Bring Back the 80's!

Prisoner of Azkaban

Darla, Chris Merdyith and I watched Prizoner of Azkaban last week. 3am that night, I could not sleep and felt compelled to list every single last thing about this film that bugs the hell out of me before I could possibly sleep again. About halfway through, I indeed got sleepy. Afterwards I decided I'd finish up the rant and post it, but I never felt in the mood to finish my rant.. so this week I figured I'll post the incomplete rant before the intended effect got too (too) old.
So if you'd like to ask my opinion on something, feel free to ask me. I know more about the books than you do and I've corneres the market on knowledge about what makes good film, after all. :)

I have read all of the books and consider myself well versed on everything. I've schooled people on the time-travel of the PoA book and how it's not a plothole on the imdb.com boards.

<RANT state='on'>
As a warning, this post will contain spoilers. If you plan to enjoy the movie or the book for the first time soon, you should not read on.

For every point I rant on I'll put out stars to say how big a problem it is. *---- is one star, means "I'm prolly just nit-picking", ***** is five stars: means something is royally screwed.

Now, I believe that Alfonso Cuarón did a spectacularily bad job directing this film. I don't believe that he is a bad director, or that he is evil or mean, but that he is crazily inexperienced. With experience he may become very good at making big budget films. I also believe that no single person, no matter how hard they tried, could cause all of the problems this film has all by themselves: so he must have had lots and lots of help.

<LIST>

***** If I see one mote 5 second long vignette transition to or from black again in my entire life, so help me I WILL MURDER SOMEBODY AND THE TWELVE CLOSEST BYSTANDERS IN A FIT OF APOPLECTIC RAGE!! In case you don't know what that transition is, it's a blurry circular hole that grows or shrinks covering or revealing the scene. In this movie it gave you the impression, on reveal, that you were waking up after a bad hangover. On fade-out, that you were slowly going blind with tunnel vision. He used the transition about a dozen times, and it is aggravated by the next problem.

***** Choice of film stock. I don't know what kind of hard negative film stock this lunatic was using, but the blackest blacks were a washed out muddy shade of grey (including the maddening vignettes) and almost everything that was in shadow (half the movie) was lost in the mud. I swear he should have washed his film in woolite instead of bleach-alternative. I might have blamed this on our theater's projectors, if the movie's very own digital trailers online didn't suffer from the exact same effect. The off-black actually creates a mad pattern of quicktime artifact/rectangles in frames that should be all black!

***** Next, film length. PoA is longer than the previous two books, GoF longer still.. Why was this movie so much shorter than the other two films? Are they strapped for cash, or for critic's attention spans? Well, for some reason, they chose to butcher most of the important plots and leave way too many unnessessary plots. They have sabatoged the foundation for the rest of the books. Then, they go ahead and leave an infinite number of loose ends that only make sense if you know the real story; instead of cauterizing the wounds. The first two films did erase some elements and tied up loose ends generated. Remember Peeves, the poltergeist from the books? Well he doesn't really affect the plot much, so they nixed him in all the movies. Good call. But they also adjusted things so that small contributions made by peeves in the book are made in some other ways in the movies. I'll touch on every major plot butchered, every minor plot that time gets laboriously wasted on, and every loose bit of electrical wire as I go. [Ed note: obviously, I never got around to them all :)]

**--- Camera-work. During the movie I thought that many of the camera shots (angle choices, etc) were pure genious: but right at the moment I can't remember a single instance of that, [Ed note: a week later and I still can't recall such a scene] and what I think I remember washes into muddy off-black film stock when I try to recall it. I did notice however, espescially right in the beginning of the film (either they got better or I got used to it) that the steady-cam was not steady. The cameras jittered around like the ones in the old episodes of NYPD blue. It was kind of unsettling.

