after eight years of avoiding the cinema ’cause the movie I had seen in the summer of ’96 was so perishing awful (hope the cast omitted it from their resumes!) that I was put off movies altogether ’til this one, and I’d seen the first two on video . . . .
But yes, exactly, and why didn’t they include the whole “someone sent Harry a Firebolt and it could be hexed so let’s check it out then finally give it back to him” subplot which was important and would have made the conflict w/ Hermoine more important too????? That’s my main prob w/ the film.
I think this is where the films started to go off the rails. I mean, the books start getting so massive you can’t make a proper 2-hour movie from them. They’re just becoming a bunch of favorite scenes from the book that get filmed because they look cool.
You hit the nail on the head Emily. Even though this is one of the potter films I enjoy the most it has A LOT of issues. You pointed them all out perfectly. I must say what they did to Ron bothers me the most but thats becuase I’ve read the books. I can’t imagine how confusing this would be if I hadn’t.
False: those prison tatts rule.
In his defense, this always struck me as the hardest book to translate to the screen aside from the finale. Time wibbly-wobbly-ness combined with Harry having to bond with not one, but two new paternal figures, a lot of detail driven plot, and mysteries that seem unrelated but really aren’t when we get to the finale.
Given all that, and the gorgeous look of most of the film, I still love it. The next one, I despise. Practically a straight-up action flick and they still couldn’t get it right.
The last Harry Potter film I went to go see in Theaters till The Half-Blood prince
I’m not sure this is my favorite Potter film – I think Yates did a great job, particularly with the final two. But this one is up there.
I gotta say, I LOVE that Snape shields the kids from Remus. Just that little action says so much about his character that the first two movies (IMO) did a poor job forgetting to mention. That scene with the boys experimenting with candy is all kinds of great.
The thing about the Marauder’s Map/Moony, Padfood, Prongs, and Wormtail really did annoy me, though. And I’m with you – would’ve traded that whomping willow sequence for five minutes of dialogue. Easy.
I always had Ralph Fiennes in mind as Lupin, probably mostly due to Strange Days. Then he got cast as Voldermort, which okay. Thewlis grew on me, though.
Something else I loved – the dementors – pretty much matched the way I pictured them completely.
As a piece of filmmaking, seperate from the HP story, this is, perhaps, the best of the lot. The kids finally start learning how to act (honestly, working on these films must have been akin to taking a master class) and the world begins to take a darker turn. It redefines the tone and style of the HP films for the rest of the series and shows the shabby side of the world. Little touches like using the Whomping Willow to depict the passage of time…I love them. But yes, while I can overlook a certain amount of changes to the story, the exclusion of explaining who Moody, Padfoot, Wormtail and Prongs were is a huge issue. Harry’s reverevance for and idolization of his father is such an integral part of his character, to just omit that is, well, baffling.
LOL. Funny thing is, this is actually one of my favorite of the HP movies, particularly for how ‘artful’ or whatever it is (plus, I actually like David Thewlis a lot as Lupin). But, man, you are right, it makes no sense. Some of those things I don’t think I even realized were non-sensical.
Things I liked: New Dumbledore, the soundtrack, the new grounds, the general atmosphere, Lupin, SNAPE IN NEVILLE’S GRANDMOTHER’S CLOTHES, Snape teaching the DADA class (I disagree with you on the best line reading, I believe that is ‘turn to page three hundred and ninety four’), and pretty much everything having to do with Snape, haha (except for the werewolf part, as you mention), the end credits sequence. In general, I find it a beautiful movie to watch and listen to.
Things I did not like:
I don’t like the kids in Muggle clothes in school, personally, and I don’t like that they kind of glammed up Hermione. She just seemed too fashionable for the way I pictured her and her hair was way too sleek. (Also, as a frizzy haired person: Dear Sleek Haired Hermione: shut up about your perfectly normal hair from the back, you don’t even KNOW the trauma of having crappy hair from the back or FRONT for that matter)
I hated the talking head. I just don’t go for that kind of wacky humor, usually.
I was really irritated the way they omitted most of the key backhistory, such as the prank on Snape (even though they establish in the first movie that James saved his life…but you never hear the full story in the movies), the origins of the map, the fact that they were all animagus, etc. I knew a lot of non-book readers that were really confused by the movie and I had to spend about 15 minutes explaining it all. It took a lot of the emotional punch and motivations away too. But perhaps one of the reasons I can still enjoy the movie is because my mind naturally fills in the blanks.
