What difference would having one director have made on the movies?

As said on another thread, I think it would have given them more to stand on, instead of the different aspect of 4 different directors. The question is who would have been the better director to make all 8? As well as if they would have used one director, would they have made Deathly Hallows into a double feature?

I've always wondered this myself. I like all the movies, but I particularly enjoy Chris Columbus' work in SS and CoS and Alfonso Cuaron's work in PoA.

As to DH being split...I still think they would have. Having seen it in two-parts, I can't really imagine it any other way!

I've wondered this as well at some points during movies, but it would be hard to pick just one of them since they all brought their own qualities to the films in my opinion. I definitely think they would have kept the two parts to DH otherwise they wouldn't have had enough time for everything that happened in it.

I really liked Alfonso Cuaron's depiction, and I think he would have done well with the later movies because they progressively got darker.

No questions, the last book HAD to be split into two movies. It would have been impossible to cram it all into one.

As said on another thread, I think it would have given them more to stand on, instead of the different aspect of 4 different directors. The question is who would have been the better director to make all 8? As well as if they would have used one director, would they have made Deathly Hallows into a double feature?

If they didn't make the last film a double feature, the fans would have been very disappointed. There was simply too much material that would have been cut. I would have liked too see what Tim Burton would have done with the series.

They would have been a lot more consistent. I've been re-watching the movies, and its easy to distinguish the different directing styles.
Prisoner of Azkaban is amazing. While Yates did a fantastic job on the last two movies, I wonder what Alfonso Cuaron's depiction would have been like...POA is one of my favourite movies of all time, and I kind of wish he had directed another one.

I've wondered what the Harry Potter movies would have been like if only one director would have done all eight as well. Unlike most people, I only thought Alfonso Cuaron's directing job was OK, I mean, I like the darker, edgier tone to the Prisoner of Azkaban movie, but a lot of explanation was left out compared to the book, but then again, I'm a stickler for movies being faithful to the books. Were there any directors that had Alfonso Cuaron's dark, edgy tone and Chris Columbus's faithfulness to the books, or is that just wishful thinking on my part?

Fan hopes and dreams are all very well, and cost nothing, but it is out of the question that any ambitious director would commit to a decade of making a kids' film series.

To be honest I really liked the fact that they had 4 different directors because they each gave a different flavour to the films. I thought Columbus and Cuaron did the best job- it would have been interesting to see them co-directing the films.

I wish they all would've combined to make the films. It probably would not have worked, but it would be interesting to see what they could create together since each brings something different to the table. So i like the co-director idea.:agree:

I'm a stickler for movies being faithful to the books. Were there any directors that had Alfonso Cuaron's dark, edgy tone and Chris Columbus's faithfulness to the books, or is that just wishful thinking on my part?Yes. Asking a movie to be a book is like asking a baseball team to be a basketball team. Good sports teams do the same general thing well: outscore the opposition consistently by a combination of good offense and defense. Good movies and books (and operas and plays and campfire yarns) do one thing well: tell stories.

So, what our dream director would do is tell the story well: and be able to recognize how to tell the story cinematically rather than with words. And this leads to a problem: Fan hopes and dreams are all very well, and cost nothing, but it is out of the question that any ambitious director would commit to a decade of making a kids' film series.Ambitious and good go hand in hand Let's say that Harry Potter had gotten a Peter Jackson 11 years ago. (We'll call him/her HPPJ.) That is, someone who took the original story and told it not just cinematically, but told it well cinematically. Let's say that under HPPJ's direction, Stone gets the acclaim and audience response that Rings or Prisoner got instead of the acclaim/response that Stone got.

After 2 or 3 HP films, this HPPJ is going to be one hot commodity. Sure, maybe doing all the 7 films sounded good to HPPJ in 2000. However, after a 3rd success with Harry Potter, is HPPJ going to want to do Harry Potter yet again? Being good and being ambitious go hand-in-hand: you cannot improve unless you have the ambition to push yourself. And doing another Harry Potter film simply wouldn't do it. (You'll note that Peter Jackson did several other films before returning to the Hobbit, and if his original plans had not been messed up by MGM's financial debacle, he would not have directed the Hobbit!)

