A/N: Yep, here it is, y’all, the long-promised Part Two of the film essay series. Elegant writing and flawless MLA structure will not always be found in this essay, I’m going to warn you right now. This was the only way to actually get it out BEFORE the OotP film. However, the time that has not been spent on polishing style and structure has indeed been spent on the arguments herein contained, so if I were you, I’d read it for that.
Infinite thanks to the wonderful Creamtea for her insightful beta! Only the mistakes are mine. :)
And, oh yeah. When we get to the END of this essay, you'll see the D/G relevance.
+++
In Part One of this film essay series, we went over the evidence supporting the theory that J.K. Rowling has always had an extraordinary level of control over the adaptation process of her Harry Potter books, of which five have now been filmed by the Warner Bros. studios. We saw that this was true in terms of script, characterizations, director choices, set design, editing, casting, and sometimes even product placement and advertising campaigns. We saw the vast difference between this and the normal author’s amount of control over the normal process of book to film adaptation (that is to say, virtually always none.) We saw why this is so—not only because the HP series is the most successful fiction series in publishing history, but also because Rowling fought shrewdly and hard for creative control, as she has repeatedly stated and as all news sources agree without exception. The final capper to this argument is the fact that there were five years (1998-2003) when Warner had not yet bought the rights to the entire series, and had every reason in the world to give J.K. Rowling everything she wanted in order to get her to sell them the rights to the last two books.
What remains to be seen is what the actual differences were between book and film in this unique situation, and then to analyze why they are there. My hypothesis for this essay is that the very few significant differences exist only because J.K. Rowling has agreed to them, and actually believes that these few important changes in the films for Books 1-6 are completely congruent with her planned denouement in Book 7. The question we are really asking is whether we can separate out the changes that are significant and cannot be explained only by any exigency of film or cinematic necessity—in other words, the changes that must exist because they foreshadow plot developments and emotional arcs to come in DH.
The answer to that last question is yes. As we will see, this is true because film speaks in a distinct cinematic language that operates according to very strict rules. The key, really, is that changes from book to film are always done for a reason. The question at hand is to figure out what that reason is. If we understand the rules of cinematic language, then we know which changes are necessary in order to be comprehensible in this language when translating from book to film. In other words, we can logically figure out what changes have been done for that reason. We then know that any changes that absolutely cannot be explained in this way are there for another reason. Because J.K. Rowling has creative control, she must approve of that reason. This entire essay is based on this chain of logic.
In order to best accomplish this task, we will rely on Jon Boorstein’s well-known paradigm of the three ways in which a viewer experiences films: the vicarious, the visceral, and the voyeuristic. Doing this can clearly separate what makes a film great, good, mediocre, or bad from what makes it simply work as a film, no matter what its quality might be. In other words, we have gotten away from the realm of goodness or badness as film to a certain basic definition of the essence of film-ness itself. One is a matter of opinion; one really is not. As Boorstin succinctly states, “when it comes to movies, people tend to agree on what’s right.”
When Boorstin talks about these three ways of experiencing film, he is referring very specifically to Hollywood films produced under a distinctly American aesthetic. All of the HP films fit into this category. They are very big-budget movies produced by a major studio, which are the kinds of films that Boorstin is talking about. When he compares these kinds of films to the ones produced by the rest of the world, he states that “art aside, Hollywood-style quality pays. Audiences want to see Hollywood movies. Why? What do we do that makes a difference?” He concludes that the Hollywood language of film is always constructed to cause the audience to “derive three distinct pleasures from watching a film… the voyeuristic, the vicarious, and the visceral. Each has its own rules of time and space, its ways of judging reality.”
When changes are made in the adaptation process of book to film, they are made in order to fit one of these three categories—except in a few very unusual exceptions. As Boorstin states, these exceptions occur only because of star power. The demands of an actor with extraordinary box office draw (or more rarely a director) have occasionally superseded certain elements of even the basic language of Hollywood film. He wrote several years before the first HP book had been published, of course, but the idea still holds true. In this case—and for the first time in recorded film history—the author was the one holding the star power.
