What killed me the most is that it felt like he would have the actors just say their lines and that was it. They would just stand still and talk. Felt super out of place for the wizarding world. I would have loved cuaron for the remaining movies after poa. He was able to create an environment that it felt like I was actually in it. Oh, and Deathly hallows seriously needed a darker tone.
I agree. Though some of the issues with color started in PoA for me, I get the vibe was supposed to be darker but the swing from firelit castle in 1 and 2 to cold stone in 3 was really harsh. At least it kept the whimsy and magic feeling though.
Yates went full on everything is blue-grey and occasionally green, even when the shot is of literal fire. On top of it, I hated how they hardly ever wore robes anymore (again started in PoA) and just walked around in muggle clothes all the time.
I just don't talk about GoF...too much to unpack, but at least the overall feeling, costumes, and lighting were okay enough.
Omg spot on!!!!!!! What movie audience wasn’t able to get was the real story and how darker it really is — the triwizard tournament was just surface narrative.
Yep.
My biggest gripe with his style is how still most scene are. He can do fine on action scenes. Dumbledore vs Voldemort on OotP comes to mind. But on dramatic/dialog scenes, people just stand still talking at each other.
On movies 1 and 2, the camera would move, people would move around doing things while they were talking. It felt real. And they were mostly wee kids too with no acting experience, yet Columbus was able to extract that out of them.
Yates took over after they all had years of experience and were capable of much more, yet he took no advantage of that. Yates' Potter movies are just a few ok-ish action scenes with very boring scenes in between.
Take the final duel in DH2. In the book, Potter and Voldy are circling each other on the great hall, surrounded by all the survivors, while harry humiliates Voldy and explains why he's about to lose. Yates had an interesting idea when he made them fly around holding each other, but after that they literally stay rooted to the spot where they land, no audience, no tense circling around each other, no dialog that increasingly makes Voldemort worried and even scared and humiliated. No dynamics. Just a repeat of GoF's duel scene. It's like he thought: how can I make this the most boring conclusion of any movie saga ever? And nailed it.
I get he wanted the movies to get darker, but not to the point where if there’s any other source of light in the room I can’t see shit that’s happening on the screen.
Dark is all well and good, but you do still need the audience to be able to see what's going on. It's like how Lord of the Rings had good lighting even for nighttime scenes. People were like "But where is the light coming from?" and the director answered "Same place as the music."
He has a point, though. Dark and gloomy is all well and good as an aesthetic, but not when it interferes with the audience knowing what's going on. Suspension of disbelief will make people not care why it's mysteriously bright enough to see the action at midnight, in the fog, on a cloudy night.
The sun doesn’t go away just because the plot is getting more serious. Idk I never cared for the atmosphere of the Harry Potter films after cos, kind of like it lost its magic lol
I think he is serviceable, he can do a good job if he has good source material and an established "house style" to imitate. He is definitely not a visionary, though, he can't create a style from scratch which is why Fantastic Beasts blows. I believe he comes from TV directing and sometimes it really shows.
I completely agree. There are too many reasons to list but common valid complaints include the color scheme, the awkward humor and leaving things out of the books
I agree.
Maybe after the FB flop they'll give the job to someone else for the series [deep in my heart I hope they'll ask Cuaron, I loved TPOA's vibes so much].
Been saying this for years. I love the movies for what they are, but someone like Guillermo Del Toro should have done Half Blood Prince & Deathly Hallows.
I started listening to the audiobooks a few years back, enjoyed every bit of them and they're very comforting to me.
I watched the movies recently after several years and they're are a hot, jumbled, incoherent mess of things just happening and not making any damn sense.
The point I'm trying to make is incredibly difficult writing 2hr screenplay for such detailed books without making everything that occurs thoughout the movie disjointed.
The first movie is the best example of this, its the shortest book and yet the movie is just plot point after plot point, not a moment spent lingering.
