Harry Potter and the deathly hallows

Between Harry, ever the wizard to call his enemy by his real name, switching to saying ‘You-know-who’ and the immediate appearance of the death eaters after Luna’s father says ‘Voldemort’, I pieced together that they must be alerted to the utterance of the dark lord’s name.

As you’ve both read the books, how would you know that they aren’t great if you haven’t? Please, don’t get annoyed on my behalf. I’m fine. The movies are great.

The movies are in a tough spot, because they’re trying to serve both people who’ve read and love the books and want them to be represented very accurately, and people who haven’t and just want to enjoy the movies. Under those constraints I think they’ve done pretty well.

#3 was the best of the movies because it flexed its adaptive muscles, dogmatic fans be damned.

Yeah, didn’t hurt to have the best director the series has seen either, though it was also the least commercially successful in theatres. For my part I found 4 and 6 the most incomprehensible, though it didn’t help that I saw 5 and 6 out of order.

The first two are borderline unwatchable if you haven’t read the books. 3 is probably my personal favorite; 5 and 6 are also very, very good. 4 is pretty decent, but nothing really special. I’d probably put the new one down with 4, though it’s harder to rate overall because some parts are so good and some parts are just so nonsensical without the background from reading them.

Man, those kids have developed a real nice chemistry and it shows in this one. Rupert has become my favorite. He seems the most talented, but it’s really hard to call. Much harder after this movie.

I’m also a big fan of movie #3, even though I think that the omission of the true identity of the Marauders was pretty close to criminal. Mostly it was just such a joy watching Cuaron breath life back into Hogwarts after Columbus’s ham-handed efforts.

I didn’t think this one was amazing, but those saying its the worst Harry Potter film really need to go back and watch the Chris Columbus ones again. Or rather, try and fail, because they’re unwatchable.

The big problem I had with 6 is that the vanishing cabinet is not adequately explained, and it’s one of the major plot points. I later had a family member explain its significance and watched it again, and found it more enjoyable.

Are the Columbus pictures really that bad? I don’t think I’ve seen either one since they were in theatres, so my memory of them is pretty hazy. I have tentative plans to rewatch all of them before Deathly Hallows II comes out (I may even read the books if I’m feeling ambitious), so I guess I’ll find out. Whatever his faults, Columbus really nailed the casting of the three principal child roles. There was a lot room for those decisions to go sour, but they’ve held up incredibly well.

I actually enjoyed 1 just fine, because I felt it was pretty in-line with the introduction of the world as being this amazing, magical, “omg everything sparkles” place. Ultimately, I felt the casting was pretty spot-on and it was sort of the right movie at the right time. The second film was the unwatchable piece of crap (which is a shame because book 2 has a special place in my heart): Columbus reached Lucas-levels of sentimental idiocy in his desire to “appeal to the kids” – completely stripping Ron of his depth so that Grint can practice his rubber-face, omitting important scenes so that we could have more time in the fucking flying car, and just taking a nap with the actual direction of the movie to the point where there are awkward gaps and pauses in action in which the actors, who are still getting the hang of things, have to try their hardest to look like they understand what’s going on. He under-used Rickman, Harris was really on his last legs and couldn’t give any energy to the character of Dumbledore, and there were so many treacly curtain-calls I want to vomit up slugs.

They’re incredibly dry, by focusing only on the main plot and cutting all the side-adventures they rather miss the magic of the first books.

Yeah, 2 is easily the worst of the lot and 1 isn’t much better. I hated 4 and 5, but I’m nowhere near crazy enough to say they’re as bad as the Columbus films. I actually think 6 is the best movie, because while 3 did a competent job, it is guilty, as you pointed out, of the major blunder of not revealing who Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs actually are. From talking to friends who have both read the books and seen the movies, I’ve come to the conclusion that how much you like #3 is directly related to how much this omission bugs you.

The later movies remedies it a bit, since if I remember correctly Sirius and Lupin call each other by their nicknames, and of course Voldemort calls Pettigrew “Wormtail.” But still, no mention at all of who Prongs is.