However, the changes mandated by J.K. Rowling occurred in the context of a myriad of minor changes that were made for the normal reasons of film. In order to understand the difference between the usual and the decidedly unusual, we must first look at why the vast majority of changes were made from book to film in the case of HP. To do this, we will define each of Boorstin’s three terms and then analyze how almost every change fits into one of the three categories. After we have fully explored the norm, we will then look at what is not the norm: the extremely few major changes that cannot be fitted into the categories. Before we can be sure that these changes were not made for the normal reasons, however, we first need to fully understand those changes that do fit into those categories, and exactly why they do so.
The first category is that of the “voyeuristic eye.” In Boorstin’s context, “voyeuristic” refers to the creation of a consistent world in film that allows viewers to suspend their disbelief, and to enter into the created world on the screen. The fatal criticism of the voyeuristic eye, therefore, is “I don’t believe it, I don’t buy it; I don’t think that would happen.”
In one way, this involves the most technical crafts of film: composing, lighting, editing, continuity, cinematography. Conceptually, this means “watching events steadily unfold in rational, explainable sequence, creating a credible flow of time and space and creating a story.” To the voyeur’s eye, credibility depends on plausibility. Some of this comes from technique that is—or should be—invisible. Viewers only notice Foley sound, editing, and continuity, for example, if they’re badly done. The world of spectacle falls into this category too, especially the computer-generated, and this is particularly true of the HP films. As viewers, we delight in the richly and fully imagined Hogwarts we see onscreen, complete with breathtaking vistas, talking paintings, moving staircases, giant pumpkins, werewolves, hippogriffs, and Dementors. All of this is a huge part of why we fall under the spell of the narrative.
However, there is a much more subtle way that we must experience a film voyeuristically if it is going to work for us as viewers. Pacing and timing have to feel right. The emotional storyline has to be structured in a tempo that feels believable, and the way this needs to happen onscreen is just not the way it can happen on the page. The most noticeable difference we see when we compare book to film is that plotlines are severely condensed, dialog shortened, characterizations simplified, and motives and behavior made more obvious. A lot of subtleties are deliberately lost. Most of the changes made in all five of the HP films fall into this category.
The second category is that of the “vicarious,” which refers to the emotional identification the viewer has with the characters. As Boorstin states, “the vicarious eye sees with the heart.” We, the viewers, invest ourselves in the emotions, decisions, choices, and behavior of the characters. The actors’ performances are obviously pretty key to this, although the editor is the truly unsung hero here. Because credibility for the vicarious eye depends on emotions, its fatal criticism is “I just don’t buy that he/she/they would act that way. I have not been pulled in this film convincingly enough to make me care about them as characters, or believe what they are doing.”
The third category is the “visceral,” which refers to scenes that evoke a particular gut reaction from the audience—terror, anger, disgust, arousal. These shine on film rather than in print; in fact, they are what film does best. Action sequences are the clearest and best examples of what stirs the visceral eye, although suspense also belongs to this category. The fatal criticism of the visceral eye is, “That doesn’t get me. It’s actually kind of boring. It isn’t making me feel scared, or excited, or apprehensive, or anything.”
When we analyze the changes that have been made from book to film in the HP series, we find that virtually all of them can be placed into these three categories.
The visceral content will be dealt with first, as it is the easiest kind of change to see. In a way, it can be summed up by the fact that the books were filmed in the first place, with every visual and sound component that film entails. The most obvious examples would include any scene that involves action, suspense, and/or danger, such as Harry’s vastly expanded battle with the Hungarian Horntail for the golden egg. However, visceral change in these films has nothing to do with emotional or characterizations arcs, and so we’ll move on.
