Once I started reading the Harry Potter books and became a fan of the series (around the age of twelve), I also began watching, and greatly enjoying, the movie adaptations. I found that, for the most part, the casting was great and the cinematography really brought the magical settings from the books to life, especially in the earliest films. Some changes were made, of course, as they are with all movie adaptations, and some of these changes worked better and felt more necessary than others. But no matter what they change, it doesn't matter too much, right? Everyone watching the movies will already know which parts are from the books and which aren't, right? If the movies forget to mention an important plot point or don't give a fun side character enough screen time, it might be disappointing, but it won't be a big deal, because we still know all about that part from the books – right??
I was more than a little surprised when I discovered how many people had seen the movies without ever reading the books. I had always presumed the movies' main target audience would be fans of the Harry Potter books, and never realized until recently how the movies had to live up to the task of not only bringing the world of Harry Potter to life for us existing fans, but to effectively tell the story to new audiences for whom this is their first introduction. And there we come to a bit of a problem, because while I think each Harry Potter movie is a good representation of that particular book on its own (with the exception of Goblet of Fire), the movies don't exactly flow together into one cohesive story. Sometimes this even happens within a single movie, keeping the introduction of a plot thread and then never following it through and thus not giving any reason for keeping it (specific examples of this are below). The series was directed by no less that four different directors, and the differing styles show, as if the last three directors were all more interested in showing off their own personal visions than in making this feel like the next chapter in a continuing story. Honestly, I don't see why they couldn't have at least given Chris Columbus a chance to direct the whole thing and seen what he would have done with it before deciding he won't do anymore and replacing him. (Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets remain my two personal favourite Harry Potter movies, and I also feel they were the most faithful in terms of plot and spirit. There's a certain magic and wonder about those two that I feel is lacking from the other six movies.) And if they did have to change directors, I know I would have before anything else looked for someone who was committed to following the same vision and, you know, making the series feel like a series!
Now, I don't think it's particularly fair for some Harry Potter fans to imply the movies should have been exactly word-for-word like the books and left out nothing, since there's so much detail in these books I doubt any movie could keep up without feeling totally restricted and being five hours long. But I also think it's important for Harry Potter fans who have only seen the movies to keep in mind that certain changes were made when adapting the books, and before they assess a certain character or situation, to remember they aren't getting the whole story, or even necessarily the most accurate representation. There might be any number of Harry Potter fans out there with inaccurate ideas of some sequence or other from the story. I know there are Harry Potter fans out there who believe that Harry and Hermione should have ended up together, or that Ron was just the silly comic-relief member of the Golden Trio, both of which aren't impressions you would ever get from reading the books. Whether these impressions came from the movies, I wouldn't be the right person to say, since when I was watching them it was filtered through the knowledge of the characters I already had from the books. But for people who have only seen the films, that's all they have to go on, and that makes it the movies' responsibility, more than ever, to recreate the vibe of the books, with all their plot threads and characters and themes, as accurately as possible, even if they have to change some of the exact events to make the story unfold faster or to adapt it to a visual medium.
So I thought I would go through each of the movies (Deathly Hallows is rolled into one section, even though it was two movies, because it's based on only one book) and explore first the changes they made that I felt didn't work, and then the ones that did. I want to make sure I'm covering both the positive and the negative, since the point of this review is not to begin criticizing the movies. I have tried to word my review in such a way that fans who have not read the books will understand what I am talking about, since I think it will be helpful for them to know which parts of the movies weren't actually from the books or were changed to the point that they feel entirely different.
I have been working on this review for quite a while and adding new things as I think of them, but it still may not be a comprehensive list, and if I come up with enough other points I forgot to mention here I may make a Part 2. In other cases, if you don't see a particular change mentioned, it's probably because I have no strong opinion about it one way or the other.
Also there are Major Spoilers ahead, but I feel like that usually happens with Harry Potter content nowadays, I just want everyone to be aware in case you haven't read (or watched) the whole story yet.
Okay, so let's begin:
Philosopher's Stone
The Bad:
Hermione tells Ron the spell he needs to knock out the troll, instead of being believably terrified and giving Ron the opportunity to think of the answer himself. I have said it before and I'll say it again: robbing females of all their emotions and any sign of vulnerability does not make them strong characters.
Ginny has straight hair. Not that this is exactly a change as the books never specify whether Ginny's hair is straight or curly, but I always pictured her with lots of long, wavy hair full of life and volume, that bounces around her when she walks, and I maintain a style like this would work much better for reflecting the character's personality. Since most of the movie's character designs look perfect to me, especially in Philosopher's Stone, it's a bit jarring to see Ginny with flat, lifeless hair, and this impression is only amplified as the movies go on to portray Ginny as a flat, lifeless role. Isuspect this may not have been Bonnie Wright's fault, and that she might very well have made a good Ginny with a better script, better direction, and a more Ginny-appropriate hairstyle.
Dumbledore seems just a little too old and tired for the role, though mostly he's very good. He isn't given many iconic witty Dumbledore lines, so I can't judge how well Richard Harris would do with a better Dumbledore script, but I wish the movies had shown us this side of him. They really never did, not with either Dumbledore actor.
The Good:
I like the way the movie has Hermione repair Harry's glasses using magic on the train, as a way of showing off how good she is at magic already. It gives us a very nice excuse not to have to be distracted by the tape on Harry's glasses for the rest of the movie, and it ties in with what Hermione says (in both book and movie) about having already tried out a few simple spells for practise.
I like having the Hogwarts robes trimmed in the House colours of whichever student is wearing them. It's a great way to let us know who's in which House when we don't have a narrator there to remind us, as well as just adding a nice bit of colour to all that black! I don't see what the point of changing Ravenclaw's colours was, though, or what bird appears on their crest. Maybe the colour part, at least, was decided before J.K. Rowling specified that Ravenclaw's blue is accentuated with bronze – I seem to recall that was only mentioned in the later books. But they could still have asked her.
I like how Harry sees just his mother and father in the Mirror of Erised, rather than his entire extended family like in the book. I do find it easier to connect with Harry's feelings when they're concentrated on just two people rather than a whole crowd – especially two people we've heard of, we already know who they are and what they mean to Harry, and we're going to know more about later!
Having Dumbledore send Norbert away to live in a colony instead of Harry, Ron, and Hermione secretly arranging it with Ron's brother simplifies the storyline, since in a movie you won't have time to properly cover every side plot, and the change here nicely wraps up this one without adding extra complications. (This change does make McGonagall seem awfully harsh, though – why take fifty points from four separate students just because they were out of bed after hours, once the factor of her thinking they'd deliberately lied to get Malfoy in trouble was no longer there?? Now I think on it, the movie also cuts the backlash and hatred Harry receives after losing his House that many points, so at this point it would probably have worked best to just cut out the part about losing House points and only keep the detention... Oh well, I still think for the most part the change works.)