Dufresne – but the same could be said about the Half-Blood Prince. Snape tosses it off at the end of the 6th book like it’s supposed to be a “Luke I am your father” line, but there is nothing to bookend it with Voldemort’s own lineage and how they were both the children of a muggle father and a witch mother.

You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But to be honest, the plots in the books are just as nonsensical as they are in the films. I sympathize for Steve Kloves, who must have read book seven and thought to himself “Really? They spend weeks blundering around in the woods doing nothing? WTF? You aren’t making my job any easier, Dame Rowling.”

I’ve always felt that the appeal of the Harry Potter books stemmed more from the prep-school hijinks than the fantasy. It was basically Tom Brown’s School Days + magic. Her vivid imagination for the little magic touches and her dry wit made for great children’s literature. But when the series had to move away from the “school year” formula, I don’t think Rowling was able to make the transition. And this is a weird thing to say about the most successful series in history, but the plotting in the later books felt amateurish to me. Because she had never bothered to set up rules for the magic in the early books, everything in the later books seems contrived and confusing. Constant deus ex machinas, obsession with continuity, and explanation for spells that cancel other spells.

The escape from Harry’s house in book 7 is a perfect example. “Say, why can’t Voldemort just pop by the Dursley’s and kill Harry in his sleep one summer?” Oh, because there was a Protective Spell put on the Dursley’s house - a super-powerful one that not even You-Know-Who can break (though he can break through every other protective spell, it seems). Of course, this spell expires when Harry turns 17, and everyone must flee. Er … okay. Why? Can’t we just, like, leave that spell up, all the time?

Anyway. I think the weaknesses in the movie are largely just reflections of the weaknesses in the book.

Interesting points, sinnick.

What I like about the magic is that all the spells are in Latin. Caesar should have put some hexes on all those assassins, would have really helped out.

My wife has seen all of the HP movies except this one, and we were pretty much leaning toward not going for this reason. Since they’ve helpfully split the movie into two halves, we can skip the half where they go camping for 300 pages and jump into the real plot with the second movie.

I’ve always felt that the appeal of the Harry Potter books stemmed more from the prep-school hijinks than the fantasy. It was basically Tom Brown’s School Days + magic.

I always thought of them as being like some of the Enid Blyton books I read as a kid, about a group of kids who bond at boarding school. She even managed to make boarding school seem like fun; glad I never convinced my parents to send me to one…

Anyone that claims ‘weeks of camping doing nothing’ and ‘sitting in a tent for half the book’ makes me question the fact that they actually have read the book or not.

There was honestly very little of that, and when it did happen, it’s not like they sat around with a thumb up their ass. They discovered important backstory, made plans, developed characters like Ron in a way that became important later. Ugh. But what’s the point of arguing. You like it or you don’t.

Mom’s dead. Need a mother’s love to cast the unbreakable spell.

But the problem is that even this explanation will not satisfy some. “Why not just whip up another Mum?” they’ll say. At that point you just have to shrug it off. Some people are just not going to buy into it.

What can you do?

I guess mother’s love only lasts 17 years, then?

The problem isn’t that there is an explanation. JK Rowling has lots of explanation in her books. The problem is that in a world of no rules, where the explanation can be anything, where anything is possible, where some spells expire, some last forever, some can be cancelled and some depend on the day of the week, it’s almost impossible to have a story that has tension or makes any kind of sense. Because no matter how much of a bind the characters get in, there is always some God Machine spell that the author can lower in to save them.

Take “apparating”, as Jamie and Les mentioned upthread. Most sci-fi and fantasy authors know that if you’re going to introduce teleportation or some other kind of faster-than-light travel into your story, you’d better damn well have some rules about how and when and where it can be used, and make it very costly and sparing. Otherwise you’ll run into severe plot holes when readers start asking: Wait, why don’t they just teleport out of there?

The Harry Potter books are full of this kind of thing. I realize that part of the appeal of them is the crazy inventiveness of the magic, but even fantasy needs rules.