I've already been hit with it. I'm married. :D

CRUCIO!!

...heheheh...

Read the books, yes. Several times at this point.

What may make me different from some is that I don't care about slavish devotion to putting the books on screen. The books are the books. The movies are the movies. The movies are based on the book, but it's the director's job to recreate the story while keeping the movie to a reasonable timeframe (always a big challenge) and maintaining the spirit of the books.

But a really f'n boring movie is, well, really f'n boring. The Sixth movie was really goddamn boring.

"Bingo! We've got bingo!" --- Troy Brown

Yes, the sixth movie stuck close to the book. Unfortunately, it was the one book so far where they SHOULD'VE added a little extra flair by putting in some of their own stuff. "Prince" (the film) was overlong, too full of talk, too dark. All I remember about the film is muttered conversation. It was a giant celluloid turd.

Here are the film costs vs. US grosses:

"Stone": 125M vs. 317M
"Chamber": 100M vs. 262M
"Azkaban": 130M vs. 249M
"Fire": 150M vs. 290M
"Phoenix": 150M vs. 292M
"Prince": 250M vs. 302M

Can someone tell me what the **** in "Prince" was worth $100M in production costs? Was that the cost per-foot to underexpose the whole movie?

I might be in the minority, but I have absolutely no faith that the final two films will be very good, given this director's track record.

Alfonso Cuaron's Azkaban was the best movie of the six, mostly because he gave it his own personal touch and separated his vision from the book. He's only directed one movie since then (the very good Children of Men), they really should have tried to bring him back instead of going with the boring Yates again.

The 7th book was the best one and it would be a shame if they screwed up the movie (which, based on the last two, I'm sure they'll do).

Given the fact that the last book wraps everything up, it'll be hard even for Yates to **** it up TOO much. It should certainly be better than "Phoenix" and "Prince" (at least, "Hallows Part 2" should be). I think "Hallows Part 1" and most of "Part 2" will be the same boring, dark, talky dreck that his first two films were, but at least the last half-hour of "Part 2" will be climactic and leave people exiting and saying, "Well, the ending was good, at least". (Especially for those who've never read the books.)

I'd still rather have someone creative doing the ending, especially the scene at "King's Cross Station."

Hallows Part 1 will not be all that exciting. If you have read the book, then you know it's pretty much all setup for the dramatic ending.

Hallows Part 2 should be a special effects masterpiece. I believe someone was saying there is going to be a 25 minute fight scene at Hogwarts.

Which begs the frigging question... WHY are they making it into two parts?!? When we all know the first part will be a boring, long-winded, incomplete suckfest? Especially because of Yates?

Simple. They're greedy mother****ers. They know they'll rake in another $300M for trotting that shit out there. It's incredibly annoying, and part of me hopes it fails miserably and the film makes around $50M and is a net loss. They could've EASILY just made one film, especially since Cameron just pushed the IMAX film limit to almost 2:40 (which is plenty of time to tell a story).

The guy that looks on the brighter side in me says they will make the first one for completeness of story. So that if you never read the books, and just watched the movies, you would get pretty much the whole story. While the first part was not thrilling, it was crucial to the plot, and crucial to how Voldemort is taken down.

The realist in me knows that they know that they could put a pair of glasses and a robe on steaming pile of shit and they would probably make record profits off of all the Potter fans out there.

Ok, I'm looking for suggestions. I think I'm going to start on the audio books, but my question is do I:

A - start from the beginning and work my way through them all

or

B - since I've seen all the movies up to this point, pick up the last book first and then go back through them when I have the time?

Winner.

Go in order.

One thing that's unique about Rowling's work is that she specifically wanted to make each book more mature, so that as the kids in the books age, and as the kids reading the books age, they get more in-depth, more adult. So it makes the most sense to start from the first book.

Start at the beginning dude. Trust me, when you get to the end, you will wonder why you took so long to read them...or listen or whatever.

I'm actually glad they are making 2 movies, because it will probably take them 5+ hours to possibly salvage the story. If they did just one 2.5 hour movie, I honestly don't know if I'd even bother seeing it in the theaters...