Mr. Potter and… the Muggle World (reflection article)

EN FR RU UA +

We wanted to write a small or large reflection article that touches on the work itself, film adaptations in Hollywood style and video games based on. You can express your opinion in the comments 😉

At the time of this writing, the story of the wizard boy has been published in 7 major books. After the release of the third book, the rights to the work were bought by one of the giants in the production and supply of films to cinemas. After that, films based on the main books were released, as well as video games based on films and additional sources of information.

The influence of buying rights to a work on the plot of the work itself has already been discussed more than once, because the author began to get rid of positive characters and affect more and more topics for adults just starting with the fourth book, which was in the process of writing, at the time of purchase. But here you can think pointlessly for a long time, because only the author knows how it really was 😉

The author of the work herself indicated that she would no longer publish books about Harry and kept her promise. Since both eighth books published for the theater (rehearsal edition and final edition) were created by third parties and only approved by the author. It would be difficult for her not to approve of the book, because the literary business has its own characteristics.

Additional materials to correct the understatement from the main books were released in the form of additional books (a collection of fairy tales, a history of magical sports, a textbook on magozoology) and the site pottermore.com, which gradually evolved from an interactive book with mini-games and a related goods store into information site-encyclopedia. But in the end it was closed, giving way to a colleague from the copyright holder (RU). Where, by the way, you can buy the status of a fan of the Universe of Mr. Potter for real money, which suggests a reference to Sirius’s phrase that his uncle bought himself the Order of Merlin. The site is also interesting in that it retained some of the mini-games and basic materials from pottermore.com. We have already written about this on our website several times.

In addition to reprints of the main books with new covers or with the addition of illustrations, many books based on films have been released by third-party authors. They are often accompanied by souvenirs, such as a paper version of the castle’s magic map or pages from textbooks, or train tickets. When studying a copy of such a map, it turned out that the authors did not even try to compare it with the information from the books (for example, the location of the room on demand and the offices often does not correspond to the instructions in the main books). Therefore, before buying such a book, you should think about whether you need such inconsistencies. For such books are more like good for collectors.


Movies

Films and their relationship to the original source have been widely discussed in the community. But the main idea seems to us as follows.
The first film created the first image of history for moviegoers, not all of whom are familiar with the book’s original. The film told a story very close to the book version, although there were scenes where the main idea was significantly distorted in order to shorten its duration (for example, the scene where Harry receives a broom). At the same time, the filmmakers perfectly conveyed the general atmosphere of Hogwarts, described in the book.
The first film was followed by the second, which retained the style of storytelling and correspondence to the original. But starting with the third film, the book’s original began to play an increasingly smaller role: the statute of secrecy of wizards is being ignored, the images of students and teachers are changing (in the third film, Harry uses a powerful spell in his room at the Dursleys’ house, the appearance of Professor Flitwick changes greatly, the school uniform is not used or changes significantly).
Even the castle-school itself began to change, the films began to contain more and more strange errors and inconsistencies (Harry in Dudley’s bosom, although he had to drag his cousin on his back, in the sixth film several important scenes were excluded, but a couple of meaningless ones were added: the destruction of a bridge that had not yet been built, and the burning of the Weasley family home).

The last two films, based on the seventh book, have little followed the plot of the book, adding new oddities, such as prolonged scenes with dances and a scene with a hint of a high age rating. And of course, Harry broke the main wand. a joke that the films were filmed after reading the book’s table of contents would have looked good here 😉

A series of films about the author of a textbook on magozoology does not have a book original, while existing films, in an attempt to expand the magical world both in terms of geography and in terms of time frame, introduce more and more distortions into the original plot and look good only if perceived each film as a separate work, not associated with either the original novel or other films. Thus, they continue the tradition of films based on the events of the fifth and subsequent books.


Games

As for video games, the situation here is even more controversial than with films.

The copyright holder has approved the release dates for video games in advance, linking them to the release dates of the films of the same name. Thus, each game was given only 8-12 months to create (there were exceptions for later games, but this is rare).

The short development time and the decision to release a separate game based on each movie, on gaming platforms of different performance did their job.

