There’s Good Reason
I too am a Harry Potter virgin – no books, no movies. I can’t really imagine the books ever being a priority given the always-large stack of books that must be read on my shelf, but in principle I’m not opposed to the films (although I have no particular interest in them either.) But unlike Frank Bruni, I have a good reason! The unavoidable barrier, alas, can be summed up in four words: “Directed by Chris Columbus.“ Starting with the third doesn’t seem workable, but watching the first two is obviously not an option as there’s no chance whatsoever that they’ll be watchable, and there we go.
Actually, you probably could start with the 3rd. Stuff happens in 1 and 2, but not so you would get lost.
I think most people agree it’s the best of the lot, and directed by Alfonso Cauron as well. And if the 3rd didn’t do it for you, I doubt any other one would either so it’s a decent test to see if the rest of the series is worth your while.
Still, if you haven’t read (and aren’t interested in) the books I can’t imagine why you would want to see the movies.
I agree with this
Co-sign. Just start with the third movie
I also think that the first two books are pretty much skippable and boring. Rowling improved a lot as a writer as she went along.
Each book takes like a day or two to read. It’s fun.
I’ll agree too, though I would add that you could probably just stop with the third as well. I think I’ve gotten through movies 4 & 5 (my lack of memory of them is, I think, telling), and found them pretty tedious for the most part. Watchable enough, but hardly worth the time. At this point, however, I’m going to embrace the fallacy of sunk costs and finish the series.
The third movie is the best of the lot?! It had flying, cockroach-like dementors (they were supposed to *glide*, dammit), and all the characters were wearing Muggle clothing – even Malfoy himself!
*facepalm**headdesk* The worst part is that after bastardizing the book, Cauron didn’t even bother to film a satisfactory ending: the big twist and explanation are rushed, and the watchers who hadn’t read the book are left confused. :(There is one reason why the Harry Potter books need to be read:
The characters of the heroes are fully-formed, complex, and interesting. And they’re not even anti-heroes: they’re good guys in a good-vs-evil struggle. How often do you see that?
And this, in the genre of children’s/young adult literature.
Yeah. I started with book four and wish I had started with book three. What I found impressive is that Rowling is able to write about incredibly adult themes—death, suffering, sex, selfishness, guilt, the complexity of human (or I guess wizard nature)—without resorting to a lot of faux irony, double entendres and cartoonishness. I found the HP books to have more heart and less agenda than any other young adult fiction I’ve ever read (like, say, His Dark Materials, and I’m an aetheist!). She’s not a great action writer, but she really gets human nature, and what drives us to behave badly or well in different situations. The series makes an amazing case for the need for compassion. And kids love it. What more can you really ask?
The Golden Compass was a totally great book.
After that… yyyyyyyyyyyeah
Agree about the Golden Compass. The writing is so great I got over the proselytizing and read the whole thing in a 14 hour stretch. But after that, the series becomes a weirdly inappropriate mess.
The books are good–they’re written for kids that are about the same age as Harry is in the books (eleven in the first, seventeen in the last)–and get longer, more complex, and darker in tone as they progress. Thus, the first one is the shortest and a pretty quick read if you’d like to dip your toe in the series and see if you’d care to proceed.
I read all of the books though it was in spite of that same always-large stack you referred to. I skipped the movies until a few weeks ago. However, since I had read the books, I had no problem skipping the first two movies for the same reason you mentioned here.
Right. I assume if you’ve read the books starting with the third movie is no problem…
The first two movies are unwatchable. A lot of fans prefer them, as they squeeze in lots of plot irrelevancies and thus have a lot of their “favorite scenes” in them. But they aren’t as literal as a lot of the same fans think.
Read the books. Start with the third movie. I have the same kind of huge (and always expanding) stack of books to read, but I took the read HP to my daughter last year and very much enjoyed them. They’ll stick around as “classic children’s literature” until the 22nd century.
I resemble that remark!
I really admire the way Rowling was able to sketch a fully-developed world, and thought her work establishing setting and conveying the mood of that world was as much of an accomplishment as her theme, plot and characters.
