They should have done this with book 4 as well...

[acroyear]

'Harry Potter' finale to be split into two movies:

The last installment in the Harry Potter movie franchise will be released in two parts--because one edit of The Deathly Hallows will leave out too much information about the boy wizard's final adventures.

The sixth film in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, is due for release in November, and although the characters' futures are wrapped up in just seven novels by author J.K. Rowling, fans of the movies will be given an extra treat with a double dose of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

A source says, "There's so much to fit that the view is the last movie should be in two halves. There is a huge battle when Harry, played by Daniel Radcliffe, takes on (evil wizard, Lord) Voldemort (played by Ralph Fiennes) that needs to be done really well."

And Rowling has briefly commented on the reports herself, stating on her Web site: "It is simply impossible to incorporate every storyline into a film under four hours long."

Fans of the books have previously criticized the big-screen adaptations for their lack of detail.

I do think the final edit of movie 5 was alright.  Although in ALL the films, the biggest hassle is that much of the exposition, especially the epilogue discussions between Harry and Dumbledore, are always what gets cut yet that's where the best of Albus always comes out.  Kinda annoying that - because of those cuts, I haven't grown to like Gambon's portrayal as much as I think I should.

Comments

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that even two movies would have sufficed for HP4. It's simply too big for the big screen. I'm increasingly of the opinion that the "short story" is a good length for a movie. A novel of any length always requires severe edits that will undoubtedly ruin the story, upset the fanbase, or both. I dread the thought of turning something the size of Wheel of Time into a movie, it's just too big. Maybe a television series could do it justice, but that would flop for other reasons.

Then there is Hollywood's desire to change stories to appeal to a broader fanbase. Does that ever actually work?

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

See, I'm against the "short story -> movie" because it tends to give Hollywood *too* much leeway into satisfying their collective "desire to change stories to appeal to a broader fanbase". By the time they finish with a simple concept, it bears even less relationship to the original work than the epic novel -> epic movie does.

Consider "I, Robot" and "The Lawnmower Man" as prime examples that come to mind right now. There are many others. The lack of dialog gives too much room to "write your own" and as soon as you do that, some subsequent writer or editor or even the director and actors at production time will change things again, and the drift away from the original is unrecoverable.

Trouble is, the mini-series never *quite* gets enough money to go through enough writing and editing sessions to make the conversion work, and a series has even less time and money - as with something like B5 and Firefly, the creator (who needs to be ONLY ONE, not a committee) has to have the concrete vision in his head of exactly how it should be paced, preferably with storyboards converted to story-reels (per the Disney animation technique) to know that it's going to work before they even get a director and start shopping around for a studio...and again, that takes serious money up front that in today's risk-averted Hollywood (and the market as a whole) is hard to come by.

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

Maybe the way to do it right would be a premium channel series. They get money, great actors, dedicated fan base. Unfortunately, most of those are extremely hard core (e.g. Sopranos), so that medium isn't really open to Harry Potter or epic fantasy right now. But the money and hollywoodification effect are the "flop for other reasons" I mentioned.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

Then there is Hollywood's desire to change stories to appeal to a broader fanbase. Does that ever actually work?

Yes, but only if you acknowledge that it really is a different work, sharing only the name. Consider MASH (the book), MASH (the movie) and MASH (the first 3 seasons) and finally MASH (the last 8 plus the finale) (and then finally ignore AfterMASH and WALTER).

Each effectively was a unique creation, sharing only character names, a few common plot points, and the overall environment of the Korean War. Beyond that, each was unique, but each does successfully hold up on its own.

But it only works BECAUSE the audience has acknowledged that they are each unique and not trying to be a representation of a work in one media "ported" to another.

The broader appeal is not always "more eyeballs == more money" - sometimes it really is an acknowledgment that the media is different and a "one to one" conversion won't work.

But of course, there are those (many) exceptions...