Let The Complaining Begin!

Currently Reading: The Big Red One by Samuel Fuller

It's one of those universal thing, like death and taxes. Every year books are turned into movies. Most of them are smaller books or genre-specific like crime or romance, but once or twice a year you have a HUGE blockbuster type movie based on a HUGE blockbuster type book. In the past years we've had the whole Tolkien Lord of the Rings series and the still on-going Harry Potter series, which will be the topic of complaints all across America tonight.

Actually, the complaining is already starting. Despite a whopping 89% favorable rating over at Rotten Tomatoes, what stands out in most reviews are the complaints. I even saw one article over on Fox that does nothing BUT complain. No, wait, they refer to it as "listing differences from the book." Yes, they list those differences but in only one case to they list a change in a positive light.

Mostly what I'm seeing falls into one of two categories. The first group is complaining that the new director is a little too much like the FIRST director and he's taking the series back to a more literal translation. The guy who did the third episode was much more stylistic in his approach and wasn't that just WONDERFUL . . . so they say. To be honest, I never had a problem with either method. Being literal worked great for the first two movies, which were based on much shorter books. Starting with book 3 though, the amount of text being translated to the screen grows dramatically! Naturally you can't be literal when the source material is so huge. Things have to be cut, combined, reworked to fit the time frame of a movie. And let us not forget, there were quite a few complaints about the third movie for just that reason, too many cuts.

Of course, cuts is the second category. Everyone has their favorite characters and scenes from the books and they expect to see them in the movies. They work themselves into a frenzy if their chosen one isn't featured prominently. Take this new movie. According to one "complaint," Victor Klum and Fleur (I'm not even going to look up her last name) hardly speak even though in the book they're both given HUGE back stories. Ok, yeah, so? It's something I remember talking about with movie 3. When you have that much basic plot to work with, you HAVE to cut down the little stuff along the way and when you get right down to it, Harry's fellow competitors in the Triwizard Tournament really are just there for the plot. Hell Fleur eventually ends up marrying one of the Weasleys and she's STILL not that major of a character.

One of the things that makes J. K. Rowling's work so great is her attention to detail. All those layers add up to a very rich literary environment. It makes for a good read. But it also makes converting it the work to film pretty tough. Some of the details can be worked in as background or scenery but when it comes to each character that crosses the paths of the protagonist, that's quite a bit more difficult.

Cut the director some slack. The movie will be great, we'll all enjoy it and we'll have a wonderful time. If you prefer the books, then stick with the books and stop trying to ruin it for the rest of us.

.