I understand why Neville is replaced with Ron during the Forbidden Forest scene and cut out of the Fluffy scene. This way we don't need to use up extra screen time to explain why he's there or why Ron is missing, and more importantly, it gives us as many opportunities as possible to see the Golden Trio together as a threesome. And most importantly of all, they manage to do this without making Neville any less memorable or his role any less important: we're just as proud as in the book to see Neville get his Big Moment at the end of the movie where his standing up to the Golden Trio payed off. (Of course, I must point out that the movie's changes to the events leading up to Harry, Ron, and Hermione running into Fluffy give Hermione a lot less grounds for blaming Harry and Ron later on – in the movie she was the one who convinced them to wander the castle with her in the first place!)
Similarly, though I would have liked to see all the obstacles to the Philosopher's Stone on screen, it makes sense that they would cut it down to three: one chance for each member of the Golden Trio to shine. It was similar in the book, where Harry got them past the flying keys, Ron past the living chess game, and Hermione solved a potions riddle to allow Harry to go on to save the Philosopher's Stone. Getting past the Devil's Snare was a group effort, with Harry, Ron, and Hermione all doing or thinking of something essential. But since the movie kept only three obstacles, it works to change the Devil's Snare into the challenge Hermione overcomes; otherwise she wouldn't have had anything. With that said, I do have to point out that in the book, if relaxing had been an effective way of fighting Devil's Snare, Ron would probably have been able to do it, and I think Hermione is the one who would have had trouble!
(If it seems like I'm having trouble coming up with Good Changes for the Philosopher's Stone movie here, or that I keep finding negative sides when I do think of them, it's just because what I liked most about this and Chamber of Secrets was how faithful they managed to be, and this review isn't meant to be about what the Harry Potter movies kept the same as in the books. Okay, let's continue.)
Chamber Of Secrets
The Bad:
I get that they were trying (I presume) to build up the idea that Hagrid might be accused of a crime and might even be guilty, by having him act kind of shifty in some scenes. But it feels weird to have Hagrid acting so suspicious when he didn't even do anything. In some cases he's acting weird before the attacks at Hogwarts even started happening, never mind before Hagrid realized he might get blamed for it! For example, when Harry asks what Hagrid was doing in Knockturn Alley, and Hagrid replies that he was looking for a flesh-eating slug repellent, in the movie he sounds as if he's lying – Harry even gives him a suspicious look after he answers. This is never followed through and, just like in the book, we're never given any other reason to think that Hagrid wasn't being entirely honest. (In the book Hagrid's delivery of the line gives us no reason to be suspicious.) So – once the movie's over and we know Hagrid's innocent, what are we supposed to believe his reason for acting shifty was?? If Hagrid was actually meant to be guilty of something, even if it was a small thing that had nothing to do with the main mystery, this would have been a great idea to build up to it further. But as it is, it just feels like a setup with no payoff, or having us think less of a beloved character for no reason.
The movie sometimes gave intelligent-sounding lines to Hermione which rightfully belonged to other characters: “Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself”, which was actually a line of Dumbledore's from The Philosopher's Stone; and explaining to us what a Mudblood is, when in the books that was Ron. Ron is, after all, the only member of the Golden Trio raised in the Wizarding World, and in the books he was their main source of knowledge about wizarding street smarts, while spells and history and book smarts were Hermione's strong points. Hermione was actually not supposed to be offended that first time Malfoy called her a Mudblood, because she didn't even know what the term meant! Hermione doesn't need other characters' lines shoved on her in order to come across as intelligent – she already does that very well on her own. There are so many different kinds of intelligence anyway, it's not something Hermione has and the other characters don't, and the other characters can absolutely show signs of intelligence without Hermione suddenly not looking like the smart one anymore. Let Hermione shine in her own areas, and let the other characters shine in theirs.
I don't think they should have used a Herbology lesson to demonstrate Neville's fearful nature or his tendency to get things wrong in class, by having him be the one who faints at the Mandrakes. Herbology was supposed to be Neville's best subject, the only one he didn't have trouble with!
It's around the scene with the Duelling Club that the movies start to get lazy with showing us which spells do what. Every spell Harry and Malfoy shout at each other simply causes them to get blasted off their feet and fall over backwards. This is carried on throughout the rest of the movies, for example in Prisoner of Azkaban, when Harry is somehow able to knock Snape unconscious using a Disarming Charm. (In the book it was Harry, Ron, and Hermione all Disarming Snape together that knocked him unconscious.) So much for the incredibly precise magic system J.K. Rowling set up for this world....
I would have liked to see Cornelius Fudge wearing his lime-green bowler hat. In the books it was his most defining feature! I know it's a small thing, but that's exactly why it bothers me – there's no reason why the costume department couldn't have given him one! And without the hat, what defining features are left so that we know right away this is Cornelius Fudge??
Ginny has no emotional reaction to having been possessed by Voldemort and forced to open the Chamber of Secrets and almost kill several Muggle-borns. No tears (and no reasonable substitute like freezing or uncontrollable shaking), no fear she'll be expelled from Hogwarts, nothing. Why would they do this?? It's not very believable and makes her a far less compelling character – if she doesn't care that Voldemort possessed her or that she opened the Chamber of Secrets, why should we?
The Good:
A small change, but I like how in the movie, Harry's trunk was already in his bedroom waiting to go, so Fred and George didn't have to sneak around the house to get it for him. Not that I'm complaining about how it was done in the book, since it fits better with the Dursleys' character to lock away Harry's trunk where he couldn't get at it, but I like how the movie's focus was able to be entirely on the escape from Harry's bedroom in the flying car. If the twins had had to pick Harry's lock and wandered through the house, it would have felt less like the dramatic escape from Harry's bedroom, now that the front door is also an option.
While in the books Mrs Weasley stays angry a lot longer about her sons taking their father's car, I love the effect of the few lines she and Mr Weasley exchange about it in the movie. It effectively demonstrates the Weasley parents' relationship and the whole scene helps establish our impression of the Weasleys as a happy family unit. We don't have the benefit of hearing Harry's thoughts in the movie, so it's definitely easier to buy the Weasleys' as the happy home Harry feels safe in if Mrs Weasley isn't always yelling at everyone!
The changes to the flying car scene add in an extra bit of excitement and good cinematic effect. Sometimes added-on action scenes feel unnecessary, but I think this one worked.
I like how they changed the way Polyjuice Potion works so that you still keep your own voice. It's better in a visual medium, when we need some way to distinguish between the real person and someone else in disguise. Here we don't have the benefit of a narrator always calling the person who looks like Goyle “Harry”.
They bring in Moaning Myrtle's crush on Harry earlier, so she has feelings for him almost every time we see her. This gives us more time to enjoy the dynamic – it's always fun to see the way Myrtle talks to Harry contrasting so strongly with the way she talks to everyone else!
The way the freeing-Dobby scene ends with “Never try to save my life again”, instead of carrying on so that Dobby can explain something else to Harry. The impact of ending on this note is just too good to lose. I love it.
