by Danielle Mckenzie

Created on: March 04, 2010

Harry Potter books over the movies

Harry Potter movies are filled with drama, wit, visual effects and memorable acting; however it clearly falls short in comparison to the book. Rowling provides us with important plots and backgrounds that are not even mentioned in the movie, information that would provide a better understanding of characters and their motifs.

Many complain about reading such long books when a movie sums it up in 2 hours, yet the movies are only disjointed attempts of the book, which clearly doesn’t flow and will surely leave most of its audience in confusion and regret. I strongly recommend that in order to better appreciate the movie one would first have to read the books.

Following are several reasons why I say so:

The movie ‘Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire’ attempts to cover the most important aspect of the novel, which is the Triwizard Tournament. This attempt should be commended as it was done quite well; however the movie deleted the whole history and background of Barty Crouch Junior (the spy of Voldemort who pretended to be Professor Moody). In the movie Barty Crounch Junior only comes across as just another supporter of Voldemort. The whole history on the Crouch family was erased from the movie without proper presentation of how they got there.  With so much erased, Barty Crouch senior’s role in the movie became almost non-existent, he was reduced to a man who ended up dead with insufficient reason to why. If one reads the book they would find out about another house elf Winky who is the Crouch’s house elf; the one who held all the family’s secret. They would also know about Barty Crouch’s wives who risked her life to save the same son who was the biggest supporter of Voldemort.

The History of The Black family was taken out of ‘Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix’ (the movie). In the book we become aware of the wizarding family Sirius’s is from, and just how much his family hate muggles, we also become aware that Sirius is related to the Malfoys, however that becomes undermined in the movie

‘Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince’ too came across as having shortcomings. People were anxious about the getting together of Harry and Ginny. “I only came to the theatre to see the big exciting kiss between Harry and Ginny” one girl said to me after the movie “so much for the Big kiss!” and with that she stormed off looking extremely disappointed.

Well we can see where it would be difficult to sum up every inch of the book in the course of 2 hours thus the deleted scenes are acceptable to some extent, however ‘Harry Potter and Half Blood Prince’ went ahead and completely changed several notions of the book. The opening scene with Harry at the coffee shop didn’t happen at all in the book and the burning down of the Burrow was also not a part of the book. The ending of the book was the most disappointing as the battle that was supposed to happen between the Death Eaters and The Order of The Phoenix didn’t happen at all in the movie and this was clearly one of the highest points of the book. The emotion, disappointment, emotions and regret expressed after the death of Dumbledore was not that intensely portrayed in the movie.

Books provide us with limitless imagination even more grand than how the movie brought it across. While reading this masterpiece Rowling made me giggle, concerned and scared for her beloved characters, she made picturesque effect in my mind that no visual producer could ever effectively produce.

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