The community has received a set of games with a linear storyline. The genres of games turned out to be different and depend on the gaming platform, since the developers used the existing developments, because it was impossible to invent something new due to the short implementation time and constant control by the copyright holder (and starting with the creation of the second game, there was also a ban on communication with the author of the work). Sometimes the problem was to justify one or another decision: for example, the introduction of a second game for the computer of a brown spider into the gameplay delayed the game for two weeks.
The atmosphere of the magical world in games turned out to be very peculiar: in diligently drawn rooms and external territories you can find intricate and sometimes strange mechanisms and creatures, for the one existence of which the magic school would have been closed long ago. Young Harry must fight with huge rats in a magic jar or with an animated heating boiler, jump through huge holes in the floor or walk through a corridor with moving knives or huge hammers.
The use of cards depicting famous wizards and wizards is also sometimes surprising: either Harry he collects and buys them, or uses them for battles with certain creatures.
The game based on the fourth movie caused a lot of confusion, forcing Harry and his friends to walk on the roofs of the castle (at night, in a thunderstorm), in the forbidden forest and in the sewers .
Games based on the last two films have little in common even with the films, let alone the original book. Instead of Harry’s adventures, players received a disguised war simulator, where experienced players easily identified, under the guise of doxyde and spells, what was not used in the wizarding world.

Subsequent games turned out to be either associated with only one game platform, or contained many bugs in their program code.

For example, LEGO versions of games about Harry’s adventures have not received a single fix for ten years, though LEGO 1-4 is 100% 100% the first time it is not always possible: either there are problems with dynamic lighting, or some locations are blocked, or navigation is not functioning correctly.
In LEGO 5-7 there are much fewer such errors, the code is more stable, but impossible to save control settings.
There are noticeable attempts by developers to add support for exchanging user-created levels, but this feature is ultimately not implemented, as is the function of launching both games in windowed mode.

Games for consoles like Magic Book and exclusive for the Kinekt sensor cannot even be emulated, since they depend on certain hardware.

Since 2016, games have been released only for mobile devices. In this case, the player pays for the gameplay and after the game support servers are disabled, it becomes unavailable for the player.

Games for mobile devices have been created before. These were very simple in structure sets of tasks in the style of the wizarding world. Usually they could be bought from a mobile operator by entering a special code in the request. The games themselves were standalone, written in Java Microedition 2.

Hogwarts game announced. Legacy , the announcements of which usually indicate that the game is being developed without taking into account the opinion of the author. That is, if earlier the games at least formally followed the idea of ​​the author of the world, Mr. Potter, then in this game the developers will already be able to do anything. At the same time, the 18+ rating does not reveal information about what the developers consider optimal for the new game about the wizarding world: from the video announcements it is only clear that the game will be closer to a war simulator.

In addition to official video games, there are also amateur ones. According to information that is difficult to verify, some of the projects were closed by the copyright holder, because the authors of amateur games are prohibited from making money on the copyright holder’s trademarks, which are most of the names and titles of the world of Mr. Potter.

Among amateur free games, you can usually find games for adults (dating simulators) or games of the genre of Japanese role-playing adventure games. There are relatively few games like this, as developing a good game takes a lot of time.

For the first games, custom mods are created thanks to enthusiastic level editors. You can find the work of authors who sent their add-ons to the first games on our website.

It is also worth remembering board games. They, as a rule, were not very original, but did exist. Finding them on sale can be difficult.


Software

Software is usually provided as a work-around utility for official video games for the computer (HP and your computer) or topic programs like card album or letters from the same school.
There is also adware that either shows the video announcement of the game as a screen saver, or unlocks a level in one of the computer games, or it is a mini-game, for example: 2D Java minigame or gnome for the Desktop Windows.


Results

New admirers of the world of Mr. Potter are increasingly learning the story from films and video games, so they get a very distorted version of the plot. You just need to understand that, contrary to logic, film adaptation rarely follows the plot and features of the book original. Therefore, in the next film adaptation, Hermione may well be shown as a guy, and Argus’ cat may become the director of a magic school.

So feel free to read the originals of literary works: after watching a couple of adaptations, the original may surprise you a lot 😉


Pretended to be a historian and is the author of this article: АlехeyMS

When creating the article, information from the articles of this site, the pottermore project, films, books and games was used. Including from behind the scenes book on the creation of the first games.

Automatic translation is used.


Добавить комментарий

Your e-mail will not be published. Required fields are marked *

 

1. If you want to display a comment only to employees of the site - add the word "top_secret" ;-)
2. To add a picture in a comment, use the services of photo hosting (suitable HTML-code to insert).