What is canon anyway?

[stgulik]

In eight or ten generations, after The Fall of Civilization, when humankind rebuilds itself from the ashes and the Harry Potter series supplants all major world religions, scholars will argue over canon in ways that make our bickering on LJ seem amateurish.

But until that fateful time, I'd like your opinion on movie canon. Is it as authentically canon as the books? When the movie version of HP7 Part 2 doesn't make it clear that Snape is not Harry Potter's father by Lily, does that idea become alternate history, or just a curiosity that ought not to be taken seriously as book canon?

Let's hear from you:

[Poll #1962449]

Do me a favor and share this poll around, because I don't have a lot of followers and I'd like some decent polling numbers on this, for science.

Comments

[delphipsmith]

I was really tempted by option 4 lol!

It is an interesting question, especially if (as in this case) the author of the books is intimately involved with the movies. I'm fine with referring to "movie canon" as opposed to "book canon," to indicate that they are separate versions of canon, but I don't rank them the same: I put the books as "more canon" than the movies.

Some people might argue, "If the author herself approved the screenplay, doesn't that sort of automatically make it equal canon?" I would say not; the pre-existing story which was purely words had to be reworked for a different format (visual), therefore it was a forced alteration based on considerations other than pure authorial intent, and to me that drops the movies below the books, if only slightly.

On the other hand, I'm emphatically not in favor of using the terms "book canon" and "movie canon" with LotR, because that film version was entirely Peter Jackson's creation, even though he used Tolkien as the basis. To me Tolkien only has book canon :)

Where it gets a bit tricky, I think, is when the author actually admits that they made a mistake in the books. Like JKR saying that Hermione and Ron weren't really suited for each other after all. What does one do with that twist??