The largest category is that of voyeuristic change. It’s important to emphasize that the vast majority of the changes through all five films were clearly made in order to better suit the voyeuristic eye through condensation and simplification. What follows is not a completely exhaustive list, which would be tedious indeed. That’s available elsewhere, and the high points are hit. First of all, let’s look at SS. In particular, the “condensation argument” applies to the way that several characters don’t get all the filmed scenes that they have in the books. In SS, for example, Draco Malfoy’s character doesn’t get the introductory screen time that he gets on the page. Harry doesn’t meet Draco until they get to school, and the scene at Madame Malkin’s is lost. So Draco’s character isn’t set up as thoroughly as a lot of us would like, but his function as a character remains the same. We really don’t see anything in the robe store scene that isn’t conveyed by what is on screen. Neville appears onscreen when he is Sorted, rather than on the Hogwarts Express with Hermione, so the same argument applies to him. A lot of time is saved by condensing the introduction of these two characters into what is actually shown. In fact, a lot of characters specifically named by the Sorting Hat in the book aren’t named or shown onscreen, because they’re not important enough to merit that screen time at all. Peeves was filmed (performed by Rik Mayall,) and then cut, and it’s easy to see why. He would have been a fun character to watch, but he really added nothing vital to the plot. The same argument applies to condensed scenes, such as the way that only the first three tasks are shown as Harry, Ron, and Hermione attempt to reach the Philosopher’s Stone.
However, there are significant changes in Ginny Weasley’s scene at the train station, and these greatly downplay her reaction to Harry (and his response to her.) Since these weren’t a matter of shortening the scene but of changing its emotional thrust, they will be examined later on, when we begin to delve into the few controversial changes.
In CoS, more minor characters are cut, such as Peeves, Professor Binns, Terry Boot, and Lavender Brown. We certainly know we’ll be seeing Lavender again in HBP, but there was really no plot reason for her to be in the second film. J.K. Rowling certainly knew this and didn’t insist that she be cast. A number of locations are cut. Some plot elements are mildly simplified, such as the flying car incident, the destruction of Tom Riddle’s diary, Percy’s relationship with Penelope Clearwater, and so forth. A few scenes are omitted, such as the physical fight between Arthur Weasley and Lucius Malfoy. The scenes showing clues that Ginny Weasley was being possessed by Tom Riddle were shot, but were cut from the final film and included on the DVD. They really didn’t add anything significant to the plot, so they were exactly the kind of scenes that were going to end up on the cutting room floor.
However, the vast majority of the scenes showing Ginny’s interest in and interaction with Harry were never even shot, and this fact is significant. It will be taken up in a later section.
In PoA, several characters were cut who had been cast in SS. Examples include Oliver Wood, Nearly Headless Nick, Katie Bell, Poppy Pomfrey, Colin Creevey, and Hannah Abbott. Because we have the advantage of reading the next two books, we know that it just wasn’t important to the series to show these particular characters in this film. Some have never been particularly important in terms of plot; some have played notable roles later on (as Katie Bell did in HBP,) but it can’t really be said that they’ve had great importance as characters. (The case of Cho Chang will be considered a bit later, since it really falls into the vicarious category.) A number of unimportant locations were cut, and all classes taught by recurring teachers were cut. A few scenes were cut, and several others mildly condensed. None of these changes made any difference to the film narrative.
Again, however, a scene involving information about Ginny—and Harry’s reaction to it-- was never shot, and it will be analyzed later on.
In GoF, other characters are cut who appeared in the book, including Bill and Charlie Weasley, Ludo Bagman, Narcissa Malfoy, Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange, Bertha Jorkins, Pansy Parkinson (aside from one long shot,) Sybill Trelawney, and so on and so forth. In fact, this is the film where the largest number of characters and scenes are cut to date. The entire Ludo Bagman and Bertha Jorkins subplots are cut, as are virtually any mention or appearance of house-elves, all classes taught by recurring characters, the opening scene with the Dursleys, any detailed explanation about Veelas, Moody putting Imperius on students in class, any mention of Bellatrix, Dumbledore’s detailed explanation of Priori Incantatem, and all the details of the Quidditch match. Because so many little subplots were lost, it’s important here, I think, to understand why it isn’t necessary to include what was cut. Some elements certainly did have to be cut if GoF was going to be released as a single film, but the choices were made deliberately. In the case of Neville/Ginny—which will be examined in detail—screen material was actually added that was not in the book.
