Harry Potter and the Deathly Decisions
Mood: frustrated.
Feeling like: making a few people at WB "disappear".
To be quite honest, and despite the fact that I found out two days ago, I still feel too frustrated to talk about it, but I just gotta try to vent…
It’s a well-known fact (by the people who know of my slight – ahem—obsession with Harry Potter) that I am not crazy about the movies because, like I’ve said a number of times, they leave out waaaay too much. They’re not, in my opinion, faithful enough to the books.
Also, the fact that I truly disliked the 5th movie is not a secret at all. Being The Order of the Phoenix one of my favorite books, I was very upset to see what they’d turned it into.
Now, I don’t have any doubts that Mr. David Yates must be very talented as a director—but if the people over at WB think that he is the right guy to lead a franchise as big and successful as HP, I beg to differ.
It turns out that, despite what he did to OotP (he destroyed a wonderful story), they want him back for not only the sixth one (which was confirmed ages ago and, IMHO, is sure to become a romantic comedy with wands and some magic in it), but also the seventh AND (take this) the eighth one!
What. The. Fuck?
Have they lost their bloody minds? This is Harry Potter we’re talking about, people! It’s supposed to have a grand finale and all. Why on earth did they decide to hire a… a… newbie… to direct the last movies? I mean, with the amazingly talented directors out there who were more than willing to direct Deathly Hallows (Guillermo del Toro, for example)…
I just can’t get over it. All I know is that they’re making a huge mistake. And if Yates was a tad considerate, he would step aside and let someone more experienced and talented do the job. Moreover, I think it’s about time the person in charge starts caring more about the story and less about marketing and what not (yeah, right, like that would ever happen).
After all these years… After all the money we, the fans, have spent in the Potter franchise… After all the happiness Harry and co. have given us… *sigh* He deserves better. We deserve better.
Moving on…
Other than the tragic choice that has been made about the director, the good news is that, apparently, they’ll try (at least try) to respect the seventh book, to be faithful to its plot. Yes, I did say a few lines ago that there’ll be 8 movies, instead of 7. Kudos to WB for deciding to go with two movies for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—there was just way too much material in that book to make it into just one movie, considering their limit appears to be 161 mins. (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the longest movie so far).
The titles are anything but complicated: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II. And we can expect them by November 2010 and May 2011, respectively.
That’s what kept me from flying over to the UK, sneak into Leavesden Studios and killing everyone (but Dan), starting with Yates. In all honesty, however, who else, besides me, thinks that this decision about the two movies was at least partly one last attempt to milk HP as much as possible…?
I’m off…
