The Harry Potter series contains a lot of kids’ childhood memories, including me, who were fascinated by the magical world and the adventure of Harry and his friends. The movies of Harry Potter were based on the novels written by J.K Rowling, but like most of the novel-based films, changes could be found. Both the novels and movies are incredible, yet, there are plenty of slight differences we could find. There are three major differences between the Harry Potter novels and the movies based on three aspects of the series: The performance personalities of the characters, the way of how the characters talk, and the clothing. 

      

    First, the personalities of some main characters in the movie are different from those in the novels. Especially the debut (the first time a character appears in a movie) of characters in movies differ from the novels. There are two characters’ personalities that differ obviously in movies and novels, they are Hermione and Ginny. Hermione, who was played by Emma Watson in the movie, her image in the movie has a huge difference than the one in the novels. In the novel, Hermione is an intelligent student just as she does in the movie. However, her appearance was described as ordinary in the book, which is different from the movie. Every time Hermione appeared on the screen, she caught the eyes of every audience. In the movies, the director portrayed Hermione as a stunning person, not only in her academic performance, but also the way she looks. Movie-version Hermone could not be described as ordinary by the way she looks, which is quite an obvious difference regarding the image of hers in the novel. There is another example, Ginny,  she was described as the campus belle in the novel, the first time she appeared in the sight of Harry’s, Harry cannot even take a move as he was surprised by the way she looked. However, the debut of Ginny in the movie was dimmish, she was like a “somebody” on the screen, and Harry did not look surprised at all. The Harry Potter movies somehow downplayed the existence of Ginny and her personal development to outstand Harry. These two examples showed us that the personalities of the characters could be apparently devised through words and pictures.

      

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    Another difference between the novels and movies of the Harry Potter series is the way of how the characters talk. There are two scenes that brought out quite great differences by the way how characters talk in the books and the movies. The first one is a scene both performed in the book and the movie, which is the scene from the Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire. Harry’s   name tag was being put in the goblet by Barty Crouch Jr., but it was a violation as Harry did not meet the age limit of participating in the race. In the novel, Dumbledore asked Harry calmly whether he put his name into the Goblet of Fire by himself. Whereas in the movie, Dumbledore was crying his lungs out, and grabbing Harry’s shoulder tightly while asking this question.  The tone of Dumbledore  asking this question is totally opposite between movies and books. The second one is the scene of the discussion about Voldermort between Dumbledore and Mcgonagall in The Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone. In the movie, Mcgonagall mentioned Voldermort by the name “you-know-who”, as Voldermort was kind of a forbidden name to say in their world. However, in the book, Mcgonagull just called Voldermort by the name “Voldermort”. This little difference actually made the book-version Mcgonagull seem to be the braver version of hers than the one in the movies.  The mentioned examples indicated the characters’ way of talking differed in books and movies, and these differences brought the audience various watching experiences and impressions of the characters.

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    Thirdly, the clothes in the movies and books differ. The dress that Hermione wore to the ball in the movies was pink and kind of old school, in my opinion. When the movie first played , a lot of the audience did not find the dress impressive on the screen . Most of the opinions from the audience back then were disappointed by how Hermione was presented in the movie. However, Hermione’s dress was made of a floaty, periwinkle-blue material, which differed to the one displayed in the movie from its color to the materials. For me, it is one of the reasons why the audience was so disappointed by the dress in the movie, it is just not as fancy and dreamy as it was described in the book.

      

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

   

    To sum up, these are the three major differences between the movies and novels of Harry Potter: the performance of the characters, the tone of the lines, and the clothing. Although there are a lot of varieties between these two versions of the Harry Potter series, no matter which version it is, Harry Potter will still be the most magical legend in my heart.