Prisoner Of Azkaban
The Bad:
First off, quite a few of the casting and costuming changes felt off to me, which is especially noticeable after finding almost every casting and costume choice of Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets to be perfect. Michael Gambon's Dumbledore is too “rough” and not as serene and witty as the character is supposed to be. They even went and gave him an entirely new costume that no longer matches either Richard Harris's costume or Dumbledore's description in the book. I know they had to find a new actor for Dumbledore because Richard Harris passed away, but couldn't they at least make him up to look like the same person?? I never thought either Dumbledore actor was exactly perfect, but Michael Gambon just... never really convinced me. Then Flitwick suddenly, for no apparent reason, looks at least fifty years younger, and that takes me out of the story because now I'm thinking about the costume change. The new, younger Flitwick also proceeds, throughout the rest of the movies, to act considerably “rougher” and more on-edge than the easygoing character described in the books. Despite Warwick Davis still playing the role, Flitwick also feels like an entirely different character. Hermione's hair has changed from truly bushy to simply curly. Now, if the reason was that Emma Watson wanted, in her debut movie role, to let people know she's actually pretty, I completely understand. But that doesn't have to come at the expense of looking like a book-accurate version of her character! And even though we barely see her, Madam Rosmerta gives us no sense of being a young, attractive woman such as a teenage Ron might have a crush on – in fact, the only impression we have of her is as someone fairly unpleasant. And like Dumbledore and Flitwick, Lupin seems a little too rough around the edges. (Why is this roughness in men who were supposed to be kind and gentle becoming a pattern?? That's concerning.) He seemed to be yelling, scolding, and speaking sharply too much, which doesn't really fit in with his role as Former Marauder and Best Teacher Ever. “That's not good enough; not nearly good enough!”!? What kind of Best Teacher Ever criticizes a student's feelings about what memories make him happy?! In the books he doesn't even ask, he just suggests Harry might want to pick something stronger. I can see why the movie has Lupin ask Harry what memory he chose, because otherwise we wouldn't know, but he could still have been a lot nicer about telling Harry he might need to select a different one.
Talking of Lupin, I didn't care for his dialogue in the scene where he tells Harry he knew his parents. He kept going on and on about what a great friend Lily was, how she was there at a time when no one else was. But James is supposed to be the one Lupin was especially close to! From Lupin's dialogue here, you'd think Lily was his bestie at school, and James was someone he kind of liked, but maybe mildly disapproved of. How does that lead up to finding out that Lupin and James were both Marauders? (Not that it even does; see below. And Lupin's excessive dialogue about Lily is never followed through in the movie's version, either.) It would have been so easy to make the weight of Lupin's dialogue here about James, and then have him mention Lily, instead of the other way around!
Ron's line “If you want to kill Harry, you'll have to kill us too!” is given to Hermione. Why?? Why not keep it like it was in the book, with Ron defending his best friend from a supposed murderer even with a broken leg, and Hermione protecting Harry in her own way by stopping him from running at Sirius and making things worse? The book scene is one of those moments that really demonstrates the dynamic of Harry and his two best friends, and showing this faithfully wouldn't have interfered with either the running time or the visual storytelling.
The explanation of what happened with Sirius and Wormtail and Harry's parents is rushed and noisy, and hard to understand at all if you haven't read the book. It's also not very pleasant to watch even if you have – I don't want to see pushing and shouting here, I want to see the mystery explained!
The movie never tells us who the Marauders were. Again, not a big deal if you presume only people who read and loved the books will be watching these movies, but as that isn't the case....
The time-turner scenes, where Harry and Hermione watch themselves do things they've already done in the past, are not matched up exactly timewise, which kind of defeats the purpose. Are we really supposed to believe that Malfoy and Hermione stayed frozen in the same positions for more than a full minute, just so future Hermione would have a chance to explain to Harry what was happening?!
I know it's just supposed to be a funny, lighthearted way to end the scene, but I don't really like the implication that Harry and Hermione will not tell Ron about the time-turner, like they just had some fun private adventure together that the third member of their trio will not get to share. In the books we clearly see that Harry and Hermione do let Ron in on the secret!
The Good:
While Harry didn't enjoy riding a hippogriff in the book, I like that he does in the movies, especially because Hagrid was trying to do something nice in letting Harry ride Buckbeak during the first Care of Magical Creatures lesson. The scene also lets us get swept up in the thrill of soaring across the sky on a flying creature, and the excited tone provides a nice contrast to when Malfoy ruins the lesson shortly afterwards.
The scene from the book where Harry hits Malfoy and his cronies with mud by the Shrieking Shack while under the Invisibility Cloak is changed, so that it's snowballs he throws at them, it happens during his first excursion to Hogsmeade, and that was how he let Ron and Hermione know he was there. The result is a very fun scene and a great way to combine incidents from the book while very much keeping the spirit.
I like how the movie handled Harry finding out that Sirius was (supposedly) the one who betrayed his parents to Voldemort. In the book he held in his feelings, but having Hermione discover him crying under the Invisibility Cloak both makes his emotions clearer for a visual medium and makes the scene so very touching. (It's probably a healthier way for Harry to deal with his feelings, too!)
I love the way the movie has Snape find the Marauder's Map, by having Harry wandering the halls at night looking for Peter Pettigrew. It builds up nicely to our finding out Pettigrew can turn into a rat, by having Harry see his name on the map but see no trace of him in real life even when the map says Pettigrew's standing right in front of him. And the look on Harry's face before he reads out loud what the Map said about Snape, like he's thinking: “I don't care how much trouble I'm going to get in for this, this is way too perfect to pass up,” is just so Harry, our king of sass. And – well – I kind of like how the movies didn't include Harry eventually getting into trouble for sneaking into Hogsmeade. I like that he pretty much got away with it!
I appreciate the extra bits added into the Time-Turner sequence, where there were a number of little things Hermione had to do to make sure the timeline ran the way it was supposed to – throwing snails in Hagrid's window, for example, or making a wolf call to draw Lupin away. I would have preferred to see Harry get a few extra things to do as well as Hermione, but overall, it was a nice enhancement for their trip back in time.
And I do like the decision which began in this movie, to have the students wearing casual clothes outside of lessons. I know some fans don't like this change because Muggle clothes aren't supposed to be a part of the wizarding world. But I feel like it adds more visual interest, and allows us to connect with the individual characters better, if they aren't all wearing the exact same thing all the time, and are wearing clothes the viewers have more context for. (And I for one know I would be really uncomfortable if I had to wear a robe all the time!)
Goblet Of Fire
The Bad: (where do I begin??)
All mystery has been stripped away. We know right from the start who conjured the Dark Mark, who this loyal servant of Voldemort's is, and whether Barty Crouch Jr was guilty or innocent. Mad-Eye Moody is acting like a villain the entire time and it's impossible to believe Dumbledore would have suspected nothing. Other mysteries, like how Rita Skeeter was getting all her scandal scoops and who Fred and George were writing to and possibly blackmailing, were cut for time, so it leaves the ultimate mystery book of the Harry Potter series as not much of a mystery at all.
Dumbledore acts less like himself here than in any other movie, to the point that it's positively cringeworthy. Let us not forget “calmly”.
In the books, Harry and the Weasleys got great seats at the Quidditch World Cup and were sitting in the Minister's Box right along with the Malfoys. I don't see why they had to change this, but what really baffles me about the movie's change is how Lucius Malfoy taunts the Weasleys about how high up in the stands their seats are, implying that these are cheap seats in the least desirable section – but they're watching Quidditch, which is played up in the air! Wouldn't the highest-up seats be the best ones??
