New Director = bad story telling

Rating: 6/10 (5 June 2004)

I've never been one of those people. You know the "Oh that movie didn't do the book justice" people. Yes, THOSE people. However, in watching Prisoner of Azkaban, they leave out so many important points in not only the book, but in the big picture of the story which is Harry Potter. First of all, let's get this out of the way, PoA, the book, is not a very good story. Yes, it does advance the plot, but let's face it, there's not Voldomort and the only point is to introduce new characters, in particular, Sirius Black. So granted, the movie doesn't have a lot to work with (compared to the other stories), but it could have at least done a better job in capturing the story telling aspect.
Instead of using foreshadowing, continuity, and other aspects of story telling, they focused more on the cinematography. I could just picture a director's commentary "yeah, this part of the plot was important, but we had to take it out, because it was such a BEAUTIFUL special effect." And just to prove I'm not ranting incoherently, here are a few examples of this: Harry was never spotted at Hogsmeade, very little quidditch mentioned, nothing about winning the quidditch cup, nothing about the house cup (only 5 points were deducted the whole movie), Ron never spotted Sirius in the dorm, no mention of Snape delivering the potion to Lupin as his reason for finding them at the shack, no mention of who Padfot, Prongs, Wormtail, and Mooney were (or better yet, that they wrote the bloody map!!!), and perhaps worst of all, Wormtail transfigured into a fully clothed human, but when transfiguring back into the animagus, his clothes were left behind.
Though much of this was probably because the general muggle viewing public is incapable of following too complex of a plot, they wanted to simplify the plot. I respect that, and I came to expect as much. However, as I stated earlier, the case turned out that they wanted to show off their special effects and "movie making" ability, even if they had to sacrifice some of the plot. An example would be with the Wormtail transfiguration. I'm probably with the 99.9999999% of the movie public, and we don't want to see a naked Wormtail appear as a human, so it is perfectly acceptable to have him appear fully clothed. However, when he turned back into a rat, his clothes fell tot he ground, and the rat scurried away out of the pile of clothing. Now of course, the director thought it would be such a "cool shot" to have the rat run away as the clothes fell, thus sacrificing continuity, for a good camera shot. I find that highly unacceptable.
The bottom line is this. If you are a film student, or someone who is into good camera shots, special effects, and scenery in movies, than Potter 3 will send you home very happy. But if you're like me, and enjoy good stories, consistent plots that challenge the viewers to think what will happen next, and reward those who remember little things to make the story deeper and very interesting, then you will leave this movie feeling unfulfilled.