To think the acting in Harry Potter is just awful?

[LookingForAlaskas]

Not watched the films in ages and the third one was on tonight.

It honestly felt like some parts were like a drama class in school. Very cringe.

I thought they were all alright except early Daniel Radcliffe (and Bonnie Wright, who was fucking terrible throughout)

The older, established actors are clearly having a whale of a time hamming it up, especially Alan Rickman.

Richard Harris was EXACTLY how I imagined Dumbledore, Michael Gambon was good but his voice wasn’t right and his eyes didn’t twinkle enough

I first saw Daniel Radcliffe as a young David Copperfield in a BBC (I think) adaptation. I remember thinking he was very good for a child actor and remembered him when he was cast as HP. Maybe he just had a really good director for David Copperfield, because he certainly wasnt as good in the Harry Potter films

Richard Harris was incredible.

I can understand Gambon wanting to add his own spin on things, but he fucked it

@Honeyroar I also thought RG was the worst. His 'She needs to get her priorities sorted' in the first film makes me cringe! DR was terribly wooden to begin with but I felt he relaxed into it as the films went on. And I actually thought EW was super.

I don't get why people think that the books are badly written either. There are plot holes, yes, but the actual prose and storytelling is excellent, I think. And I'm a fiction copy-editor so I'm reaaaaaasonably qualified to make assessments about novels! I just don't understand quite what is so supposedly terrible about the writing. Anyone care to enlighten me?

I thought a lot of the adults were great... Hagrid, Umbridge, Mcgonnagal, the first Dumbledore, mr and mrs Weasley etc etc

Agree about Ginny, just wasn’t right for the part and couldn’t realky act, the Ginny/Harry scenes just felt so weird as there was absolutely no chemistry.

Well Michael Gambon, imo, is the most miscast of all the characters. I simply cannot understand how anyone who has read the books can think that his portrayal of Dumbledore is anything but a travesty. He utterly ruined the films for me, he doesn't look right or say a single line the way the book Dumbledore says it.

I read that Gambon never read any of the books so he could follow what the script and director told him and not be influenced by events that hadn't yet happened in the films. Hence we have HARRYDIDYAPUTYANAMEINDAGOBLETAVVFIYAAH???

And yes to the shoelace scene!! Wtf was that about, was it supposed to be sexy or something 😂

The child actors were uniformly embarrassing apart from the kid who played Draco Malfoy. He was the only one who was actually believable and who wasn’t hammy.

Seriously, how hard is it to find kids who can act? Was the catchment for those films ‘kids who already had agents’? Maybe the casting directors should have toured regional drama groups. That is how Stephen Graham (Line of Duty etc) was spotted: he was in a school production of Treasure Island.

It’s a toss up between Ron and Ginny Weasley for worst actor. Although they were hard put to it by the Weasley twins.

This is why, after the first film, I stuck to reading the books. My imagination is way better.

The twins. They were just embarrassing to watch

The child acting wasn't great at the start. I thought some of it was how the characters were supposed to be played though. HG was supposed to be stiff and a little snooty . The twins were supposed to be really irritating and hammy

Liked it over all.

Emma Watson butchered the character of Hermione - turned her from a smart level-headed girl into a hormonal irrational drama queen. Just awful.

I remember watching the films as a teen and already hoping for a remake.

Shame because the adult cast were stellar.

I don’t mind the films and when these threads turn up am always amazed at everyone who thinks the children were so awful. I didn’t think they were that bad. I loved RG and Tom Felton was great as Draco.

DR was okay too, I always thought Emma Watson was the weakest but she was outdone by the Weasley Twins, appalling actors both of them.

They are no Christian Bale are they? In my view they never really progressed into great actors either. Bless them.

Read the first 4 books before seeing first film, had to knock it off.
Harry is a working class kid in the books but given posh kid makeover for American audiences and a “Briddish accent”.
Didn’t bother of the books as the films are so bad so no idea what happens in the end, presumably Voldemort is Darth Vader’s father or something. 3rd book was great, 4th was meh, can’t comment after that.
Daniel Radcliffe is a great actor now though

No-one tops Percy Weasley for all out woodeness. Why he wasn't redubbed baffles me. Just shocking.

“Emma Watson butchered the character of Hermione - turned her from a smart level-headed girl into a hormonal irrational drama queen. Just awful. ”

Ironically enough you’ve just described Emma Watson’s personal trajectory

Seems a bit mean slagging off kids' acting but the Weasley twins were fucking dire actors

Yes, they are terrible.

Emma Watson butchered the character of Hermione - turned her from a smart level-headed girl into a hormonal irrational drama queen. Just awful.

Yes! But she has to have done it under direction.

It just makes me irate though. There was a strong, sensible female lead character in the book, and in the films they make her a trembling, weepy, hormonal drama queen. Because girls.

When I teach creative writing modules, I use HP as what not to do.
Clunky dialogue
Plot holes as big as the one in the ozone layer (none of the kids from wizarding families knowing that Tom Riddle was Voldemort's real name? That would be like kids in "our world" not knowing that Mr Claus's name was Santa.
Her sentence structure is predictably wooden Every noun has its adjective, every verb its adverb. And they are invariably the same ones throughout the saga. Now, I know that was how it was done in "rosy-fingered dawn" days, but I'm sure JK has a wider vocabulary than "oh, they're running! Must add a "breathlessly" there!"
Etc etc.
Name repetition instead of pronoun use.

The list of stylistic clunkery is endless. I don't blame JK, but she needed a better editor and she needed one to actually pull her up and tell her that occasionally, less is more . The first three books are fairly well-written for the age group they were aimed at, but once she started the two-year churning out of doorstopper volumes, her writing went haywire.

Don't get me wrong, there are wonderful bits, fabulous. But she needed to plan better, (in order to avoid the millions of questions she had to answer to explain things that don't make sense, we've all seen and read the "ah, but she wanted it to look like that really!" stuff) and she needed more time.

Her name choices are inspired however!

DR is terrible. In the earlier films, if he has to show emotion, he’s shot so you can’t see much of his face. You can see it in the train carriage where the dementors board.

@NaviSprite they spotted him in the theatre because his mum or dad are/were big names in the theatre business I believe so I am sure that had something to do with it! I don’t think it was a random ‘oh that kid looks like HP’. Would explain things

I have never watched a film with British child actors where I thought the kids could act. American kids seem quite good at it. British children always speak in a terribly affected and wooden way that sounds nothing like natural speech.