Fleur is not nearly beautiful or standout enough for a part Veela. I don't understand why they didn't at least decide to have her hair loose and flowing around her, instead of scraped back into an ordinary ponytail. Krum doesn't look right either; he is too strong and manly-looking, though perhaps they did that to show us why all the girls are attracted to him, since it might be harder to believe in a visual media that someone who is not at all conventionally attractive could be so irresistable to so many. (Although personally, I have seen fan art of Krum drawn the way he is described in the books and I find it much more attractive than his movie appearance.) And while I never really a problem with Beauxbatons being made into an all-girls school and Durmstrang into an all-boys school, the decision does shift the focus away from the themes of international wizarding relations that the book introduces, and onto the “lovely ladies of Beauxbatons” and the “proud sons of Durmstrang”, which adds nothing new to the story beyond the schools' simple existence. It also feels a bit unbelievable that a school focused on breeding beautiful, cultured young ladies; a school focused on training tough, manly guys; and a school focused on teaching general wizarding skills to everyone, would all have learned the same skill sets and been able to compete against each other with the same tasks. And neither Fleur nor Krum was supposed to be “just one of many” pretty girls or athletic guys. Fleur was part Veela and Krum was an international Quidditch player. That was what made the individual characters special, and to reduce that to merely being what their schools were all about robs these new characters of their individuality, denying them any chance to become important or interesting. If all I knew about Fleur and Krum was what I saw in the movie, I don't think I'd like or care about them at all.
Nobody in the books had the idea to “offer Harry up as bait” to find out what Voldemort's plan was. Quite the opposite, everyone was telling him to not take risks and to protect himself!
I never really cared for the moment where the movie has Hermione come see Harry in the tent before he goes to do the first task, and Rita Skeeter snaps a picture of them and calls their friendship “young love” before Krum tells her to leave. It feels out of character for Hermione, and was probably just supposed to tie into the part of the book where Rita makes out a love triangle between Hermione, Harry, and Krum. But in the books she does this to get back at Hermione for giving her a piece of her mind about her ethics, and it leads to Hermione deciding to get back at Rita in turn. In the movie, even though the article in question exists, we see no motive for Rita to write it... unless the movie was trying to make out a possible love triangle between Harry, Krum, and Hermione, which is beyond unnecessary. I was always so pleased that the Harry Potter books didn't fall into the oh-no-who-do-I-choose teenage girl love triangle trope (even though that trope may not have existed yet when the later books were being published, I'm not sure).
The dragon scene is far too long and drawn-out, especially since Harry was supposed to get his nerve back and have no trouble once he was actually doing the task. The added length and difficulty adds nothing to the story and comes across as a generic action scene meant only to add some cheap thrills, while only serving to make the movie drag and wasting precious screen time which could otherwise have been spent on important things. And what happened to the extra safety measures the Tournament was supposed to have in place? Surely someone would have stepped in the moment the dragon got loose! Even if the champions are supposed to handle the danger on their own, there's the other students' safety to consider, no to mention the repercussions if the dragon destroyed the school building....
This is around the time when I start to notice Lavender Brown is replaced by Padma Patil, who for some reason is now in Gryffindor with her twin sister Parvati. Would it really have been so difficult to cast a specific actress as Lavender and then give her her role as Parvati's best friend – especially as Lavender becomes important in Half-Blood Prince! As it is, when the movies do introduce her in Half-Blood Prince, the character seems to appear out of nowhere, and it was only thanks to the book that I knew who she was. All the other Gryffindors in Harry's year are given specific actors and enough screen time that we can identify them without looking at a casting guide – and Seamus, Parvati, and Dean didn't have any bigger roles than Lavender did!
Dobby and Winky are completely missing from this movie, as is any mention of Hermione's house-elf rights group, SPEW – just when J.K. Rowling was showing us how wizards overlook the importance of house-elves, and portraying that as a negative thing! Which, I might add, was far more relevant to the story's themes than a long, drawn-out fight with a dragon....
A small matter, but it is a little disappointing that out of all the characters whose Yule Ball outfits were described in the book, none of them are wearing the correct colour. Except Parvati a little bit – at least the base colour of her outfit is still pink. But Padma wears orange instead of turquoise (and she's matching Parvati exactly, which I don't think is the right vibe for twins who were supposed to be Sorted into separate Houses), Hermione wears pink instead of blue (getting Sleeping Beauty vibes here; I like to joke that Flora must have visited Emma Watson in the dressing room), Ron's robes are more outdated than they are maroon, and Harry wears boring black instead of bright green, which in the books was supposed to be such a good colour for him and which I would have loved to see on male formalwear. This might not be as big a deal if we had Harry Potter merch based on the book's descriptions, and not always on the movies, so blue Hermiones, green Harrys, and turquoise Padmas would be available.
And having Hermione break down in tears at the end of the Yule Ball – a seemingly small thing – shifts the focus onto feeling sorry for her, and thus feeling angry with Ron for making her cry (how shocking it is that a fourteen-year-old doesn't know how to tell a girl that he likes her) instead of on the budding feelings the two have for each other, which neither one of them is handling very well.
Hermione isn't supposed to be angered so much by what Rita wrote about her personally in Witch Weekly as about Rita's lack of ethics. In the books Hermione was actually very good at ignoring taunts and insults.
In the book, when Harry visits the courtroom in Dumbledore's memories, the convicts sit in a chained chair which can clearly sense a person's guilt, since from what we see it will chain a guilty party the moment they sit down, but allow an innocent to sit unrestrained. I find this a fascinating addition to the world, especially as we're beginning to find out in this book all about the Wizarding justice system and its flaws, and how they end up making grievous mistakes sometimes about who was guilty and who wasn't. I feel like replacing that chair with a cage filled with spikes, as the movie did, turns the symbolism into mere sensationalism, especially with the Ministry workers constantly turning the spikes closer to Karkaroff like it's some sort of torture scene. It's also just plain distracting in a scene meant to give us a bunch of vital new information.
Dumbledore would never dismiss Harry's concerns and tell him to just “cast them away”. He was always willing to openly discuss that sort of information with Harry – and that's exactly what he does in the book! Why keep that scene in there if you're not going to have Dumbledore give Harry, and thus us, any more crucial information??
I don't really like how the maze in the third task became some sort of sentient enemy that could drive you mad. At least in the books, the champions had a fighting chance against the obstacles in there! How were they supposed to defeat this maze, exactly, if all the magic they knew and all their wits and cleverness wouldn't help them?! It's one thing for a task to be dangerous and difficult, but is it really fair – or believable – that they would create a task where the champions couldn't do anything to improve their odds? That isn't exactly great storytelling either, since it says nothing about Harry's abilities that he made it through. Harry doesn't learn anything from the sentient evil maze, he doesn't become stronger for having gone through it, it doesn't symbolize any of the story's themes as far as I can see... It just comes across as a very unfair task designed to torment the champions rather than give them any fighting chance of survival.
