In the long list of fads and obsessions that have captured the imagination of children over the years, the Harry Potter series stands a little aloof, separated from the rest of the Power Rangers/Sailor Moon/Star Wars herd by the fact that they’re books – spectacular, can’t-put-it-down, wish-it-were-real books that have earned more praise (and money) than any children’s book in the history of the genre.
What the Harry Potter books lack in firepower and flashing lights, they more than made up for with stories so mind-blowingly creative that they literally come to life in your mind. In these televised times, where even George Lucas felt compelled to explain away The Force in Star Wars as a bacterial infection, it’s a rare and beautiful thing for someone to leave anything up to your imagination.
So of course it couldn’t last forever. Although you get the sense in interviews that the last thing Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling wanted to do was sell out her vision to Hollywood to make more money, it becomes impossible to say no – most major publishing contracts these days include provisions for books going to film, anyway.
As disappointed as I was that Harry Potter had to go down the same commercial path as other big trends with games, action figures, lunch boxes, an official soft drink and a major motion picture, I at least hoped that the commercializers would do the book justice.
Last weekend Warner Bros released the first movie for the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and broke all first weekend records by earning $93.5 million U.S. in its first three days.
As expected, the movie was unable to adequately capture the wonder of the book, and because they couldn’t possibly put everything in, the movie jumped from event to event with very little continuity. A narrator might have helped to tie the scenes together better, and if I hadn’t read the book even once, it might not have made any sense.
Perhaps the biggest drawback is that Harry Potter was a book before it was a movie, and readers had preconceived ideas of what everything looked like, and went to the movie looking for things that never materialized – the Sorting Hat’s song, for example; the roller-coaster trip to Harry’s vault at Gringott’s Wizarding Bank; Peeves the Poltergeist (axed at the last minute); the giant squid, and Fred and George Weasley’s practical jokes. The funnier characters in the book, like the win-obsessed Wood and the twins, were dulled down completely.
Rowling also depicted Harry Potter as a small, skinny kid with wild hair, and Hollywood gave us a regular-sized kid with a bowl cut.
That said, it really was an excellent effort given the limitations of the film medium, and clearly no expense was spared to bring Rowling’s vision to life. Any short-cuts were made to keep the movie under three hours, and not to save money.
The depiction of Hogwards School for Witchcraft and Wizardry was excellent, however, and many of the scenes more than did justice to the book; the giant game of Wizard’s Chess, for example, and the Quidditch match.
If there is one outstanding Warner Bros innovation however, it has to be the Harry Potter Web site at www.harrypotter.com .
It truly is a work of art that could enthrall a Harry Potter fan for hours. Unlike the movie, the Web site is completely interactive.
A visitor can enroll in Hogwarts, and be sorted into your house by the Sorting Hat. You can go shopping for wands at Ollivander’s, buy a magical creature, or practice Quidditch – there are Flash games for seekers, beaters, chasers and goalkeepers.
You can also read the latest Daily Prophet news bulletins, and try Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans.
Whatever the movie might take away from the books, this Web site makes up for it.
www.scholastic.com/harrypotter/challenge/
If you’ve read the books, and consider yourself to be a Harry Potter fan, put your money where you mouth is and take the quiz. Fans as young as six submitted questions to this trivia game, and some of the questions are extremely difficult.
For example: "What is the name of the bartender at the Leaky Cauldron – Bill, Ernie, Jon or Tom?"
For every question you get right – it was Tom – you get another question. When you get a question wrong, its game over.
You can also challenge your friends to a trivia contest.
The Scholastic site also includes information on the books, author J.K. Rowling, a discussion area, and an area to download an interactive screensaver based on the first four books.
www.harrypotterfans.net
Did you know that the original cut of the Harry Potter movie was over four hours long? Neither did I. Although I don’t think I’d be able to sit still for that long, I wonder if it would have helped the movie.
I learned that tidbit, and many others, at the Harry Potter Fanclub.
By the way, fans have already collected almost 3,000 names on a petition for the director to release all four-plus hours of completed footage on the DVD version.
If you want to write J.K. Rowling, or learn more about the books or the movie, this site is an excellent place to start.
www.mikids.com /harrypotter/
Although this site is embarrassingly low-tech, the section on "Books Like Harry" will be a special interest to Harry Potter fans who have already read the series several times over, and for parents who want to foster their children’s newfound interest in books. There are no books ‘like’ Harry Potter, but there is no shortage of good children’s literature.
