Here’s the thing. I know in my brain that it makes no sense to consider the source material when watching a film adapted from a book. A film and a novel cannot be compared to each other with any degree of usefulness because a film’s faithfulness to its source has exactly nothing to do with whether or not the movie is good. There have been films that completely suck that were very faithful to the novel on which they were based. So ranking a movie based on faithfulness to its source is pretty useless.
So I will attempt to talk about the last Harry Potter film without talking about its source. I will fail, but I will make the attempt.
My most basic issue with the movie is that it does not follow the rules of its own universe. One of the tenants of telling a story with supernatural elements is consistency. You craft a universe with different rules than our own, but you have to remember the rules you come up with. You can’t ignore or change them as it suits. That’s bad writing. The Harry Potter films aren’t any better than any other shitty big budget summer movie in this regard. The kids (almost grown ups) are in several situations that could be solved by shit they’ve already learned in wizard school but don’t employ for dramatic purposes. Bad writing. (this is the movie, the books were adamant about sticking to the rules of their created universe)
So that really spoils the whole experience for me. I don’t go to wizard school so they ought to be better at thinking of this shit than I am.
The next thing is that the films make fantasy ass boring. This latest movie is a giant war between good guys and bad guys and giants and monsters and giant spiders and dragons and explosions and…yawn. Somehow they make it about as interesting as the DMV.
Now, what’s good about this movie: the actors. All the actors are awesome. Even the goblins and what not. (Here’s where I fail) The actors were so good I wish they’d been given a chance to play the characters in the books. That would have been really cool. Just one example of the difference: Fred and George aren’t pussies in the books. There’s more but that’s an important one.
So unless you’re a flaming Potter fan, go ahead and ignore this movie.
Nothing special.
If the subject interests you, you might pick up the books. There’s actual people in the books and halfway decent writing.
If you do see this film, do not go see it in 3-D.
3-D is retarded.
It was retarded in 1953, and it’s retarded now.