@stephen:
The third one was the only good one. Have you watched the first movie recently? It's like a made-for-TV kids movie.
Have you read the first book lately? It's like a made for children kids book.
The tone and style of the first book was way different from the later ones ANYWAY, I felt the movie captured it pretty well.
And the third one didn't get into any of the crucial details that explained everything about Harry's father tand their group or the time turner… i can't imagine trying to follow that movie without having read the book first.
@Kaiolino:
And here I thought winning a bunch of prestigious prizes makes you a good author. Silly me.
Fame and success AREN'T the same as being good. I'm not knocking Rowling, but that's a really silly criteria. Plenty of things win awards, or make lots of money, that suck. (Scary Movie, for instance. Or Vanilla Ice. Or Naruto.) And Potter has the built in "Well, it sells millions of copies, we'd BETTER be nice to it, and all the judges have actually heard of it." thing going on.
Rowling is fantastic at memorable characters and characterization. That's where she really shines. And the Potter books are a solid fun read. The sheer phenomena means they'll be in bookstores for forever.
But 92% of her ideas are borrowed, (She didnt make up hippogryphs, or moving paintings, or the entire chosen one thing, for instance, and EVERY book was locked into the full year structure so the finale could take place 3 days before the end of the school year, even though the villain schemes really didn't require that. Book 4 could have been done in the first 10 minutes without the tournament at all, if the entire overly complicated ploy was JUST to get harry to touch a disguised teleporation item.).
Her actual prose is a bit weak, (She'll never have the poetry of Lewis Carol or the depth of Tolkien. Can you think of any particularly memorable lines off the top of your head?) and since she's locked in as a children's author she'll probably never do anything with the maturity of James Clavell or George Martin. (I'm not saying blood and tits, but… adults around other adults and dealing with older topics)
Its also quite clear the editors were terrified of telling her to cut anything on the last three books. Could have easily chopped a hundred pages out of each of those to make a much tighter story. (And the last book could have showed what the other characters were doing, instead of 150 pages wandering through woods)
She told an interesting tale that pretty much lived up to its promises and her master plan, and had fun characters, and it was enjoyable. That's all any writer needs to do. She IS good, but not great. Just famous. There are definitely better writers out there.
As far as the double feature thing? Thats what the movies SHOULD have been doing since the fourth one. Or at least recording enough footage for eventual special editions with everything.
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