Saw this story over at The Leaky Cauldron today. Eight years ago this month the first Potter movie came out. In the story Chris Columbus, the director of the first two movies, looks back at the casting of the Trio and also how far they’ve come both as actors and as young adults. Two other items of note: One, Columbus is directing the new movie based off of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series; two, in December ultimate DVD editions of the first two Potter movies will be released.
Look over the story and share your thoughts!
Jonathan on 
korg20000bc on 
Arabella Figg on 
revgeorge on 
Red Rocker on 
Dave the Longwinded on 
Fricka on 
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{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Not a big fan of Columbus, is he?
Columbus isn’t hailed as a founding father by many fans, though; as the franchise has grown darker, more stylized and better-acted (if only due to the maturation of its young stars), the perception is that the Columbus films have not aged all that well. To me, they do feel overly quaint now and, at some wincing moments, have the soft-glow aura of a Hallmark commercial. I’m sure that sort of appraisal will sound a bit unfair to Columbus and his supporters — they weren’t trying to make “Let the Right One In” after all, it was a film for kids and about kids.
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Indeed, Columbus may not have the storytelling chops of current “Potter” director David Yates but part of his job on the first two films was making sure his young stars were kept safe in the eye of the storm.
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Debate, if you will, the quality of Columbus as a director but don’t doubt for a minute his value to the franchise that is now a towering part of Hollywood history
Wonder what he would have said if he’d disliked him?
Wanker.
My post exactly, Red Rocker. And thanks for calling him a Wanker.
The 3rd movie was okay, but I thought the 4th was terrible. It had a few good moments, but ultimately butchered the story beyond recognition. After that I haven’t had the heart to see any of the newer ones.
Humph! Kind of makes me want to go for the Bubotuber pus. As Red Rocker, Joivre, and Pauli have all noted, the author of the article doesn’t have much good to say about Chris Columbus. The HP film franchise as it is today owes a debt of gratitude to this director, as apparently he was the one who had the vision of what the Hogwarts world should be like. We can all read now about the potential choice of a director who wanted to cast American kids and place the setting in Beverly Hills, and laugh about it, but without having someone like Columbus at the helm, the first film probably would have been a box-office disaster. Not only that, but he’s the one who cast the essential trio of child actors and had the patience to work with them at a time when, as he recalls, they could hardly get through a line without breaking character. He also got the great John Williams to score the first films, which helped set the atmosphere perfectly. In spite of a few cheesy special effects(re: troll), the first film remains my favorite to this day. Thank you, Chris Columbus!
Very good point, Fricka! Columbus was the one who had the vision of what Hogwarts – and Potterverse – should look like on film. It could have been so badly mismanaged – I shudder to think of all the ways it could have gone wrong, including a real “Hallmark commercial” too cute and too pretty feel which could not have handled the incipient dark under pinnings of the story. Columbus got the “gothic” feel and the sense of menace just right.
Pauli;
This reawakens the discussion about books-to-film. Are they to follow the books completely? I don’t think so, and it is also probably impossible, except maybe for short stories.
I hadn’t read a single Harry Potter book (or even seen any of the movies) before I saw the fourth with a friend in 2005. And I thought that it was a good movie. I now know that it didn’t follow the book completely, but it was a good movie in and of itself.
And I don’t hear anyone complaining that Francis Ford Coppola didn’t follow Mario Puzo’s The Godfather competely faithfully in making his masterpiece of a film.
The award for extreme nerdiness must surely be mine?
Here are the pages per minute for each book to film adaptation:
HP1 … 2.0
HP2 … 2.1
HP3 … 3.1
HP4 … 4.8
HP5 … 6.3
HP6 … 4.3
Hp7 … 2.5 estimate
Why do this mad foolish pointless thing? It is my reply to those that say the first two films were much more faithful to the books. The good news is (or might be) that the last two films will return us close to the ‘faithfulness’ ratio of the first two films….
Interesting measure of faithfulness, SeaJay But the mean is not always the best indicator of central tendency. So many pages per minute doesn’t necessarily mean that every two or three (or 6.3) pages was given a minute of movie time. It’s quite possible that some pages were given more than the average, and some pages much less – perhaps even completely ignored. Which we know to be the case, since the scriptwriter picks and chooses which scenes he or she (but more often he) will include and which delete.
I think another potentially meaningful measure of central tendency might be the mode. The mode is the value which occurs most frequently, which taken literally would be the page or pages which had the most minutes spent on them. But in this case might more usefully be conceived as the events in the book which got the most screen time.
Or we could do away with measures of central tendency altogether and just look at the frequency distribution, using as unit of measure not pages, but scenes from the book. For each scene, we’d have to count the number of book pages, and then map that against the number of movie minutes. Do this for the whole book and movie, and you’d get a frequency distribution for each movie. If the distribution did not have too many zeros, and if it were relatively flat, then you’d know that the movie was “faithful” to the book. If the distribution had a lot of peaks and also a lot of zeros, then you’d know that a lot of scenes were omitted and a disproportional amount of time spent on others.
But all this wouldn’t know what was actually done with those scenes, whether the movie captured the meaning and emotion and mood of the scene, or whether it was good movie making and worth watching.
But for a certain kind of extreme nerd (we know who we are), it might be fun doing.
Aaargh I’ve been out-nerdivated!!!