That pretty well sums it up. Everything is just a little off. I disliked the whole business with the Knight Bus. The whole thing was just a weak excuse for an extended action scene.
For me, though, the werewolf design was the absolute worst. It looks nothing at all like a wolf in any way and just… just sucks. I really hated it.
But unlike a lot of fandom, apparently, I really liked Thewlis as Lupin. As soon as he was announced, I thought he was a terrific choice. He matches the Lupin in my head perfectly.
@5 Mordicai
The tats look good, but they make absolutely no sense for Sirius. For one thing, he spent almost all his time as a dog. And for another, there’s at least a strong implication that everybody in Azkaban is in solitary. Not a lot of opportunities for Sirius to get those tats.
I agree with @3 that the films really “started to go off the rails” with this film. Yes, Hogwarts looks great. Yes, there is some nice world-building. But there are some MAJOR issues in terms of plot and acting that just totally diminished this film for me (and the rest of the Potter films). Michael Gambon is okay, but I never liked him as much as Harris, even before that infamous shouted line you mentioned in Goblet of Fire. He just doesn’t LOOK like Dumbledore to me, not like Richard Harris did.
Learning that Cuaron never read the books explains a lot, actually. The Potter films not only started losing their adherence to the books at this point, but they started NOT LOOKING LIKE HARRY POTTER. The actors are wrong in appearance much of the time, the plots stop making sense when you stop to think about it, Ron becomes just another pouty student who happens to always be around Harry and Hermione, and magic now has no consistency in its rules and usage. Bleh…
This is also the movie that introduced me to Movies in 15 Minutes (which, as a college student, I found hilarious):
http://m15m.livejournal.com/2237.html
THANK YOU. I always disliked this movie and have had a difficult time explaining why to other fans who swore this was the best of the films (at the time). I did love Goblet of Fire though.
This film’s saving grace in my mind is that everything bad in it is less bad than what came before.
So the story is underexplained. Still better than Riddle’s moustachetwirling ebil monologuing in the previous one.
The werewolf is a stretched and shaved poodle, but at least this one looks like the designers live in a world where canines actually exist, and not New Zealand (oooh, now Im thinking about that awful bear, too!).
Prison tatts dont make sense, but on the other hand we have posters with Gary Oldman railing us, and clearly having a blast.
I saw this movie before I read the books, or even saw the first two movies. And I gotta say, I did not find it nonsensical in the least. I followed the story fine. Now Order of the Phoenix and Half Blood Prince, those movies I had trouble following. This, I enjoyed. Even Snape’s protection of the children made sense to me, well, in light of later revelations. He’s sworn to protect Lily’s boy, this movie really established that part of his character better than Rowling’s prose did. It illustrated the promise his character made.
However, I also love the cinemasins rundown on the movie too. And that’s a sin *ding*.
The last of the films I saw was Order of the Phoenix, precisely because they’d gone off the rails. But that was, I think, inevitable. As ssherris pointed out above, the books were just getting too big to film properly. (This problem is also obvious in LoTR, where even the extended butt-buster editions leave out huge parts of the story. And what’s done to Gimli and Faramir! Worse than what is done to Ron…) Having read the book by the time the movie came out I didn’t really notice the plot holes in the film. I just filled them in myself.
Speaking of Ron, in the first 2 movies you see that he is actually very courageous, but here is where the mischaracterization of Movie!Ron really takes off.
As far as glamming up Hermione goes, the character is supposed to be fairly plain, and Emma Watson was well on her way to being a real beauty. There are worse problems a director could be faced with. ;-)
And as a movie this was great.
Yep, that werewolf blue hybrid from animorphs thing was the final nail for me. I had hope from the second movie that the third would be good. And tht hope was murdered.
All i could do was think of questions. My biggest question that i still of today: why are lupin and harry walking around the forest all the time? Did that really happen? I loved that book but cant remember them strolling through woods. The scene were pettigrew is revealed is very rushed. It was all very sad to me.