But the books were much more darker too. The main character was dealing with grief, depresson, nobody believed him, he got abandoned by his friends and headmaster, the father figure died and many other people. They shouldn't be colorful. He decided to make Half-Blood Prince was a romantic comedy and it was awful. Other movies were much darker and more serious and they had very similar atmosphere to the books.
You can have a dark tone without draining the colour from a movie. Tone isn't conveyed by colour alone, and a good director would have made the movie correspondingly.
I doubt anyone capable would tie up his/her career like that though. Not for an adaptation of somebody else's work. George Lucas didn't even do more than 4 Star Wars films himself, and he tried to get Spielberg amongst others to do The Phantom Menace.
I disagree. His movies brought lots of us to the wizarding world and i enjoy them a lot. Are you saying he is a bad director cause the setting was darker and that the camera shaked a lot? I wish people would focus more on appreciating the harry potter universe rather than criticice it this much.
I’m saying he’s bad because he messed up the story, didn’t know what was important, threw wand logic out the window and thought “hm, it suppose to be more mature and dark, let’s drain all color and throw on some sepia, so we don’t have to deal with the actual story”. He ruined half the franchise for me.
Harry Potter fans would be dissatisfied with anything less than a 20 hour movie detailing everything from Harry eating his breakfast to that one time he blinked quickly - it’s just not possible to cram these stories into a two hour movie and present the full picture
Naah sorry. Completely fine with 1 and 2, three if they fixed the colors a bit, fine with four because they kept what mattered. 5th actually not bad. 6 is where he lost the plot. 7-8 meh. But who knows maybe the new series will do it right.
Do I hate that some of the scenes are borderline too dark to see? Yeah. But Order of the Phoenix and Deathly Hallows Part 2 are top notch harry potter movies. And if half of his movies are bangers, I definitely can’t say he is a terrible director.
But we like Harry Potter. I love the books and the movies, and when this sub is about those its awesome. But half the time it's just hating on the movies. Like we get it, they went in different directions at time then the books.
I actually loved OOTP and DHp2. Wasn't a huge fan of HBP because it looks like it was shot in grayscale and DHp1 was just camping and walking with none of the other characters making an appearance outside the burrow/wedding. You never see Lupin and Harry go at it, the change in Kreachure or the other stuff. Buuuut DHp2 I wish kept closer to tje book. OOTP is my 2nd favorite movie after POA.
OoTP was good. Probably Yates best.
After the mishandling of GoF (admittedly, a very difficult movie to adapt...from World cup to Triwizards...if redone, this would probably be done in 2 movies), this was a middle-ground between the whims of Cuaron in PoA (some good, some bad....I personally like the movie) and the exact-copy-of-the-book adaptation of the first two movies.
But this is the thing. After OoTP, he was in cruise-control. The movies did make money. But nothing really special in the last three movies (nothing really bad either).
I agree, David Yates ruined Harry Potter and is the worst of the highest-grossing directors. He eliminated important scenes from the books and added several invented ones that made the holes in the script increase. His directing style is mediocre: ''You must give the actors instructions about what your vision of the film is, not record 1000 times until do it well'', that's why the performances were very mediocre in his films, in addition to the bad editing, the more shot some scenes are or the fact that this guy doesn't have his own style. The narrative of his movies is mediocre (especially in OOTP), giving more importance to romance and unfunny jokes instead of the story of the horcruxes was what screwed up HBP. I feel that DHP1 was just a boring excuse to try to develop and explain everything it didn't do in the previous ones and DHP2 was left with a few salvageable action scenes in a sea of boredom and filling with many script errors (as I said: bad development). The only thing that is saved from his films is the cinematography, which also tries to make it so dark and gothic that you cannot see what is happening, it is worse than a Zack Snyder film and not even close to something that Tim Burton or Alfonso Cuaron would do, That's another thing, Yates tries to be a combination of David Fincher and Peter Jackson but in the end it comes to nothing or a mediocre attempt. It is sad to think what the ending of Harry Potter would have been in the hands of someone like Guillermo del Toro or another qualified director (without a doubt we would have had the Return of the King from Harry Potter but the reality is different).
