I didn’t read the books.
Prisoner of Azkaban— and to a lesser extent Chamber of Secrets and Goblet of Fire— had a necessary mix of whimsy, humor, color, and charm, and also seriousness/darkness. The series should have stayed that way.
But then first they sucked out the literal color, then the literal light, then the happiness out of the movies. By the time I saw the earliest part of Deathly Hollows, I just stopped caring. Every moment became joyless and hard to watch.
If there’s no more discovery of the whimsy of the wizarding world, no more wonderment, no more seeing characters be just plain likeable, why do I care anymore? The series slowly became about friends being jealous and petty, people being double-agents, and about death and loss.
I had to read a summary of the events of Deathly Hollows, because I couldn’t subject myself to 4 more hours of misery after the latter two-thirds of Half-Blood Prince. Now I’m just going to enjoy the full LEGO Harry Potter collection game.
It is really not recommended to watch it without reading it first.
I loved how the movies gradually changed from kiddy comedy to borderline horror. I’m more into the latter style so I’m okay with it but I can understand why it may be disappointing for those who fell in love with the former.
Thank you for an understanding response. I myself do not like a focus on horror, cynicism, bleakness, or grit. Of course that’s not black-and-white— I can appreciate scary suspense too.
They aesthetic choices of the movies directly reflect the events of the story. Voldemort coming back into power literally drained all the joy out of the wizarding world for those who knew and understood what was happening. The story turned from one of discovery to one of self preservation.
Voldemort let dementors loose to feed on any joy they could find, no wonder the characters became jealous and petty. Then the sense of impending doom from the threat of Voldemort or his followers and their terrorist style attacks meant that any gathering that could have been joyous turned downtrodden and melancholy.
The tone of the films reflect these events. The films didn’t touch on the prevalence of the dementors except briefly, so instead they showed the constant cloudy grey skies. The sense of impending doom is seen in the darkness of the scenes. In settings where the characters can be more free or relaxed the scene is brighter and more colorful. In settings where that relative safety is more easily broken the scene is dark and foreboding.
I’m not trying to say the movies were all perfect gems that got everything right, but the stylistic choices for scene and lighting I think were used to emphasize the greater tone of the events as seen by the characters.
There’s probably some edits on fanedits dot org. I love DonKamillo’s edits for the Hobbit. I remember there at least being a jpotter who did HP ones, but there’s probably loads of them.
Jpotter did one for Half Blood Prince where they took the atrocious green/emerald tint out.
The series transitioned from being made for children, then to content made for adults embarrassed that they were watching children’s entertainment.
I grew up with these books, then came the movies, and I felt the same about the movies. As the series progressed it was supposed to get darker, but there was also a feeling of hope caused by the actions of Harry and his friends. I didn’t feel that. Especially the last 2 films, the feeling of dread is ever persistent and it doesn’t go away even when they make things right. It becomes just dreadful & hard to watch, bordering on boring
Thanks for your viewpoint. I agree.
LOL, you’re the person who posted this: “Downvote me all you want, but I have to complain. Most bad things in the series would never happen— especially to Harry— if people just talked, explained, or defended themselves like human beings.”
Congrats on coming over to lemm.ee, and escaping that shithole lemmy.world
You might also like this really cool audiobook renditon by an amazing person who got their work taken off Youtube, https://castbox.fm/channel/Harry-Potter-|-Immersive-Soundscape-id5488497?country=gb - it’s got background sounds and all!
Thanks for the welcome.
I’m out of the loop, what’s up with lemmy.world?
They’re always defederating from servers and their ambitions are too big. Lemmy is defederated by design but lemmy dot world behaves like reddit. They’ve also bizarrely taken it upon themselves to defend the IMF. So combining that with their aversion to piracy communities (they only allowed it again recently) they’re a threat to free speech.
Shithole is strong word though.
I hate to say it but the David Yates films seemed like a step down in quality somehow. I can’t be sure if it’s entirely his fault though or the screenwriting, adapting longer books, or just the bleaker nature of the last few. From a subject matter perspective Fluffy, Devils Snare, Mirror of Erised, etc. are such a far cry from the bland wand duelling later on
The Philosopher’s Stone did genuinely feel like we were transported into a new world with exciting new things. But that sense of awe was not replicated later and it slowly worsened until we got to a green tinted Half-Blood Prince.
These days shock and awe is given attention - Dune really did this well, though Foundation also did well with this initially but took it too far and lost substance.
This might be something to look forward to given we have a new Harry Potter series coming, but it doesn’t seem guaranteed to produce good results without good direction, story etc.
Also:
There’s probably some edits on fanedits dot org. I love DonKamillo’s edits for the Hobbit. I remember there at least being a jpotter who did HP ones, but there’s probably loads of them.
Jpotter did one for Half Blood Prince where they took the atrocious green/emerald tint out.
Yeah – you REALLY should have watched Deathly Hallows 1 & 2. You kind of missed the entire point of the series if you skipped the end.
It’s like watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” and turning it off before the end.
So either you entirely missed the point or you have written an entire post to take the piss out of this forum.
Read. The. Post.
Edit, after a bunch of downvotes: To all you insufferable fanboys out there who think that a person’s dislike of how the tone changed for something is invalidated because they watched the first 16 hours of the series but didn’t watch the last 4— yet they skimmed the last part, got a plot summary from the internet, and decided they didn’t want to subject themselves to the misery of it— I have this to say to you:
🖕
Grow the fuck up.
Yeah, I am not going to “grow the fuck up”
I have no objection to people who dislike how the tone changed once they have watched the entire series
But if you bail out before the end – if you bail out before you get a true understanding of what the series is really about (an analogy of World War II in the magical world, where the muggle born witches & wizard are the Jews and the purebloods & Death Eaters are the Nazis) – then I have no sympathy for you at all.
Also, if you didn’t do at least a little research into the series before you started watching it – if you go into it thinking “this will be a happy, fluffy series about a boy who goes to magical school and nothing bad happens to him” then quite honestly I have very little sympathy for you as well. The entire series is 30 years old – if you don’t know Harry Potter is about a war (a war where people will die and a war where people will suffer) then quite frankly that is on you and really you have no one else to blame.
My boss, the first time he watched “The Sound of Music” expressed great surprise that there were Nazis in it, which really made my go “what the fuck did you expect – it’s set during the invasion of Austria in World War II”. But apparently he didn’t bother to do any investigation or research, and was quite upset by the Nazis. And I had no sympathy for him either.
So yeah – really you brought this on yourself.
I could not even imagine saying something as stupid as this. “You didn’t truly understand it because you skimmed the last 4 of the 20 hours, therefore your dislike is invalid” is truly a smooth-brain take. I wonder what other stupid shit you spend your life saying.
That wasn’t my point, but whatever
Well that’s just stupid.
