The Ultimate Harry Potter Thread

I got to read the Eragon series at some point. I liked the movie. I also liked that the protagonist was raised by his uncle and grew up with his uncle's biological son and the uncle loved his nephew very much. He said something a long the lines "I am lucky to have two fine sons."

A nice subversion of the begrudging step family to an orphaned hero. I guess the protagonist is still an orphaned hero, but he had a relatively pleasant childhood.

 

You went into a long thing about the impact of fantasy movies.

I just wanted to talk about the fact that I think abuse step family is an overused trope in fiction. And in my opinion it was not very well handled in Harry Potter in my opinion.

I think the abuse Harry took was not very realistic. I understand that there are abusive people out there, but I've never met anyone that bad.

Even the worst person I know wasn't that abusive to her daughter.

It was really really bad in Book 3 and Book 4 when Harry was literally starved by his guardians. Great Britain doesn't have any equivalent to Child Protective Services in the Harry Potter universe?

Given that Dumbledore was apparently watching Harry from afar all this time, he probably should have intervened surreptitiously on his behalf more than the one time he sent a Howler in Order of Phoenix.

Also, there is an issue with show don't tell.

It is revealed in Book 5 that Aunt Pentunia cares about Harry deep down and in it is revealed in Book 7 that Dudley cared about Harry deep down.

Later, Rowling explained that adult Dudley and adult Harry get along okay and their kids are fond of each other.

This kind of violates the story telling principle of "show, don't tell." Because the few times where Harry Potter's relatives are said to care about them we are told about it, not shown it.

I am not sure if this is a conscious bias, but I believe that Rowling believes blood is thicker than water. She covers themes of family a lot. It's worth noting that Uncle Vernon is more of an asshole than Dudley or Petunia, the latter two have blood ties to Harry.

 

You ever played Zelda a Link to Past. (Super Nintendo version). In that version, Link is a farm boy raised by his uncle who gets swept up into battle against an evil regime but it turns out he is the last heir to the Knights of Hyrule, an order of persecuted sorcerer warriors.

Stardust, the character was raised by a single father and he was a shopboy, but the same principle applies. Tristan was pulled into a magical adventurer and realizes he secretly has a mystic heritage.

I don't have a problem with that story. Some story telling tropes are clichés and some tropes are classics.

I'm pretty sure George Lucas is not the first writer to have a plucky farm boy get swept into a giant war against evil.

Maybe I'm being a hypocrite. I don't have a problem with the trope of scrappy young farm boys destined to be magical heroes battle against evil. I like that story. But I find the trope of the abusive step family boring and overused.

 

Over and over again, in her book, Rowling beat the point home that Professor Umbridge was an ugly toad-like woman with a girly voice that didn't match her exterior.

The actress that played her in the movie was good but the casting was weird for me because i had an established image for her in my brain that was very different. There are not a lot of non-photogenic people in TV and film and the few that are average looking or even below average looking don't want to be typecast as an ugly character. Thus it is kind of unavoidable.

As far as I'm concerned, Rowling should have retconned her own books to make Snape in the book look exactly like Alan Rickman.

I don't know why, but JK Rowling seems to like to describe characters that are somewhat weird looking. Even the good looking characters have odd features that mar them. Harry and his father had perpetually unkempt hair. Lupin was aged prematurely, Viktor Krum was a bit bowlegged. Dumbledore had an unusually long misshapen nose. Most of the characters had some prominent physical flaw.



Now Hermione was never described as being ugly but she was not described as looking Emma Watson. In Goblet of Fire, she kind of had an ugly duckling transformation going showing that if she made an effort on her appearance she was very pretty and on some hidden level Viktor Krum was insightful for noticing this potential.

Emma Watson, did not need to make special effort to appear attractive and everyone being shocked that she looked good at the ball in the movie was weird. Though I'm sure casting agents liked seeing in her in a ballroom dress and that's why she starred as Belle in The Beauty and the Beast remake. It was kind of a stretch for her acting talents. In Beauty and the Beast, she played a shy, socially awkward girl that was made fun of for always having her nose buried in a book. Something Emma Watson never had to do before...