Some subplots clearly just weren’t necessary-- Ludo Bagman, Bertha Jorkins, lots of details about the Quidditch World Cup. Some would have been very nice to have, but weren’t absolutely vital, so out they went. Narcissa Malfoy is certainly an important character later on the series, but it wouldn’t have added a great deal to introduce her character at this particular time. Cutting the normal opening scene with the Dursleys saved a lot of time, and it just wasn’t necessary to have it. Cutting house-elves meant that this aspect of Hermione’s characterization was lost, but the director and scriptwriter clearly decided that it was being reinforced enough in other ways. It might have added something to show Harry resisting Imperius in class, but again, I think that when push came to shove and some material absolutely had to go, the filmmakers decided that they were getting the point across well enough without including all of that extra screen time. The same is true with detailed explanations of Fleur being a Veela; she’s clearly a very alluring and attractive girl, and the male response to her is the same in any case. There’s just no need for a long explanation.
Once more, there are some major changes in the scenes between Harry and Ginny. The way they were rewritten does not necessarily save any screen time at all, and considering that Neville/Ginny material was actually added, it’s easy to see that all of these changes need to be analyzed in detail. Since the situation here is not nearly so straightforward, however, these will be dealt with in the Ginny section.
Obviously, we don’t yet have the opportunity for truly detailed information about OOtP. However, an advance screening was previewed quite some time before the film’s release, and we do have several reviews available from that. The details of their information are very consistent, and they come from both hard-core fans and at least one person “who has never read a Harry Potter book.” Of course, we’re undoubtedly missing quite a few subtleties here, since we can’t yet see the film for ourselves. The fact that none of the reviews have been posted by professional film reviewers also needs to be taken in consideration, and a final edit of the film clearly did not yet exist at that time. Yet it’s still possible to draw some conclusions about the similarities and differences between film and book. In order to do so, we will stick to the factual information available from the reviews as much as possible.
Simplification and condensation seem to have played at least as large a role in OotP as in any of the first four films. Since a great deal of source material had to be fit into a single film, this makes sense. The “young Marauder’s scene,” for example, was reportedly narrowed down to fit into a shorter time slot. While one reviewer described this as a “disappointment” and “such a letdown,” it does sound as if all the vital information in that scene was communicated. While it would have been fun to see a longer version (as evidenced by the fact that the same reviewer called it “one of my favorite chapters in the book,”) it really wasn’t necessary to the narrative. As another reviewer noted, “Harry’s teenage father is portrayed as being a total bully to young Snape.” This is the information that needed to be shown in this scene, and it was.
Fred and George’s exit scene has been described by some in the same terms (“the most disappointing scene in the entire movie,” for instance) and yet the same point is even more applicable to it. It just wasn’t necessary to show the swamp, the pinwheel fireworks, the brooms zooming up from the dungeon, etc. Screen time had to cut somewhere, and the extended version of this scene would not have added anything to the plot. The same thing was true of the entire O.W.L. test preparation and test-taking process, which got very little screen time. It wasn’t vital, either, to show the entire storyline with Neville’s parents, since Neville did mention the basic facts to Harry after one of the DA meetings. It wasn’t necessary to show all the times that Harry was in detention with Umbridge, and these were also not shown.
However, the scene involving the Harry/Cho kiss was apparently given a great deal of screen time. While we don’t know all the precise details of the way in which the H/C relationship was shown onscreen, it certainly doesn’t seem as if it was condensed, skipped over, or skimped on. This point will be taken up in further detail later on. There are also two other cases that merit more consideration, and those consist of the missing scenes involving Harry/Ginny, and the added scenes containing Harry/Luna interaction. They, too, will be discussed a little later in the essay.
Overall, there’s one quote from a reviewer that sums up much of the entire situation regarding the changes in OotP: “This movie actually followed the books better than the other ones did. There weren’t really any major differences. There were just left out scenes that fans of the books would have liked to have seen.” In short, nothing was cut that would have substantially changed the thrust of the narrative. Both producer David Heyman and scriptwriter Michael Goldenberg have said exactly the same thing in their recent interviews.