The Good:
While Goblet of Fire was the weakest movie in my opinion and did have very little going for it, the relationships were done well. Cho and Harry are wonderfully awkward without being too awkward to comfortably watch, and Hagrid and Madame Maxime's brief falling out is something I can understand the movie cutting, so that one scene where we see them getting along, and Hagrid is telling Maxime about his childhood without any of the tension from the book, is actually quite sweet and really works. And just like the books, it makes me wish we saw more of Madame Maxime and Hagrid's relationship and found out how it ended up!
I do like where they have Rita Skeeter say in her article that Harry is only twelve, ignoring him when he corrects her. That didn't happen in the book, but it's very much in the spirit of how Rita likes to exaggerate the facts just to get a more scandalous story, and the way she tried to portray Harry as a tragic little hero in spite of what he was actually feeling or telling her.
And I must admit I do like the decision to have the Yule Ball attendees wear normal party dresses or some sort of suit/robes hybrid. It was honestly really difficult for me, reading the books, to picture how a robe could possibly be fancy enough to qualify as formalwear. And much as I don't like the way the movie changed the colours of all the Yule Ball outfits and made their ideas more recognizable to the public eye than the actual canon, I must appreciate the way the movie shows us a positive, strong female like Hermione wearing and feeling great in a frilly pink party dress. I like this much better than having our pink frills relegated to the negative Pansy Parkinson!
Combining all of Dumbledore's memories of the wizarding courtroom into just one memory is a great idea to save time while still keeping in everything relevant to the plot. Plus it's a great dramatic impact when Karkaroff accuses Crouch's son as being guilty – and seems at first to be accusing Crouch himself! Or at least it was until Barty Crouch Jr started acting like an evil maniac and making it completely clear that he really was guilty, as if we viewers are too stupid to figure out any subtlety... Oh, right, this was supposed to be the “changes I liked” section. Sigh. Let's just move on....
Order Of The Phoenix
The Bad:
Tonks is not fun, vibrant, enthusiastic, or any of those things that made her such an appealing character in the book (and probably made me far from the only Harry Potter fan who wishes we could have seen more of her!) The movie's interpretation of Tonks is older, more subdued, and isn't on screen enough to show much personality of any kind, appealing or otherwise. And for some reason her hair is shoulder-length and remains purple instead of being spiky and most often pink. To be fair the movie Tonks' shoulder-length hairstyle could be interpreted as spiky, I suppose, but that's not what comes to mind for me when I hear “spiky hair”. As for the pink, I have heard an idea that Tonks' hair might have been kept purple in the movie so as not to link her to Umbridge who is closely associated with pink, and if that's true I am not happy about it. That's all the more reason to make sure we have some positive character connected with pink!
Still no sign of house-elves, apart from a brief appearance by Kreacher – in fact this is the only house-elf content we get until Deathly Hallows, at which point it's been so long since we saw Dobby that, going by the movies alone, we might have forgotten who he is by now. The task of finding the Room of Requirement is given to Neville, and the way they do it is very difficult to believe – I still cannot figure out why Neville was in “great need of” the Room of Requirement when he finds it in the movie. It wouldn't have been that hard to put in a short scene with Dobby telling Harry about the Room. Even that one appearance from Kreacher, in which we actually see Sirius telling him “Away with you!”, ends up having no relevance, as we never find out later that Kreacher was the one who betrayed Sirius to Voldemort, and that he was able to do it because Sirius inadvertently ordered him to leave the house. Again, once you realize not everyone watching the movies has read the books, you have to be a lot more careful with what you do and don't reveal!
I understand they had to cut and combine some things for time, and couldn't possibly have kept everything from the longest Harry Potter book in the film, but I would have liked to see the storyline with Cho's friend Marietta and how that was one of the reasons Harry and Cho broke up. Having Cho betray the DA under Veritaserum instead works well enough, but is somewhat less of a compelling storyline in my opinion, and there's also no real reason for Harry not to forgive Cho and get back together with her once the misunderstanding is cleared up – especially as the movie doesn't show us any of the other problems in their relationship, probably, once again, for time.
Talking of Harry and how the movies handle his love life... we don't get any of those Harry and Ginny moments which show us how they have a really good relationship now, and set the stage for them becoming love interests later on (as well as just developing Ginny's character!) We don't see Ginny reminding Harry that he could have just asked her if he thought he was being possessed by Voldemort (although that change did open up a really nice Harry and Sirius moment instead; see below) or helping him get in touch with Lupin and Sirius, nor do we have any replacements for those scenes to show us what sort of person Ginny is or what her dynamic with Harry is like now. All we have is one tiny moment where the camera focuses on Ginny after Hermione says Cho couldn't take her eyes off Harry, and Ginny might look displeased but because she never shows any expression it's hard to say. Even that wouldn't have been enough on its own, because all it tells us is that Ginny still has feelings for Harry, nothing about Ginny as a person or her and Harry's relationship to each other. Order of the Phoenix is really the ideal place to start setting up the Harry and Ginny love story, and it's the book where Ginny really comes into her own, and I think the movie could have taken the time to show us some of that, considering how important she was going to be.
The Good:
I always loved the scene where Harry bonds with Luna in the Forbidden Forest, long before he's supposed to like or understand her in the book. It's just such a nice moment, and it works on so many levels. Harry connects with someone new right when so many have turned against him, and Luna gives him some hope by explaining why Harry might be feeling so cut off from everyone. (That's so in character for Luna, too.) It works well with the movie's pacing, allowing us to find out what Thestrals are while cutting down on some of the book's material (in this case, Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures lessons and Umbridge trying to get him sacked). Having one major scene for getting to know Luna works better in a movie, I think, than the many smaller Luna scenes we had sprinkled throughout the book, which work perfectly in that medium. And now we don't have to focus on Harry's initial discomfort around Luna, what with everything else we have to focus on – that might have wound up feeling like their friendship came out of nowhere. And finally, I like to see Harry immediately reflecting our own opinions about Luna, since I know I loved her right away and I get the sense there are precious few Harry Potter fans who don't love her. Luna is the character who gives us permission to unapologetically be ourselves, so having Harry accept her early on is like – we can see right from the start that Luna is someone we're supposed to like and agree with, so we're free right away to embrace her message and unapologetically be ourselves, too.
I love Ron's line, “Who are you and what have you done with Hermione Granger?” It's very much in the spirit of the books, too, since book Hermione does have a tendency to act unexpectedly rebellious when she feels passionately about something.
When Hermione tells Ron he has the emotional range of a teaspoon, in the book Harry has the impression she said it “nastily”, but in the movie, she, Harry, and Ron all start laughing and it turns into this really nice moment of friendship between the three. I really love those friendship moments between the Golden Trio in the Harry Potter movies; there was another great one at the beginning of Half-Blood Prince when the friends' conversation turns to Dumbledore's age. I think the change works better when we're watching a movie as neutral observers, too. Even though Harry thought Hermione sounded nasty in the book, that doesn't mean Ron saw it the same way, or that that was how Hermione meant it. I believe that Harry often misinterprets Ron and Hermione's interactions as being more unpleasant than they actually are, that bickering is actually an effective way of bonding for Ron and Hermione, but wouldn't be for Harry, raised as he was in such a strict, unloving household. Also the sudden change in atmosphere makes the very next scene, Harry's vision of Mr Weasley being attacked by a snake, even more impactful.
