8. Lord Voldemort - Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban
Back in the early days the Harry Potter books were a lot more episodic and predictably structured; Harry goes to school, something mysterious is going on, its revealed to be related to something hinted at from the beginning (and involving the Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher), Harry saves the day. You almost get the feeling it was going to stay in that vein until Rowling decided to bring Voldemort to the fore; hes not present in any form in the third book. Its like hes been dropped as a threat. Alfonso Cuarons didn't make the mistake of increasingly his threat, instead building Hogwarts as a school and giving the most tonally correct adaptation of any of the Potter books. Voldemort is mentioned, but only because hes an essential part of the world and key characters back story, rather than directly influential to the plot. I've often wondered, had the Prisoner Of Azkaban been made with the same epic ideology of the later films if more would have been made of the Dark Lords impending return. On some evidence its refreshingly no; The Half Blood Prince (a film without the physical presence of Voldemort, but plenty of flashbacks) made a bold decision to cut down much of the characters backstory to keep focus on teenage angst.