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Another week, another movie.

A question to get discussion started: this movie has a new director. Did you notice a different "style", and if so, do you feel the difference to be positive or negative?

 

This is the movie that allowed HP to transcend being merely a kids adventure series/mystery series.

The effects were better, the style brought forth more of an epic feel and I had much fewer cringe moments with the acting.

EXceeds Expectations.

 

I liked the movie. The dementors were cool I thought but first time I seen it I said, who's this? Where the fuck is my Dumbledore?

 

Easily the best Harry Potter movie. I liked the darker tone, I liked the character becoming less script delivers and more like actors. The Lupin bridge scene was espically nice and prefer the new way of dressing, dropping the all the same, rather dull robes and start to wear more personal cloths.

Overall I feel like Cuarón did nearly everthing right there was to make right. With the exception maybe of the new Dumbledore I dont have really anything I dont like about PoA and even this is not a major critic.

 

Best one so far in my opinion. Feels much more like an actual adaptation instead of an (almost) scene by scene transcription onto film. Managed to hit most of the high points from the book, with the only thing really missing being the Marauders reveal. The use of the whomping willow to show the passing of the seasons was a nice and simple thing to help it feel like time as actually passing.

I seem to be in the minority in really liking the new Dumbledore? Richard Harris was great, but he always seemed a little... frail? I'm not sure how he would've done in later films where Dumbledore is more active. That said, seeing a transformation from his almost airy personality to a force to be reckoned with in the Ministry duel would've been sublime.

No poll in this one?

 

I actually feel like this is one of the weaker movies. Maybe if I hadn't read the books, my thoughts would be different. But the books are some of the best selling in history, so that's not really a good excuse. As for the book, It's one of the better ones, but not my favorite. So, here's a wall of text. I made notes as I watched.

Spoiler

My issue is the plotholes. I said it in the previous threads, but I can keep movie and book canon firmly separated in my mind. In this movie, it's really hard however. Plus, there's barely any actual scenes that follow canon.

We start off with a massive plothole, one that has been beaten to death. Harry casting magic during the summer. And, he fueled a ton of bad fanfiction scenes on top of it by adding "maxima" to the end of a spell. Him casting magic contradicts what is said at the end of the first movie, as well as what Vernon Dursely himself says 3 minutes after this scene, and what Fudge says 5 minutes after that.

Next, it's apparent that this movie suffers from time dilation effects, just like the previous movies. Instead of getting letters (which admittedly doesn't make for a good movie visual), leaning about Sirius from the muggle news, and spending 3 weeks in Diagon Alley and seeing the Firebolt and enjoying his first bit of non-Hogwarts freedom in his life, it's all rolled into one day. Like, it goes from Harry inflating Marge to Fudge telling him that night that he bought all his books and shit for him since the Hogwarts Express comes the next day. Admittedly, I still like all these scenes so it works, but I feel like we missed out on a lot. In fact, I feel like that merging a bunch of scenes together in order to give those scenes enough time has actually felt more rushed than if those scenes were actually developed singularly.

The first impression I get of Lupin everytime I watch this movie is god damn, that scene was terribly acted by him. And his acting really doesn't get any better. Sirius outshines him completely, as does Snape.

The Double Trouble song was good.

I don't actually mind Gambon's Dumbledore, though he's not really playing Dumbledore, he's just kinda reading lines as himself. I feel like he comes off as more eccentric than the Harris Dumbledore, but less grandfatherly and Gandalfian.

I never noticed this Ron line before - “Do you think this Grim thing has anything to do with Sirius Black?”

Random note… Puberty is a funny thing. Crabbe is just not very intimidating in this one.

Lupin class was ok. Draco’s line is funny. Not sure how I feel about Harry actually getting a turn with the Boggart instead of Lupin jumping in immediately, but narratively it probably doesn’t matter. Only weird thing is like a minute later after Ron and Hermione goes off to hogsmead, Harry meets with Lupin, who pretends like the Boggart didn’t actually switch into a Dementor for about 5 seconds. It was kinda weird.

Lupin drops this line - “Your mother was there for me at a time where no one else was.” What the fuck does that even mean. I mean, I know what it implies, but the line seems so random.

Feels like the story was slightly bogged down in trying to jump through hoops with Hermione’s timeturner plot. Makes more sense in word form rather than on screen, I think.

Snape’s DADA lesson. Two birds were killed with one stone in this one. Super on the nose with the werewolf stuff, and Animagi were brought up as well (rather than showing McGongall having a class at all). And for some reason, Snape let Hermione talk for like a whole minute before he told her to not speak out of turn. A bit heavyhanded with the exposition.

Post-quidditch scene with Lupin. Why are Lupin and Harry randomly walking through the woods together? Weird scene.

Winter Hogsmead… we now see the first instance of shouty!Harry

Patronus lesson - Harry figures out the perfect memory and can cast the spell with just a single lesson and one failed attempt? Really?