To be continued...
Infinite thanks to the wonderful Creamtea for her insightful beta! Only the mistakes are mine. :)
And, oh yeah. When we get to the END of this essay, you'll see the D/G relevance.
+++
In Part One of this film essay series, we went over the evidence supporting the theory that J.K. Rowling has always had an extraordinary level of control over the adaptation process of her Harry Potter books, of which five have now been filmed by the Warner Bros. studios. We saw that this was true in terms of script, characterizations, director choices, set design, editing, casting, and sometimes even product placement and advertising campaigns. We saw the vast difference between this and the normal author’s amount of control over the normal process of book to film adaptation (that is to say, virtually always none.) We saw why this is so—not only because the HP series is the most successful fiction series in publishing history, but also because Rowling fought shrewdly and hard for creative control, as she has repeatedly stated and as all news sources agree without exception. The final capper to this argument is the fact that there were five years (1998-2003) when Warner had not yet bought the rights to the entire series, and had every reason in the world to give J.K. Rowling everything she wanted in order to get her to sell them the rights to the last two books.
What remains to be seen is what the actual differences were between book and film in this unique situation, and then to analyze why they are there. My hypothesis for this essay is that the very few significant differences exist only because J.K. Rowling has agreed to them, and actually believes that these few important changes in the films for Books 1-6 are completely congruent with her planned denouement in Book 7. The question we are really asking is whether we can separate out the changes that are significant and cannot be explained only by any exigency of film or cinematic necessity—in other words, the changes that must exist because they foreshadow plot developments and emotional arcs to come in DH.
The answer to that last question is yes. As we will see, this is true because film speaks in a distinct cinematic language that operates according to very strict rules. The key, really, is that changes from book to film are always done for a reason. The question at hand is to figure out what that reason is. If we understand the rules of cinematic language, then we know which changes are necessary in order to be comprehensible in this language when translating from book to film. In other words, we can logically figure out what changes have been done for that reason. We then know that any changes that absolutely cannot be explained in this way are there for another reason. Because J.K. Rowling has creative control, she must approve of that reason. This entire essay is based on this chain of logic.
In order to best accomplish this task, we will rely on Jon Boorstein’s well-known paradigm of the three ways in which a viewer experiences films: the vicarious, the visceral, and the voyeuristic. Doing this can clearly separate what makes a film great, good, mediocre, or bad from what makes it simply work as a film, no matter what its quality might be. In other words, we have gotten away from the realm of goodness or badness as film to a certain basic definition of the essence of film-ness itself. One is a matter of opinion; one really is not. As Boorstin succinctly states, “when it comes to movies, people tend to agree on what’s right.”
When Boorstin talks about these three ways of experiencing film, he is referring very specifically to Hollywood films produced under a distinctly American aesthetic. All of the HP films fit into this category. They are very big-budget movies produced by a major studio, which are the kinds of films that Boorstin is talking about. When he compares these kinds of films to the ones produced by the rest of the world, he states that “art aside, Hollywood-style quality pays. Audiences want to see Hollywood movies. Why? What do we do that makes a difference?” He concludes that the Hollywood language of film is always constructed to cause the audience to “derive three distinct pleasures from watching a film… the voyeuristic, the vicarious, and the visceral. Each has its own rules of time and space, its ways of judging reality.”
When changes are made in the adaptation process of book to film, they are made in order to fit one of these three categories—except in a few very unusual exceptions. As Boorstin states, these exceptions occur only because of star power. The demands of an actor with extraordinary box office draw (or more rarely a director) have occasionally superseded certain elements of even the basic language of Hollywood film. He wrote several years before the first HP book had been published, of course, but the idea still holds true. In this case—and for the first time in recorded film history—the author was the one holding the star power.
