“Harry Potter” Movie and Novel: Plot Changes Essay

Abstract

The changes of the plot throughout the movie in comparison with the original novel are disturbing watchers since the times of cinema appearing and performance of the derivative movies. Sometimes these changes are rather surprising and innovative by the writer, who assisted the scriptwriter. But often, these changes are rather disappointing, and the movie director is not able to pass the moods and surroundings of the epoch, relations showed in the handiwork. (Ash, 2003)

Harry Potter is a unique novel, as almost all the published books had been performed and rolled. Only ingenious books by genius writers had been subjected to such honour. Performance of all the 5 books (and planned performance of the sixth and seventh novels) is undoubtedly a significant occasion in the cinema and literary world.

Introduction

Since the publicizing of his first adventure, Harry Potter has outlined more incongruity both amongst parents and others who usually solve what their children need to read and among the researchers than any other children’s book in current memory. This may be as J. K. Rowling has done somewhat innovative and joined a number of the “rules” of the incredible. (Griesinger, 2002)

To start with, she has left the imaginary into the real. She has dumped the kingdom of traditional fantasy and laid her story in nowadays England, rather than in the fantasy and medieval flavoured bizarre world of Middle Earth or Earth Sea, or even the world of Alan Garner’s The Owl Service where the magic is a residue, a revenant, of antique and influential legend. There are no weapons in this sorcery. Rowling offers the being of witches and magicians in the world we live in here and now in a way that is bothering to those who like their planet to stay motionless. (Nel, 2002)

In Harry’s world, almost nothing stays still. The objects in photographs and oil pictures move about; the latter irregularly leave their frameworks completely to visit other pictures. The location for most of the books’ action, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, is charmed so that it cannot be planed on a map, and its building is unstable: “There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump” (Sorcerer’s Stone, 131). It is as if Rowling is depicting to the readers from the start: Don’t think that anything would stay still. Don’t expect things to be what you’re used to or even what you might approve of.

Thus far, the initial five novels have been performed into a series of motion pictures by Warner Bros. The sixth, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince began filming in September 2007, with a scheduled release of 21 November 2008.

Background of the research

The background research here includes the collection of any material devoted both to the books and to the screen versions.

The books mainly avoid locating the story in an exacting real year; though, there are a few notions, which simplify the definition of the exact date when this or that book takes place. Thus the timeline is adequately stated in Chamber of Secrets, in which Nearly-Headless Nick noted that it was the five-hundredth centenary of his death on October 31, 1492; thus, Chamber of Secrets takes place from 1992 to 1993.

This chronology was again repeated in Deathly Hallows, in which the date of death on James and Lily Potter’s tombstone is October 31, 1981. Thus, as Harry was a year old at the time of his parents’ killing, his year of birth is 1980, and the main action of the story originates from 1991 (the second chapter of Philosopher’s Stone) to 1998 (the end of Deathly Hallows). The dates are not stated in the movies, but some of them flow a bit unmentioned and lost in the details of the plot. Though it is rather difficult to follow the year, when the story takes place, movie watchers may follow the changes and move into adulthood of the beloved characters. (Nel, 2002)

The series of books is the following:

1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (26 June 1997) (titled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the United States).
2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2 July 1998).
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (8 July 1999).
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (8 July 2000).
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (21 June 2003).
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (16 July 2005).
7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (21 July 2007).

As for the movies, the first five books have only been performed by the moment. The analysis of these five books and their screen versions is the main goal of the paper.

The themes of the book are different from the themes of the movie.

According to Rowling, a major theme in the series is the theme of death. She says:

My books are largely about death. They open with the death of Harry’s parents. There is Voldemort’s obsession with conquering death and his quest for immortality at any price, the goal of anyone with magic. I so understand why Voldemort wants to conquer death. We’re all frightened of it.