Reworking Sirius's line “The world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters” so that it's now in response to Harry's fears that he's turning bad – this not only saves us some time by having Harry's fears reassured early on, but also sends a heartwarming message which I feel that all of us sometimes need to hear. It also gives us a super-sweet Harry and Sirius moment – and of course, in the movie where Sirius will die at the end, we want as many of those as possible.
Adding in more Educational Decrees than there were in the book, a whole wallful of them, and showing Umbridge enforcing all this in a montage is an extremely effective way of showing us her twisted power over Hogwarts. The montage of her trying helplessly to catch the D.A. in the act is similarly effective, even though in the book she didn't know about Dumbledore's Army until much later on.
The changes to the Grawp sequence, humanizing Grawp and making Harry and his friends more willing than they were in the book to help look after him, make for a very touching scene, while also eliminating an extra conflict (an important thing when adapting the longest Harry Potter book to film!) I think it works well with the book, too, since in the books, when we last hear of Grawp, it seems he was able to connect to Hagrid and be something more than a fierce, wild giant, and one of the books' major themes was about treating your fellow beings as equals. And I love the parallel they drew between Harry and Hagrid with Grawp being the only family Hagrid has – which also fits beautifully with the messages of love and found family in Order of the Phoenix.
Special mention must be given to that wonderful scene where Fred and George wreak havoc with their fireworks during exams. This is quite possibly my all-time favourite Harry Potter movie scene.
I love how they bring back Umbridge's attempt to punish Harry for telling the truth, turning her cruel suppression of the truth around on her when the centaurs carry her away: “Tell them I mean no harm!” “Sorry Professor, I must not tell lies.” I love poetic justice.
The Ministry battle is condensed, making it easier to follow on screen.
The movie's interpretation of that very brief part in the book where Voldemort tries to possess Harry and trick Dumbledore into killing him – brilliant. All these clips of past movie scenes, all of Harry's most dark, unhappy memories, but then his friends come in and Harry sees them, and his thoughts change to clips of all the happy times Harry's spent with the people he loves... not just one thought like in the book, but a whole parade of loving memories. It was so incredibly effective, and emphasized the story's theme so well, leading right into that last line of the movie where Harry says: “We have something Voldemort doesn't. Something we're fighting for.”
Half-Blood Prince
The Bad:
Bellatrix is given all of Narcissa's lines when Narcissa and Snape are making the Unbreakable Vow – making it feel like Snape is making an Unbreakable Vow with Bellatrix, not Narcissa. She's also stealing the scene at a time when Narcissa was supposed to be the main focus, which distracts from the real point – how driven to protect her family Narcissa is.
Harry flirting with a pretty waitress at the beginning feels out of character. In the books Harry was not the type to have flings with random girls, or to consider every girl as a potential date, and I always quite liked his ability to treat girls the same way he'd treat any other people and develop close platonic relationships with them.
Why is Slughorn missing his characteristic walrus mustache? I know a couple of characters couldn't be given certain iconic traits for various reasons – Harry's green eyes and Hermione's buck teeth, for example – but what was their reason for Slughorn?? If he hadn't been introduced the same way he was in the book, I honestly don't think I'd have known who he was supposed to be!
I feel like Dumbledore would be able to tell that Harry and Hermione are just friends, even if other people do get that wrong. What's the point of having someone as wise and perceptive as Dumbledore ask something like that if there's no foreshadowing or any other significance in it? If Dumbledore is going to ask about Harry's love life (which doesn't really feel in character for him anyway), why not have him ask about Ginny, considering Harry is kind of supposed to end up with her?
It always felt wrong to me when Hermione confesses to Harry that she has feelings for Ron, especially when later in the movie she goes back to her complete lack of self-awareness from the book. If Hermione knew, consciously and without any attempts to deny it to herself, that she was in love with Ron, would she really have said “He's at perfect liberty to kiss whomever he likes. I really couldn't care less” (a line taken directly from the book!) later? Especially to the very same friend she had confessed her feelings for Ron to? And just like in Goblet of Fire, having Hermione in tears draws all our sympathy to her, distracting us from the fact that both she and Ron are in the wrong. Hermione wants to date someone else? Ron should be more understanding of that; he's ruined her whole evening, and now look, she's crying! Ron wants to date someone else? Ron should understand how Hermione feels about him; how dare he be so unaware of her feelings, and now look, she's crying!
A very small quibble, but I felt like they could have given more impact to Hermione's failed date with McLaggen, after she explains to Harry that she left him under the mistletoe. She doesn't look as dishevelled as the book described, and one might be left with the sense that McLaggen just wanted to kiss her and she suddenly realized how wrong being on a date with him felt – not at all like in the book where it sounds very much like McLaggen tried to force Hermione to kiss him!
(The big one) Ginny and Harry have no chemistry at all, largely the fault of Ginny, who is still not displaying any personality or any life to her hair after all this time. Apart from one single scene where she yells at the Quidditch tryouts to “Shut it!” when Harry can't get them to be quiet so he can address them, her character is nothing like what she was supposed to be in the books – and then for Movie Ginny, the “Shut it!” moment, which should have worked so well, feels out of character. But Harry is far from blameless, showing absolutely no sign of any strong emotions whatsoever when he and Ginny are together onscreen. Most of their interactions are as awkward as Harry and Cho's, only coming across as cringey rather than adorable (you know something's wrong when Harry and Cho have better chemistry than Harry and Ginny). They do have a version of the scene where Harry sees Ginny kissing Dean and is upset about it, but Ginny and Dean are in shadow with their faces turned away and it's such a brief clip, I honestly wasn't sure at first what I was looking at. We also don't get any indication from Harry that he is upset about this or that he even cares. When Harry and Ginny's first kiss comes, the scene is much less powerful and joyful, the setting changed so that they're alone and not in the middle of a jubilant crowd, and it gives us none of the satisfaction that the book does when Harry's dilemma over whether he can or should date Ginny is finally resolved. They just kiss for a bit in private and then Ginny leaves – she even says their kiss can “stay hidden up here” as if this is some sort of one-off forbidden secret. Where's the resolution? How do we know they're going to be in a relationship after this, or that Ron's okay with it, or anything?? Their relationship is treated as some sort of very mild, unpassionate teenage lust more than anything, and I don't blame people who have only seen the movies for wondering how these two could possibly have ended up married.
It would have been nice to see all the memories concerning Tom Riddle, although I do understand about time restraints. Still, did the movies ever explain how Dumbledore, and thus Harry, knew Ravenclaw's diadem, Slytherin's locket or Hufflepuff's cup had been made into Horcruxes? I don't think they did. In the Half-Blood Prince movie, Dumbledore just says, “Magic, especially dark magic, leaves traces”, which really isn't helpful at all, and then in Deathly Hallows, Harry and his friends aren't looking for traces of dark magic, they somehow know exactly what objects they're looking for. Viewers who have not read the books will be very confused, and viewers who have read the books will be disappointed that these memorable scenes weren't dramatized. (I don't insist that every single one of the memories appear in the film; you could cut and combine, but at least make sure all the important parts appear.)
