Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: 190 pages.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: 251 pages
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: 320 pages
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: 636 pages

If you’re adapting serial source material into the movie format and you’re suddenly faced with the problem of the next installment having twice the amount of content of the previous one, you’ll be forced to ask yourself whether it might not be smarter to split it up into two films, keeping the proportions intact. This was a fact that had to be strongly considered by WarnerBros., the financial backers of the Harry Potter films’ production. It was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’s director Alfonso Cuaron who strongly suggested to the fourth film’s director, Mike Newell, to fit the 636 pages long (original UK Bloomsbury edition) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire into one single movie. Mike Newell agreed with his predecessor when he found the book’s essence, it’s red line he could hold onto and focus on within his motion picture: the book is a classic thriller. This was the notion on which writer Steve Kloves started adapting J.K. Rowling’s book into a screenplay - set up the antagonists and their shrouded plan in the beginning, then show how the main characters get more and more entangled in it. Any side plot that is only secondary to this process is prone to be left out of the script.

The procedure of splitting up the source material’s content into what’s more relevant and what’s less relevant (in relation to what has been defined as it’s ‘essence’) is integral to any adaptation. This is something that Jo Rowling, the source of the source material so to speak, understands. And because she understands, and because she does value the Harry Potter movies, she’s always been ready to offer any help she can give during the adaptation. So it came to be after frequent talk backs between Kloves and Rowling that the following scenes and characters were decided to be cut from the Goblet of Fire movie: the Dursleys and all the scenes at Privet Drive, Charlie, Bill and Percy Weasley, Winky and Dobby, Ludo Bagman, the meeting with Sirius in the cave, Buckbeak and almost the entire S.P.E.W. subplot. In addition to those, the Quidditch World Cup and the Yule Ball were radically shortened.

Word on these omissions was quickly spread via news outlets, causing an immediate uproar in fan communities. Beloved secondary characters, fun story tangents - cut! Why not make the movie four hours long instead of merely two, to keep those scenes, to fit them in afterall? There are two strong arguments against this. Firstly, four hour movies don’t make sense from a marketing standpoint. Studios generally fear that long movies will scare away a big part of a potential audience. Sure, the Lord of the Rings trilogy was successful in spite of each film’s length; but that was a risk that paid off, and not many of the big studios are willing to take that risk. A longer running time also means less screenings per day and consequently less ticket revenues. Secondly, prolonging a movie always comes at the expense of pacing, one of the most important aspects in filmmaking. Much more than a book, a strong (and especially high-profile film such as Harry Potter) film needs to be paced well, which means that the story only slows down so much - usually following a succession of increasingly intense scenes - that it doesn’t start dragging, because once that happens, the film loses the viewer’s unidirectional focus (contrary to a book, which can be set aside and picked up again at a later time of the reader’s own choosing). From what I can tell, the film’s story will progress as follows:
The Riddle House -> the Quidditch World Cup -> the arrival of the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students -> Harry and Ron’s fight -> Task 1 -> the Yule Ball -> Task 2 -> the pensieve -> Task 3 -> the graveyard -> the aftermath
While that certainly isn’t more than a very brief summary, it definitely reads like a high-paced thriller to me.

Still, omitting material will impact the remaining scenes, they weren’t isolated from those parts in the book after all, but always affected them in some way. This realization is what causes some scenes in the film to differ from what happened in the book - if a ’cause’ in one of the cut side plots has an integral ‘effect’ on something that’s being kept, that ’cause’ needs to be reassigned to someone or something else that’s in the film. For instance: if Winky’s not in the film, who’s going to be suspected of conjuring up the Dark Mark at the Quidditch World Cup; if Dobby’s been axed, who’s going to find Harry gillyweed for the second task; if the Dursley’s are cut, how does Harry get permission to attend the Quidditch World Cup with the Weasleys?
There are two ways to deal with this: you can either leave out the ‘effect’ because it’s bearing on the main plot is minimal (how Harry managed to go to the World Cup is relatively unimportant in the overall story), or keep the ‘effect’ but find a new ’cause’. For instance, it can be argued that in the book Ludo Bagman’s function (in relation to the plot) is to draw away the reader’s suspicion from the real culprit, to the effect that the plot twist at the end catches you unawares. Since this is one of the most basic plot devices in a thriller, and Newell sees the film as a thriller too, you’d think he’d keep that distraction - but Bagman’s not in the film, that’s a fact. Ultimately, that problem is easily solved: there are enough shady characters left who can harness the viewer’s suspicion. A book, having more room for details, will set up various such distractions, where a film is tight enough to function with one only. Having not yet seen the film, I predict that the false leads will concentrate mainly on the Durmstrang delegation. So where in the book you have half your suspicion focused on Bagman and the other half on Durmstrang, Bagman’s half will be reassigned to Durmstrang in the film. And in a nutshell, the big advantage of reassigning is that it saves time, and keeps the pacing lively. As soon as Bagman’s original ‘effects’ on the main plot are reassigned, you can leave him out entirely, including all of his exposition and his antics.

I believe the S.P.E.W. scenes deserve a special mention at this point: this particular subplot is a story in itself, and by the events in book 6, recently released Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, it still has not had any greater impact on the main story line. Yes, it reads like a nice metaphor for equal rights, but nothing has come of it - yet? If in the final book something major happens that was set in motion by S.P.E.W., what significance will the omission of those sequences in movie four have in respect to the final, seventh film? If the final book’s resolution sees the elves liberating themselves from their slavery and causing the downfall of Voldemort and his cronies with their mysterious elvish magic, how will the filmmakers pull that off in the last movie? Or similarly, with Percy being shunned from the Goblet of Fire movie, how can the Ministry scenes in Order of the Phoenix still work? I offer two suggestions: I have a strong feeling that Jo Rowling would object to scenes and characters being cut from the film if they were vital further down the line. So if she doesn’t protest at Steve Kloves cutting S.P.E.W., chances are it won’t be that important in the final installment. But if it is, and here’s my second suggestion, an experienced film writer (be it Kloves or someone new) is bound to find a way to reassign the ’causes’ that works just as well.

An adaptation is not about fulfilling the readers’ visual needs (you’re imagination should take care of that), a film is a different medium and an artform in its own right, with its own set of rules and values. That is why a film will always differ from the book it’s based on - it has to function as a self-contained piece of art. And judging by the overwhelmingly positive reviews of early screenings of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, this film does deliver.

Posted by Tai in Commentary, Harry Potter • Add to del.icio.us Add to Digg