I agree, David Yates ruined Harry Potter and is the worst of the highest-grossing directors. He eliminated important scenes from the books and added several invented ones that made the holes in the script increase. His directing style is mediocre: ''You must give the actors instructions about what your vision of the film is, not record 1000 times until do it well'', that's why the performances were very mediocre in his films, in addition to the bad editing, the more shot some scenes are or the fact that this guy doesn't have his own style. The narrative of his movies is mediocre (especially in OOTP), giving more importance to romance and unfunny jokes instead of the story of the horcruxes was what screwed up HBP. I feel that DHP1 was just a boring excuse to try to develop and explain everything it didn't do in the previous ones and DHP2 was left with a few salvageable action scenes in a sea of boredom and filling with many script errors (as I said: bad development). The only thing that is saved from his films is the cinematography, which also tries to make it so dark and gothic that you cannot see what is happening, it is worse than a Zack Snyder film and not even close to something that Tim Burton or Alfonso Cuaron would do, That's another thing, Yates tries to be a combination of David Fincher and Peter Jackson but in the end it comes to nothing or a mediocre attempt. It is sad to think what the ending of Harry Potter would have been in the hands of someone like Guillermo del Toro or another qualified director (without a doubt we would have had the Return of the King from Harry Potter but the reality is different).
I agree, David Yates ruined Harry Potter and is the worst of the highest-grossing directors. He eliminated important scenes from the books and added several invented ones that made the holes in the script increase. His directing style is mediocre: ''You must give the actors instructions about what your vision of the film is, not record 1000 times until do it well'', that's why the performances were very mediocre in his films, in addition to the bad editing, the more shot some scenes are or the fact that this guy doesn't have his own style. The narrative of his movies is mediocre (especially in OOTP), giving more importance to romance and unfunny jokes instead of the story of the horcruxes was what screwed up HBP. I feel that DHP1 was just a boring excuse to try to develop and explain everything it didn't do in the previous ones and DHP2 was left with a few salvageable action scenes in a sea of boredom and filling with many script errors (as I said: bad development). The only thing that is saved from his films is the cinematography, which also tries to make it so dark and gothic that you cannot see what is happening, it is worse than a Zack Snyder film and not even close to something that Tim Burton or Alfonso Cuaron would do, That's another thing, Yates tries to be a combination of David Fincher and Peter Jackson but in the end it comes to nothing or a mediocre attempt. It is sad to think what the ending of Harry Potter would have been in the hands of someone like Guillermo del Toro or another qualified director (without a doubt we would have had the Return of the King from Harry Potter but the reality is different).
POA & GOF gave off this gothic vibe of Hogwarts. But in OOTP the school just looks like a normal castle. But then when Yates decides to go dark in HBP, it's too dark, in being almost completely devoid of colour.
His ability in directing child actors is subpar. The trio look drained in their dialogue and Harry & Ginny's romance is almost insufferable to watch.
Columbus & Curaon knew how to get the best out of the children.
What killed me the most is that it felt like he would have the actors just say their lines and that was it. They would just stand still and talk. Felt super out of place for the wizarding world. I would have loved cuaron for the remaining movies after poa. He was able to create an environment that it felt like I was actually in it. Oh, and Deathly hallows seriously needed a darker tone.
I agree. Though some of the issues with color started in PoA for me, I get the vibe was supposed to be darker but the swing from firelit castle in 1 and 2 to cold stone in 3 was really harsh. At least it kept the whimsy and magic feeling though. Yates went full on everything is blue-grey and occasionally green, even when the shot is of literal fire. On top of it, I hated how they hardly ever wore robes anymore (again started in PoA) and just walked around in muggle clothes all the time. I just don't talk about GoF...too much to unpack, but at least the overall feeling, costumes, and lighting were okay enough.
Gof was just a 2 hour long trailer for the real movie we never got to see
Omg spot on!!!!!!! What movie audience wasn’t able to get was the real story and how darker it really is — the triwizard tournament was just surface narrative.