I actually wish there were more “plot irrelevancies” in the later books and movies. What it’s like to wake up in the morning, what happened in the lunch room, ordinary social interactions that aren’t part of the big story…
That’s probably true. The first film is almost a literal adaptation of the book, so you could read the first two books in about two days (or less—I did), then just see the films. (Though both the third film and book are the best of the lot, from a pure plot and not bad writing standpoint.)
The second film is the worst of all of them. (The fourth is no great shakes either.) Starting from Order of the Phoenix onward, they are all actually films (less adaptations) and, except for more detail found in the books, the films are simply better. (I spent last night reminding myself that, except for Order and Azkaban, Rowling never really masters the art of good prose. But she has lively characters and can be funny. And again, except for Azkaban, she’s not really as clever as she seems to think.)
Overall, it’s a good (not great) story, with some excellent characters and occasional lapses. Yates is a pretty good director, though, even if Cuaron is clearly the best of the lot.
The first movie isn’t bad. The goal was to appeal to committed Harry Potter fans who knew the book inside and out, and kids tend to be sticklers for faithfulness to the original text hence the attention to “plot irrelevancies.”
I read the first book because I was reading articles about adults enjoying the books, and I didn’t quite get it. Nice book, but a children’s book just the same, and Rowling isn’t the world’s most gifted prose stylist. All credit to her for coming up with a great idea, though.
She was also shrewd enough to disguise her own sex and make her protagonist a boy, thus ensuring an audience beyond girls and greater popularity and critical respectability for her books.
Well, this thread just goes to prove just how subjective views on books and movies are.
Actually, I (and many others) thought the first movie had all sorts of problems with deviations from the book. Subtle things, but important to characters and sequencing. But it did a terrific job of visualizing the setting.
The third movie (Azkaban) also deviated from the text a bit, specifically related to the time-turner sequence near the end, but this did so in a way that enhanced and better explained the magic involved.
The fifth had its moments — it did a much better job than the book of portraying Harry as the emerging leader and powerful wizard that he needs to be. But it also had the worst direction of all. The best part of the fifth book (in my humble subjective assessment) is the confrontation between Tom and Albus (intentionally disguising the description for those who haven’t read/scene it). In there you realize the nature of the power relationship and who really fears who. In the movie that subtle interplay is gone, replaced by a bunch of meaningless fireworks-like CGI — and the “fear” relationship appears to be the reverse.
In the end, I can imagine that someone who does the movies but not the books may be entertained but that person won’t get what is really happening.
But for those who haven’t read the series, I suggest giving the first book a try. Yes, it is aimed at 11-year olds, but even in that book it is rich in imagery, texture, setting detail, and lots of interesting linguistics. If that appeals to you keep reading — JKR does a very nice job of dropping plot details in early books that sit there doing nothing until a much later book. There are some consistency issues, of course, but the many fans forgive those because of all the other strengths.
I agree with all of this, except for, in the first movie, the damned fershluggin’ stupid moving staircases. The book gave the impression that a staircase is there one day, gone the next; one day it leads to location A, the next location B. That was a nice magical idea. Then Chris Columbus turned that into stupid mechanical theme-park-ride staircases. So he fails the world-building part insofar as it was not magical.
And I agree about the subtle but crucial characterization differences. They drastically reduced Neville’s role in the plot. My biggest fear for the last movie is that they will continue with that bad choice.
Scott, I would recommend the books because the real strengths of the story are lost in the movies, but I would also guess that the movies would make enough sense starting with #3. The books would too, but the first books are such quick reads you might as well read them.
I very much recommend buying the British editions from amazon.ca or amazon.co.uk, not the Americanized versions.
Update: my fears are assuaged; they kept Neville’s role but made interesting changes so that the finale was not predictable for those who have read it.
Must second what Green Caboose says about the CGI spells-that-look-like-fireworks. The duels are now just FX fights, not two characters confronting each other. They are empty of meaning, which really takes away from the story told in the novels. Spells in the book are, first of all, literate, done with words, and secondly demonstrations of character. It matters thematically that Voldemort uses killing spells while Harry uses disarming or blocking spells. Without that, the big confrontations appear to be demonstrations of “who is STRONGER?” — which is the complete opposite of the story’s actual point.