Rowling has stated that the books comprise “a prolonged argument for forbearance, a protracted appeal for an end to prejudice” and that also pass on communication to “question authority and… not suppose that the organization or the press tells you all of the truth”. (Whited, 2002)

While the books could be said to include many other topics, such as power/ abuse of power, love, bigotry, and choice, they are, as J.K. Rowling states, “profoundly entrenched in the whole plot”; the writer prefers to let themes “grow organically”, rather than sitting down and purposely trying to instruct such ideas to her readers. Along the same lines is the ever-present theme of adolescence, in whose depiction Rowling has been determined in recognizing her characters’ sexualities and not leaving Harry, as she put it, “stuck in a state of permanent pre-pubescence”. (Cohan, 2005)

Rowling said that, to her, the ethical implication of the tales seems “blindingly understandable.” The key for her was the alternative between what is right and what is easy, “like that, that is how tyranny is started, with people being apathetic and taking the easy route and suddenly finding themselves in deep trouble.”

The themes of the movie do not differ from ones in the novels, but their representation is a matter of separate discussion. The themes depicted in the movie are usually accepted by the watcher differently from the ones in a book, as word lines are realized individually on personal perception, and the movie director aims to emphasize all the necessary details by means of some objects mimics of the characters, phrases etc. But if the main theme of the novel is the relations among students of Hogwarts, the movie reduces this point, and the first place among themes is occupied by the adventures and solving of the appearing problems by Harry Ron and Hermione and their friends in Hogwarts. (Berg, 2006)

Research question

The facts that are composing the essence of the research question may be found only after a thorough reading of the novels and watching the movies. But it is necessary to mention that the changes in the adaptation version are inevitable. The challenge for a filmmaker is to condense the source texts in a way that retains the central experience or meanings of the original. For example, Jackson (“Lord of the rings”) and his crew make simpler the dispute at the Council of Elrond, but they distil the essence of the scene–we glimpse Boromir’s half-covered objectives for the ring and Frodo’s troubled but courageous conclusion to bear the ring himself.

Columbus’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone does not thrive as well as Jackson’s film, although it does at period hit its mark – as when, for example, Harry goes straight from Diagon Alley to Platform 9 3/4 (in the novel, he goes back to the Dursleys first). This delayed acknowledgement of his magical skills may seem an insignificant point, but miniature details like these combine over the route of the film plot. (Berg, 2006)

Research objective

The research objective for the paper is to define the changes in the interest level by means of comparing the original novels and their screen adaptation. This research would be useful either for philologists or for actors, performers and scriptwriters to take into account the experience of adaptation sequel novels.

Hypothesis

Surely, new electronic equipment has made what we usually call loyalty to the thoughts probable in new ways, well outside earlier simulation technologies and special effects. The many new versions of fantasy literature are, debatably, the consequence of these technological breakthroughs. One of the key clichés of film adaptation theory is that spectators are more demanding of loyalty when dealing with the classics – with the work of Shakespeare or Dickens, for example. But a whole new set of what we might call popular cult classics – the classics of fantasy–are now being made visible and audible in the movie theatre. And the readers of classic cult writers are likely to be just as challenging of film adaptations as are the admirers of the more customary classics.

What occurs when these readers see their preferred books depicted on-screen according to someone else’s thoughts? The reply can be found anywhere in the audience responses to the current adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter novels. (Ash, 2003)

Methodology

The methodology of writing the paper is the collection of data from various sources. It is rather difficult to find all the inconsistencies; that is why the collection of the information by means of looking through the reviews and annotations to the books and movies may be regarded as the best methodology of writing this paper. As for the definition of the interest level and its comparison between the book and the, it depends only on the personal preferences of every particular reader. The key point of defining this difference in interest level is the fact, what admirer likes most: either to stay alone with the characters of the story/movie, or to invite friends to the cinema, or for watching the movie on the DVD with the whole company. (Cohan, 2005)

Data collection and analysis

Some changes appear to be rather successful, in spite they deviate from the original plot. Thus, in the third novel, “The prisoner of Azkaban”, the following changes may be regarded as successful. But the rearranging and shortening of the plot often lead to disappointment. Thus, for example:

• Harry’s Broom: In the book, Harry did not get the broom, but at the end of the movie, and ride off into the sunset. He got the broom just after his first Quidditch match (his Nimbus 2000 was shattered when he was attacked by the dementors), and Professor McGonagall kept the new broom to have it experimented.
• Fidelis Charm: This charm was portrayed in detail in the book as a type of magical protection; this was not shown in the movie.
• Hogsmeade Trips: only one trip to Hogsmeade is shown in the movie, unlike the book describes two trips.
• Hogsmeade Scene: The scene outside Hogsmeade in the book includes Ron being intimidated by Draco and Harry, unseen, covering him with sludge. Harry’s cloak slips, Draco sees his face, and Harry has to run back to the castle in order to not be banished. He meets up with Snape but is saved by Lupin. In the movie, this is altered to a winter scene, with Draco, Crabbe, and another student intimidating Ron and Hermione and Harry pelting the three of them with snowballs. In a later, different scene, Harry is walking the castle at night and is wedged by Snape and rescued by Lupin.
• Harry’s School books: In the book, Harry gets his reproduction of the Monster book by owl post from Hagrid, down with the newspaper clipping of the Weasleys staying in Egypt, which demonstrates Scabbers, anniversary cards and the sneak scope. Later on, he is free to roam Diagon Alley to get other books etc. In the movie, it is fake at the Leaky Cauldron who has arranged his book list, and it is there at the Leaky Cauldron where Harry gets to see the implicating newspaper cutting and has the occurrence with the book.
• Time Move Cycle: In the novel, Harry and Hermione are tremendously cautious not to interrelate with their past selves, yet in the movie, Hermione chucks rocks at the past Harry and Hermione, and she comments about her hair.
• Hermione Slaps Draco: In the film, Hermione slaps Draco when she is on her way to Hagrid’s shed with Harry and Ron, though in the book, this scene happens when the trio is on their way back to the Castle with Hagrid after a Care of supernatural beings lesson.
• Snape’s Tirade about Harry’s Father: In the novel, Professor Snape treats Harry to an outburst about how Harry’s father was an agitator at school, but this moment is not featured in the film.
• Professor Trelawney’s Forecast: In the movie, Professor Trelawney constructs real predictions when Harry is returning a crystal ball to her after class, but in the book, this forecast occurs at the end of Harry’s Foretelling ending.

Magical Classes

• Care of Magical Beings: Only Harry and Draco are seen contacting Buckbeak in the film, while in the novel, several other students try to do with the Hippogriff.
• Snape’s Potions Classes: All potions lessons were cut from the movie. Snape does alternate for Lupin, where he allocates the paper on werewolves.
• Transfiguration: All transformation classes are cut.
• Neville’s Boggart: In the book, during a Protection against the Dark Arts lesson, Professor Lupin asks Neville to illustrate his grandmother’s clothes detail, yet in the film, he tells Neville he doesn’t let Neville describe the details.

At the Dursleys

• Harry Studying: When the book starts, Harry is writing a paper on witch-burning, yet when the movie starts, Harry is practising magic (Lumos) under the covers.

Quidditch

• Tournament: There is only one Quidditch match in the film, the Hufflepuff/Gryffindor one, and the eventual winning of the Quidditch cup is not shown, while the book discusses all three Quidditch matches. They are described in chapters 9 (Grim defeat), 13 (Gryffindor vs Ravenclaw) and 15 (The Quidditch Final).

Relations

• Harry and Cho: There is no mention of Harry’s squash on Cho in this film, but there is in the book.
• Ron and Hermione: While there is no hint of potential relations in the book, there is in the film when Ron and Hermione hold hands in a Care of Magical Creatures Class and at The Shrieking Shack.