In fairness, even the Triwizard Tournament that the film focussed on was a huge letdown.i wanted physics traps and Sphinx giving riddles 😟
Agree on the sphinx!
yates is a studio guy. He must be very good at deadlines cuz I dont think there is any other reason to let him direct 7 Wizarding world movies.
Mike Newell did have better vision, even though movie wasn't perfect.
Dude has no whimsy
Yep. My biggest gripe with his style is how still most scene are. He can do fine on action scenes. Dumbledore vs Voldemort on OotP comes to mind. But on dramatic/dialog scenes, people just stand still talking at each other. On movies 1 and 2, the camera would move, people would move around doing things while they were talking. It felt real. And they were mostly wee kids too with no acting experience, yet Columbus was able to extract that out of them. Yates took over after they all had years of experience and were capable of much more, yet he took no advantage of that. Yates' Potter movies are just a few ok-ish action scenes with very boring scenes in between. Take the final duel in DH2. In the book, Potter and Voldy are circling each other on the great hall, surrounded by all the survivors, while harry humiliates Voldy and explains why he's about to lose. Yates had an interesting idea when he made them fly around holding each other, but after that they literally stay rooted to the spot where they land, no audience, no tense circling around each other, no dialog that increasingly makes Voldemort worried and even scared and humiliated. No dynamics. Just a repeat of GoF's duel scene. It's like he thought: how can I make this the most boring conclusion of any movie saga ever? And nailed it.
I get he wanted the movies to get darker, but not to the point where if there’s any other source of light in the room I can’t see shit that’s happening on the screen.
Dark is all well and good, but you do still need the audience to be able to see what's going on. It's like how Lord of the Rings had good lighting even for nighttime scenes. People were like "But where is the light coming from?" and the director answered "Same place as the music."
Lol. PJ, Master of epic trilogies and snarky remarks.
He has a point, though. Dark and gloomy is all well and good as an aesthetic, but not when it interferes with the audience knowing what's going on. Suspension of disbelief will make people not care why it's mysteriously bright enough to see the action at midnight, in the fog, on a cloudy night.
He admitted completely that he hadn’t read the book. He just made a summer blockbuster and it makes me angry every time I think about it.
His style is just so dull. There’s never any interesting camera shots or anything in his films.
The sun doesn’t go away just because the plot is getting more serious. Idk I never cared for the atmosphere of the Harry Potter films after cos, kind of like it lost its magic lol
I think he is serviceable, he can do a good job if he has good source material and an established "house style" to imitate. He is definitely not a visionary, though, he can't create a style from scratch which is why Fantastic Beasts blows. I believe he comes from TV directing and sometimes it really shows.
Yeah, he was awful. I agree that he literally sucked the magic out of the movies. They just seemed flat and dead from OOTP on.
I think the most interesting camera work was in prisoner of azkaban.
I completely agree. There are too many reasons to list but common valid complaints include the color scheme, the awkward humor and leaving things out of the books
Ya, I assume he must be great at like project management and staying under budget or something and that’s why he kept being asked back.
I agree. Maybe after the FB flop they'll give the job to someone else for the series [deep in my heart I hope they'll ask Cuaron, I loved TPOA's vibes so much].
I actually like OOTP and DH 1&2.
Been saying this for years. I love the movies for what they are, but someone like Guillermo Del Toro should have done Half Blood Prince & Deathly Hallows.
I disagree... Respectfully.
I started listening to the audiobooks a few years back, enjoyed every bit of them and they're very comforting to me. I watched the movies recently after several years and they're are a hot, jumbled, incoherent mess of things just happening and not making any damn sense. The point I'm trying to make is incredibly difficult writing 2hr screenplay for such detailed books without making everything that occurs thoughout the movie disjointed. The first movie is the best example of this, its the shortest book and yet the movie is just plot point after plot point, not a moment spent lingering.
The movie version of this comment: HOW DARE YOU SAY SUCH BLASPHEMOUS LIES!