The movie's scene where Harry tells his friends he's going after the Horcruxes, and Hermione tells him she and Ron are going with him, doesn't really capture the dynamic of the three friends very well at all. Why isn't Harry protesting that he doesn't need his friends to put themselves in danger for him? Why is Hermione completely understanding of, and even admiring, Harry's more reckless tendencies instead of taking a more logical approach?? Why does Ron sit in the background without saying a single word?!
The Good:
Of course they had to cut a lot of the dialogue here for time, but I think it's just so clever that Snape's entire speech about being a spy for Voldemort is worded so that it's actually all true, all while sounding to Bellatrix and Narcissa – and us – like he's saying he's on Voldemort's side. Bellatrix does doubt Snape, Snape has played his part well, he has fooled one of the greatest wizards of the age, and Dumbledore is a great wizard – just not the one Snape is fooling!
I really like the part where Harry arrives at the Burrow and sees Ginny through the window, and we then switch to Ginny's perspective as she notices Harry's owl and luggage in the house and goes around asking various members of her family if they've seen Harry, and the culmination of Ginny and Harry's hello hug when he finally comes in. Now, if the rest of the movie had continued developing Harry and Ginny's chemistry like that, it might have actually worked!
And in the same scene, when we find out Dumbledore didn't actually tell the Weasleys that Harry would be staying. I love the line where Mrs Weasley asks Harry why he didn't let them know he was coming, and Harry just says “Dumbledore,” and doesn't need to say anything more! And Mrs Weasley's reply, asking what they would do without Dumbledore, also provides some great foreshadowing.
I kind of like how the movie did a whole buildup about McLaggen having feelings for Hermione, even though in the book there's no indication he was interested in her other than his agreeing to go to Slughorn's Christmas party with her. I think it works well to have a whole set-up leading to them going on a date together – and would have worked even better if that date had actually culminated in McLaggen forcing himself on Hermione!
Having Harry actively trying to get on Slughorn's good side, while the opposite of what happened in the books, works really well. Harry does have to try and get on Slughorn's good side at some point in order to get that memory, so this way makes it a bit more like he's doing what Dumbledore asked!
Having Slughorn forget Ron's name, and only addressing him as an afterthought, rather than simply treating him as if he isn't there, works better in a movie because we don't have the text there to point out to us that Slughorn ignored Ron, and otherwise might not have processed it. This way, the movie clearly draws our attention to the fact that Ron means very little to Slughorn.
I always enjoyed the movie scene where Lavender tearfully breaks up with Ron after he mumbles Hermione's name in his sleep, especially as in the book, Ron does mumble Hermione's name and it is right after the poisoning incident that he starts actively avoiding Lavender. I only wonder how Ron and Hermione could possibly wait a whole two other movies to become a couple after sharing a moment like that!
Deathly Hallows
The Bad:
I notice that the Harry Potter movies tend to change the location of every single kiss between Harry and Ginny or Ron and Hermione (for some reason, Harry and Cho's kiss gets to stay the same as it was in the book). But that's not what I object to most when they changed Harry and Ginny's kiss at the Burrow. In the book, Ginny gives Harry this kiss on his birthday because she knows he'll be going off on some dangerous quest and they don't know when they might see each other again, if ever. Neither one wants their relationship to end (in the movies, Harry never breaks up with Ginny in order to keep her safe, either), but they don't know if they'll ever be able to pick up again where they left off. And then to top it all off, in the book they're interrupted not by George wanting to tease them, but by Ron, who is mad at Harry for getting Ginny's hopes up after ending things between them, leaving Harry with mixed, guilty feelings. It's a great representation of Harry's feelings about the quest he's undertaken and how his role in life of being prophesized to destroy Voldemort might leave him with no chance of experiencing the normal joys that other people take for granted. The movie's kiss shows us none of this, and is just another bit of physical attraction on Harry's part to Ginny's body. How compelling.
After ignoring him for most of the series, the movies reintroduce Dobby out of nowhere. It's like the only reason he's there helping Kreacher capture Mundungus is in case we'd forgotten who Dobby is by now. Of course he'd been absent for so long that it might have felt jarring no matter how they brought him back into the story at this point... But I do wonder if it might have worked better to just wait and have Dobby come back into the story when he reappears in the book, at Malfoy Manor, when it's really essential to have him there. That way if his reappearance is surprising, well, that's okay, it's meant to be impactful. I also thought Dobby's dialogue sounded a bit “off” in this movie, sometimes slipping into ordinary human speaking patterns instead of that distinctive way house-elves talk, whereas in Chamber of Secrets he was perfect. And he should absolutely not have been wearing his filthy pillowcase anymore. The Chamber of Secrets movie even showed us that Dobby was freed, and told us the reason house-elves don't wear proper clothes is as a mark of their enslavement! He's probably just wearing it to be more recognizable, which wouldn't have been a problem if they'd included him throughout the movies in the first place....
There is just no way uptight, by-the-book Hermione Granger would ever have the idea to release a dragon and escape from Gringotts on its back. No way. That plan has reckless, hotheaded Harry's name written all over it! Why not let Harry keep his moment to shine? Hermione has plenty of her own moments that actually have to do with her own talents and personality!
Having Luna be the one to tell Harry he has to speak to the Grey Lady, so that the story can move along quicker and considering we can't hear Harry's thoughts in a movie, works. But having Luna shout at Harry does not. Even in a stressful moment, that was just too out of character. Evanna Lynch's delivery even sounds awkward and wrong – probably because there isn't any way to make a line like “Harry Potter! You listen to me right now!” sound like something Luna would actually say.
I'm not sure I like Snape actually seeing Lily's dead body for himself – in the books it sounds very much as though he didn't. I get what the movie was going for, a visual representation of Snape's grief, but if that scene is going to make some fans criticize Snape for crying over a dead body while ignoring the helpless baby orphan in the room, I think the movie would have done better to find some other way of showing us his feelings.
I cannot accept that Harry would ever have been able to sacrifice himself to Voldemort if he had spoken to his friends and let them know what he planned to do first. Ron and Hermione would have used any means in their power to keep Harry safe, even if they had to use physical force. There is no way Hermione would have just hugged Harry and let him go, knowing she will never see him again, or Ron would just stand in the background without making a single protest. And there's also no way Harry would have told them – if nothing else, he wouldn't have wanted their sympathy!
Having the Malfoys flee at the end, instead of implying that they will return to and be welcomed back into the normal Wizarding community, makes them feel much less like the morally grey characters who saw the error of their ways they were supposed to be. And I don't like Narcissa pulling herself and Draco away from Lucius either. The Malfoys were always a close-knit and devoted family, no matter how they treated anyone else, and I believe Narcissa's relationship with Lucius is every bit as important to her as her relationship with Draco. Not to mention they were all initially corrupted and believed Voldemort was right, then realized how wrong they were as they saw just what serving Voldemort really meant. It was never that Lucius was basically evil but his wife and son were redeemable, and treating them as such is unfair to the characters.