****- Hogsmeade permission slip. If you have not read the book, you probably don't know what hogsmeade is. It is an all-wizarding town nearby Hogwarts. At various intervals, 3rd year students and up are allowed to go there for shore leave, if and only if they have a permission slip signed by a legal gardian. You see Vernon shrug off signing it.. you see Minerva state that she is unqualified to sign it. It has no impact on future books/movies. So: why is it in this movie? They spend more time bandying this peice of paper around uselessly than they do explaining/describing any of the things in or involved with hogsmeade. "Honeydukes" is a candy shop that sells the kind of trick candies the kids were eating in the start of the film (paradoxically before they visited hogsmeade, and again for no apparent purpose.) You see it's interior breifly. Zonko's Joke Shop is refered to twice as "a really great place", but nobody goes into why or what it's like. Hog's Head is a pub, run by the lady Rosemerta. You get to see a bit about it but only while Harry was all pissed off so it was only a quick fly-through. The Shreiking Shack? So far, in book five, it has had no use except in book 3: yet in the movie it is talked about entirely in vain. Twice it is refered to as "the most haunted house in England", but what does this mean? Is it safe as a hideout? I saw no ghosts while there. Why bother naming it or elaborating on it? In the book it is a very meaningful place and you learn everything important about it. In the movie, it is nearly as erased as peeves, just not cauterized.

***-- English-english vs. American-english. The first two films were done in american-english, with a british accent and some simple british sayings. This means that while everyone sounded like they were British, everyone could still understand what they were saying. This is an interesting fact; but a British person normally cannot discern American-english from british-english. Your average person from *anywhere* else in the world simply cannot understand british-english, but they can understand american-english. Among other things this stems from the traditional british dislike of "consonants", as being unnessessary hassles to the spoken language. Perhaps Alfonso learned English in England, or else perhaps he felt insecure to tell everyone they were prattling on like nincompoops in a language he is not entirely versed in, but most everyone (Ron, Hermione, Neville, Fudge, Stan, Trelawny, better jobs done by Harry, Lupin, Dumbledore and Sirius) spent a great deal of time prattling meaninglessly.

***** False danger. Espescially in the first half of the movie, nearly every time something dangerous happened (except the dementors on the train) it was at least a second into happenning before the music changed to forbode danger. It left me with a feeling like the story-teller almost forgot to mention that you're supposed to get scared, or take things seriously all of the sudden. The dog behind the park bench, bogart responding to Harry, Trelawny reacting to the grim, all horribly horribly botched jobs. For the bogart, I mean come on.. it changed into a dementor in front of Harry. It was that way for several seconds before Lupin jumped in, yet Lupin still told Harry he interfered because he suspected the bogart would look like voldemort. That is a line from the book that obviously didn't apply to the movie since Lupin got a rather good look at the thing in the movie.

**--- Knight bus. Yes, it's this violently purple triple decker bus that speeds insanely and unsafely around everywhere. I thought the chandelier was a nice touch. I thought the lack of mailboxes and street lights leaping conveniently out of the way was a disapointment. Squeezing between two busses was cool in theory, but too slow and dull in practice. I complained to my wife that they provided no explaination: that everyone who hadn't read the book would be left wondering "wtf is that knight bus, anyway?" to which she replied, "wtf WAS that knight bus, anyway?" People will probably wonder what it is for, how it found Harry, what's the fare, ect etc. This is all covered in the book, and could have been in the movie in less time than the boring squeezy scene took.

*---- Sirius Black. So he was apparently Voldemort's pal. So he betrayed Harry's parents, and apparently brutally killed Peter Pettigrew. So he probably wants to do in Harry. So he's escaped from Azkaban, right out from under the dementors.
So why is he getting so much press? I mean, bad wizards kill people all the time. Most of them on the large at any moment are simply uncaught instead of escaped, but there are always some on the large, and many of them have done worse things than the movie mentions black doing.
Why has Fudge lined Hogwarts in dementors? Just like that one kid mentioned, dementers had done no good so far.. and hassling the school has got to take a lot of effort, dementors or no. Why don't they always have some rad protection for the school, with uncaught wizards lurking about all the time? Doesn't that sound disproportionate?
In the book it is made clear why Sirius inspires so much fear in the wizarding community. He is wanted for not only "destroying" Peter Pettigrew, but for "destroying" the city block in the muggle town that Peter was standing on, along with 12 of the muggle bystanders who also happened to be located on that fateful city block at that moment. I think they hould have explained what made him a criminal in eye's other than Harry's

*---- Flying motorcycle. Book 1, and movie 1, Hagrid freely mentions that he borrowed the bike from "young Sirius Black". I guess they would have had to invest up to 40 more seconds on that back story in this movie, but they left 45 minutes out so I think they had all the room to work with that they @#$! needed.

