random thoughts on Potter and Holmes and other movies

[Cainanite (imported)]

Cinema has been such a disappointment to me over the past few years that I have all but given up. The last movie I went to see in a theater was "The Green Hornet" with my then-12 year year old godson. Need I say more? Even he was ready to leave at 30 minutes in. Before that, we had gone to see the debacle and blasphemy which was called "The Last Airbender".

We did, however, brave the theater to see HP/DH 1 & 2. I was quite disappointed; he was impressed.

Any more, I go for foreign films or the straight to DVD releases. The boy, however, is allergic to subtitles, so we do not share the foreign gems that I sometimes find.

Our next adventure will be "Men in Black 3". It's hard to screw up with Wil Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. We'll see.

The one thing that bothered me about Harry Potter, though, was this - after all the times that Lord Voldemort failed to kill Harry with magic, then why didn't he just bludgeon him to death with a large tree limb in the forest of the DH2 when he had the chance?!

Voldemort never impressed me as a villain. He could have so easily taken over the Wizarding world it is ridiculous. I am shocked, and I mean shocked, none of the Death-eaters never embraced using guns, or grenades. They are the bad-guys after all. What kind of a shock would it have been if one of Dumbledor's Army shows up, and starts waving his wand around, only to have Bellatrix just pull out a gun and drop him on the spot? No duel, no honor, just a dead wizard bleeding out on the floor.

Want to take out Hogwarts? What about high yield explosives and a few rocket launchers? What about a few magically enchanted CR2 Battle Tanks?

For that matter, why didn't the Wizarding world employ these methods when the war got going?

The villains in Rowling's world were too honorable for my tastes. It reminded me of that great line at the beginning of Enter the Dragon with Bruce Lee. "Why doesn't someone just shoot him? Pull a gun and, bang, settle it?" answer, "He (the main villain) had a bad experience with guns once, and now they are banned on his island."

That exchange was just an obvious excuse for the story to be only about martial arts, and hand to hand fighting. Guns would have been too easy, and the writers had to recognize that. So they hung a lantern on it, and moved on.

Rowling didn't even bother with hanging a lantern on her shortfalls. She just plowed ahead with an unrealistic premise. All the way through Deathly Hallows 1 and 2, I was getting impatient, and imagining better ways to resolve the plot, and in a more consistent way.

[Dave (imported)]

Paolo...

SUBTITLES:

I just watched X-Men First Class on cable and there's a ton of subtitles in it. It's set during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the Russians are subtitled. Also, the main villain (Sebastian Shaw played by Kevin Bacon) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) meet in WW2 Germany and speak lots of subtitled German.

DEATHLY HALLOWS:

If Voldemort had destroyed Harry like you say, then the entire seven book series would have been a waste.

That's one of those things that show up on the "The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord"

http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html

This is covered in Item #24 : "I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)"

I came across the list many years ago and revisit it occasionally just to remind me of things not to do in my short stories.

Another question I have about Harry Potter is why did Voldermort trust Draco Malfoy, an obviously insecure child, to kill his chief rival Dumbledore? That sets up the wand thing that takes two books and three movies to reveal. That didn't stop me from enjoying the book or the movies but I do question it.

[gareth19 (imported)]

Paolo...

SUBTITLES:

Another question I have about Harry Potter is why did Voldermort trust Draco Malfoy, an obviously insecure child, to kill his chief rival Dumbledore? That sets up the wand thing that takes two books and three movies to reveal. That didn't stop me from enjoying the book or the movies but I do question it.

Voldemort sent Draco to kill Dumbledore because he reasoned that Dumbledore would let his guard down with a child, but would, if need be, destroy a competing adult (Snape or Bellatrix). What he didn't count on was that Dumbledore would sacrifice himself to achieve the greater goal of destroying Voldemort. And any wizard worth his salt can cast a spell to deflect bomb, bullets, and barrages. The essence of magic is that it trumps reality (at least in its own world), so the only offense against magic is more magic.

[Cainanite (imported)]

Voldemort sent Draco to kill Dumbledore because he reasoned that Dumbledore would let his guard down with a child, but would, if need be, destroy a competing adult (Snape or Bellatrix). What he didn't count on was that Dumbledore would sacrifice himself to achieve the greater goal of destroying Voldemort. And any wizard worth his salt can cast a spell to deflect bomb, bullets, and barrages. The essence of magic is that it trumps reality (at least in its own world), so the only offense against magic is more magic.

A magical elf was killed, while teleporting (a magical event), by a disarmed wizard, who threw a knife.

Rowling demonstrated in her writing that non magical stuff was just as deadly as the magical. A well aimed gun would be just as effective as a well aimed Avada Kedavra Curse.

[Riverwind (imported)]

The whole premiss of the evil dark lord and his followers were that they had nothing to do with the non magical world, the use of throwing a silver knife would be in line with that thought process.

The books were much better then the movies, which started to stray from the books after number 2. 7.1 was back on track then at the end of 7.2 they did what Hollywood has become noted for, special effects over story and fucked the ending of the story. Why I ask, it was not to sell more seats for the movie, the audience was already fixed world wide.

The only real question I would have for J K Rolling is that in book two, she had the chamber of secrets under the girls bathroom. Now the castle was 1000 years old, indoor plumbing did not come until much later, bathrooms only about 100 year or so ago.

BUT we forget, it was a story and in a story you can make things happen the way you want, reality is for non fiction.

River

[Dave (imported)]

One of the things changed in Deathly Hallows part two, was the place where Voldemort confronts and kills Snape because the super-duper all powerful wand is acting like it's not his... The movie moved it to the Hogwarts Boat Dock where the book has it in an underground passage between the Howling Shack in Hogsmead and Hogwarts Castle. The reason give was that they couldn't physically or digitally build the sets to film it.

I am so glad that all that backstory of Voldemort's family wasn't in the movies. That was agony to read in the book.

Voldemort isn't portrayed as particularly brainy and or even wise. Voldemort want to live forever. He didn't want to be just the most powerful wizard in the world, he wanted to be the most powerful for all time. In his rise to power, he hears of some prophecy by Sibyl Trelawny and goes all apeshit crazy killing newborns. He wants to be immortal and that in itself is flawed.

When we finally hear the prophecy (Book 4, Order of the Phoenix) It's ambiguous...

Snape is the one who reveals that Voldemort started killing babies (Book 7, Deathly Hallows, his memories revealed after death)...

[Riverwind (imported)]

I truly believe after book 4 she was done, when they demanded a book 5 she wrote the longest piece of dribble hoping it would be the last, I think the idea for book six was hers but I suspect a ghost writer did the actual writing and finally she sits back down and actually wrote book 7 which was not bad all things considering. But don't judge the books by the movies, if you do you will be disappointed.

River