Harry Potter and the Strangest Serial Killer, Part I

This just in: video and printed words are different media!

Which means that what is purportedly the “same” story tends to change in scope and sometimes plot when transferred from one to the other. Why am I thinking about this now? Because I’m a huge fan of Jeff Lindsay’s Darkly Dreaming Dexter and Dearly Devoted Dexter, and I’ve just started watching the Showtime TV series based on his characters. Also, last Saturday, some friends and I went to catch Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on the big screen.

When faced with an adaptation of work that I’ve come to like in another medium, I can’t help but notice the differences between the version I know and love and the new version being presented to me. Often, I find them uninspired at best and at worst, pandering and destructive. But Dexter and the last three Harry Potter movies are exceptions to this rule. In their cases, the changes significantly improved the quality of the adaptation.

Being me, I naturally decided to ramble about why I think that’s so. I’ll start with Potter this week, then move on to the talented Mr. Morgan. (Spoilers for both book and movie versions  after the cut.)

Not only do I like the changes the film-makers made to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I like most of them better than the actual books. If you know me at all, you will be aware that this is heresy: a movie is better than the book??? Never! But the last three or four Harry Potter books, while still obviously providing  something that moved large numbers of people,  felt flat to me in terms of character and unsuccessful in terms of structure. It burns me to say it, but Hollywood’s ruthless trimming of characters and subplots and in some cases, complete remake of the story, helps the essence of the original breathe and in some cases even fixes things I couldn’t stand about the book.

For instance, it was about this point (when the series tried to reach into the epic battle between good and evil and the real horrors of war, with vague references to the Second World War and the Holocaust), that I stopped liking Book!Harry. It was easy, because I’d never found him a particularly engrossing character even when I didn’t mind him, and in Book 6 particularly, all the important stuff seemed to happen to him, with a bunch of filler where he “investigates” trivial annoyances in not-really-intelligent ways that all lead nowhere.

Movie!Harry, on the other hand, seems reasonably clever. Instead of complaining about how fat and hypocritical Slughorn is – no, wait, stop and think about that. Book!Harry doesn’t miss an opportunity to whine to the reader and/or his friends about how much he dislikes Slughorn. Movie!Harry doesn’t say a single, itty-bitty word on the subject of Slughorn. We see how he feels in his expressions, in his tones of voice, and, most of all, in the grossness of what Slughorn actually does. And instead of complaining about Slughorn, Movie!Harry intelligently and strategically sucks up in such a way that we, the viewers, can appreciate both his intentions and his discomfort with his role.

Movie!Harry also gets a lot closer to figuring out what Malfoy’s up to, all without running to the Room of Requirement and shouting double entendres at the door. He has nice, little gestures that make us like him and feel like he’s an ordinary, sweet teenage boy, like awkwardly flirting with a coffee-shop waitress, stammering to Luna that he’s her friend, and roughhousing with Ron to get the last decent potion book. He even seems way sorrier about almost killing Malfoy with Sectumsempra, and he and Ginny actually strike me as a reasonable couple. And, heck, I love the nice little moment where Harry lets Snape pass up the Astronomy Tower stairs.

I know the movie left out a lot of important information: (spoilers abound!) the Fleur/Bill and Lupin/Tonks subplots. The whole Snape-was-the-eavesdropper bit. Voldemort’s mom’s sordid love-potion shenanigans. But you know what (and I know for major Harry Potter fans, I’m going out on a limb here)? It didn’t matter. I didn’t even remember Fleur and Bill were supposed to be there until the next day. I cheered when Lupin and Tonks appeared as an established couple because their courtship in the books was stilted and unconvincing. And I completely forgot that this was the book where we learned Snape told Voldemort the prophecy because it made no difference to the story.

And while it’s more difficult to notice in the books that Rowling’s devoting the majority of her attention to things that have no relevance to the main plotline and/or including a lot of unnecessary filler (characters whose purpose could be served by another one already introduced; scenes that give the reader no new information; segments that seem to have been included for the sole reason of stretching out the plot to make it match the school year), the movies can’t rely on helpful apostrophes (Bill, Ron’s oldest brother, who worked as a curse-breaker at Gringotts, had a single dragon-tooth earring, and wore his red hair in a ponytail, was standing near Ginny…) or a patient audience (an extra twenty minutes sitting in a movie theatre is way different from an extra chapter in a book) to keep the story going.

This was apparent from the first film – where I never felt quite so bad for Harry as I did reading the books simply because I had that step away that let me see things like, well, but Snape had a point: Harry was talking out of turn. In the end, I think the Harry Potter books have a lot of glossed-over weaknesses that the Harry Potter movies can’t support. So the writers do their best to cut them out, which makes the experience more satisfying – well, for audience members like me, at any rate.

But then again, all you really have to do to get me to like a movie is turn me loose on the concessions stand. Slushies and poutine – om nom nom!

Stay tuned for Part II next week!