The Chris Columbus movies are icy, but they’re kids doing magic in a well-imagined world (on the part of Rowling), which provides enough fun to defeat the sluggish filmcraft. Other good actors help a lot. You can do something else when they’re on anyway if you really feel the urge to catch up.
The Quidditch matches are kind of inspiring, which probably just means that the special effects crew had lots of leeway.
Your awesome solution to no. 1:
Brad Neely’s movie-length voiceover, “Wizard People, Dear Reader.”
You’re welcome.
Seconded on this — one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. It’s on YouTube too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u981JhkK46o
Damn you. I watched the whole bloody thing. The chapters on getting his wand and the cribbage match were inspired.
I saw a few of the movies, but I’m not sure which ones. They were easy enough to follow in a “here’s the good guys and these are the bad guys, now just wait for the big fight” kind of way, but a lot of stuff happens in between that didn’t make much sense to me. I assume the subplots and minor characters get more explanation in the books, but they didn’t translate well in the movie. Nor did a lot of the magic, especially the quidditch games, which I would imagine is a large part of the appeal.
Caveat: I was drinking and not very interested in the first place, so my ability and willingness to keep up might have been impaired.
Yeah, this is particularly true of the 6th movie, which they should/could have split into two ala this last one. Two many sub-plots and narratives get obscured; I have not read the books but my lady has, I was able to piece all my questions together afterwords, but I had to ask.
I concur with the group though, apart from the 1st two movies (and the loose ends of the 6th) these movies are first rate children’s flix, and stand well on their own against any blockbuster that has come out this millennium.
If you have kids, they will want to read it.
Or even have you read it to them, and you will probably want to read it as well.
I say that because I am a believer in knowing the books your own kids are reading.
So do it, eventually.
The actors were very careful not to say that Chris Columbus’s directing skills are nonexistent, but Emma Watson earned eternal loyalty when she said in the Making Of for the third “A director who listens! And we get to act!” Almost that directly.
I suspect you’ve picked up enough about “the Harry Potter story” from the aether (Voldemort was/is a bad guy, for instance–vanquished, believed killed in a battle with one-year-old Harry, The Boy Who Lived, though no one is certain how), that starting with the third movie isn’t a problem.
Or you can play The Chris Columbus game: watch the first two movies and take a drink with every Product Placement. (Do this over several days, please. Or use something non-alcoholic during a heat wave.)
The solution to reading the books is simpler. Use my method–start with a serious case of the flu–or just listen to the Jim Dale audiobook recordings, which are fun enough that you can ignore the occasional grammatic slip.
Just never try to start with any movie after the third: you get the Star Trek movies problem then, even with flashbacks.
The audiobook versions are indeed wonderful.
“…Voldemort was/is a bad guy, for instance–vanquished, believed killed in a battle with one-year-old Harry…”
…but Harry didn’t listen to Elrond and throw the ring into Mt. Doom.
I read the first book a couple of years after it was released. I was visiting my brother for Christmas and read my nieces’ copy. It was enjoyable enough: a solid entry in the genre of English children’s literature adults can enjoy. It was not an exceptional example of the genre. The following year over Christmas I started my nieces’ copy of the second book. I only got about halfway through before returning home. I have never bothered to pick it up again. Whenever I consider doing this, I think on the books’ growth from reasonably sized volumes to door stops.
Far more interesting than the books as literature is the books as cultural phenomenon, with even marginal readers lining up for them. This is the only reason I might read the rest of the series.
There’s something to this. The second book is like a lot of rock bands’ second albums: like the first one, only more so. If you’re a fan, you’ll like it.
The subsequent ones are like the albums from bands that proceeded to grow beyond their first album.
Yah, the 5th book was my favorite. They’re quick reads.
But I think Scott may derive more satisfaction from being a Harry Potter abstainer than he would from actually imbibing. Kinda how I am with John Grisham.
I actually read The Firm, and thought it was terrible. (And legal thrillers are my favorite form of junk fiction — read every Scott Turow.) You don’t expect great prose, but I do expect plots whose every twist you don’t see coming 100 pages ahead.