(Until i saw harry potter rifftrax)
PoA is one of my favorite books. However, this is my least favorite movie. I do not like how Cuaron’s used the camera in this movie. To me it was jarring. I cannot explain it. Also, I cannot get over the ending (Harry getting the Firebolt out of nowhere and taking it for a test flight).
That said, I have to give credit to Curon for one small change. I do like his use of the Scottish landscape as the landscape for Hogwarts grounds.
Thanks for reading my musings,
AndrewB
Oof. This is my favorite HP movie by far, but I agree with you about the opening and closing scenes and the werewolf design. Also Harry’s long, dramatic flight on Buckbead in the lesson. The whole Snape-Marauders backstory never interested me much, so I didn’t mind (OK, didn’t notice until now) its minimization. Never been sure how I felt about the dementors flying and making things freeze — it’s inaccurate, but it adds visual drama to make up for the difficulty of translating silent despair and fear from book POV to screen. Didn’t much mind Hermione’s hair comment; even a supergirl can be self-conscious about her appearance once in a while. Apparently enjoyed the talking head more than I should have. Loved the song from Macbeth, the changing seasons, and Lupin’s little speech about Lily’s compassion toward him.
NPR fans: In case you missed it, Daniel Radcliffe played Not My Job on last week’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me: http://www.npr.org/2014/11/01/360350153/not-my-job-actor-daniel-radcliffe-gets-quizzed-on-chia-pets
This was always one of my least favourite Potter movies, mostly for the reasons you mentioned above. I appreciate it a lot better now, but yeah, some of those things still really bug me!
Super Hermione definitely starts becoming a thing here – that werewolf “awoo!!” scene is just so silly (although you do get a nice moment where Harry shields Hermione from the werewolf)
I can’t remember, but I don’t think you ever explicitly find out that Harry hears his parents dying when the Dementors are near. I guess it’s not really necessary, but that’s something that hit me quite hard in the book
You know, as a big tLotR fan, I’ve been the rounds on movie adaptations, true-to-the source matarial vs. revisionism and “raping” the text (and overblown hyperbole as well). There is a lot to say about adapting art to another medium. For instance, I found the first two movies, though fairly true to the source material (anyone could quibble on this if they really tried though), to be rather souless and uninspiring as movies or even telling a good story. I found this one a breath of fresh air in this regard, despite being forced to agree with most of Emily’s criticisms above. I didn’t particularly care for the Night Bus scene where we suddenly seemed to veer into a revival of Beetlejuice, and there are other things that were off, or just plain didn’t work.
Yet I maintain that this movie was head and shoulders above the two that proceeded it, and the two that followed it for that matter.
no mention of the continuity error of h/h looking down from the clocktower watching themselves run past the executioner, then the two of them going down and running right past him again? to say nothing of hermione appearing out of thin air in the middle of class.
and the exposition boy with no name… why didn’t they just give his lines to dean?
Sorry I haven’t been able to keep up with the reread, but I think that when I did last reread PoA, I had determined that it was my favorite of the books. There were just lots of little things, and I particularly like Rowling’s writing in that one. As far as the movie goes, I’m just kind of meh. I liked some of the later ones better…but also, I had seen the first four movies before reading the books, and Goblet of Fire was the movie that really started to get me interested in the series. I know people complain about all the stuff cut from that one and there’s the two movie issue, but honestly, for me I feel like a lot was cut from Azkaban that made it good. Part of what makes it good is the prose, which you can’t capture in a film, but really, this one could’ve been made into two movies.
I wouldn’t necesarily blame this one for Hitlerwick; as you say, it was Goblet of Fire which decided to actually make the choir director be Flitwick. But a problem is that Warwick Davis is so well known, people might have mistaken the character for Flitwick anyway.
As for Michael Gambon, I’m never sure what my thoughts are on the change. I like him, but I don’t like that he is so utterly different from Richard Harris. And Harris I think definitely fits better with with image of Dumbledore from the first two, which are much more whimsical. But I also can’t imagine Harris in the role of say, book 6. So I’m glad Gambon was there for that.
And yeah…wtf was up with the werewolf?
Funny – I just saw the movie again last week (my dd had never seen it).
It is still my favorite of the movies, in look and feel and sophistication of character emotions and cool scenes and use of cool jazz beats during the boggart scene. But, there are definite logic and/or lost opportunity problems (Remus – please tell Harry who made the flippin map; Harry with his (masturbatory) light spell under the blankets in the opening despite the prohibition on magic….)
