Alfonso Cuarón: A Sad Excuse for a Director

For those of you that don't know, Alfonso Cuarón was employed by Warner Brothers to direct the third official Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. While the first two movies were directed - and done well, in my opinion - by Chris Columbus, WB decided to change to Cuarón for the third one (why, I don't know). Disregarding the obscure reasons for this decision, however, let me explain to you why it was a bad one.

In short, Cuarón's movie stunk. It was the worst movie adaptation of a book that I have ever seen. I can't even begin to imagine what he might have been thinking when he put it together; the movie mangles the storyline to incoherence such that you had to have read the book to understand what's going on, while at the same time it “dumbs down” the complexity of several scenes with the apparent attempt to make them more understandable to people who haven't read the book. This is of course a paradox, making the movie repulsive both to those who haven't read the book (they will quickly become confused by the random unexplained events) and those who have (they will be annoyed by the oversimplifications). Cuarón, you moron! The only real reason that justifies simplifying the story in a movie adaptation of a book is to make it more accessable for people who haven't read the book, yet you leave so many things unexplained and add so much randomness to the storyline that it becomes necessary to have read the book in order to understand the movie!

Now let's move on to specifics. There were four main flaws that made this movie a failure; while at first they all seem to address the issues for people that have read the book, mixed among them in the specifics are problems that make the movie hard to understand if you haven't read it. First and foremost is the fact that so many scenes were modified from the way they went in the book. I can see changing some scenes a little to cut them short while maintaining coherence, but most of the 23 major modified scenes that I counted were not significantly shorter than they would have been if enacted following the book. Even with the modifications that seemed to have been done to shorten the movie, they by no means retained any semblence of sense - they might as well have been scripted in the original book form and then abruptly cut off halfway through filming them. And within this category of nonsensical modifications I've grouped an even more hideous mistake: inventing scenes outright! Come on, how can you possibly say that you deleted scenes to “shorten up the movie” when at the same time you're adding in content that wasn't even in the book? In the endnote you'll find a complete list of such things, but for emphasis here I'd like to point out an example of each thing. Probably the most hacked-up scene in the movie was the one where Harry, Hermione, and Ron are in the Shrieking Shack with Lupin and Sirius (before Snape comes in). In the book this was a rather long scene with Sirius and Lupin giving the full story of what really happened with Harry's parents and Peter Pettigrew, while Ron was keeping a tight hold on “Scabbers the rat” (Pettigrew) but in the movie everything was very rushed and Sirius and Lupin only had time for a very brief, muddled explanation while they chased “Scabbers” around the room before Snape showed up. Which was another difference: Snape picked up Harry's invisibility cloak in the book and was able to sneak all the way into the room without being seen, but in the movie he just showed up at the door (and everyone noticed) because the scenes at Hagrid's hut had been modified so that Harry never used the invisibility cloak (let alone dropped it). Additionally, the most retarded made-up scene was probably the one near the beginning where Harry sits down in some sort of park and all the play equipment starts moving itself for a few minutes before he sees Sirius as a dog watching him. Nothing as ridiculously “supernatural” happened in the book, it was simply that Harry saw the large black dog looking at him and then tripped and fell in front of the Knight Bus.

The second major flaw in Alfonso Cuarón's movie was the stupidity and volume with which scenes from the book were deleted. Yes, it's reasonable to delete scenes from a long book in order to make the movie palatable to the average audience (even Chris Columbus did that), but it's customary to show some semblance of rhyme and reason when doing so. Not only did Cuarón delete far more material than was required (his movie was actually shorter than Columbus's two, despite being based on a longer book), his choice of which scenes were deleted shows that he is either a certifiable idiot or didn't bother to read the book before deciding what was unimportant enough to keep. I mean, he removed Cho Chang from the movie entirely! Don't you think it's kind of important to include the Quidditch match where Harry meets his girlfriend? How are they going to explain in the 4th movie why Harry is in love with a girl he's never seen before? I think it makes just a little sense (sarcasm) to include this scene over, say, the one at the beginning where some sort of choir is being conducted by Professor Flitwick (one that Cuarón made up, by the way).