I watched Hot Coffee on HBO this morning, which is a documentary about the Chamber of Commerce’s (and other groups’) campaign for tort reform. There’s a section about a Mississippi Supreme Court judge, Oliver Diaz, who faced some frivolous lawsuits of his own after being re-elected over a Chamber of Commerce-backed challenger. Specifically, he was charged with accepting bribes because a friend cosigned a loan for him, even though Diaz recused himself from any case involving the friend’s law firm.
Grisham was in the film as a sort of character witness for Diaz. I guess they’re friends and one of his novels was inspired by the case. I got the impression that notwithstanding Grisham’s triteness as a writer he seems to be a fairly decent guy personally and politically.
Anyway, the doc plays like an extended, less ominous Frontline. Definitely worth the hour and a half.
Against that, I’d balance Grisham’s involvement in the lawsuit against Oliver Stone and Time-Warner. I know that the murder victim was a friend of Grisham’s, and I’m not defending Natural Born Killers (I thought it was crap), but it was not only a pointless, wrong-headed lawsuit, but it also lead to what could be called the NBK defense, i.e. Mickey and Mallory gave me the idea to shoot Grandma.
It’s fantastic; I’ll have a post on it next week.
I think it will be interesting to see if the books endure into a second generation. They are good, I think. In the UK they were printed with two sets of covers, one for children, and one for adults, so they could read it in public without worrying about looking silly. They rock right along– at least the first three do– and if you have a taste for fantasy than I think it is fair to say that you will enjoy them.
I suspect that my daughters will one day read them to their children, but I don’t know that the series will work the way that the Oz books, or the works of say, E. Nesbit will, because the first generation of Harry Potter readers grew up in real time at more or less the same rate as the Potter characters have. When you are at the age when “The Phoenix and Carpet” appeals then you are at the age where “The Enchanted Castle” and “Five Children and It” will likewise thrill you– and you will read them all at once. I think the Potter books work differently. They become darker, and denser, and someone for whom “Philosopher’s Stone” is perfect may not find that “Goblet of Fire” is quite there.
My two boys, who are eight and five, enjoyed me reading the first book to them. I edited around some of the slightly bloodier material that I anticipated would upset them. But we’re going to proceed slowly.
I have read the second and third books, not beyond although I think I have seen all of the DVD-released movies now (and it was seeing Azkaban by happenstance rather than planning that encouraged me to persist; Columbus had indeed turned me off).
I don’t anticipate reading the second book for another year or two. That’s fine; the boys have story cycles of their own that we spend most bedtimes on, and I have mine and there are always a million other books (we’re starting on Enid Blyton’s Famous Five shortly – we are getting a service dog for our older son and I think Timmy will be a crucial storytelling point to build enthusiasm for the dog).
I’m dislike Columbus as much as anyone, but I didn’t think the first two movies were all that bad, at least when they were first released (haven’t seen them since). You’d have to be a pretty reactionary Columbus hater to call them “unwatchable.”
I’ve never read the books, but my feeling is that so much effort was put into staying faithful to the books that Columbus didn’t have a lot of leeway to put his own personal touches on them.
I’ve actually grown impatient with the movies as they’ve gone on, although 7.1 wasn’t so bad.
Movie 1 was merely bad. Movie 2 was a wretched atrocity and secures Columbus’ place among the damned. It bloody well was unwatchable.
Perhaps you’ve never seen Bicentennial Man.
Something else cool that Rowling wrote.
Cool. And even cooler when you remember she’s one of the wealthiest people in the U.K.
I’ll join the consensus that you should read the books. They’re pretty fun and it won’t take long. It’s not like we’re trying to get you to read “A Song of Ice and Fire” here.
I think you could figure out what was going on if you started from movie #3. The fourth and sixth are pretty good, too. Five didn’t play well to me, but a lot of that was that I didn’t like how they adapted the book.
Movie 7.2 kinda sucked btw. (Yes, I got dragged into a midnight showing.) Did not at all like what they did w/ the 2d half of the Battle of Hogwarts.
I could actually go into a bit of a rant on how the values that Rowling focuses on in the book are deleted from the film, but that would be spoiler-heavy … whatever “spoilers” means when everyone seeing the movies has read the books.
