There’s something that has been on my mind for a few years now but I never gave it too much thought until I realised that a certain pattern was forming. Every once in awhile, there is a movie or television series that kinda screams to audiences “hey, the studio/network was money hungry so we’re putting this out even though it’s crap.” I first noticed it with the latter Harry Potter films, then with The Hobbit trilogy, and of course, Game of Thrones. Of course, I didn’t realise that this was what was happening until I watched the appendices of The Hobbit… Which I highly recommend if anyone was asking.
I have always been a huge fan of each of the book series which naturally translated to the films/TV show when they were first released. However, as each series progressed, my joy and excitement quickly dwindled. Everything that I enjoyed from the books were disappearing in front of my eyes as each movie/season became more popular and therefore, generated more money. I couldn’t understand why it was happening for a long time and became sad and outranged over what I was seeing on the screen.
Why were important storylines being erased from Harry Potter? Why were some characters non-existent and others, completely changed? I saw it in Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince with Voldemort’s entire backstory being replaced by horny teenagers. The Hobbit decided it was doing to become a trilogy for no reason and add a bunch of characters that had nothing to do with anything while also losing the magic that The Lord of the Rings had. And don’t get me started of what Game of Thrones did to the beautiful Dorne and the characters that were fleshed out and interesting in A Song of Ice and Fire.
Each series started off so well and so dedicated to the book (well maybe not The Hobbit, but that was riding off of the LOTR love) and by the end, they resembled a world that I didn’t even recognise anymore. As I said upthread, I realised what was happening after I watched the appendices from The Hobbit. In that almost nine hour series, I learned a lot of things that shed light on why the trilogy was the way that it was:
- Guillermo Del Toro was supposed to be the director and he had a LOT of early artwork/ideas before he walked away from the film.
- Peter Jackson decided to take on the challenge with only a few months until filming began. Which means he barely had any pre-production time vs. the years he had for LOTR. And the studio would not postpone.
- PJ tried to do the most that he could with the time that he had but of course, it was hard.
- The new filming technologies that they used were not as great on the eye as the standard ones.
- And perhaps the biggest shock of them all: the Battle of the Five Armies was as crappy as it was because the studio pushed PJ and co. to get the film out as SOON as possible. The movie that was sent to theatres was not the one that PJ wanted the world to see. If you want to see a closer version of that, watch the extended edition.
The first four points are pretty depressing to learn but I think the last one tells it all: the studios didn’t care what movie they were putting out in theatres, they just wanted the money that would come from the release. And boy, you could tell that was the case because that movie was a hot mess.
So with that knowledge, it was easy to pick up on what happened with the Harry Potter series that veered so far away from the books in many ways. Once that money started rolling in and the audience was a sure thing, I highly doubt Warner Brothers were concerned about the quality of the movies that they were putting out. The few who were upset about the movies were STILL going out to watch them in theatres because you had to (I am guilty of this).
Most recently, Game of Thrones, HBO, and David Benioff and Daniel Weiss committed the same atrocity with the last season of the show. For a book reader, it was kinda going downhill anyway but the final season was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen (and I also sat through the Dexter series finale). It was clear that HBO only cared about the money because characters were completely obliterated and storylines were lost in the wind. It was also obvious that the show runners had more freedom to prove how much they didn’t care once the source material ran out. It’s easy to send a big “F— you” to your fans when you know they’re still going to watch. The show lovers will watch because they don’t know any better and the book lovers will slowly damage themselves because they know they’re not getting those final books any time soon.
So with all of that said, I think it’s obvious that these studios and networks won’t bother to make quality adaptations when they know that the Potterheads, Tolkienites, and the loyal fans, will always show up.
The Film Tease 