I’m coming out with my hands up RedRocker, don’t shoot!
I never tire of hearing the comments about the trio being so well-grounded in their personal lives. It truly is remarkable and I give Columbus huge kudos for interviewing the families, as well as the actors.
I loved the first film, as I thought Columbus captured much of the visual aspects of Potterverse. It looked a lot like I had envisioned it, any way.
Ditto, Fricka. Excellent points.
I got the mode wrong, and the gods of statistics demand a correction.
It would actually be the number of minutes spent per page which occurred most frequently. Thus, for example, if there were 2 minutes spent on page 1, 3 on page 2, 0 on page 3, 0 on page 4 and 0 on page 5, then the mode for pages 1 through 5 would be 0. Telling us that most pages are not included in the movie.
What’s that you say? That only the nerds are interested? And that even the nerds have left and I’m talking to myself?
Beats working on the statistical analyses that I’m paid to work on.
I agree with Pauli–Newell’s adaptation of 4 was pretty close to awful. Contrast the Voldemorts of 4 and 5, realize they’re the same actor, and be quietly sick.
No, Red Rocker, you’re not talking to the walls. It’s all somewhat fascinating. Up with the nerds! But are we factoring the comparative page counts of the books, and the ratio of added/omitted scenes in the movies?
What about JKR’s alleged choice of director for the franchise–Terry Gilliam? Anyone else casting longing glances at what might have been?
Wow! I can memorize three hundred pages of German, Italian or French and can keep about 20 operas in my head simultaneously – but I am humbled in the face of Statistics. I simply cannot wrap my puny brain around it’s awesome intellectual brawn.
But to give an insight into timing. One page of script roughly equals one minute of screen time in the industry. But description in scripts can be longer and must be timed out shot by shot. For example, the first task from GoF – it’s in the book, however, the description in the script is different and the screen time is not exactly proportional. Things like this would make the relationship of book to film extremely difficult in my mind. But nothing’s impossible to a nerd.
Mr. Pond – Terry Gilliam certainly is a power-house of imagination isn’t he? He’s also pretty bitter about his treatment at the hands of WB execs. And I don’t blame him. Yet – I am happy it was the vision of Chris Columbus. His decisions respected the book and I liked that. Mr. Gilliam’s imagination is so powerful that in some ways – I would be afraid they would overpower the original. But that’s just conjecture and we’ll never really know.
Joivre — yes, we’ll never know, and there’s the pity. But I, too, heartily enjoyed Columbus’s adaptations–he set a very good tone for the franchise. An important component of that was his respect for the books–you’re absolutely right about that. And I think his sensitivity to the actors helped immensely, too. I respect him for that.
However technology advances and movies change, the first two movies will always find a place in my heart, if for no other reason than the late great Richard Harris’s interpretation of Dumbledore.
Please note that it was Mr. Pond and not Red Rocker or myself who first brought up Harris’ Dumbledore!
Back to Chapter 14, revgeorge!
I actually am working on Ch. 14 even as I speak! It should be up later tonight. It won’t be as good as Lily Luna’s but I count on the smarts of the posters here to make up for my deficiencies.
Analyze this:
One minute of screen time holds an infinity of meanings yet doesn’t seem nearly long enough when Harris is acting. One second of screen time shows the actor’s barren, brittle soul and seems to take for ever when Gambon is acting.
I want my Dumbledore back.
How about this – as I sit here and type this, I am listening to the Borromeo String Quartet rehearsing Beethoven’s Rasumovsky Opus 59, no.1 – in person. Ah – the pleasures of being a Music Director.
You Gambon-haters you!
Oh whoops – I just got home from a GREAT CONCERT and I looked here and realized I didn’t finish copying my whole post with that last one.
As I was saying….
You Gambon-haters you! *vainly shaking my fist in the air* I’m starting to feel like Elmer Fudd. It’s getting harder and harder to defend Sir Michael when you guys are all ganged up. You’re going to have to start a little club with matching jackets that says Gambon sucks! on the back. And now you’re enlisting Mr. Pond? No!!!! I won’t allow it. I like Mr. Pond. He’s mine. Although he is showing sway towards you – I must convince him not to be sucked into the vortex.
Red Rocker,
You mentioned earlier that you feel the sense of menace was right in Columbus’ movies.
I disagree. I found there to be a particular lack of menace in them. They shouldn’t be horror movies but I was completely underwhelmed but the peril-factor. Voldemort is wheezy and makes silly faces. Then it went downhill. The movies seemed too self-concious to me. Like there was a wink at the audience in every scene. The sooner they’re remade the happier I’ll be.
Bah, humbug, Korg!
I thought there was plenty of menace, particularly in COS. Maybe it wasn’t coming so much from an outside source, but the concern that Harry felt after learning he spoke parseltongue, the strange petrifications of various figures, the writing on the wall, were all sufficiently ominous to me. The scene in the forest with Aragog and his children was really frightening(at least the first time!) I won’t say that I have arachnophobia, exactly, but I’ve had nightmares about spiders coming down the ceiling toward me, and the giant spiders coming down en masse in that scene was reeely spooky to me. Where’s the giant spray can of raid when you need it???
Joivre: Do not despair, you are not alone, I think Sir Michael is terrific!
SeaJay – you are brave, my dear friend. It’s us against the world!