Hey guys! Sorry this is so late. I’m actually having issues moving on from where I stopped and finishing it up. If you have any suggestions please let me know!
From Books to Film
For this last reading journal, I decided to read “Lost in Translation? Harry Potter, from Page to Screen.” This one really stuck out with me because I read lot and when I find out that this book that I’ve been obsessing over is becoming a movie, I get pretty excited. The first book that I got on my ereader was called “Fallen” by Lauren Kate and Disney picked it up for the movie and I’m just worried that they’re going to take one of my favorite series and have it come out like “Eragon” and it’ll completely ruined. But then I realize that they can’t keep it 100% accurate to the books and I feel that more reading this article.
It was interesting to see the difference in directors with the films. I think it only covers Sorcerer’s Stone to Order of the Phoenix and it would be interesting to read an updated version with the rest of the movies and how it all ends. The thing that always frustrated me was people complaining about the all British cast and getting worked up that Robin Williams wasn’t able to be in it. Robin Williams was a great actor, but he’s not from England. I don’t think he’s ever lived there. Like Steve Norris said, “Harry Potter is something that is weirdly about us…. It’s culturally British and the thought of it being made anywhere here sent shudders down everyone’s spines. It’s like taking Catcher in the Rye and setting it in Liverpool.” That goes for any movie that’s set in another country. It’s something that you can’t mess with and the same goes for Disney movies. They freak out because every princess is white, but it’s based on the culture that they are representing.
I didn’t realize this until after reading about it, but the first two movies were more focused on visual effects instead of character development. Columbus leaves out a lot of things, such as dialogue between characters, and didn’t really have as much freedom of creativity that the others had. The might be because of how he said, “People would have crucified me if I hadn’t been faithful to the books.” He did direct the movies of the series and, for the fan base to already be as big as it was, there’s no way you would want to do anything that would cause them to not come back for the third, fourth, and fifth. I loved the visual effects with the clocks and the camera always moving forward in Prisoner of Azkaban. It was completely than what Columbus did with the first two and really gave the viewers a sense of darker times ahead within the series.