***** Monster Book of Monsters. I don't care how cute it is, they spent about 5 minutes on it even though it is even less important than peeves, and spent about zero time going into the backstory of James & co. I mean do they seriously plan to even film GoF or OotP at this point? Each of those books are 50% longer than this one. They are going to try and cram tons of missing backstory of Harry's parents and their friends, Harry and Cho, Harry, Cho and Cederick, on top of nearly two thousand pages of new material in 4 movie hours or less. That would not be possible even butchering things to only the very most important major plots. So, I've lost all hope and fear they will toss out the major plots instead and only keep some lightweight minor plots that make interesting looking special effects juxtaposed with no actual storyline. Maybe in OotP they won't even bother casting Harry. What else could they possibly have time for? Tentative GoF script: "Ooo, see the big quiddich game? Ooo, look at Moody's creepy eye.. ooo! that goblet is on fire. Lookit the pretty dragon! Harry is swimming with mermaids. Woah, how did Harry get here? not important, dodge all the bad guy's wands! wow, safe back at home." End of script.

***-- Cruikshanks. Hermione purchases Cruikshanks as a familiar at Diagon Alley. Cruikshanks doesn't like scabbers, and this is supposed to make some serious friction between Ron and Hermione. When scabbers appears to get eaten, it is supposed to look very very much that way, bloody messes and all. Ron is supposed to be Royally Pissed, and Hermione is supposed to be unnervingly sided to her cat, so as Ron and Hermione have a barkingly serious wedge between them. I feel this is a very serious and important part of their character development. The trivial spat they had on film was such a waste of time that there might as well have not been a cruikshanks or a spat.

*---- Speaking of familiars, when is Ron supposed to get Pidwidgeon? I would rather see Pidwidgeon than the monster book, she is much more cuter. :)

***-- Scene with Goofy Candy. Would have been appropriate in conjunction with hogsmeade, honeydukes, or Zonko's. Otherwise, brilliant waste of time and confuses the pace.

*---- Mirrors and flopping. Robert Zemeckis likes to push cameras through glass and through mirrors. He does it about a half a dozen times in Contact. Cuarón does it about a half a dozent times in this movie too, and it's not too bad, though it's a bit clumsily placed sometimes. One thing I noticed is that after pushing through the mirror on the bogart closet in Lupin's class the final time, as the scene closed, he pushed into the mirror instead of out of it. This has the unfortunate effect of flopping the image.. you're left in the room with the characters, but all of them are backwards and Harry's scar is on the wrong side of his head. I probably only chafe at this one because I'm a part-time journalist and you simply do *not* flop images in a news paper. It's bad mojo :)

***** Trelawny. She had a class. She talked quickly and clumsily. When she told Harry about the Grim, it's not even certain if she saw it in his cup, or was electrocuted by the table: there was no "examination phase" in her acting there. In book/movie 2, Lockheart is supposed to be viewed as a saint to the ladies, and a sap to the guys. Trelawny is supposed to have a similar effect: enrapturing some students with her skills (like Pavil and Lavendar) and convincing the rest that she's full of it. In the film, she just seemed to bewilder everyone uselessly. She pissed off Hermione, who left class, but that seemed to have little effect on the rest of the film's plot. She grunted out a prophecy at Harry in a gravelly voice that nobody in the audience properly heard, and even if they did nobody will remember what she said by next movie when some character can explain what it meant or do anything useful. She was an important aspect of the book, but her only impact on this film was that she tried to spook people about the Grim, and add window dressing to the promotional material ("You must look... BEYOND!"

