We went to see the new Harry Potter movie last night. My wife got tickets to the special IMAX showing they have at the Warner Brothers Miramar in Dazhi. I was actually pretty surprised how good the IMAX was. The detail and size of everything was pretty incredible. If you ever get a chance to see a real movie in IMAX, give it a try. (I don’t mean those nature movies they usually have.)
As for the movie itself, this one was a good bit better than the previous ones. The first two, and to some extent the third one pretty much stuck to the books without cutting much out. This one cut out quite a bit. That’s not terribly surprising since the fourth book was longer, but they didn’t bother to even go through the motions of Harry’s muggle step-parents, or much of the quidditch matches, and mostly stuck to the more interesting parts of the story. Even so, the pace of the movie was pretty quick. As an effect of this, some of the usual characters, while appearing in various scenes are reduced to being bit parts. Even Professor Snape really only has one scene of significance.
As well, this movie is significantly more mature than previous ones, particularly the graveyard scene and some characters dying, not to mention several scenes where characters almost died but just got away. For older viewers, this is probably a good thing, but I’m sure there’s lots of younger kids who aren’t going to get to see it due to the more graphic content.
The added characters of Professor ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody and Daily Prophet Reporter Rita Skeeter were well played and quite interesting. I hope I’m not spoiling anything, but this is also the first time we see He Who Cannot Be Named back in his full form, and get our first view of current and past (?) Death Eaters, some of who we’ve already seen and some which are new characters.
Anyways, it was a good bit of fun, so if you’ve been following the movies and/or read the books, get out and see this one.
Saw it today – rather liked it. And I keep getting more and more impressed by Emma Watson. She just gets better in each movie.
Perfect choice of Ralph Fiennes for Voldemort, he positively relishes the role. Except that he’s channeling I dont know which evil zombie creature movie. I wonder what would have happened if Voldemort was a gollum like animated creature with Andy Serkis lending his voice to it. Not the gollum voice .. a creepier, more evil one that would suit Voldemort.
(http://livejournal.com/users/hserus)
Yeah, a gollum voice wouldn’t work. Voldemort is strong, arrogant and egotistical whereas Gollum is pathetic and decayed. I think they did pretty good the way it was.
(http://livejournal.com/users/jlick)
i heard a lot of not-made-for-IMAX movies that are being shown at IMAX loses quite a bit of details. you’d probably notice that so i take your word for it that they did a good job with HP4’s transfer/conversion.
the last HP sucked, certainly story wise. it’s good knowing that this one is better.
(http://livejournal.com/users/scrungew00t)
This must have been a special IMAX transfer, because if they showed the same print at regular sizes, the subtitles would have been microscopic.
(http://livejournal.com/users/jlick)
they’re starting to transfer movies specifically for imax. they did it most recently with the latest batman. they also did a special transfer for the lion king a year or two ago. in the olden days they used to just blow up the image for the larger screen. the new IMAX transfers are really nice though.
(http://livejournal.com/users/jenfavre)