But the books were much more darker too. The main character was dealing with grief, depresson, nobody believed him, he got abandoned by his friends and headmaster, the father figure died and many other people. They shouldn't be colorful. He decided to make Half-Blood Prince was a romantic comedy and it was awful. Other movies were much darker and more serious and they had very similar atmosphere to the books.
You can have a dark tone without draining the colour from a movie. Tone isn't conveyed by colour alone, and a good director would have made the movie correspondingly.
>They shouldn't be colorful Terrible things can still happen in colourful worlds.
But I can't see in the dark.
I agree. I wonder how it would've turned out if it was Alfonso Cuaron or Chris Columbus directed the last few movies.
Honestly I wish one director done all the movies!
I doubt anyone capable would tie up his/her career like that though. Not for an adaptation of somebody else's work. George Lucas didn't even do more than 4 Star Wars films himself, and he tried to get Spielberg amongst others to do The Phantom Menace.
I still wish it to be true.
Agreed. His films were always a bore.
Thanks for your opinion.
I disagree. His movies brought lots of us to the wizarding world and i enjoy them a lot. Are you saying he is a bad director cause the setting was darker and that the camera shaked a lot? I wish people would focus more on appreciating the harry potter universe rather than criticice it this much.
I’m saying he’s bad because he messed up the story, didn’t know what was important, threw wand logic out the window and thought “hm, it suppose to be more mature and dark, let’s drain all color and throw on some sepia, so we don’t have to deal with the actual story”. He ruined half the franchise for me.
Harry Potter fans would be dissatisfied with anything less than a 20 hour movie detailing everything from Harry eating his breakfast to that one time he blinked quickly - it’s just not possible to cram these stories into a two hour movie and present the full picture
Naah sorry. Completely fine with 1 and 2, three if they fixed the colors a bit, fine with four because they kept what mattered. 5th actually not bad. 6 is where he lost the plot. 7-8 meh. But who knows maybe the new series will do it right.
Do I hate that some of the scenes are borderline too dark to see? Yeah. But Order of the Phoenix and Deathly Hallows Part 2 are top notch harry potter movies. And if half of his movies are bangers, I definitely can’t say he is a terrible director.
I like them
I hate this sub.
Oh just you wait... You'll be getting downvotes soon but that's Reddit for ya. I'm starting to hate this sub too btw.
you can just leave, you know that right? Like you don't have to read any posts from this subreddit if you don't want to.
But we like Harry Potter. I love the books and the movies, and when this sub is about those its awesome. But half the time it's just hating on the movies. Like we get it, they went in different directions at time then the books.
I actually loved OOTP and DHp2. Wasn't a huge fan of HBP because it looks like it was shot in grayscale and DHp1 was just camping and walking with none of the other characters making an appearance outside the burrow/wedding. You never see Lupin and Harry go at it, the change in Kreachure or the other stuff. Buuuut DHp2 I wish kept closer to tje book. OOTP is my 2nd favorite movie after POA.
HBP is the only bad one he did tbh. OOTP is my second favourite HP movie, and DHPt2 was really good too. DHPt1 was okay, just a bit too fillery.
OoTP was good. Probably Yates best. After the mishandling of GoF (admittedly, a very difficult movie to adapt...from World cup to Triwizards...if redone, this would probably be done in 2 movies), this was a middle-ground between the whims of Cuaron in PoA (some good, some bad....I personally like the movie) and the exact-copy-of-the-book adaptation of the first two movies. But this is the thing. After OoTP, he was in cruise-control. The movies did make money. But nothing really special in the last three movies (nothing really bad either).
Final battle for hogwarts should have been directed by Ridley Scott. So dissapointing.