**--- Malfoy and Buckbeak. In the book, Malfoy did not boldly leave the group to obtain fruit when he should have been listening to how not to be hurt by a hippogriph. He stood right there, listened to the entire disclaimer, and still let his ego cloud his judgement. I think this is important to help place the blame for Malfoy's hubris squarely on Malfoy. In the film's version, you've still got good reason to blame Hagrid, since he didn't notice students were missing during the warnings, and since he ignored the whole class for a quick chat with Harry.

***-- Quiddich Tournament #1. Where in heck did Harry fly to while chasing the snitch? did he leave the arena or was he shooting straight up? It looked to me like he left the arena: he passed dumbledore's spectator stand and went behind it.. but the snitch isn't supposed to go out of bounds (part of it's spell). But then again when he fell, he landed right in the middle of the arena. Perhaps when he doubled back to avoid the dementors he went back in bounds. All the clouds left so little frame of reference that it was a fairly confusing scene. Did Dumbledor's "arresto momentus" spell have any effect on Harry's fall? We're not sure how that played out thanks to another tunnel-vision vignette.

***-- Brooms. Unless you've read the books, or watched the other movies recently enough to recall clearly, you're not going to know what a bummer it is that the Whomping Willow smashed up Harry's nimbus. Since they didn't do any setup in the beginning of the movie about the Firebolt (like they did in the book), the joy of seeing Harry get one at the end of this film feels entirely artificial. If they were so pressed for time they should have skipped trying to bash up the nimbus at all. Once you confirm that the Firebolt is better, and Harry gets one, it's not a big deal what happens to the nimbus. Hell, he could give it away and not impact the plot.

***** Quiddich Tournament #2. The second quiddich game did not make it into the film. I know many critics are glad there is nearly no quiddich in this film, but for god's sake, there is absolutely no quiddich in non-Harry-Potter films! They should feel satisfied, and anyone who doesn't like quiddich should not watch/read Harry Potter. That goes double for everyone who randomly doesn't like castles, or magic, or pointy hats, or ghosts, etc. Perhaps some people feel that you can tell the Harry Potter story without mentioning Quiddich. Sure, you could do that, and you could retell Lord of the Rings without mentioning horses. Quiddich is the only (mentioned) wizarding sport. It brings the entire school together. In the next book it brings the entire world together (Quiddich World Cup). It allows Harry to prove himself to everyone, including himself, because of his wicked flying skizzles. It is also an integral part of the school's politics. For those who have only seen this movie, there are four 'houses' in the school: Slythryn, Gryffendor, HufflePuff, and Ravenclaw. Each house can gain or lose points with good or bad behavior, and in Quiddich games. so they are always competing. Malfoy and his cronies are in Slythryn, and most of slythryn spends most of it's time at odds with most of Gryffendor: Harry's house. The fat lady's painting is the portal into the Gryffendor common room. This film entirely disrespected the idea that there are houses as though it was irrelevant. When Snape said "5 points from gryffendor" in 'defense against dark arts' class, people starting with this film will have went "who is Gryffendor, and how did he get into so much trouble?"

**--- Whomping Willow in seasonal transitions. It was somewhat humourus to see it shrug off leaves, shrug off snow.. but what did it do to those poor birds? I prefer Columbus' seasonal transitions better. He showed how students greeted the new season outside, and worked the camera into the castle. It made you feel like a member of the student body.

***-- Whomping willow throwing hermione around. Horrible waste of special effects on bad slapstick. It took a long time as well, and the kids' blank O-mouthed reactions were difficult to beleive. I can imagine Alfonso forcing them to do that however.. Imagine an actor giving a believable look of shock, and Alfonso steps in: "Cut, cut, no that looked nothing like my favorite mexican cartoon character. Ok, so just clear your face. Now look at me. Good, you look like you're mildly irritated. Hold that expression, now open your mouth into the widest O possible, and look straight into the camera. perfect!"

</LIST></RANT>

Posted by jesse at June 17, 2004 07:38 PM