Along similar lines of the first issue, the third problem with this movie was the complete butchering of the concept of Patronus charms. Not only was the scene where Harry learns the spell completely changed so that he seemed to get it easily (and it was thus a bit of a surprise when the pre-Time-Turner Harry at the lakeshore was unable to ward off the Dementors), the whole idea of the way Patronuses ward off Dementors was modified. Rather than having the more reasonable form of a positive-energy animal that attacked the Dementors, the Patronus charm in the movie was simply a blinding display of generic white light that somehow repelled them. This also destroys the concept of Patronuses being unique to a person (taking the form of different animals); Cuarón tried to compensate for losing the important concept of Harry's Patronus being his father's Animagus form by making the outline of a stag appear briefly in the white flash, but come on - that is LAME! The Patronus charms were a pivotal part of this story (as they were Harry's one solution to his Dementor problem and also showed how the memory of his father lived on inside him), but Cuarón completely wrecked them. Not only does this turn off Harry Potter fans, it makes the movie harder to understand for people who haven't read the book (“Why did the white-light spell look different the last time? What was with that stag thing, anyway?”).

The last major problem with Alfonso Cuarón's “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (and believe me, the problems don't stop here, they just get more minor) is one of overall quality and realism. Far too much of the movie occured on what appeared to be weekends, as the characters were dressed in street clothes and were on the castle grounds, and most of the scenes from the book that happened in classrooms were deleted (they don't appear in my appendix of deleted scenes because they aren't that important individually). This does not match at all with the book, where most of the conversations occur after school on weekdays or between classes, and there are actual classes where important things occur. For example, only two of Professor Trelawney's classes are shown, one of them being the one in which Hermione walks out. Anyone who hadn't read the book would have no idea why Hermione said “It's the Grim, isn't it?” of Trelawney's crystal ball, because with only one other classroom scene you never get the impression that Trelawney is constantly predicting Harry's death - she's only done it once! Non-book-reading viewers are also left mystified as to why Hermione would leave the class, anyway, because they don't see all the other times where Trelawney has made her feel inadequate. The combined effect of all the deleted classroom scenes and the modifications of many other scenes to be outside of the school routine completely change the atmosphere of the movie so that it barely even matters that they're going to Hogwarts - the story in the movie could be set just about anywhere. While the school as a setting is central to the book, it plays no part at all in the movie and much of the intrigues, obstacles, and complications that occur due to the fact that all this adventure is happening while going to school are lost. Yet another way in which Cuarón the moron “dumbs down” the movie to repugnance for book-readers while making it difficult to understand for non-book-readers (“Why are they inside this building now? Where are they going?”).

Endnote

List of scenes changed or invented:

The scene of receiving the Firebolt, which in the movie was put at the end (for no real reason), when Harry knew it was from Sirius. In the book he gets it at Christmas, and Hermione thinks it’s jinxed because there’s no note or anything (but in fact it’s not). This adds to the mysterious events that are cleared up when Harry finds out the truth about Sirius. (Harry finds out that Sirius sent him the Firebolt in the letter he gets on the train ride home; see following section.)
When Snape caught Harry with the Marauder’s Map, in the book it was because Malfoy saw his head in Hogsmeade (Harry tripped Crabbe and the Invisibility Cloak got pulled down). In the movie it was because Harry saw “Peter Pettigrew” on the map (which he never did, by the way) and went out to look for him when he was supposed to be in bed.
The scene with Harry asking Prof. Lupin to help him with his dementor problem, which in the book is just after one of Lupin’s classes but in the movie occurs while walking in the Forbidden Forest (why the heck would they be doing that, anyway?).
The scene of Prof. Lupin talking to Harry about why he wouldn’t let him face the boggart and the Prof. Snape walking in and giving Lupin his potion was changed. In the book it happens in Lupin’s classroom when everyone else is at Hogsmeade, but in the movie is set on an odd bridge on the grounds, and Snape never comes into the picture (see next section). Even worse, Lupin says something about Harry’s mother “understanding him” or something, which never occurred in the book.
When Harry went to Hogsmeade at Christmas (the first time), he did not use the Invisibility Cloak in the book. He heard a much more extensive story from under a table in the Three Broomsticks, hidden by a Christmas tree and Ron and Hermione’s legs. In the movie Fudge, Madam Rosmerta, and Prof. McGonagall (and there should have been Hagrid and Prof. Flitwick as well) mentioned nothing of the Fidelius Charm or Black being Harry’s godfather. They’re going to have trouble in the 5th movie when Dumbledore puts a Fidelius Charm on Sirius’s house and Harry knows why he can only see it after he reads the info in Dumbledore’s writing, if supposedly (by the movies) Harry doesn’t know what a Fidelius Charm is.
During Harry’s Patronus lessons, he produces only a weak, shapeless Patronus even after several practices. He is never able to force the boggart back into the box and doesn’t know he can really make a Patronus in the face of dementors until he does it from the opposite bank of the lake (when he goes back in time).
In the book the Knight Bus almost ran Harry over but stopped short, which is why he thought Sirius-the-dog was the Grim—shortly after seeing the dog, he had near-fatal incidents (the other being falling off his broom at Quidditch). The bus didn’t even come close in the movie.
Regarding that Quidditch match, the Grim didn’t form out of clouds—Sirius was watching from the stands, and looked like the Grim to Harry. Also, dementors can’t really fly; they just sort of float off the ground. At the Quidditch match they were all on the ground underneath Harry, and they had enough “range” to suck up his happiness from there and make him fall.
When Lupin stops the boggart from getting to Harry, in the book it never actually transforms into the dementor; Lupin simply stops the lesson before Harry gets to the head of the line. In the movie it does transform but Lupin doesn’t seem to notice.
Prof. Lupin doesn’t use the “Immobilus” spell on the Whomping Willow—he prods the special “freezing knot” on the trunk that he and Crookshanks know about.
An added scene: when Harry gives the Marauder’s Map to Prof. Lupin (after Lupin rescues him from Prof. Snape), Harry says that he doesn’t think the map works very well because it shows Peter Pettigrew on it. Harry never says that in the book because he never notices “Peter Pettigrew” on the map—Lupin does, which is why he comes into the Shrieking Shack shortly after Harry, Hermione, and Ron do.
Prof. Trelawney’s room didn’t appear to be in a tower—it was a spacious, light room with low-level-view windows, and the door was regular (not a trapdoor). In the book a trapdoor in the ceiling led into a small, crowded room at the top of the North Tower that was dimly lit due to the shades being drawn and most of the lamps being covered with thick fabrics.
When all the students are sleeping in the Great Hall, Dumbledore is talking to Snape, Filch, and Percy Weasley in the book. That scene in the movie did not contain Percy.
When Harry asks Uncle Vernon to sign his Hogsmeade form, Vernon gets considerably angrier (than he does in the movie) and blusters that he’ll only have anything to do with “that school” if Harry behaves himself and follows his story about being at St. Brutus’s for the entire week that Aunt Marge is there.
Which reminds me: Aunt Marge was there for a week, not a day, and the exploding of the wineglass and her inflation happened on different days. Also, she insulted Harry’s parents a lot more than she did in the movie, which removed the tension from the scene that should have been there when Harry inflated her.
Sirius wasn’t imprisoned at the top of a tower in the book. He was kept in Prof. Flitwick’s classroom, the thirteenth window from the right of the West Tower on the seventh floor. After his rescue, Buckbeak flew them to the top of the West Tower, and from there Sirius took off.
Prof. Trelawney’s prediction came at the end of the school year, after the Divination exam. It most certainly did not happen on the same day that Hermione walked out of the class, as it did in the movie.
Ron’s dad doesn’t tell Harry outright that Black’s looking for him in the book; Harry overhears it and then when Mr. Weasley finds out he adds his part about “don’t go looking for Black.” In the movie he tells Harry both things at once.
Hermione walked out of Divination after scoffing at “the Grim again” because Prof. Trelawney said that she didn’t have what divination required, and that her mind was hopelessly mundane, not that “her heart was shriveled as an old maid’s” as was said in the movie. In addition, in the book Trelawney was mad at Hermione for saying “not that ridiculous Grim again” and knew perfectly well why she walked out—in the movie Prof. Trelawney says “Was it something I said?” and never appears angry.
In the scene at the beginning of the story, Harry was reading his spellbook by an ordinary flashlight—lighting your wand (like he did in the movie) counts as forbidden out-of-school magic.
An added scene: shortly after everyone first walks into the Gryffindor Common Room, it shows Harry and some other people (among them Fred and George Weasly) laughing and eating strange candies that make them produce animal sounds. That scene was never in the book—if anything it looks like the party after they win the Quidditch Cup, but it’s obviously not that in the movie because the Quidditch Cup never happened.
An added scene: the “choir” led by Flitwick singing at the beginning instead of the Sorting (whih Harry didn’t miss in the movie because he never talked to McGonagall about the dementor on the train, which he does in the book).