It’s one hour into the movie before we get the first swerve - Peter Pettigrew appears on the marauder’s map. It’s kinda clever because we had the animagus and werewolf discussion in Snapes DADA lesson not that long ago, and the previous scene had Ron arguing with Hermione about Scabbers getting supposedly eaten.

Werewolf hints are so heavy. Snapes drops the line “Out for a stroll in the moonlight, Lupin?” It's way more obvious in the movie than in the book. In the book, it kinda felt like an AHA! moment, and that's without even using the name Moony, which is never used in the movie (but more on that at the end).

Harry didn’t question how Lupin knew the marauder’s map was a map at all. It didn't even look like he meant to question it and got cut off or anything like that. Like, Snape had no idea what it was, and as soon as they're out of ear shot Lupin calls it a map. And this is never explained.

Trelawney’s burn on Hermione is pretty good.

Start of the end sequence - I find it strange that it’s not mentioned at all that the trio were trying to help Hagrid with his defense of Buckbeak. Hell, there’s really only 3 Buckbeak scenes - the one where it slashs Malfoy, the one where Hagrid says he lost the trial, and the execution. It's fair to cut that sort of thing to save time in the movie, but it's hard to build an emotional attachment to Buckbeak when none of the three have an emotional attachment. Also, the actual runtime minus the credits is only 2 hours 8 minutes.

No Crookshanks pushing the knot on the whomping willow? It doesn’t even take any extra time to include. Didn’t want to tie it to the crookshanks/scabbers fight scene? Like, removing it just makes it seem like Hermione was in the right, when in actually, Crookshanks did go after scabbers. God forbid the movie show Hermione being wrong about something. Hell, the Firebolt Christmas present was cut and shunted off to the end, and she would have been right with that one, at the cost of alienating her friends.

Wormtail admits to working for Voldemort way too quick. I’m glad Harry figured it out on his own, but the whole scene went by very fast. waaaaaay too much detail was left off here.

Also, Expelliarmus is way too inconsistent. Sometimes it just disarms them while others it's knocking them backwards a dozen feet.

Lupin's Werewolf form is dumb looking.

Random aside that pertains to both books and movies: the idea of Hermione getting a timeturner just to take extra classes is ridiculous.

As is tradition, Hermione does get other characters lines in this movie as well. In the book, Harry is the one who realizes that Buckbeak is the other life Dumbledore said they could save. Hermione wasn’t sure how that would help. But in the movie, it’s all Hermione.

Alright, so, time for the elephant in the room. The Marauders are not talked about at all. Like, what the fuck? We have the Marauder's Map. We even have the 4 names Moony, Padfoot, Prongs and Wormtail. But the connection from Lupin to Moony is not made at all so we never learn that they made the map. Nor is it mentioned that they, including Peter, became Animagus to keep Lupin in check during the full moon. No mention that Harry's dad becomes a stag, or that his Patronus looks like a stag because of that. We don't even see Harry casting the stag patronus. We see the stag in the normal timeline, but in the timetravel, he just sends bursts of patronus energy outwards. Then, there's the tieback to the actual film. It's never mentioned how Sirius broke out of Azkaban. Nor is it ever mentioned why he chose that time to break out. The answers are both in the movie itself, but they're never addressed as such. The first is becoming a dog and escaping through the bars, and he's not as susceptible to the dementor's in that form. The seconds is the picture in the daily prophet of the Weasley family with scabbers on Ron's shoulder. That picture is shown in the leaky tavern scene and never mentioned again. So we're left to assume that Sirius just decided to escape randomly 12 years into his incarceration.

Cut content.. so much cut content. Nothing of Sirius actually breaking into Gryffindor House, just the one with the attempt. No firebolt. Only one sighting of the grim. quidditch scenes were trimmed dramatically, which is weird since they're actually important in this book, since he actually sees the grim, loses to cedric, casts a patronus at malfoy who is dressed as a dementor... No sneaking to honeydukes with the map the first time either. Tons of other minor stuff that probably isn't that relevant. But it feels like there's more cut content than actual content.

Anyways... couple final things. The movie pretty much ends with Sirius making a ridiculous statement - "You really are the brightest witch of your age." Firstly, Sirius was in Azkaban for 12 years. He shouldn't know shit about any of the witches of Harry's generation. Secondly, it's the kicker. In the book, Sirius's line is this "You really are your father's son, Harry." Really shows you what the directors think when Sirius' final line is about Hermione and not Harry.

Overall, I'd say it's the worst of the three so far, but not the overall worst one (spoiler - that's #6). 6/10

 

I feel like this video fits pretty well here. Give it a watch.

 

I really liked the change in style. It's darker for the movie that introduced dementors. One thing that disappointed me though was that they didn't explain the mauraders or their map. For people who have read the book this is no big deal but plenty of people only watched movie and this is a rather important plot point.

 

This film is by far the best of the 8 and one of the best films of the 2000s.