When I think about Harris vs Gambon I think about Half-Blood Prince and I wonder if Harris would have had the physical strength to do the cave scene (not to mention the Wizard battle in Order of the Phoenix)
Okay, I admit to not reading many of the other comments (there’s a lot) but I want to respond to the article directly.
First of all, I have not read the books, so this is my perspective as a film watcher with no prior knowledge.
I think just about every one of your complaints must stem from reading the books first, because I don’t agree that the movie made no sense.
* Harry confused about not getting expelled: This is easy, he didn’t expect to get CAUGHT using his light magic to read or whatever. But casting magic on his aunt was Serious Business™. Makes sense to me.
* The map and Lupin: I didn’t really find this jarring in the movie, mainly because it’s such a common trope. Teacher knows more than they should (this isn’t unexpected because so far in HP the dark arts teacher is always speshul), and Harry not catching that is also expected, because he is plot stupid.
* Sirius shouting about the potion: Again, as a non-book reader, this made sense to me. You already know at this point that Lupin is the werewolf (duh), and it would make sense that there’s a potion that could possibly stop the transformation. We know so little about Sirius at this point I didn’t find it implausible that he would know this about his friend.
* The stag thing, and seeing his dad: Harry totally explained that right after it happened. He was all like “It was my dad! [all the feels]” And then when they time travel, he realizes it wasn’t his dad, that it has to be him, and we see that bit of heart break on his face, but he saves himself. I totally thought it was moving. Again, I think your prior knowledge of the book maybe gave you higher expectations here.
The only thing I do agree with is the Mooney, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs bit. I did have to have a friend explain to me who they were, but once they did I was like OH duh. I think any astute watcher could probably figure it out, but it would have been nice if they could have spared the 5 minutes it would take to explain the four dude’s relationship. However, I don’t think not knowing really detracted from the movie itself. Sure, it might save a lot of plot stupid, but that’s just movies.
Anyway, just my thoughts from the outside, as it were. The third movie is still my favorite of all the movies by a large margin. I think its very well done.
This is my least favorite Potter film, and always has been. There were some great additions, certainly (I actually love the werewolf design, really put a new perspective on how terrifying these creatures must be, even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense), but for me, the overall tone of the film was just wrong. Prisoner of Azkaban is still a very dark book, and the whimsical silliness of much of it– the talking head, the gag with the screaming in the Leaky Cauldron, the musical interlude in DADA, and all of that awful Whomping Willow scene–just rubbed me the wrong way. While I can admire it from a film making perspective, as an unreasonable fan, I feel like the story came second to the whole “Look at me, I’m a fancy director!” aspect, which is most assuredly uncool in my book.
@27,
I see your point, but the patronus/dad thing especially doesn’t really work. Could have been fixed with 30 seconds of dialog. Lupin says, “I’m Moony, of course, my friends were Padfoot the dog, Wormtail the rat, and…” they get interrupted by Snape or whatever, then in the hospital wing Harry says “wait a minute, my Dad was Prongs, it was my dad in the woods.” It would have made the connection much more poingnant.
And, not just Harry, but all the adults are plot stupid, and not just in this movie or book. I’m in the middle of my own re-read and JKR’s flaws are showing up much more than the first time I read it.
@27 Re: Magic and Marge
I thought much the same. The Wizard government would naturally want to encourage muggleborn wizards to experiment with magic so as to avoid backsliding in the holidays. So they probably have a “magic use threashold” if you will, small trivial uses (which are coincidentally, the most useful things) are to be winked at, if detected at all. Large uses, and in front of muggles not in on the masquerade like Marge and those guys Dobby screwed with in the previous book would be a much bigger deal. Once you imagine the Wizarding government as massively corrupt, and also oddly Sith-like in wanting to bring muggleborns over to the
Dark Sidemagical world, all this stuff makes sense.Like any good hypocrite they only care about broken rules when there is something to gain, like shutting Harry Potter up about you know who’s return and politically emasculating Dumbledore. Politics, huh.
The black kid in Divination got a name in extracanonical material. His name is Bem.
And nobody is going to talk about “HE WAS THEIR FRIEND!”?
