The author knows why she put things in the story, of course, and she might concede to dropping certain things to avoid dropping others. She certainly has tried to prevent them from making things difficult later on by preventing them from removing Kreacher, and she insisted on pointing out that Dumbledore wouldn’t have had a girlfriend, but I doubt she has as much invested in the movies if she’s enthusiastic about every change they made.

I doubt she is, actually. Approving something might be a concession to some studio demand rather than thinking it’s a good idea. But I imagine she just didn’t pick up on the fact that some famous criminal has escaped from Azkaban with no one worried about it, even thought the previous year one had done so and everyone was scared to death. She probably was thinking as she had in the book, that he was assumed to be dead, and didn’t notice that no one mentioned that in the movie.

I am afraid this will also happen with the DHP1. Although I can see several point where they might cut off, the beginning that could be left might just be a miserable attempt at an interesting, coherent and stimulating film.

As Travis has said, movies are different from books. Each movie stands on its own (as books should too, but that’s another debate). A movie doesn’t need to reference itself to other movies to present a plausible, coherent, comprehensible and compelling story. So it really doesn’t matter if details which will be necessary for future movies are left in or out. The only thing I can see is important is that characters who will be necessary for the plot late on not be killed earlier.

Where I think there could be problems is if they’re making two movies out of DH. Each of those movies will also have to stand by itself, and have its own full story to tell, yet the first will have to set the stage for the next. But we can see examples where the challenge has been (more or lesss) successfully met: Pirates of the Caribbean, LOTR (although Tolkien did the scriptwriters’ work work for them) and Kill Bill.

We have no idea in the movie why Lupin knows that the Marauder’s Map is even a map. We never find out why Snape refuses to believe Sirius, even though in the movie he overhears much more than he does in the book, enough that everyone else in the room is convinced. There’s also nothing about how Sirius managed to get out of Azkaban, just as there isn’t any account of how Barty Jr. does so in GOF (and no mention why everyone is surprised to see him despite his just having broken out of Azkaban, the way the movie presents it).

There’s no explanation of why Harry shares the information about the dragons with Cedric (in the book it’s because he knew Fleur and Krum knew, but Harry never draws that conclusion in the movie). We’re never told that Dumbledore would never have let anyone die in the Second Task, and so we’re left thinking the whole competition was thoroughly immoral. The movies tell us of Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs only in the map, but inexplicably Peter Pettigrew is somehow Wormtail only in the fourth film, and Sirius is Padfoot all of a sudden in the fifth.

It’s never clear in OOtP that Snape does indeed understand Harry’s statement about Padfoot in Umbridge’s office and that that’s how the Order knows to go to the Ministry. Dumbledore in fact explains very little at the end of that film, and some of what he leaves out is very important. He doesn’t tell Harry that he knows the prophecy. Their way of getting us to hear the prophecy was fine except that we lose stuff that they’ll need to work back in to the next movie. As has already been mentioned, they’ll need to work hard to make up for the loss of the Snape-Lily stuff. They’ll have to make stuff up with Kreacher too because of what they left out with him, and the locket’s going to need to be explained after-the-fact too. Leaving out Mundungus is also going to require some work to get around.

Leaving out Quidditch is unfortunate but understandable. Leaving out some of this stuff is going to make things very difficult, and leaving out some of it is even unconscionable. This is not an issue of purists vs. those who recognize that a movie can’t have everything in the book. It’s an issue of internal consistency, ensuring what happens in the story has a plausible and noticeable explanation, and looking forward to things that the script writers even know ahead of time but don’t set themselves up for.

The other point for me is that book 7 really does have a lot more plot and a lot more action that simply cannot be cut out. I just do not see how DH could be made into a 150 minute film, remain coherent and bring everything to a proper close.

If WB make a mess of this and get bad word of mouth on the release of part 1, then few people will go and see the final film. I think there is still some element of risk in the two film strategy.

I have never seen the movies as anything of importance. It has gotten some great British actors some mainstream roles and publicity but otherwise they are just two hours if mindless fun. Nothing more. If I want a true Potter fix, I’ll read my books thanks.

So it does not surprise me that they have made this movie into two. What does surprise me is that they haven’t done it sooner.

More is not always a good thing. Look at LOTR. Did we really need endless shots of Arwen riding to Aragorn’s rescue? Didn’t Frodo agonizing over his heavy burder get a little tedious? Weren’t there a few too many CGI battle scenes? Didn’t it drag just a wee bit?

Also, I think that people who are celebrating two movies for DH are making an assumption: that the time will be spent on the plot details they want to see. More could mean dwelling endlessly on battle scenes (I can see that the battle at Gringotts and the battle of Hogwarts are going to be drawn out in excrutiating detail.) More could mean the camera watching Harry and Ron agonizing over their conflicts and decisions. Nothing wrong with that, but the action lovers aren’t going to like it. And frankly, neither appears to be a fine enough actor to hold the camera’s interest for extended period of time. And worst case scenario: what if they start introducing stuff which wasn’t originally there. The Dumbledore-Ariana-Grindelwald back story is especially open to that possibility. Will they still be checking with JKR to make sure it’s congruent with the canon?

And along the same lines:

All along the directors and scripwriters have been following the guideline of cutting stuff out so that the movies would fit a reasonable time frame. Now they’re going to be told to stretch it out? Who works like that? Directors make long movies because they have a lot of footage which they don’t want to leave out. In this case Yates is going to be told to film more stuff to fill in the time?

Look at the previous movies: SS: 152 minutes. CoS: 161 minutes. PoA: 141 minutes. GoF: 157 minutes. And OotP clocking in at an amazing 138 minutes. Average run time: 149 minutes

And DH is going to require 300+ minutes?

Sometimes less is more. In this case, I fear that more is going to be way too much.