No, no, no, no...

[piasharn]

Via The Leaky Cauldron. There are apparently rumors that Chris Columbus will be returning to direct the sixth and seventh HP movies.

Nooo... Please. Let someone else have a chance. No offense to the guy. He did some nice work on getting the core cast together and supplying the initial sets and whatnot. But his work seemed so... so... Warm and fuzzy? Kiddish? Theme-park like? Something like that.

There's also an article up of an interview with Terry Gilliam, who was a potential candidate to direct the first movie, and how he stated that the first two movies were "shite" and missed the point of the series. This seems to have started a row in the comments about how wrong he is and how Alfonso Cuarón ruined the third movie.

Personally, I still think that the third movie is the best. Yes, I'm biased. PoA is my favorite book in the series. Lupin, who plays a major role in it, is my favorite character. I also adore Cuarón's work.

(And anyone whose describes Lupin as being "like your favorite gay uncle who does smack" earns my undying devotion.)

Beyond that, though, Cuarón made the HP world seem so much more real. He added dirt and grit. Hogwarts actually looked like an ancient castle and not just a set. He made magic seem effortless and natural. The dementors were creepy as hell. Buckbeak was carefully constructed to work according to the laws of anatomy and physiology. The Whomping Willow, which looked lumpy and misshapen in CoS, was given a personality. He added sexual undertones that amused me to no end. (Harry "playing with his wand" in the opening scene, anyone?)

The fourth movie was... all right. The effects, costumes, and sets were gorgeous. Rita Skeeter looked perfect. However, the whole thing had so much action on top of action on top of action that I felt overwhelmed. For example, remember how in PoA we would occasionally get shots of the Whomping Willow shivering in the autumn air, swatting birds in the summer, shaking off snow in the winter, and so on? Yeah, I remember people bitching about those scenes. "If they had time to put in those, they should have had time to put in X!" "Why didn't they cut those and put X in instead?"

The thing is, having those quiet little moments really helped. It helped show the progression of time. It gave the audience a moment to absorb what had happened in the previous scenes and be able to start fresh for the next one. They cleared the palate, so to speak.

With the GoF movie, things moved so fast that I didn't get that sense of an entire school year passing. I didn't have time to absorb what had happened in previous scenes. Everything seemed to rush by.

To give Mike Newell credit, there was a lot going on in GoF, even after one took out the various side stories. And so much of it was essential to the plot.

Back to movies one and two. I admit that some of the problems were beyond Columbus's control. The kids, for example, had never done any acting. At least not on a level like this. So it makes sense that they wouldn't be as good as we would see in later films. (Although I was annoyed that they didn't mess up Harry's hair enough.) And Columbus did do a good job of listening to feedback of the first movie and making an effort to improve in the second.

Like I said, it's not that I think he did a bad job. I just don't think it was as good as it could have been. And I think it would have been interesting to have seen Terry Gillian's interpretation.

I also remembering hearing a rumor years ago that Tim Burton was scheduled to do the GoF movie. Now that would have been interesting too, although I think CoS with it's eerie voices in the walls, diary that wrote back, and basilisk monster might have been better suited to his style.

I'm curious to see what David Yates will do with OotP. Now that's a messy story to sort through! I'm glad that he's at least given the male leads hair cuts. Although Harry's hair is now a bit too short for my tastes. On the plus side, Luna looks exactly how I imagined her. And he got the creepily girly/frilly look for Umbridge. Tonks' hair is longer than I pictured, and they apparently decided to keep it purple, but I love the outfits they have her in.

Comments

[aigooshesays.livejournal.com]

I totally agree. POA and Cuarón's vision is my favorite by far. I've adored him for years and POA just made me admire him more.

I've loved what I've seen of Luna and Tonks so far. I think everyone expects Tonks to have the spikey hair like she has on the cover of the N.A. book but she changed her hair different lengths/styles as well as colors so what I saw totally works for me. She looks cool.

[piasharn.livejournal.com]

Well, she is described as having "short, spikey, bubblegum-pink" hair as her default look in the OotP, so that's understandable. (I'm not complaining too much, though - I like purple better than pink ^_-) There's only a few pictures up of her online, so it's hard to say how much of her metamorphmagus ability will actually be shown on screen. Maybe we'll find out next month when the trailer gets released.