@32 – He looks just like one of my dd’s friends, so we called him by that kid’s name every time he showed up. Easy peasy.
I was so ANNOYED by this movie, for the reasons Emily points out; The lack of the really important backstory and how that wove into the present day characters and plotline was unforgiveable, in my opinion. There was time to have it in, if they got rid of the awful talking head stereotype/tacky humor.
Otherwise, really, it is a good film, and the more natural take on the kids was a good move, but dropping the plot the way it does has always frustrated my storyteller side.
I think the reason Lupin’s werewolf form became two-legged was that they didn’t want him looking too much like Sirius.
I refuse to rewatch this movie that ruined the best book. I saw it once in cinema in German and once on DVD because I hoped it would be better in English, but it wasn’t. The stupid “jokes” like the talking heads make the movie unwatchable.
Trelawney doesn’t fit the description in the book at all. She might be good as a crazy seer in a different movie, but she just isn’t Trelawney.
The clueless hippie Dumbledore doesn’t fit either. Dumbledore always knows what is going on.
The only good thing about this movie is that the dementors were better than in a later movie.
@30:
Erm, no. They would prefer if Muggleborns simply did not exist, so they figure out ways to oppress them. They make the excuse of wanting to keep magic secret, but how it works is that magic around an underage person in a magical household is assumed to be supervised by the parents; in a Muggle household there is nobody else to take the blame. This is why Harry took the blame for Dobby’s levitating cake trick.
The effect is that children from magical families get a huge advantage over Muggleborns in that they can practice magic away from Hogwarts if their parents are OK with that. Obviously Gred and Forge demonstrate the limitations of that!
I loathe this film for most of the reasons discussed above (particularly the werewolf and the lack of map/MWPP explanation) but the thing that really gets me is the Shrieking Shack – in the book, Remus is calm and reasonable and stands in massive contrast to the quite angry and irrational Sirius, which makes it all the more terrifying when he casually offers to help Sirius kill Peter. Having them both be all hyped-up and trigger-happy in the film ruins one of my favourite scenes from the entire canon. I thought David Thewlis was too old to play Remus, but I think casting directors’ hands have been tied by the casting of Rickman, who was too old to be Snape. All that lot should be about 33/34 during PoA, and they’re clearly not, even allowing for potion fumes/lycanthropy/prison being prematurely ageing.
I love this film the most of all the Potter films, mainly because Cuaron is just good at what he does. That said, I can understand the issues you brought up with it. Which I wasn’t expecting to. See, I love Thewlis as Remus. I think he’s perfect. And while I love Rickman for this Snape, he’s not Snape. But I can’t think of a better actor for Remus than Thewlis.
Either way, it’s head and shoulders above the debacle that is The Goblet of Fire. I hate nearly every single thing that happens in that move except for the confrontation with Voldemort. Easily the worst butchering of book to movie.
On a completely different topic than the comment thread thus far, I completely agree with Emily about John Williams and the score. Personally, I think it might be the best score/soundtrack of the series and he pretty much gets the tone right for every part of the movie.
It was a serious loss when he decided to move on from the HP world, but when you’re John Williams, you can turn down the rest of a multibillion dollar franchise and not stress too much.
And why does Harry have to keep re-lighting his wand in that silly opening scene? Every other time he uses “Lumos”, the light stays on until he uses “Nox” to turn it off!
I’ve got nothing but good things to say about the change in Flitwick’s appearance, the thing I hated most about the earlier movies after having read the books was how they tried to make him into some dwarf from a fantasy series, not a dimunitive human who is part goblin.
I don’t remember my exact reaction on first watching the movie. I am sure that my mind was very busy pointing out all the differences and all the things that were not shown. As such, I was not confused but I too expected much more. Then again, I have always been very nitpickity about all of the film adaptations so….
Another non-book reader here. Only ever saw PoA, but liked it enough to stop looking down my nose at everyone who liked HP from that point on.
It’s funny, I had assumed the bus/talking head thing must have been straight from the books because that whole sequence was very strange and unconnected to the plot otherwise.
Otherwise agree with @27: the holes are book-holes, not movie holes. I thought pulling off a decent time-travel tale was lots of fun.
I agree with most of Emily’s points, but Sirius declaring “the map never lies” when the movie never explains how he knows what it it does or how he even knows it exists…..I can’t believe she missed that one.