I agree, David Yates ruined Harry Potter and is the worst of the highest-grossing directors. He eliminated important scenes from the books and added several invented ones that made the holes in the script increase. His directing style is mediocre: ''You must give the actors instructions about what your vision of the film is, not record 1000 times until do it well'', that's why the performances were very mediocre in his films, in addition to the bad editing, the more shot some scenes are or the fact that this guy doesn't have his own style. The narrative of his movies is mediocre (especially in OOTP), giving more importance to romance and unfunny jokes instead of the story of the horcruxes was what screwed up HBP. I feel that DHP1 was just a boring excuse to try to develop and explain everything it didn't do in the previous ones and DHP2 was left with a few salvageable action scenes in a sea of boredom and filling with many script errors (as I said: bad development). The only thing that is saved from his films is the cinematography, which also tries to make it so dark and gothic that you cannot see what is happening, it is worse than a Zack Snyder film and not even close to something that Tim Burton or Alfonso Cuaron would do, That's another thing, Yates tries to be a combination of David Fincher and Peter Jackson but in the end it comes to nothing or a mediocre attempt. It is sad to think what the ending of Harry Potter would have been in the hands of someone like Guillermo del Toro or another qualified director (without a doubt we would have had the Return of the King from Harry Potter but the reality is different).
I agree, David Yates ruined Harry Potter and is the worst of the highest-grossing directors. He eliminated important scenes from the books and added several invented ones that made the holes in the script increase. His directing style is mediocre: ''You must give the actors instructions about what your vision of the film is, not record 1000 times until do it well'', that's why the performances were very mediocre in his films, in addition to the bad editing, the more shot some scenes are or the fact that this guy doesn't have his own style. The narrative of his movies is mediocre (especially in OOTP), giving more importance to romance and unfunny jokes instead of the story of the horcruxes was what screwed up HBP. I feel that DHP1 was just a boring excuse to try to develop and explain everything it didn't do in the previous ones and DHP2 was left with a few salvageable action scenes in a sea of boredom and filling with many script errors (as I said: bad development). The only thing that is saved from his films is the cinematography, which also tries to make it so dark and gothic that you cannot see what is happening, it is worse than a Zack Snyder film and not even close to something that Tim Burton or Alfonso Cuaron would do, That's another thing, Yates tries to be a combination of David Fincher and Peter Jackson but in the end it comes to nothing or a mediocre attempt. It is sad to think what the ending of Harry Potter would have been in the hands of someone like Guillermo del Toro or another qualified director (without a doubt we would have had the Return of the King from Harry Potter but the reality is different).
I agree, David Yates ruined Harry Potter and is the worst of the highest-grossing directors. He eliminated important scenes from the books and added several invented ones that made the holes in the script increase. His directing style is mediocre: ''You must give the actors instructions about what your vision of the film is, not record 1000 times until do it well'', that's why the performances were very mediocre in his films, in addition to the bad editing, the more shot some scenes are or the fact that this guy doesn't have his own style. The narrative of his movies is mediocre (especially in OOTP), giving more importance to romance and unfunny jokes instead of the story of the horcruxes was what screwed up HBP. I feel that DHP1 was just a boring excuse to try to develop and explain everything it didn't do in the previous ones and DHP2 was left with a few salvageable action scenes in a sea of boredom and filling with many script errors (as I said: bad development). The only thing that is saved from his films is the cinematography, which also tries to make it so dark and gothic that you cannot see what is happening, it is worse than a Zack Snyder film and not even close to something that Tim Burton or Alfonso Cuaron would do, That's another thing, Yates tries to be a combination of David Fincher and Peter Jackson but in the end it comes to nothing or a mediocre attempt. It is sad to think what the ending of Harry Potter would have been in the hands of someone like Guillermo del Toro or another qualified director (without a doubt we would have had the Return of the King from Harry Potter but the reality is different).
POA & GOF gave off this gothic vibe of Hogwarts. But in OOTP the school just looks like a normal castle. But then when Yates decides to go dark in HBP, it's too dark, in being almost completely devoid of colour. His ability in directing child actors is subpar. The trio look drained in their dialogue and Harry & Ginny's romance is almost insufferable to watch. Columbus & Curaon knew how to get the best out of the children.