It didn't make a huge difference because these were minor characters but the Harry Potter movies had so many good looking people in it, that the characters from the book that Rowling explicitly stated were good looking seemed to fall short.

The books described Ginny Weasley as being very beautiful but her actress did not really shine when sharing screen space with Emma Watson. I thought Fleur Delacour was not nearly cast prettily enough since being beautiful and universally desired by all men was almost her sole character trait. I am not a great judge of men's appearance (though Neville is the hottest now), but I thought the actor playing Professor Lockheart was not that good looking.

The actress playing Luna was perfect. She is perfect at looking spacey and having crazy eyes.


This is not unique to the Harry Potter movies, I thought the casting in the Percy Jackson movies was not very good. Though almost everything in the Percy Jackson movies was not very good.

I did not like the woman they cast for Clarisse LeRue, she looked like an Aphrodite kid, not a Ares kid. It didn't help that she wasn't even in the first movie at all. In the first movie, all demigod children were the same sex as their godly parents. Ares only had sons, Aphrodite only had daughters. Then they retconned it back to the book standard for the second movie realizing that Clarisse, daughter of Ares was a useful character.

I guess it would be really hard to find an actress that looks remotely like her. You aren't going to find many actresses who look like Gina Corano and can pass herself off as a sixteen year old. Not that many teenaged starlets hit the weights frequently.

 

I've got a question regarding the moment that i probably hate the most in all the movies' saga.

I'm talking about The Goblet of Fire, and I'm curious if a certain thing is the same also in the book.

When the Goblet spits a fourth champion for the tournament, and it's Potter, everybody goes mad at him. and i mean everybody, including Dumbledore.

"ohh, Harry Potter is surely a vain glory hunter! He clearly tricked a powerful magical ward to be included in a deadly challenge! Booo, hooo, shame on you, we are so disappointed!"

REALLY?

Ron, you stupid moron, he's your friend. You two are growing together and you really think Harry is that kind of guy?

and most of all Dumbledore, you old imbecile, you should know better. You are not even giving the benefit of doubt to a person that you know is a humble guy. A guy who was able to summon Fawkes to the chamber of secrets thanks to his absolute loyalty to you.
Nah, let's forget about that diabolical and powerful wizard that wants to kill Harry, let's throw into the dump 3 years of mutual trust. Clearly Harry did it.

It was totally out of characters, and it broke my suspension of disbelief... or better, it shattered it into fine powder and dispersed it into a storm.

 

My problem with Goblet of Fire is that Voldomort's plot was ridiculous. It had so many moving parts.

1) He had to rescue one of his captured minions from underneath the nose of a high ranking Ministry of Magic employee and trap a strong willed man with the Imperius Curse for almost a year.

2) He had to insert a spy under Dumbledore's nose for months.

3) He had to rig an ancient magical contest twice, first to let Harry in the contest, then to make sure Harry wins the contest.

4) It also required his most cowardly servant to act boldly and efficiently multiple times.

Steps 1-4 all had to occur under the nose of government observers from three nations.

It's a miracle his resurrection plan succeeded.

When talking with my friend who is a Potter I've come up with so many brutal plots Voldomort should have done it's scary, and he said "When I take over the world I'll have to have you killed."

In Book 6, I thought the Deatheaters acts of terrorism were lame. I would have staged a Death Eater attack on Muggles that left several wounded. The "wounded Muggles" are sent to St. Mungos Hospital. The "wounded Muggles" are werewolves who drank a polyjuice potion and it just so happens that they are brought in the hospital before a full moon.

During the chaos, the Death Eaters swoop in and steal as many healing potions and kidnap as many Healers as they can. Not only is the random violence terrifying but the Death Eaters control the health industry and can extort wizards and witches who need specialty cures.

In Goblet of Fire. Voldomort needed Harry's blood. He needed Harry removed from Dumbledore. Ultimately, he needed Harry to grab a portkey. Portkeys can look like anything.

How hard can be it to get Harry to pick up a random object when Dumbledore is not nearby? That's all he needed to do.