The Hermione line about her hair – idk, I always find that funny. As for her being too pretty……casting kids before puberty can be tough. They may change a great deal and that is hard to predict. Emma here is just too pretty for the part as written….reminds me of Man of La Mancha where Dulcinea should really only be attractive in Quixote’s eyes but it’s SOFIA LOREN!!
The choir bit has always felt “off” to me……the song is really cool and all, sounds great, but the shot of Flitwick at the end is so goofy. Just feels out of place.
Gambon vs Harris – Yes Harris would never have pulled off the scenes to come, but Gambon always seems too over the top. DD is reserved, not wacky.
Whoa.. i am surprised with the lack of love for this movie among potter fans… didnt expect.
personally hands down this is my fav movie of the series…. i think this movie was truest to the spirit of books and also the theme of the POA book.
I LOVE what cuaron did with it. Its SOOO beautiful to look at.
And this is one movie which viewers who have NOT read the book cal follow. and it works wonderfully as even a standalone film.
I have no issues with the things ommitted. because i felt the marauders eventually were not so important to Rowling also the way she treated them.
I am in the minority but I dont see any Ron assasination by cuaron or any HP films for that matter.
Wonderful film.. the one i love watching again and again.
Also i have read somewhere rowling was not happy with the look given to flitwick in the first 2 movies.. so it was she who wanted his look changed.
This is the only one of the movies that I liked. I’d sworn never to watch another after the first two, but a friend convinced me to try it. It was so much better than those (and the ones that came after). The rest were bloated with the facts of the books while ignoring the spirits of the books. Cuarón was masterly at tapping into that spirit and expressing it so both this fan of the book and her husband (not a fan at all) could appreciate it.
Though that head was just wrong.
I have always thought that the films never managed to truly convey the cultural split between purebloods and the rest, because they not only went for modern-looking uniforms, but also dressed the kids and the majority of other characters in modern clothing. I mean, folks like Snape, Lucius, Dumbledore,etc., in their wizardly costumes look more like people with eccentric sense of fashion, than normal representatives of a distinct culture.
Which was a big missed opportunity, IMHO, because what could have shown the divide more succintly than consistently dressing purebloods, including children, in say, 19th century clothes? Then one glance at various characters could have informed us about their background and the wizard locations, such as Hogsmeade, etc. would have looked suitably exotic.
You think this is bad, wait until you review the Goblet of Fire film…what a waste of source material.
@49 I just hope they institute a rule about mentioning *that* line reading by Gambon being a bannable offense. Otherwise I know what the first fifty comments will all be about. :)
yeah, well, other than *that* line reading, I still thought the movie wasn’t good, and that might also be because it was not long after I got into the series that I saw that film, so perhaps i’m a bit biased, but we’ll get to that and we’ll just have to wait and see.
I really like this film because of the aethetics and the music (yay jazzy class), but the more I rewatch it the more I see the holes, especially the whole ‘there was another generation of wizards and their story influence the present’ I mean you can’t understand the agony of Snape having to protect his love’s child who is also his nemesis’ child.
I hate H’s line about her hair. It’s the same about Harry’s bday’s cake in HP & DH part 1. Yes Her. can be self conscious (see the Yule ball preparation, diminizing her teeth) but NOT when the stakes are so high.
I don’t think Gambon’s Dumbledore is an over the top, kind of nuts, hippie. Yes DD knows overything and plans 10 moves ahead. But he also is eccentric and says some inappropriate things in appropriate times (like talking about toilets at a school function with MoM representatives). I think this is a part of his personnality but also a way for other wizards to find him less powerful and less threatening.
I don’t like that we see the boggart changing into a dementor for Harry (then why is Remus intervening?) nor that it is a moon for Lupin (a non descript whitish disc keeps the secret).
I think this is by far the best Harry Potter movie. As already said in the comments, it is the only one that captures the spirit of the books instead of simply the plot points. The first two are the worst.
I just watched it again last night, and oh man, the werewolf is even weirder looking than I remember.
However, the soundtrack was even better than I remember. And, I love John Williams, but I will say that I can usually pick out a John Williams sound track because they all have a similar sound/feel to them. That’s not a bad thing (although some of the previous HP soundtracks were a bit too similar to the Star Wars prequel soundtracks). But this one…I remember thinking they’d already gotten a new composer because something about it is just so different from his other works. I especially love the map music.