However, the changes mandated by J.K. Rowling occurred in the context of a myriad of minor changes that were made for the normal reasons of film. In order to understand the difference between the usual and the decidedly unusual, we must first look at why the vast majority of changes were made from book to film in the case of HP. To do this, we will define each of Boorstin’s three terms and then analyze how almost every change fits into one of the three categories. After we have fully explored the norm, we will then look at what is not the norm: the extremely few major changes that cannot be fitted into the categories. Before we can be sure that these changes were not made for the normal reasons, however, we first need to fully understand those changes that do fit into those categories, and exactly why they do so.
The first category is that of the “voyeuristic eye.” In Boorstin’s context, “voyeuristic” refers to the creation of a consistent world in film that allows viewers to suspend their disbelief, and to enter into the created world on the screen. The fatal criticism of the voyeuristic eye, therefore, is “I don’t believe it, I don’t buy it; I don’t think that would happen.”
In one way, this involves the most technical crafts of film: composing, lighting, editing, continuity, cinematography. Conceptually, this means “watching events steadily unfold in rational, explainable sequence, creating a credible flow of time and space and creating a story.” To the voyeur’s eye, credibility depends on plausibility. Some of this comes from technique that is—or should be—invisible. Viewers only notice Foley sound, editing, and continuity, for example, if they’re badly done. The world of spectacle falls into this category too, especially the computer-generated, and this is particularly true of the HP films. As viewers, we delight in the richly and fully imagined Hogwarts we see onscreen, complete with breathtaking vistas, talking paintings, moving staircases, giant pumpkins, werewolves, hippogriffs, and Dementors. All of this is a huge part of why we fall under the spell of the narrative.
However, there is a much more subtle way that we must experience a film voyeuristically if it is going to work for us as viewers. Pacing and timing have to feel right. The emotional storyline has to be structured in a tempo that feels believable, and the way this needs to happen onscreen is just not the way it can happen on the page. The most noticeable difference we see when we compare book to film is that plotlines are severely condensed, dialog shortened, characterizations simplified, and motives and behavior made more obvious. A lot of subtleties are deliberately lost. Most of the changes made in all five of the HP films fall into this category.
The second category is that of the “vicarious,” which refers to the emotional identification the viewer has with the characters. As Boorstin states, “the vicarious eye sees with the heart.” We, the viewers, invest ourselves in the emotions, decisions, choices, and behavior of the characters. The actors’ performances are obviously pretty key to this, although the editor is the truly unsung hero here. Because credibility for the vicarious eye depends on emotions, its fatal criticism is “I just don’t buy that he/she/they would act that way. I have not been pulled in this film convincingly enough to make me care about them as characters, or believe what they are doing.”
The third category is the “visceral,” which refers to scenes that evoke a particular gut reaction from the audience—terror, anger, disgust, arousal. These shine on film rather than in print; in fact, they are what film does best. Action sequences are the clearest and best examples of what stirs the visceral eye, although suspense also belongs to this category. The fatal criticism of the visceral eye is, “That doesn’t get me. It’s actually kind of boring. It isn’t making me feel scared, or excited, or apprehensive, or anything.”
When we analyze the changes that have been made from book to film in the HP series, we find that virtually all of them can be placed into these three categories.
The visceral content will be dealt with first, as it is the easiest kind of change to see. In a way, it can be summed up by the fact that the books were filmed in the first place, with every visual and sound component that film entails. The most obvious examples would include any scene that involves action, suspense, and/or danger, such as Harry’s vastly expanded battle with the Hungarian Horntail for the golden egg. However, visceral change in these films has nothing to do with emotional or characterizations arcs, and so we’ll move on.