Swapped or Changed Quotes

• Ron agrees with Snape: In the book, when Snape calls Hermione an “insufferable no-it-all,” Ron defends Hermione, yet in the movie, Ron agrees with Snape’s comment.
• Draco and Buckbeak: Draco does not refer to Buckbeak as “that bloody chicken” in the book.
• Draco’s threats: Only in the movie does Draco threaten to get even with “that jumped-up mud blood” when Hermione punches him.
• Dumbledore’s ignorance: Dumbledore does not pretend as though he had no idea what happened when Hermione and Harry return from the time turner trip in the book; however, he does in the movie.

But in the case of taken off phrases, these modifications usually improve the story. Thus, some phrases depict insignificant details, the disclosure and realization of which could have taken additional air time.

Some additions to the film played their own role in the development of the plot. Here they are

Film Additions

• Shrunken heads that appeared in the Three Broomsticks and the Knight Bus
• The frog choir singing at Hogwarts.

(data collected by means of the interviews with fans of the novel)

It’s in the details the gathering of minor details can generate a noticeably different understanding among books and films, which may clarify why the students who read the novel first were so critical of the film. The movie looks like the places in the book, but it doesn’t “feel” like them because these little details accumulate. To turn to another example, Dumbledore’s sense of humour stays concealed until the very end of the film when, at Harry’s hospital bed, he chooses an earwax-flavoured jelly bean. In the book, his unusual wit appears earlier and more frequently: At the opening dinner, Dumbledore says, “Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words.

And here they are, Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!”. The film excludes these amusing farces and also deducts Harry’s asking Dumbledore what he observes in the Mirror of Erised. The headmaster replies, “I see myself holding a pair of thick, woollen socks”. As a result, the Dumbledore of the film more closely resembles Tolkien’s Gandalf. While Gandalf and British author T.H. White’s Merlin are literary antecedents of Rowling’s headmaster, the film emphasizes Dumbledore’s serious side. A sense of humour may be a minor detail in and of itself, but it is the kind of detail that, over the course of the film, distorts the original character in ways that inspire criticism from fans of the book. (Purse, 2007)

Columbus is steadily checked with Rowling to make sure he was implementing the little details in the film correct. Kloves explained the film as being “really realistic” to the book. He added some conversation, which Rowling approved of. One of the lines initially comprised had to be removed after Rowling told him that it would directly contradict an event in the formerly non-realized Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Even so, as with most of the book to film changes, there are dissimilarities between the plot of the film and the original source material. The first chapter of the book starts from the viewpoint of Vernon and Petunia Dursley in the days leading up to them being given Harry to look after, underlining how Muggles respond to magic. The film parts this, starting with Hagrid leaving Harry with the Dursley’s. Next, a month of Harry’s summer, including several of Vernon’s efforts to escape the repeatedly inward Hogwart’s letters, is cut from the film. Some incongruity amid Harry and Draco, taking into account their first meeting in Madam Malkin’s covering gown shop, is not taken into account.

The personality of Piers Polkiss is cut, and some of Nicolas Flamel’s role is changed or cut generally. Norbert is cited for having been taken away by Dumbledore in the movie, whilst the book sees Harry and Hermione have to take him by hand to friends of Charlie Weasley. Rowling described the scene as “the one part of the book that she felt [could easily] be changed.” As such, the motive for the custody in the Forbidden Forest is also distorted.

In the novel, Harry and Hermione are put in custody for getting caught by Filch when they departed only after hours (so do Malfoy and Neville for obstructing with the circumstances), while in the film, Harry, Ron, and Hermione (as is Draco Malfoy for being out after hours despite his “admirable intentions”) are put in imprisonment as Malfoy caught them in Hagrid’s hut after hours.

The Sorting Hat’s song is taken away, as is Snape’s potion puzzle task on the way to the limestone. Imaginary changes included both Aunt Petunia and Dudley being made dark-haired, and Firenze, who in the book is explained as being palomino with light blonde hair, is exposed to be dark in the film. Moreover, the Quidditch field is distorted from a customary stadium to an open field circled by viewer seats.