Visually, it really is quite fun (the shaky cam use in the Dursley’s home at the beginning kind of sets the tone for that part of the movie right away, although I can’t stand the ‘water hitting the camera lens’ effect during one of the Willow transitions).
The Whomping Willow from this movie is actually a bit how I picture the butterfly terrorizing Cthaeh in Rothfuss’s books ;)
Oh, and another thing I noticed for the No list – when Harry goes to Hogsmeade in the cloak, not only does he knock over the choir, he steals a lollipop from Neville. What a dick.
This is the moment where the films started to make sense only if you’ve read the book. It’s even more apparent in the next one, as continuity and causality and all kinds of stuff the story should have all go to hell. I know the film is pretty, and everyone is like “yes finally it’s not a moving illustration,” but guess what, the moving illustrations did not create gaping plot holes.
@55: Or the fact that he film establishes him as using his invisibility cloak still, but then he wanders around the school at night without it with no explanation.
@57
The explanation is very simple. Long shots of dark, empty hallways are incredibly boring. Viewers need to actually see the lead actor wandering around.
I’ve always had a major bone to pick with the movies – partially because I’m not the most forgiving when it comes to changing plot items from the story, partially because they’re just not good adaptations. That’s the danger with making a movie based on a well-known and beloved book – the movie needs to be good and it needs to be a good adaptation of the story. Doesn’t need to be word for word, but when you go changing the emphasis of the story you better have a damn good reason for doing so. If you aren’t going to change the emphasis, then you have to make sure you don’t leave gaps in the tale.
Deathly Hallows suffers from both of these problems; Azkaban is mainly plagued by the second one. In both cases, there are large chunks of emotional weight that are just left out of the films – pretty much the entirety of the Harry/Dumbledore relationship in the final movies and the Marauders in this one. The Shrieking Shack needs way more time in the film and I’m not sure what audience was being played to with the manic pace it was given…but it greatly weakens the film. That tension is a slowly cresting wave, not a quick action sequence. Bring the filmgoers to the edge and hold them there.
You can’t make me think that Williams is incapable of such a feat with the score, and the ability to go between Oldman, Thewlis and Spall while Radcliffe (who wasn’t a good actor *yet* but really started to move towards it in this film) has to simply hold down the “stunned and catch up” bit of the moment after cresting emotionally at the start of the sequence. Dan could go angry at this point…let him do so, then simply react without going all the way over the top again. The smallness of the motion in the scene’s climax juxtaposes the weight of it so freaking well…and I’ve never figured out why that wasn’t the way they went with it.
Also, this movie continues tradition by carefully removing anything bad done by Gryffindors. We have lost the hilarious floating Snape along and laughing, while scraping his skull along the walls/ceiling bits, we have Sirius acting responsibly by asking about the potion (really, is it so hard to remember the drug that keeps you from eating students when you’re a teacher?), and we’re not given any reason why Snape hates Sirius and Remus, except Because Slytherin.
But we can’t have the viewing public realizing that James Potter and his buddies were really slimy bullies, after all.
Harry didn’t see his dad. He saw himself.
It’s ironic to me that many feel that this is where the HP movies “started to go off the rails,” when to me it’s where the movies actually started to get good on their own, as separate entities from the books. Columbus did a serviceable but rote job in bringing the first two to the screen — they were okay but they were simply bloated, pale imitations of the books (and visually Columbus just isn’t an artist — they’re very claustrophobic and flat).
But I love what Cuaron brought to PoA and think this is a really gorgeous film, both on its own and as part of the HP film series (for me, it’s my favorite HP adaptation aside from the insanely beautiful and rich Deathly Hallows Part 1).
I especially love the visual coldness associated with the Dementors and think it was the only possible way to convey their effects on people in a visual way, and I also adore the bird-eating Whomping Willow. I don’t love the werewolf graphics but they’re okay — to me it just looks like a weird, CGI, too-thin werewolf thingy.