I think I can do it spoiler-free. A lot of the draining of meaning from novel to film is the way all the action has to be visible. Spells are meaningful in the novel because they involve words and symbols which the book has time to explain, and because they are a mechanism for revealing the character’s inner self. In the movie they are BANG! ZAP! POW! ray guns. Whenever a good guy confronts a bad guy (Dumbledore vs. Voldemort, Harry vs. Voldemort, Mrs. Weasley vs. Bellatrix, Harry vs. Draco (which is interesting because both are in the wrong and conflicted) etc. etc.) the book teaches you something about characters, themes, and relationships, while the movie says FIGHT! GOOD GUY, KILL ‘IM!
And then there are filmmakers’ choices to shortcut the plot, so characters do something without having a particular motivation or reason. In the Lord of the Rings movies, Frodo’s companions come along with him because what the hell, sounds like fun. In Tolkien, of course, there’s a very serious, long discussion of their choice in the context of thanedom, lordship, the relationship of a chief to his advisors, the moral necessity of sacrifice, and so on.
I think some omissions like that occur in the Harry Potter movies, but a lot of it is inherent to the way movies translate meaningful gesture into empty spectacle.
All true enough, but some of the endless scenes of “Ron and Herminone running somewhere” and “Harry running somewhere,” not to mention the ridiculous chased-by-Voldemort-through-Hogwarts sequence, could’ve made way for (1) Dumbledore’s confession to Harry at King’s Cross and (2) Harry’s big speech to Voldemort at the end, which pulls the slow reveal on V. as he gradually realizes he’s been outthought, as well as — and this is crucial — Harry’s asking Voldemort/Tom to show some remorse, to try to save some of what little soul he’s got left. Both that and the Dumbledore confession were too central to the book’s message for Hollywood to cut them out.
(If you haven’t seen HP7 by now, how serious a fan ARE you? Spoilers unapologized for.)
I absolutely agree. In the movie Harry OVERPOWERS* Voldemort, which as you say is 100% wrong for the story. They could have shouted their spells, so that viewers might get a chance to understand that Harry doesn’t attack V. Harry should definitely have offered V. repentance. And everything you say should have been in there, should have been in there.
One small example struck me today. In the book the heroes realize how inhumanely Kreacher has been treated by both “good” and “bad” members of the Black family. They show Kreacher kindness and, because he is a creature of his environment, he transfers loyalty to them. Harry sends him to work at Hogwarts, so when the battle comes, Kreature leads the elfs (elves? that sounds to Tolkeinesque) against V. There could have been 90 seconds of movie (60 in part I, 30 in part II) to include that lesson, and it could have replaced some sparkler battles.
* Sorry about the CAPS. I caught it from Rowling.
Rowling doesn’t write very well, lots of “adjective, adjective noun” decriptions followed by explanatory declarative statements. (E.g., “over the ornate marble mantle hung the dark gilded mirror” and “‘This must be the place where so-and-so did such-and-such.’”) Because my oldest boy started reading the books when he was seven and because my wife, returning to college, had to take an English class with an emphasis on Harry Potter, I read some of each of the books. I liked some of her characters but Rowling needed an editor to tighten things up. Because the boy wants to go to the last movie (I fended off the second-to-last when it was in the theater), I agreed to watch said second-to-last with him last night. I thought I was putting up a good front until about the 90 minute mark when he said, “Dad, are you still awake?” Bottom line, there’s plenty of good adult fiction, old and new; read that instead.
There are two types of readers: readers who say “Rowling is a bad stylist, so don’t read her” and those who say “Rowling is a bad stylist, but here are all the other good things about her books.”
My solution to watching a movie that I suspect is unwatchable, is to view it in conjunction with a “riff” from RiffTrax.com. RiffTrax is the creation of Mike Nelson from Mystery Science Theater 3000 and most of the riffs are done with MST3K alums Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy… so the results are predictably amusing.
My favorites are the riffs for “300,” “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” and “Clash of the Titans;” but the various “Harry Potter” riffs are also pretty good (especially the one for “Prisoner of Azkaban”).
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