Stage 2 of the Road to Deathly Hallows is now complete - I finished Chamber of Secrets Sunday night, but it took me until last night to watch the film version, thanks to work and being kind of tired.
It is interesting now to go back and read Chamber post-Prince. JKR said that the Half-Blood Prince storyline was originally in there, and to me its rather obvious where it would have come in as well - surely Snape's comments would have been in the book that the trio got the Polyjuice Potion recipe from ('Moste Potente Potions')? I don't really know how having that information so early would have affected the series as a whole though, and even know as I think about it, I don't know if that is going to be important in Deathly Hallows at all, though it does raise the question as to why Voldemort accepted him as a Death Eater when he wasn't pure-blood - perhaps because he hated the fact he was a half-blood so much?
There is a theory going around the Internet that the different books of the series 'mirror' each other - books 2 and 6, 4 and 5 with Goblet being the turning point and therefore book 7 will mirror 1. While it is a bit of a cool theory, and I can see their links, I don't necessarily see this as being important (or even intentional) but there is no doubting that Prince and Chamber are closely linked, right down to the fact that the Bloomsbury versions have very similar colour schemes!
Originally Chamber was probably my least favorite, but as I've grown older (and with Prince) I've come to see it in a rather different light. I like the prejudice themes, and the backstory, and you begin to see just a hint of the politics of the Ministry of Magic. The diary, which seemed so small, and something least likely to pop up again, is possibly the most important part of the whole story. When it was originally said by JKR that something significant occurs in Chamber, I was sure it was Gryffindor's sword that was going to be explained. That's one of the great things about Potter, you can be so sure, and end up so wrong!
The film version of Chamber of Secrets was the first film I saw after when I consider that I became 'truly obsessed'. I actually saw it three times at the cinemas, a record which still holds to this day. The acting was so much better than Stone, but to this day I still sometimes laugh at the change in Dan and Rupert's voices :P. To me, it shows how fantastic an actor Dan is that at such a young age he was able to act against Dobby, and for it to look completely believeable - there are adult actors who have been unable to achieve that! There are still some faults with the film - while I love the themes in the score, the score itself is too similar to Stone for my liking. Also, while the ending is beautifully emotional, its still so weird that all the focus went to Hagrid. I know they obviously wanted a different ending to Stone, but surely, they could have come up with something better. Not to mention the repetition of lines - something I'm glad they stopped by Azkaban. Oh, and I can't help but smile at all the Harry/Ginny moments. So cute!
I think a thought I had last night summed up my thoughts on Chamber of Secrets rather well. As Harry and Ginny are about to leave the Chamber in the film, Harry says to her 'Don't worry, it's just a memory.' The truth is it is so, so much more than a memory.
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