And, of course, there would be the fact that the HP "Peter Jackson" would be in demand. Not only would other projects want him, but if HPPH is any director at all, then he/she has got a script or two of his/her own burning a hole in their pockets! Other studios are going to offer HPPJ a bit to do their films, and WB is going to have less incentive to keep HPPJ because they know that they can cruise due to customer loyalty.


So, this means that to get one director for all the films, you need someone between a Columbus and a Jackson. So, the films probably would have more faithful renditions of the story than we initially got, but not as brilliant as we see from top-notch directors. The audiences probably would not have plummeted as drastically as they did after the first film, but they might never have rebounded the way that they did after Prisoner. In other words, we would have gotten unspectacular competence.

(Of course, that would be my description of Yates.... :cool:)

For consistency's sake, I would have preferred only one director for all. And honestly, I think Columbus was the only one to stay as true to the books as possible and was able to get the bigger message of each book across.

Though it was nice to have four different perspectives which kept it interesting.

As for the seventh as two parts, I definitely think it was necessary considering the amount of information and action that is in the book, all of which is necessary to the plot, unlike the other books where some things can be left out and it doesn't change anything.

In other words, we would have gotten unspectacular competence.

(Of course, that would be my description of Yates.... :cool:)

I, too, thought of Yates when I read unspectacular competence :) If Yates had started the series, I don't think it's out of the question that he wouldn't finish them all. He worked on the series for half a decade after all.

For consistency's sake, I would have preferred only one director for all. And honestly, I think Columbus was the only one to stay as true to the books as possible and was able to get the bigger message of each book across.


But as I said in another thread, you must take the size and substance of the books into consideration too. Colombus did get across the message of them, but Wimsey can tell you that they did not tell any story.

Chris Columbus originally expected to be directing all of the movies. It was when he saw the immensity of the undertaking of the first two that he declined to do the third. Columbus' experience was mostly in doing movies with young children, so we should ask would he have been suited to direct the later movies with more grown up themes and older lead actors?

I don't think any directors would have lasted 7/8 films. After all, the directors were all offered to do the next films and David Yates said that he did the last three mainly because he didn't want to be the director who jumped ship right before the end.

I think the main problem with the films is that they never really seemed to be able to move beyond the children's film label. They didn't dare to really make the films grow with their characters. The script was also really lacking at times. There are some really, really bad lines in all 8 films.

I think the main problem with the films is that they never really seemed to be able to move beyond the children's film label. They didn't dare to really make the films grow with their characters.

I strongly disagree. How can you think of Deathly Hallows: Part 2 as a children's film given the amount of death, destruction and adult themes it contains?

I doubt that any director would want to do all the 8 films; they would have wanted to turn to some work of their own eventually. Most cinematic adaptations are of single literary works and not of a series of long books like Harry Potter.

I´m sure no director could have made all the 8 films (or 7 films for that matter) without losing inspiration and ambition.

Last of all most directors considered to be top-notch directors primarily want to do their own work. It is unlikely that they would have any interest in doing an adaptation of Harry Potter, let alone the entire series.

My favorite directors were Chris Columbus and David Yates. I think they both did a phenomenal job in creating the world of Harry Potter exactly as I saw it when I was reading it. I think they both did the best jobs. But to me, it isn't so much the directing of the movies as it is the writing of them. Some of the movies (PoA in my opinion) were written terribly as scripts. Everything was out of order and wrong. I think that the writers were the ones who made all the difference in the movies.

Oh my godric is would've loved to have Chris columbus direct all eight films! He kept pretty close to canon, which I am a stickler for. I think it would've made the movies much more consistent...maybe the uniforms wouldn't have changed nine or so times...:D

Oh my godric is would've loved to have Chris columbus direct all eight films! He kept pretty close to canon, which I am a stickler for. I think it would've made the movies much more consistent...maybe the uniforms wouldn't have changed nine or so times...:D

hahahahahaha love this, and agree !!!!

hahahahahaha love this, and agree !!!!

:elaugh:Thanks. I just love that in the first two they wear hats with their robesas written in the books, because they look so cute! Even though I never imagined them that way in my head. Columbus was actually involved in almost every other movie though, just not as director...I got bored one day and checked:) and I've decided that hogwarts must have about twenty different options for uniforms, because in the fifth movie, every member of the DA has a different uniform.