Limitation and weakness

The limitation of such data collection is the potential inattentiveness of the researcher. One could miss some detail or interpret it in the wrong way. But as for the adaptation theory, novels are frequently adapted for films. For the most part, these adaptations attempt either to appeal to an existing commercial audience (the adaptation of best sellers and the “prestige” adaptation of works) or to tap into the innovation and novelty of a less well-known author. Inevitably, the question of “faithfulness” arises, and the more high profile the source novel, the more insistent is the questions of fidelity.

The child actors, moreover, who often seemed at sea in the early films, are children no longer and much improved as a result. Rupert Grint’s Ron Weasley and Emma Watson’s Hermione tend to hit a single note but hit it well, while a find named Evanna Lynch steals every scene she’s in as the delightfully touched-in-the-head Luna Lovegood. Best of all is Daniel Radcliffe, who at first barely registered as Harry but who has steadily grown up into the role, which he inhabits with the strenuous, sinewy intensity of someone girding himself for the darker days ahead. (Reider, 2005)

Thus, all the changes in the plot are made to attract as many audiences as possible. And it is commonly known that successful box movies sacrifice quality to profit.

But, as it is known about the preperformance efforts, Steven Spielberg initially negotiated to direct the film, he declined the offer. He wanted the adaptation to be an animated film, with American actor Haley Joel Osment to provide Harry Potter’s voice. Spielberg contended that, in his opinion, there was every expectation of profit in making the film and that making money would have been like “shooting ducks in a barrel. It’s just a slam dunk. It’s just like withdrawing a billion dollars and putting it into your personal bank accounts.

This fact has been included in the limitations chapter, as animated variants would attract cartoon admirers, and it is necessary to point out that cartoons with more than 2 (3) sequels are losing their popularity to every following series. The movie is not able to realize the sceneries that cartoon is able, but IT solves this problem, and there is almost nothing impossible for the movie director. (McFarlane, 1996)

The third film in the phenomenal Harry Potter franchise arrives under the helm of a new director, Mexican-born Cuarón, and his magic touch transforms the series into something altogether wondrous. Cuarón’s dark, quirky and strikingly original sensibility is 180 degrees different from that of Chris Columbus, the family-friendly helmer who directed the first two Potter movies, and he was the perfect choice for Azkaban, which takes the story into more complex territory.

But the real improvement is the firm way Cuarón and writer Kloves have streamlined Rowling’s Azkaban story down to its essence, creating a muscular narrative with real momentum that packs great emotional resonance. Potter purists may quibble with the changes, but Azkaban feels like the first Potter adaptation that is truly a movie, not a slavish imitation of a book.

Suggestions for improvement

Everyone who sees films based on novels feels capable of making remarks, at heights ranging from the gossipy to the learned, on the nature and achievement of the adaptation included. That is, the concentration in addition, unlike many other substances to do with film, is not a complex one. And it ranges rearwards and frontwards from those who talk of books as being ‘betrayed’ by impolite film-creators to those who observe the performance of comparing film and narration as a waste of time. (McFarlane, 1996)

The film-creators themselves have been sketching on literary bases, and particularly novels of varying degrees of cultural status since the film first stated itself as pre-eminently an accounting medium. In view of this fact, and given that there has been a long-running discussion on the nature of the relations between film and writing, it is shocking how little systematic, continued concentration has been given to the procedures of adaptation.

