First, my god Harry is young in the first movie. I had forgotten that. Harry is little and cute and less confident. Hermione is a pain in the butt. Ron can play chess, but other than that, he's kind of a dud. They are all sweet kids and clearly brave, but it is unbelievable to me how much these characters grow and develop through the movies. Will that happen to Livy? Will I look back on the way she is now and wonder how she could be so different?
The first movie was pretty good, I thought. The plot of the book was simple enough that you didn't miss much in the movie. My only big complaint is that Hermione's logic problem with the potions was missing. I loved that; it's not all flashy magic. And I love that Hermione, Snape (who made that task), and Dumbledore saw that logic was as important for a wizard as spells, and also very rare.
Even though the Chamber of Secrets is one of my favorites of the books, I wasn't crazy about the movie. It just seemed to jump from action scene to action scene without really tying everything together. I didn't feel connected to it, partly because there was no depth to Ginny's experience with the diary, I think. It was just a magical object, not the way a horcrux should be, sucking the life out of anyone who gets emotionally close to it, like in the book.
The fun part of watching the movies again with Livy is that, this time, she's read the books. (We are in the middle of Deathly Hallows.) As we watch, we're talking about the differences between the books and the movies, recounting the scenes that get left out, talking about what will happen in the books later. It's fun to see her connect the hints in Chamber with what happens in the last two books. When we first saw the diary, she shouted, "Harry, that's a horcrux!" When Harry uses the sword on the basilisk, she said, "Oh, look, now it's getting basilisk power so it can kill the locket." We discussed Snape's behavior all the way through. At this point, she still thinks that he will be evil because of killing Dumbledore, and she's having a hard time reconciling how he helps Harry and Dumbledore with the evil Snape she imagines.
