Rewatching POA - a disaster
My local cinema is currently running the Harry Potter movies again (oh my gosh blushing fangirl-gasp) and today I went to see Prisoner of Azkaban. It was such a mix of feelings because it was wonderful to see it on big screen again but with the audience in my back it also showed me how much is wrong with this movie
1. Good stuff first: The scene where Harry leaves the Dusleys house after he had blown up aunt Marge is the saddest and funniest at the same time. There’s this poor child wandering down an empty, rainy, dark road, carrying in his trunk everything that he owns and having nowhere to go. But then a tiny black dot in the sky is floating past the moon, screaming – it’s Marge. She’s still up there. I completely forgot that and I was crying and laughing so hard at the same time.
2. Now for the bad stuff: That scene in the Shrieking Shack where Hermione steps in front of Harry and tells the assumed mass murderer that she would die for her friend. That was Rons line in the book! Ron, standing pale and sweaty on his broken leg, stepped in front of Harry while Hermione was pissing her pants. Stupid me expected the cinema to be full of loyal Harry Potter nerds and was so prepared to let out an outraged gasp about that, but no one said a word! Not even the girl right behind me who was explaining every scene to her friend who apparently somehow had never seen Harry Potter. Not even she whispered: “You know in the book Ron said that”.
3. Snape snarls at Hermione for answering a question that he had just freaking asked and calls her the iconic “insufferable know-it-all”. It’s furiating enough that in the movie Ron leans to Harry and fucking endorses the bullying, while in the book he stands up for Hermione. But you know what really hit me in the guts: The whole cinema was LAUGHING at this poor character-raping joke! They didn’t even laught at Moon-Marge or Stans “Whatcha fell over for?” but they laugh at this twisted crap?!
4. Why did they not show Harry casting a formal patronus? I mean they did, when we witness the scene the first time, when Harry thinks it’s his father casting the patronus. But later, when we witness the same scene a second time, they did not bother to show the same fucking rendering model they had already created and used, but instead just showed us a giant white shield that doesn’t even actively fight off the dementors. Also the whole point of the stag is that his father was a stag and had a stag patronus and Harrys patronus being also a stag symbolises how similar they are. His father was not a fucking round shield!
5. Lupin being forced to resign. He told Harry that “someone let slip” that he was a werewolf. It was freaking Snape! He is NOT the hero jumping in front of the children to protect them from the werewolf at full moon. (He did not do that in the book.) Someone who never read the book will probably not even think twice about this “someone” but they will remember how Snape spreads his arms in front of the trio like an overprotective mother bird takes their hatchlings under her wings.
6. Speaking of someone who never read the book: They had time to add that protective Snape, they had time to let Ron endorse the bullying on Hermione, they even had time to for that weird frog choir, but they couldn’t eclude a sentence about WHO made that map?! We meet every living one of the Marauders in person and talk a good lot about the dead one and we’re not allowed to learn that they made this amazing thing? Not even as an explanation to why Lupin knows how it works, even though this is what saves Harrys ass that night. By the way, the girl sitting behind me took the first half of the end credits telling her friend every character for every actor’s name on the screen, and the second half she tried to explain to her friend exactly what the Marauders Map is and why it is so important. I wonder how that uninformed friend must have felt, how betrayed she was by the movie that withheld her this important detail.
7. To end it on a positive note (and on the most magical number): The Quidditch scene was brilliant. Especially in comparison to the first movie where the Greenscreen really hurt the eye, this was just mindblowing. I loved how they introduced the visual of dementors through the black umbrella. I actually had goosebumps and shivers while Harry fought against the raging, freezing cold storm and the rest of the cinema was on the edge of their seats as well.
All in all the movie was incredibly wonderful even after the fifth time watching it. Especially in this one the camera work is amazing, the colours meet perfectly in the middle with the right amount of warm and cold for each scene, the CGI is really good and believable (Quidditch, Buckbeak, Werewolf, Dementors). There are some more great scenes I really enjoyed like the boys having fun in their dormitory, Harry messing with Draco under his invisibility cloak, Hermione discovering Harry crying under the cloak, the suspense of the very first dementor encounter at the train, every single time the camera played with windowglass and the great clock...
I completely understand that sometimes subplots have to suffer when a book is made into the movie. I understand that it’s a different medium with less time and a different arc of suspense. But all the things I criticized above, all the things that I have now witnessed having a strong impact on the audience and convey twisted or even plain wrong information, all those things could have been changed so, so easily (or to phrase it better, could have been left the way they were in the books and not changed at all).
2. Just let Ron say the line that was his to begin with! It doesn’t affect the plot at all, it just changes characters that don’t need to be changed. Except you know turning Hermione from a realistic, relatable strong woman to an unreachable, unrealistic warrior goddess while stressing out how useless Ron is (he’s fucking not).
3. The movie is not even buying time by cutting Rons response completely. They explicitly take the time to turn the camera on him and let him say a line. It’s just not the brave and loyal line from the book but a mean joke.
4. They already did the rendering model! Why don’t you just drop the exact model at the exact same place again? It’s not that much of an extra effort.
5. Again a single line could have made it clear and no time would be wasted. How about “Your dear potions teacher let slip something about my condition” or even sublter “I’m sure you can guess after the incident in the shrieking shack, that some staff member let slip about my condition”.
6. Here’s a suggestion. I get that it might take too much time for such a long movie to explain the marauders but how about we buy that time by cutting out the freaking protective Snape moment that wasn’t even in the freaking books at all and only adds to the false view that so many have on this teacher. The teacher who – I can’t stress this enough – didn’t keep his mouth shut about the severe and painful condition of another staff member while knowing exactly that he will be forced to resign, won’t find another position and will return to his life in solitude and poverty that he has lived in for so many years before. He also did keep his mouth shut about Sirius being innocent even though he knew the truth and also knew that Sirius would be facing the dementors kiss, so basically he signed his death. But they don’t approach that either in the movie...
Well anyway, sorry for the very long rant post. Did anyone even read so far? I just want to make clear that overall I really enjoyed seeing the movie again and it was a great experience but it will always be greater to read the books again because even though they are just black letters on white paper and not 3D 4K surround sound, they are the truest we will ever have and the movies are just doing way too much movie and too little book adaptation. (Except for the first one, the first one is precious.)
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