The largest category is that of voyeuristic change. It’s important to emphasize that the vast majority of the changes through all five films were clearly made in order to better suit the voyeuristic eye through condensation and simplification. What follows is not a completely exhaustive list, which would be tedious indeed. That’s available elsewhere, and the high points are hit. First of all, let’s look at SS. In particular, the “condensation argument” applies to the way that several characters don’t get all the filmed scenes that they have in the books. In SS, for example, Draco Malfoy’s character doesn’t get the introductory screen time that he gets on the page. Harry doesn’t meet Draco until they get to school, and the scene at Madame Malkin’s is lost. So Draco’s character isn’t set up as thoroughly as a lot of us would like, but his function as a character remains the same. We really don’t see anything in the robe store scene that isn’t conveyed by what is on screen. Neville appears onscreen when he is Sorted, rather than on the Hogwarts Express with Hermione, so the same argument applies to him. A lot of time is saved by condensing the introduction of these two characters into what is actually shown. In fact, a lot of characters specifically named by the Sorting Hat in the book aren’t named or shown onscreen, because they’re not important enough to merit that screen time at all. Peeves was filmed (performed by Rik Mayall,) and then cut, and it’s easy to see why. He would have been a fun character to watch, but he really added nothing vital to the plot. The same argument applies to condensed scenes, such as the way that only the first three tasks are shown as Harry, Ron, and Hermione attempt to reach the Philosopher’s Stone.
However, there are significant changes in Ginny Weasley’s scene at the train station, and these greatly downplay her reaction to Harry (and his response to her.) Since these weren’t a matter of shortening the scene but of changing its emotional thrust, they will be examined later on, when we begin to delve into the few controversial changes.
In CoS, more minor characters are cut, such as Peeves, Professor Binns, Terry Boot, and Lavender Brown. We certainly know we’ll be seeing Lavender again in HBP, but there was really no plot reason for her to be in the second film. J.K. Rowling certainly knew this and didn’t insist that she be cast. A number of locations are cut. Some plot elements are mildly simplified, such as the flying car incident, the destruction of Tom Riddle’s diary, Percy’s relationship with Penelope Clearwater, and so forth. A few scenes are omitted, such as the physical fight between Arthur Weasley and Lucius Malfoy. The scenes showing clues that Ginny Weasley was being possessed by Tom Riddle were shot, but were cut from the final film and included on the DVD. They really didn’t add anything significant to the plot, so they were exactly the kind of scenes that were going to end up on the cutting room floor.
However, the vast majority of the scenes showing Ginny’s interest in and interaction with Harry were never even shot, and this fact is significant. It will be taken up in a later section.
In PoA, several characters were cut who had been cast in SS. Examples include Oliver Wood, Nearly Headless Nick, Katie Bell, Poppy Pomfrey, Colin Creevey, and Hannah Abbott. Because we have the advantage of reading the next two books, we know that it just wasn’t important to the series to show these particular characters in this film. Some have never been particularly important in terms of plot; some have played notable roles later on (as Katie Bell did in HBP,) but it can’t really be said that they’ve had great importance as characters. (The case of Cho Chang will be considered a bit later, since it really falls into the vicarious category.) A number of unimportant locations were cut, and all classes taught by recurring teachers were cut. A few scenes were cut, and several others mildly condensed. None of these changes made any difference to the film narrative.
Again, however, a scene involving information about Ginny—and Harry’s reaction to it-- was never shot, and it will be analyzed later on.
In GoF, other characters are cut who appeared in the book, including Bill and Charlie Weasley, Ludo Bagman, Narcissa Malfoy, Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange, Bertha Jorkins, Pansy Parkinson (aside from one long shot,) Sybill Trelawney, and so on and so forth. In fact, this is the film where the largest number of characters and scenes are cut to date. The entire Ludo Bagman and Bertha Jorkins subplots are cut, as are virtually any mention or appearance of house-elves, all classes taught by recurring characters, the opening scene with the Dursleys, any detailed explanation about Veelas, Moody putting Imperius on students in class, any mention of Bellatrix, Dumbledore’s detailed explanation of Priori Incantatem, and all the details of the Quidditch match. Because so many little subplots were lost, it’s important here, I think, to understand why it isn’t necessary to include what was cut. Some elements certainly did have to be cut if GoF was going to be released as a single film, but the choices were made deliberately. In the case of Neville/Ginny—which will be examined in detail—screen material was actually added that was not in the book.
