I don't really need to give an introduction here, chances are you know about Harry Potter, it's kind of the biggest entertainment product of the late 90's to 2000's, defining a generation and dominating two mediums. As an insanely massive fan, like most people, i compare the books to the movies, so here are my rankings of the franchise, from best to worst. Keep in mind i think all of these are excellent.Movies: Goblet of Fire, Philosopher's Stone, Order of the Phoenix, Prisoner of Azkaban, Deathly Hallows Pt 2, Chamber of Secrets, Deathly Hallows Pt 1, Half-Blood Prince.
Books: Philosopher's Stone, Order of the Phoenix, Deathly Hallows, Chamber of Secrets, Goblet of Fire, Prisoner of Azkaban, Half-Blood Prince.
So there may be a few things that you will notice about this list, the first one being Half-Blood Prince is my least favourite of both the books and films, the reason why this is, is because it's the dullest of both but for different reasons. In the book, it felt like there was little action, and after Order of the Phoenix built it up so well and gave us a lot of great action, here, we get very little. Most of this book feels like it's just there to set up the final book of the series without giving us much of it's own story, which is what the prior books were all able to do excellently. Then there's the character development, of which still feels minimal in terms of where it counts. Order of the Phoenix had characters overcoming the death of loved ones, letting go of their childhoods and becoming adults and warriors...this book focuses on the love aspect of things...whoopee. Seriously, that whole Harry and Ginny thing just came out of nowhere. The film version has a lot of these problems as well, but to a less serious degree, seeing as it doesn't have as much time as a book does to flesh everything out. My big problem with Half-Blood Prince is that it's boring to look at, everything is grey, even when it's the middle of the day, everything is grey, yes they're trying to symbolise the dark times that they face but when your entire film is grey on grey for two hours, it gets seriously boring to look at. Gone are the zany visuals of prior films, instead it's just stale visuals with no creative magic or special effects to back it up.
Apart from that, there are other things worth talking about, the first one being which ones are better at what. Despite the listings, i would consider all of the books to be better than the films due to their extra details and developments for the characters and fleshing out the worlds even more...that is except for one. The Prisoner of Azkaban is the one where I feel the movie version does the important stuff even better than the book. The emotions are stronger in how they're represented, the atmosphere and tension are darker yet still visually interesting, even the magical creatures and effects are more entertaining and creative. It's the only one that I watch and i feel hasn't lost any significant content from book to film adaptation and still is able to add new content and make it a worthy adaptation. The Prisoner of Azkaban is the best of the adaptations, the reason why it's not my favourite is simply because as just films, not adaptations, i think the other three have more values and are basically more entertaining.
All of the other books I think are excellent adaptations, yes they lose some significant stories or character arcs, but they kept the important elements, they perfectly captures the wonder and charm of the books and never made any changes for the sake of making changes. As just standalone films go, they are damn near perfect in my opinion, some more perfect than others, but for the most part, these are some of my all time favourite films that I can watch over and over again and never get tired of.
-Danny
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