Harry Potter

Forest Shepherd wrote:I've heard nothing about the story, so I would say it has for me.

It's certainly resulted in more comments on here.

Quoting for new page:

Eldorion wrote:Haven't read any reviews but plot summaries are appearing online. Spoilers, obviously:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/10/harry-potter-and-the-cursed-child-spoilers-here-s-the-plot-of-the-play.html

I've had Harry Potter on the mind this week and one of the things I do when that mood strikes me is listen to the soundtracks. It's been a while since I've watched some of the films but three tracks stand out in my memory.

The famous Hedwig's Theme:



Lily's Theme from the final film (probably the best thing about DH2):



And my (current) personal favorite, A Window to the Past from the third film (John Williams da gawd):



An honorable mention for diegetic music goes to Nick Cave's O Children from the controversial tent scene in DH1 (which I personally loved):



I'm sure I've posted most if not all of these before, possibly in this very thread in years past, but such is the nature of my HP fandom.

I haven't watched any of the films in years but the music was certainly a stand out point.

I like both Williams' and Desplat's work in pretty much all of their films that I've seen. I remember relatively little about the music from the HP films they didn't score (other than "Harry in Winter" from GOF since that gets brought up a lot). I kinda want to watch all the films in sequence again, which I've only done once before (in 2011 right before DH2 came out) but I dunno if that's gonna happen. Might just try to find the complete soundtracks and play them in the background instead.

I really liked DH 1+2 and Azkaban, but I didn't like the other films that much, the first two were too faithful and blandly directed i.m.o, whilst the rest were unevenly paced and took too many liberties with the plot...I've often thought a graphic novel adaptation would be more interesting...

I don't necessarily think the first two films pop as much as some of the later ones, though the last time I saw Philosopher's Stone (which was, admittedly, over five years ago) it had so many classic moments (first view of Diagon Alley, first view of Hogwarts, the flying scenes) that I was willing to overlook a lot. Chamber of Secrets was kinda rough though. Loved Azkaban and the first Deathly Hallows as you say, though I thought DH2 was too compressed (ironic complaint, I know) especially with its treatment of the adult characters.

A graphic novel adaptation would definitely be interesting. That'd probably offer a lot more leeway for variance in length. I've never understood why they made Order of the Phoenix, the longest book, into the shortest movie (bar DH2). I'm not saying they should've tried to include everything but it's not like they had to worry about an audience that might be averse to lengthy stories.

Eldorion wrote:

The famous Hedwig's Theme:

I never knew that was Hedwig's theme! I just thought of it as the flat-out Harry Potter theme.

It's played over the opening logos in most of the films IIRC, so it's essentially the overall series theme too.

Eldorion wrote:I don't necessarily think the first two films pop as much as some of the later ones, though the last time I saw Philosopher's Stone (which was, admittedly, over five years ago) it had so many classic moments (first view of Diagon Alley, first view of Hogwarts, the flying scenes) that I was willing to overlook a lot.

I rewatched it tonight with my mom (who has always shared a lot of my HP fandom with me) and I was less willing to overlook things than I was five years ago. Still an enjoyable film but I might skip COS this time. Apparently the only one my mom is really curious to see again is DH1.

Maybe I should watch the later films again for comparison, but I've never understood the criticism of the first film. I think it did an excellent job of capturing the feeling of the book.

Eldorion wrote:An honorable mention for diegetic music goes to Nick Cave's O Children from the controversial tent scene in DH1 (which I personally loved):

That's a great song. Harry Potter, or not.

Not really sure why that scene should be devisive though.

The films to me always suffered from how they adapted (particularly the later) books. Too much was left out, leaving only a surface level impression of the written story. (I even find some of the movies close to unwatcable because of this effect. (Half Blood Prince, perhaps?))

halfwise wrote:Maybe I should watch the later films again for comparison, but I've never understood the criticism of the first film.  I think it did an excellent job of capturing the feeling of the book.

I think I get what you mean. I don't want to speak too strongly before rewatching at least the third, but visually it just feels kinda ... flat and uninspired. I might just be spoiled by LOTR though; Fellowship came out only a month later but obviously very few films were competing at that level, especially in terms of SFX. Story-wise I agree it's very faithful but at times it kinda feels like they're just going down a checklist. I mean, the film is still coherent and easy to follow along, but a lot of the meaning of certain scenes and characters is lost along the way IMO. The effect of the film, for me, is largely limited to jogging my memory of corresponding parts of the book rather than standing on its own.

Bluebottle wrote:That's a great song. Harry Potter, or not.

Not really sure why that scene should be devisive though.

Agreed on the song.

I think the controversy was mainly because a lot of people interpreted it as the films endorsing the Harry/Hermione ship. HP was even worse than ATLA when it came to shipping wars. I thought the season worked really well without reading romantic implications into it, though I can also understand why people saw those.

Bluebottle wrote:The films to me always suffered from how they adapted (particularly the later) books. Too much was left out, leaving only a surface level impression of the written story. (I even find some of the movies close to unwatcable because of this effect. (Half Blood Prince, perhaps?))

I remember Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix being really bad in this respect, but it's been a long time. I thought HBP had enough time but just made weird choices in how to allocate it. The emphasis on the romance, coupled with the timing of the film's release relative to the Twilight phenomenon, made me wonder at the time if it was a deliberate response by the producers. Although I eventually came around slightly on HBP after discussing it with GB on here.

True, and it is kind of a shame. Because, I rather like the feel of at least a couple of the movies, I would like to watch and enjoy them, but I just don't feel the stories stand up to scrutiny. (The shallow nature mentioned prevously.) A very shabby job of adaptation indeed.

the first 3 are my favourites. they capture the magic.

Lovely tracks Eldo. 


I agree about "Window to the Past". It's not as dark as "Lily's Theme", not as epic-film-sounding.

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