Some subplots clearly just weren’t necessary-- Ludo Bagman, Bertha Jorkins, lots of details about the Quidditch World Cup. Some would have been very nice to have, but weren’t absolutely vital, so out they went. Narcissa Malfoy is certainly an important character later on the series, but it wouldn’t have added a great deal to introduce her character at this particular time. Cutting the normal opening scene with the Dursleys saved a lot of time, and it just wasn’t necessary to have it. Cutting house-elves meant that this aspect of Hermione’s characterization was lost, but the director and scriptwriter clearly decided that it was being reinforced enough in other ways. It might have added something to show Harry resisting Imperius in class, but again, I think that when push came to shove and some material absolutely had to go, the filmmakers decided that they were getting the point across well enough without including all of that extra screen time. The same is true with detailed explanations of Fleur being a Veela; she’s clearly a very alluring and attractive girl, and the male response to her is the same in any case. There’s just no need for a long explanation.
Once more, there are some major changes in the scenes between Harry and Ginny. The way they were rewritten does not necessarily save any screen time at all, and considering that Neville/Ginny material was actually added, it’s easy to see that all of these changes need to be analyzed in detail. Since the situation here is not nearly so straightforward, however, these will be dealt with in the Ginny section.
Obviously, we don’t yet have the opportunity for truly detailed information about OOtP. However, an advance screening was previewed quite some time before the film’s release, and we do have several reviews available from that. The details of their information are very consistent, and they come from both hard-core fans and at least one person “who has never read a Harry Potter book.” Of course, we’re undoubtedly missing quite a few subtleties here, since we can’t yet see the film for ourselves. The fact that none of the reviews have been posted by professional film reviewers also needs to be taken in consideration, and a final edit of the film clearly did not yet exist at that time. Yet it’s still possible to draw some conclusions about the similarities and differences between film and book. In order to do so, we will stick to the factual information available from the reviews as much as possible.
Simplification and condensation seem to have played at least as large a role in OotP as in any of the first four films. Since a great deal of source material had to be fit into a single film, this makes sense. The “young Marauder’s scene,” for example, was reportedly narrowed down to fit into a shorter time slot. While one reviewer described this as a “disappointment” and “such a letdown,” it does sound as if all the vital information in that scene was communicated. While it would have been fun to see a longer version (as evidenced by the fact that the same reviewer called it “one of my favorite chapters in the book,”) it really wasn’t necessary to the narrative. As another reviewer noted, “Harry’s teenage father is portrayed as being a total bully to young Snape.” This is the information that needed to be shown in this scene, and it was.
Fred and George’s exit scene has been described by some in the same terms (“the most disappointing scene in the entire movie,” for instance) and yet the same point is even more applicable to it. It just wasn’t necessary to show the swamp, the pinwheel fireworks, the brooms zooming up from the dungeon, etc. Screen time had to cut somewhere, and the extended version of this scene would not have added anything to the plot. The same thing was true of the entire O.W.L. test preparation and test-taking process, which got very little screen time. It wasn’t vital, either, to show the entire storyline with Neville’s parents, since Neville did mention the basic facts to Harry after one of the DA meetings. It wasn’t necessary to show all the times that Harry was in detention with Umbridge, and these were also not shown.
However, the scene involving the Harry/Cho kiss was apparently given a great deal of screen time. While we don’t know all the precise details of the way in which the H/C relationship was shown onscreen, it certainly doesn’t seem as if it was condensed, skipped over, or skimped on. This point will be taken up in further detail later on. There are also two other cases that merit more consideration, and those consist of the missing scenes involving Harry/Ginny, and the added scenes containing Harry/Luna interaction. They, too, will be discussed a little later in the essay.
Overall, there’s one quote from a reviewer that sums up much of the entire situation regarding the changes in OotP: “This movie actually followed the books better than the other ones did. There weren’t really any major differences. There were just left out scenes that fans of the books would have liked to have seen.” In short, nothing was cut that would have substantially changed the thrust of the narrative. Both producer David Heyman and scriptwriter Michael Goldenberg have said exactly the same thing in their recent interviews.
To be continued...
Leave a Review