List of important scenes deleted:

The second time Sirius Black breaks into Hogwarts, using the passwords that Neville wrote down and Crookshanks stole, and ripped open the sheets to Ron’s bed. This scene was a vital clue to what Sirius was after—not Harry, but Peter/Scabbers.
The Quidditch match against Ravenclaw during which Harry meets Cho Chang. They’re going to have a tough time explaining why Harry goes out with her in the 4th and 5th movies if he (supposedly) never met her before.
Prof. Snape’s angry spouting-off at the discovery that Sirius Black escaped, when he somehow suspects that Harry had something to do with it and Dumbledore assures him that Harry could not be in two places at once. It makes it seem like everyone’s OK with Black escaping when they delete this scene.
The two weeks Harry spends in at the Leaky Cauldron/Diagon Alley, during which he finds out about the Firebolt being the world’s best broomstick. Cutting this short to an unreasonable one night with all Harry’s shopping done for him (Aunt Marge didn’t come over the day before school resumed!) removes all explanation from his excitement at getting an actual Firebolt from Sirius.
Prof. Snape giving Prof. Lupin the goblet of Wolfsbane Potion while Harry and Lupin are talking about the dementors (which by the way happens inside the school), causing Harry to think that Snape is trying to murder Lupin but also providing a clue to Lupin being a werewolf.
Harry’s second visit to Hogsmeade, during which he threw the mud at Malfoy by the Shrieking Shack (it wasn’t snow, and it wasn’t during his visit at Christmas).
Any Quidditch match (except the one where Harry falls off his Nimbus), including the final round for the Hogwarts Quidditch Cup. Oliver Wood ceases to exist after the second movie, huh?
Several scenes where Crookshanks tries to get Scabbers/Peter before he gets “eaten,” as well as the one where Harry looks out the window during some late-night studying and sees Crookshanks walking with Sirius-the-dog. Also, the part where Harry and Hermione get through the Whomping Willow because Crookshanks pressed the special freezing knot on the trunk. All of these deleted scenes taken together completely remove Crookshanks’ role as the one who understands Sirius and is trying to get the evil Peter Pettigrew for him.
Harry getting his first-ever birthday cards and presents from Ron, Hermione, and Hagrid, including the Pocket Sneakoscope which keeps going off throughout the story whenever Peter/Scabbers is around (because he’s untrustworthy).
The train ride home during which Sirius sends Harry a letter by an owl that Ron can keep. It contains a signed Hogsmeade-permission form.
The end-of-the-year feast and announcement of House Cup winners, which would have made the movie seem more complete.