The sixth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, is coming out in 29.5 hours.
Or, you know, something like that.
Let me say this right now – I am NOT a Harry Potter franchise fanatic. I am a Harry Potter book fanatic. The difference?
I cried standing in line waiting for the 7th book.
I left for a few minutes halfway through the first movie because I had to pee.
There was no peeing while reading a new Harry Potter book.
This is not to say that I don’t really like these movies. I love the whole story in general, so sure, I’ll stand in line for a few hours to get a decent seat at a midnight showing. I will not, however:
-watch the movies over and over until I have them memorized (honestly, I’ve only seen each of them 2, maybe 3 times)
-know the names of the actors’ pets and/or significant others
-send Rupert Grint a get-well card because he got the swine flu (he really did, you know. But no card from me!)
There is something else I won’t do when it comes to these movies. I will not say this:
“Ugh! That wasn’t NEARLY as good as the book! How could they have left (insert seemingly important scene) out?”
I have one thing to say to people that say things like this: Are you insane?
Of COURSE the movie wasn’t as good as the book. OF COURSE they couldn’t include all the nuances and details of the written word. No movie based on a book has ever been able to do that. If you ask me, that's what made the Lord of the Rings movies so good.
But I digress.
Seriously - can you really expect movie makers to be able to cram everything - every thing - into a 2 hour movie? Or even into a 3 hour movie? It can't be done. It. Cannot. Be. Done.
And you know what else? That doesn't necessarily mean the movie is doomed to failure. Movies and books are two very different things. A book might need a whole paragraph to explain what a character is thinking, whereas an actor has to portray that thought or emotion in a single camera shot. A movie director might have only a few scenes to develop a subplot that the author devoted chapters to. Something might happen in the book that could be done in a more visually appealing way on the screen, so they change it. An author's job is to describe. A movie maker's job is to show.
You get what I mean? There's no way they're going to be the same. In fact, if someone made a based-on-a-book movie in which they included every little detail from the book, the movie would most likely be criticized as lengthy and drawn-out, with a whole bunch of wasted camera time.
And as much as I love the Harry Potter books, I do not want to watch fairly to moderately crappy kid actors try to do the story justice for hours on end. The adult actors are brilliant (hello, Alan Rickman!), but please - the kid actors are not. They're getting better as the movies go on, to be sure, but they are not great. Not great.
Anyway, I will never judge how good a movie is based on how closely it stuck to its book. This I solemnly swear.
I am really very excited for this movie! The previews look spectacular. I'm a little curious as to how action packed it's going to be. I mean, the end is going to be killer, to be sure, but before that...it's not exactly the most plot-driven of all the books. Hopefully they can keep it moving along.
I love Harry Potter.
Do you? You should. Then we can be nerds together.
"And now, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure."
