“”Harry Potter and the stone of the wise men“-Under this title, most Germans will know the first part of the magical film series. When the Warner Bros., the first book of the successful British novel series was filmed at the end of the 1990s, the title question was not so clear as one would think at the beginning. The reason for this: While Harry, Ron and Hermione in the original English novel are doing everything possible to find the “Philosopher’s Stone” in front of the evil Lord Voldemort, they are looking for Sorcerer’s Stone (Stein der Wizard) in American. One could assume that this little problem would solve with the adaptation of the film title. But this difference made it possible that the film adaptation became more complicated.

Because if this legendary stone now has a different name, which also falls a few times during the over two hours of duration, then the American audience obviously poses a problem. Knowing that a whole generation to viewers have already read the book template, Warner therefore decided on an approach that, if he is not unique, can hardly fall back on many other role models: You turned all the scenes in which the stone of the wise movements occurred twice: once as “Philosopher’s Stone” and once as “Sorcerer’s Stone”.

This video cut the affected scenes together for comparison.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5v2R18QRE0

If “Harry Potter” fans have wondered why the stone of the wise men have never been mentioned in any of the other films, the answer should probably be in itthat you never wanted to deal with twice the scenes in Warner Bros..

Other changes in film history

Admittedly, turning two versions at “Harry Potter” is already a fairly elaborate change, but adjustments to details in films for different countries are by no means unusual in the film industry. Just think of it “”Die Hard“From the iconic German villain Hans Gruber (played by Alan Rickmanwho embodies the abysmally nasty professor Snape in “Harry Potter”) Jack Gruber -Probably because the FRG audience did not want to expect German terrorists.

Also “Toy Story 2“May shoot one in the head regarding such a change, because here the entire background of a short sequence in which Buzz Lightyear keeps a motivating speech was revived so that the International version no longer shows the American flag, but a globe with a bright fireworks display.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjbya5uxl-s

What comes closest to the adaptations in “Harry Potter and the Stone of the Wise” is a common but extremely expensive procedure from the early 30s: the so -called versions film. Since the synchronization was still in its infancy in these years and also did not find subtitles to a right audience, the export of films to international markets was difficult. And so a new branch of the business began: for a versions film, a complete film with another ensemble was revised in another language. However, since this business quickly turned out to be too expensive, the model had almost completely lost its importance before 1940.

By the way: One thing that the creators of “Harry Potter” would have liked to change afterwards is a film error that has crept into the first part. You can find out which one is in the following article:

If you press a break in “Harry Potter” at 90 minutes and 12 seconds, the magic is instantly gone