This is the more astonishing since the issue of alteration has magnetized critical concentration for more than sixty years in a way that few other film-narrated matters have. Writers across a wide critical range have found the subject mesmerizing: newspaper and journal reviews almost invariably offer judgment between a film and its literary precursor; from fan magazines to more or less scholarly books, one finds reflections on the incidence of adaptation; works serious and trivial, complex and simple, early and recent, address themselves to various aspects of this phenomenon almost as old as the institution of the cinema. (McFarlane, 1996)

Consequently, the only suggestion maybe not to perform novels that would possibly lose from the adaptation. As it has been stated several times throughout the paper, the apprehension of the book is exclusively personal, and the movie director may satisfy the audience only with beautiful special effects, sceneries and so on, but not the development of the plot. (McFarlane, 1996)

Conclusion

I don’t envy anyone the task of adapting a Harry Potter novel for the screen; it’s a thankless assignment that I wouldn’t take on if you paid me. Well, all right, maybe I’d do it if you paid me… and okay, I’d probably do it for free… and fine, maybe I’d empty out my savings and pay you for the privilege. (Warner Brothers, are you listening?) But the original point stands. J. K. Rowling’s novels are well-nigh unadaptable, and the proof is in the pudding.

Of the five Potter films to date, only Alfonso Cuaron’s Prisoner of Azkaban has soared more than a broomstick-length above the pedestrian or conjured up enough cinematic magic to rival its beloved source material.

Rowling’s books succeed by blending a host of different genres: Her fantasy landscape is closer to C. S. Lewis’s Narnia than Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, a mythological pastiche more than a proper sub-creation, and she takes the pastiche further than even Lewis did, filtering the fantasy through a Tom Brown’s Schooldays setting and a red-herring-strewn, Agatha Christie-style of plotting. In a big, baggy book, this comes off marvellously, but it’s murder on a screenwriter. You can be faithful to Rowling’s originals and find yourself losing any chance of narrative thrust in the subplot-strewn sprawl of her wizarding world, or you can compress the story and gain the momentum that cinema requires while sacrificing all the flourishes and complications that make the books worthwhile.

This dilemma has impaled every Potter movie so far. The hackish Chris Columbus, of Home Alone fame, chose the slavishly faithful approach in the first two films, turning out lifeless, ponderous white elephants that felt like the most expensive school plays ever mounted. Alfonso Cuaron and Mike Newell took the other tack, with more success, but Newell’s Goblet of Fire, while lively, showed the strain of compressing Rowling’s ever-more-complex universe to fit a multiplex-friendly 150-minute running time.

Talking about the success of the movies, “Order of Phoenix” is one of the most arguable. Although it is not a great movie, it is a pretty good one, in part because it does not strain to overwhelm the audience with noise and sensation.

There are some wonderful special-effects-aided set-pieces – notably an early broomstick flight over London – and some that are less so. People waving wands at one another, even accompanied by bright lights and scary sounds, does not quite sate this moviegoer’s appetite for action. But the production design (by Stuart Craig) and the cinematography (by Slawomir Idziak) are frequently astonishing in their aptness and sophistication. The interiors of the Ministry of Magic offer a witty, nightmarish vision of wizardly bureaucracy, while Harry’s angst and loneliness register in Idziak’s cold, washed-out shades of blue.

Even better, the Potter enterprise has become a breeding ground for the next generation of British acting talent. Radcliffe has already spread his wings (and dropped his pants) on the London stage, and cultural pessimists of my generation can take comfort in knowing that while our parents may have witnessed Malcolm McDowell and Julie Christie in their prime, our children will see Grint and Watson in theirs. “Order of the Phoenix” also introduces Evanna Lynch, a pale, wide-eyed 15-year-old nonprofessional from Ireland who, having read the book, decided that no one else could play Luna Lovegood, the weirdest witch at Hogwarts.

It seems Lynch was right. She’s spellbinding. Indeed as the series progresses, each book gets progressively longer, developing along with the reader’s literary abilities. A word-count comparison shows how each book, save the sixth, is longer than its predecessor, requiring greater concentration and longer attention spans to complete. This fact in itself can be seen as contributory to improved literary abilities in children who tackle the series.

Acknowledgement

The author expresses gratitude to all the philologists who devoted their researches to the Harry Potter novel and noticed all the possible inconsistencies between the book and the movie. Additional thanks to all my friends, who agreed to participate in the interview and help me with the systematization of the data analysis chapter. Thanks to all the fans of this masterpiece for not staying indifferent to writing this significant paper

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