I do agree with a few of the nitpicks — I agree that the shrunken head is silly (although the scene does have a crazy, funny energy), and I definitely agree that we (most of all) badly needed the additional info on the Marauders and on what makes Harry’s patronus so special and heartbreaking. I love Lupin’s speech about Harry’s mother but miss the info we needed on Harry’s Dad, Sirius, and Snape (and especially what the Marauders did to Snape).
But I love Thewlis as Lupin, absolutely adore Gambon as Dumbledore (to me he’s perfect, and he brings that whimsy and lightness that Harris didn’t have — Harris was lovely but for me he was too ponderous with the role). My favorite moment in the whole film (and where Gambon for me just absolutely inhabits Dumbledore) is the little scene of the sleepover in the Great Hall, with the planets and stars overhead, and Dumbledore sweetly saying Harry should sleep and dream while he can. Something about that moment is really powerful and sweet to me.
I also don’t mind Ron or Hermione’s characterizations in the film, aside from my perpetual wish that they had simply allowed Hermione to have the hair she has in the books so that she’s not quite so obviously gorgeous yet. And I like Sirius shouting at Remus because it instantly conveys a feeling of long history between the two, that you know from that one moment that even as boys, Sirius must have said the same thing to Remus at each transformation, struggling to help him overcome his transformation.
As it was another nitpick mentioned, I have to say that I love the joy on Harry’s face in the very last shot — as well as the way the film ends with a blur — because for me it is a deliberate inverse and echo of what the Dementors do — after nearly being drained of soul and happiness by the Dementors, we now see him filled with joy and transcendent again. I love it and find it poignant and really lovely.
Meanwhile, I agree that this is easily John Williams’s best score for his work on the first three HP films. I especially love that he brings in an almost early Baroque/Early Music feel to the score — it’s richer and darker than previous scores yet also lighter and more sprightly. For the first time, this was a Hogwarts I could believe was actually inhabited and lived-in.
I am re-watching it now and I just remembered whý I hated this. The part with Tom the landlord was as cringeworthy as it get’s. He’s like a mentally disturbed person, making a ‘Huuuuúúú’….Huúúúú..”sound while laughing and stopping right away after Fudge gives him a weird look. Horrible.
“I have to mention the score because it’s the final Potter film that John Williams composed for and he just nails it to the wall. Everything is gorgeous. Every idea is inspired, from Marge’s inflation being an accidental waltz to the drums that herald Harry and Buckbeak’s first flight. It’s just a great soundtrack all the way around.”
Exactly!
I have to ask again could Tor please have a series on film scores ’cause it would be fabulous–Star Wars (which was the gateway for my paying attention to orchestral film scores, as opposed to the movie musicals I grew up listening to), Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Potter films, LoTR (which I did not see because adaptations . . . but the local classical station plays parts of the score sometimes . . . .), Doctor Who, Game of Thrones . . . . Actually you could do a whole series just on John Williams’ film music. Was he the first composer to connect themes with specific characters? I don’t know enough about film score history to know.
@64 YES PLEASE DO THIS.
I mentioned above that this is my favorite of the HP scores. We had the pleasure of going to our local symphony to see this movie accompanied by a live orchestra and it was so incredible, and my kids loved it too. (We’ve also been attending the Star Wars series and I won’t even lie, I had tears in my eyes at the binary sunset scene).
Williams is going to be conductng the opening concert for the new concert hall in the next city over and I am literally waiting on bated breath to be able to buy tickets (season ticket holders get first dibs). This has been a literal dream of mine for years!
In the mean time if you are interested in this kind of thing I highly, highly reccomend the Star Wars Oxygen podcast by David Collins. Sadly it stopped right when he got to Rogue One (basically the powers that be at Disney told him he had to stop) but it was incredible. There’s 38 episodes.
I don’t know if this is what you mean, but Williams borrows heavily from Wagner (which is opera, not film) who used leitmotif extensively. As well as from composers like Holst and Dvorak. I’m going to assume other composers have done it before but Williams in my opinion perfected it. Just my opinion :) There are still songs I listen to that make me tear up completely in isolation because they so perfectly tell the story and weave the themes/characters together (and lately I’ve been getting into YouTube artists that come up with their own orchestrations and mixes of the themes…it’s so fascinating how much these themes mean to people).
Unmentioned here, but I really enjoyed Timothy Spall as Wormtail. Guy looked like a total slimeball, and acted like one, too.