Let me preface this by saying that I haven't seen HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX. I know my wife wants to go, so I'm sure I'll catch a showing before the weekend is out. The reviews haven't been kind to the film adaptation of J.K. Rowling's 800 page book. I can understand the perspectives of the reviewers, but keep in mind that the novel was a hefty 800 pages -- 800 PAGES!! Trying to distill that or any of the other Harry Potter books down to a tasty film-sized morsel is a task akin to breaking the sound barrier, colonizing Pluto, or terraforming Mars into a facsimile of Northern Wisconsin. Okay, I may be exaggerating just a bit, but for any writer who has attempted to distill a book into a movie, you know what I'm talking about, which is why I want to come out in defense of this and all the other Harry Potter movies.
Books and films are two completely different mediums. They are only related in as much as they tell stories, but they achieve this in entirely distinct ways. Books allow the writer to go deep into a character's mind and even explore complex development of multiple characters. Scenes can be elaborate, almost epic in scale. Speeches can go on for pages, if appropriate, and even though "show" is better than "tell" an adept writer can "tell" and still get away with it. The only limitation with length is determined by the market, the publishing contract, and the genre. Five hundred page books are commonplace even on grocery store shelves.
Films on the other hand tell a story in a much different way, but there are a lot of other things in the director's toolkit that help make it a distinct art form within itself. A director can use music, special effects, complex visuals, changes in lighting, background action, sound effects, camera angles, and about a hundred different other techniques that help convey the story to the audience. The actors not only have dialog, but also body language. A look or the raise of an eyebrow in the right context can express in second what would essentially be a paragraph or more in a novel.
You would think that this would give the advantage to the filmmaker, that all these options should make the movie better than the book. This is not the case. How many times have you heard, "Yeah, but the book was better?" Quite a lot, I bet. The book will always be richer than the movie. Even though the author only has words, they are in complete command of the story. They can take a page to describe a sound, delve into a character's thought, or draw out an emotion over five or six pages. Authors are not restrained by budget, the technological limits of filmmaking, or number of A List actors. Authors can just write.
The film will always be different than the book -- not better, just different. It will not be able to express all the nuances, but it can get pretty darn close. Peter Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy is a great example. But taking a story that's hundreds of pages long and cramming it down to a 120 page screenplay isn't easy. In fact it's best to think of a movie as equivalent to a short story. Yes, I said short story. In the visual medium TV is the long form and movies are the short form. A TV series of even thirteen episodes has more than 520 minutes to tell a story. Sure, the TV program is broken into episodic acts, but it still has more than four times the length on the humble cineplex movie. Just imagine taking BABYLON 5, LOST, or JERICHO and cramming it all into two episodes. I think you see my point.
When a book is taken apart into what is essentially a short story, the screenwriter has to throw stuff away. There's no choice, and going over the two hour mark is dangerous. The decision on what to cut out is almost impossible to make, but it must be done in order for the book to make it to the big screen.
Hollywood looks for big winners, so the adaptation of popular books is the order of the day for the big studios. What it has left us with is a slew of less than satisfying films that don't remain true to their literary roots. There really is no solution. The only one is to throw the book out entirely and write the screenplay "inspired" by the novel, but completely divorced from it. Still, the comparisons to the book will be there, and in the end lovers of the original story won't be happy. Adapting short stories to the screen makes a lot more sense. It's a different thing taking a 10,000 word story and expanding it to a 20,000 word screenplay. It's a better and more successful direction. THE ILLUSIONIST is a perfect example. Still, I think that the original screenplay -- a story written expressly for the screen -- is the way to go. Most of the greatest films of all time are original screenplays. It would be nice if the studios moved back in that direction.
I'm looking forward to seeing HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX. I know what to expect going in and I'm sure I'll have a great time. It won't be like the book, but that's okay. A little escapism with the world's foremost wizard seems like a fun way to spend two hours this weekend.
