Harry Potter: 10 Movie Scenes That Are Completely Different In The Books
Everyone knows by now what the films left out, but what about the scenes they did include?
Type 'Harry Potter books' into Google, and you get a bunch of Tumblr threads explaining either what the films left out from the books, or why the films just aren't as good as the books.
Everybody knows by now what the Harry Potter films left out - the same as everybody knows the books are better - but how about the book moments that did make it into the films?
Even when the same characters are discussing the same things at the same point in the story, an actor's delivery, a visual effect, even a musical note is sometimes enough for the scene to turn out completely differently to its book counterpart, sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the much, much worse.
So, from the Goblet of Fire onwards (which is around the time the books got so big the films had to go in a different direction), here are 10 examples of where the same scene changed in translation - and which medium did it better.
10. The Tale Of The Three Brothers (The Deathly Hallows)
In The Book: Hermione simply reads Harry and Ron the story of the Peverell brothers, the original bearers of the Deathly Hallows. It's an interesting story, one that is vital to the narrative, and Ron's repeated interruptions over how his mother used to read him the story keeps you invested, but there's nothing to suggest anything visually exciting is going on.
In The Film: A beautifully animated sequence of how the Peverell brothers might have acquired the Hallows is voiced-over by Hermione.
Summary: Where the films have an advantage over the books is in their visual storytelling, and there's no better example than in this scene. What could have been a single camera shot of Hermione reading a story turns into one of the best scenes in Deathly Hallows: Part 1, so the film version wins this one comfortably.