The Prisoner of Azkaban is the first of the
movies to make really significants cuts from/changes to the book, even though
it doesn’t have the excuse that The
Goblet of Fire and on do: their
staggering length. Rereading this book
really reminded me how just how much the movie leaves out, but even though it’s
not as faithful as The Sorcerer’s Stone
or The Chamber of Secrets, I still
maintain that it’s a great movie (spoilers.)
Lots of
stuff on the cutting room floor, the hardest of which is the majority of the
Marauders stuff. In this movie, the
climactic info-dump gets cut to ribbons, and as a result, we miss out on a lot
of interesting backstory on James, Sirius, Lupin, and Pettigrew, backstory
that’s been fan-favorite material for years (I believe this is the main reason The Prisoner of Azkaban gets on some
fans’ shit lists.) Additionally, it
means the explanations for things like who really betrayed the Potters and why
are kind of skimmed over. I can’t say
for sure, since I of course read the book before seeing the movie for the first
time, but I feel like this sequence might have been confusing had I not been
able to fill in the gaps from the book.
Plenty of
other things get taken out, with different levels of importance. The majority of the Quidditch season is
excised, which means Cho and Cedric aren’t introduced in this movie; neither is
super crucial at this juncture, but it means they both just pop up in The Goblet of Fire, which does take away
just a bit from that film. Harry gets
his Firebolt at the end of the movie instead of the middle, which winds up
taking away a big part of the motivation behind Ron and Hermione feuding – because
she suspects in the book that the broom came from Sirius Black, the teachers
take it away for weeks to check it for jinxes, and Ron is furious that she’d
commit such a “crime” against a primo broom.
They’ve only just made up when Scabbers goes missing and sets the whole
thing off again. In the movie, there
just isn’t as much brewing.
Some
changes are less noticeable, like skipping Harry overhearing Mr. and Mrs.
Weasley talking about Sirius Black and just going straight to Mr. Weasley
warning Harry. And there’s always the
usual minor character/flavor moments, like Oliver Wood’s desperation to finally
win the Quidditch Cup (a casualty of removing most of the Quidditch) or
Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil becoming devotees of Professor Trelawney.
A lot of
these cuts were made, not so much because they couldn’t fit, but because Alfonso Cuarón wanted to make room for
more stylistic sequences and flourishes.
It’s easily the most cinematic film of the franchise; I love the
changing-seasons motif with the Whomping Willow, the additions to the
single-timeline bent of the Time Turner sequence, and the little moments of
casual magic use that make the world feel more well-rounded.
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