In my opinion, it would have been great if Chris Columbus or Alfonso Cuaron would have directed all of the Harry Potter films. I think that Chris Columbus was the most faithful to the books and he set the tone for the whole series. On the other hand, Alfonso Cuaron did a wonderful job in portraying the darkness in POA and because of this, I would have loved to have seen him direct the rest of the films especially DH.

As far as making DH into two movies, I think that it would have happened regardless of who was the director because it would have been kind of impossible trying to cram everything into one movie.

I agree about Dh being two films, I mean it would have had to be made into a 5 hour long movie(or longer) to stay true to the book. And I didn't really appreciate Alfonso Curon as a director for POA, I thought that he didn't make it as excelent as he possibly could have. Christopher Columbus, did stay faithful to the books, and was the only one who did the best at it.

I must say that maybe having Yates for all of the films could have been could but having 4 directors actually brought something to the saga, surely Yates is my favorite but I consider the rest of them all at the same level so it was actually a good thing having various directors.

In certain aspects yes, in others no. Some of the directors didn't pay close enough attention to certain areas that(although were small parts in the books) played into the entire book plot. Some directors took those out and so that changed not only that movie, but changed the following movies. Like taking out Kreacher, yes it didn't affect the battle for Hogwarts drastically, but it did change it. While having one director they may have added and excluded certain stuff, it all would have made sense because he was one director on all movie's not different directors adding different lights( that were and were not in some books).

In certain aspects yes, in others no. Some of the directors didn't pay close enough attention to certain areas that(although were small parts in the books) played into the entire book plot. Some directors took those out and so that changed not only that movie, but changed the following movies. Like taking out Kreacher, yes it didn't affect the battle for Hogwarts drastically, but it did change it. While having one director they may have added and excluded certain stuff, it all would have made sense because he was one director on all movie's not different directors adding different lights( that were and were not in some books).There is no reason why this had to be true. A competent director would have focused on telling the story at hand. He/she also would have known that a plot element that was important to Prince or Hallows had to be introduced in that film regardless of whether it had been introduced in prior films: Joe and Jane Audience were not going to remember these things, and they are paying the director to tell a coherent story in the 2.5 hours they are sitting in the theater. This would have been true regardless of whether the director was doing all of the HP films or just one of them.

So, if Kreacher was going to be at the Battle of Hogwarts, then Kreacher needed to be introduced in Hallows: and preferably during part 2 if you are doing a 2-parter. Moreover, if Kreacher's presence is to have any meaning in the battle, then that has to be introduced in that movie. (By no means am I advocating that they should have done this: they really should have merged Kreacher and Dobby, and house-elfs at the Battle would have just cluttered an otherwise pretty well done set of scenes.)

Rowling herself did this with every book. Had Kreacher not been introduced in any of the prior books, then she still could have introduced him in Hallows: instead of reminding us about Kreacher's characters, she could have introduced them then and there. Instead of reminding us of SPEW, she could have had Hermione simply be outraged on his behalf, building on other aspects of her character. And if you did not remember anythign about SPEW or Kreacher from the prior books (it had been, after all, 2 years since most people had read Prince), well, no fear: Rowling reminded us.

(It is might not be a coincidence that Rowling was a school teacher: one thing that any competent school teacher learns is that you have to remind students about the stuff they learned 2 months ago if you are going to go back and use that as a starting point for the next series of lessons.)

Christopher Columbus, did stay faithful to the books, and was the only one who did the best at it.Columbus was faithful to the narrative details of the book. Columbus was utterly faithless to the stories told by those two books: his films failed to tell any story, never mind Rowling's stories about hard vs. wrong choices in personal desires (Stone) or loyalties (Chamber). The other 3 directors were much more focused on storytelling, even if Yates told different stories with Prince and Hallows than Rowling's books did.

I see where you are coming from. But I'm a purist still, so to me if they were to keep them closer to the books, that is what I was looking for. I'm not dogging Yates! he did an excelent job with DH P1&2, I just have some annoyances with what he took out in HBP. And the only thing I don't like about OotP is that they only fight in the hall of prophecy, but I understand that to make it to JKR's book form would have been a massive undertaking and would have been hard to remake without something being thrown ascew.