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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28248 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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It's probably common for fans of books with new movie/TV adaptations be overtly worried about new audiences understanding the plot without the (often frankly not all that necessary) context the books provide. I remember that when GoT TV series was announced a lot of posters on westeros.org were convinced that it's going to be pared down and dumbed down a lot since the "normie viewer" would never understand ASoIaF plots and so on, and then the first four seasons were pretty much straight adaptation from the books and the normies mostly understood it just fine.

Point taken. But, in our defense, iirc part of it was the worry that the writers would feel that way.

I remember watching the Harry Potter movies before reading the books, and was totally confused by parts of movies 3, 4, and 5. (These are some of the longest books, but don't have correspondingly larger movies than the first two.) Lots of other people I know IRL feel similarly.

GOT is different because they got a whole season to explain a book instead of just a movie.

For what it's worth, I don't consider the Harry Potter movies to be "stories" as such, but rather an "illustration" of the books. I'm not an art snob, and I'm not using that term derogatorily. They're very very good illustrations. But I don't think they stand alone the way Game of Thrones did. They were like "Passion of the Christ", but with wizards.

I find book five meandering and confusing. I know a lot of people love it, but I think Order of the Phoenix was the point where Rowling desperately needed an editor to tell her to cut it down, but she was too big at that point to be reined in.

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