The final battle between Harry and Voldemort was one of my very favourite parts of the books, so I was extremely disappointed that they completely changed that part and cut out everything I loved about the original scene. Just having Harry and Voldemort fire spells at each other and generically fight gives us less chance to connect with what's happening, and thus to care about it, and cutting out everything lighter or more humourous lessens the emotional impact rather than heightening it, because it eliminates contrast. A very major element in the Harry Potter books was always to highlight how life goes on and people are still people, even in the most devastating situations. So if what they were going for is highlighting how serious and horrifying this war is, by eliminating any potentially lighter moments in this battle, I think they took us further away from that instead of closer. And I know I would have loved to watch a dramatized version of Harry and Voldemort's conversation, complete with Harry sassing Voldemort, before their duel!
The Good:
I love that powerful, heartbreaking moment where we actually see Hermione wiping her parents' memories, in this case just enough so they don't remember having a daughter, and Hermione's picture fades from every photo in the Granger's living room... I think I cried.
Ron and Hermione's bonding moments, like when she's teaching him to play the piano, are just so sweet. It's a lovely representation of all those little moments in the book that show us Ron can finally express his love for Hermione.
Having Mundungus see a picture of Umbridge in a newspaper lying on the table, instead of describing her to Harry, Ron, and Hermione, works better in a visual medium. A “little woman with a bow on top of her head” who “looked like a toad” probably wouldn't let the movie viewers know who he was talking about – especially as they couldn't have gotten an actress for Umbridge who really looked like a toad!
I like the way the movie neatly gets all three members of the Golden Trio into the courtroom at the Ministry just before Harry stuns Umbridge and they have to take the locket and run. It's tidy, nicely condenses things, and they come up with such good reasons why the disguised Ron and Harry would be in there!
And I also love when Harry uses Umbridge's own words against her again: “You're lying, Dolores. And one mustn't tell lies.”
I think it was a great decision to have Harry and Hermione go to Godric's hollow as themselves, without Polyjuice Potion. This makes it much easier to follow the characters on a screen, giving them their own appearances we all know and love instead of random new bodies we've never seen or connected with. But I also like the reasoning the movies give Harry for this, and it makes the whole thing very sweet as well as easier to keep track of.
“Hermione, when have any of our plans ever actually worked?” It's pretty clear in the books that Harry and his friends can spend months planning and it's all for nothing because something unforeseen goes wrong and they just need to improvise anyway, so all the planning turns out to be a big waste of time when they could have been that much closer to defeating Voldemort if they'd only taken action. But having Harry point it out like this has such great impact, and it's such a great line to give to our sassy, reckless Harry.
Bonus: Changes I don't know how I feel about
I like the idea that, if Tonks and Lupin's problems in Half-Blood Prince needed to be cut for time, the movies just have them be in a relationship already, without any resistance on Lupin's end. But the way they handled it was a bit underwhelming. Tonks is still as subdued and brown-haired as she was in the book because Lupin wouldn't admit he loved her; if she's already in a relationship with him she should be as vibrant as ever! Also I think it could have been made a little clearer that they were together. The one scene we get is a bit vague if we don't already know these two are going to be a couple, and I would have loved to see a little more of Tonks and Lupin onscreen.
Speaking of changes to Tonks's role, I'm not sure how I feel about the Half-Blood Prince movie replacing her with Luna, having Luna be the one to find Harry on the Hogwarts Express and all. I do wish they could have kept Tonks, let her shine on screen a bit more than she got the chance to, but then Luna is a more major character and perhaps she wouldn't have gotten enough screen time if the movie hadn't given her that scene? But then I kind of suspect the whole reason Luna is more memorable than Tonks in the movies is because they kept everything that made Luna such a fun and loveable character, but none of the things that made Tonks that. I still think I would have liked to see Luna in her own role, and Tonks doing hers.
In Half-Blood Prince, Harry's Christmas at the Burrow is changed so that, instead of Rufus Scrimgeour coming over to talk with Harry about helping the Ministry, Bellatrix Lestrange and some other Death Eaters come over to burn down the Burrow (and, in Bellatrix's case, to taunt Harry about having killed Sirius). While I never had a huge problem with this, I was always a little bit thrown, and many times I went back to my copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (the book), flipping through it to see if I could find any mention of that incident even though I've reread pretty much every part of the books so many times that I knew I would have remembered it if it was in there. While I never thought about it myself, I know other people have pointed out – and rightly so – that there would have been real, lasting consequences to the Weasleys' house burning down and so it isn't the sort of thing you can just throw into the story without tying it in and following it through. Which would mean making even more changes to more and more of the story, until the change becomes so intrusive and so far removed from the actual story that you simply can't justify it anymore. As for myself, the Christmas sequence in the book, with Harry politely sassing Scrimgeour for having the nerve to ask for Harry's help after the way the Ministry treated him last year, is actually one of my favourite scenes and one of my top choices to go back to and read again, so if it was up to me, I probably would rather they dramatized the Christmas scene from the book.
I have to admit, having Harry almost decide to leave the Weasleys' house in Deathly Hallows when they're supposed to be hiding him there until after Bill and Fleur's wedding is very much in character. The problem I have with this is that it's so much in character that if Harry did make that decision, would he really have been so easily persuaded to stay? It's hard to follow through a change like that when you have to tie it right back in to what Harry does in the book.
I guess having Ollivander know about the Deathly Hallows and lie to Harry, pretending that he doesn't, doesn't really affect the plot or the tone of the movie in any significant way. I just don't see why that change was necessary. In the books Ollivander has never heard of the Deathly Hallows, and I'm not sure why the movie decided that needed to be different.
Harry and Hermione's dance scene in Deathly Hallows always gave me very mixed feelings. On the one hand it's a good way to show the two friends trying to fill the emptiness left by Ron leaving, and the way Hermione ends up really enjoying herself for a short time, before reverting back to sadness because she can't fully forget that Ron isn't here, is very effective. The trouble with that scene is, the whole time I was watching it in theatres, I was honestly afraid Harry and Hermione were going to kiss. Now, I know perfectly well that in the books Harry and Hermione never kiss, never want to kiss, and the idea of being in any sort of romantic relationship never even crosses their minds unless someone else who assumes a boy and a girl couldn't possibly be close platonic friends mentions it. But all I could think was, the other movies have already changed a lot of things, and maybe the director or somebody does somehow think there's romantic chemistry between Hermione and Harry, and assumed they would kiss or at least think about it without Ron there... So while I like the idea of the scene if it was added for the right reasons, and think it works well if you interpret it right, if the chemistry we do see made me feel like Harry was going to kiss Hermione, it needed to be handled better.
This has kind of been a long post, but if I've forgotten something it will have to wait for the next time. To sum up, I absolutely recommend the Harry Potter movies (although I only include Goblet of Fire in this recommendation order to complete the set). But if you have read the books, be aware that not everything is portrayed exactly as it should have been, and if you haven't read them, I highly recommend taking everything the movies show you with a grain of salt, or perhaps even watching the movies along with someone who has read the books and can give you some more context.
My general Harry Potter Movie rating is probably 4 out of 5 stars – I did have enough major quibbles for perhaps a three-and-a-half, but in the end, it is still Harry Potter, and I can happily watch the movies over and over again and enjoy them and the way they (mostly) bring the world and characters to life.
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