Harry Potter

[cellio]

(Ok, let's see if this will post today.)

We went to see the Harry Potter movie Monday night. Before that, though... this had to have been the most unappealing set of previews I've seen in a while:

• Spongebob Squarepants: Um, I think they might not quite have this movie's demographic nailed.
• Spiderman 2: Eh. Didn't see #1 and won't see this, but they're closer to the demographic.
• Sleep Over: Eww. Just... eww. Inane gigly teenage girls sneak around their parents and have cat-fights. Um, yeah. Maybe Spongebob wasn't so bad after all.
• Catwoman: If, like me, you have not read the comics (I assume there are comics), you get no information about this movie beyond "babe in black doing acrobatics". Maybe that's enough for their target demographic. (Oh, and I gather the cat-woman died and was recycled or something?)
• Cinderella Story: Cinderella set in modern-day LA. Looks cute, but if the glass slipper has really been replaced by a cell phone, I would think that identification would be anti-climactic. ("Each of you, quick: what's your phone number? Ok, let's ask the phone.")
• Princess Diaries 2: This looks like it could be fun. Or rather, it slightly motivates me to find #1 (this is a sequel). Dani has good things to day about the book.
• Polar Express: Eww eww eww. Even if I did Christmas, and even if I had kids, I still wouldn't take them to see this bit of insipid Santa-is-love fluff.

Now, on to the HP spoilers.

Context: I have not read any of the books.

This was a pretty good adventure story about generic characters. I didn't really see a strong effect from this being specifically the Harry Potter universe. There seemed to be less character advancement and less advancement of the overall story than in the first two movies. I don't think we learned anything new about the lead characters, nor did they learn anything new about themselves. And Draco, formerly a snide force for evil, was instead a snivelling force for bully-dom in this one.

I'm not saying the actors didn't do a good job with their characters or that there weren't fun moments -- just that it didn't seem to move the way the first two did. I enjoyed seeing more of Hagrid, I thought the replacement Dumbledore was credible (but lower-key), and Snape was his usual creepy self. (I don't like the divination professor, but maybe I'm not supposed to.) I liked Lupin, though the homosexual-teacher allegory at the end was rather blunt. And I thought Sirius was done well and had some depth; I hope we'll see more of him.

That map was cute. Dani tells me that according to the book Harry's father created it; that would have been a nice detail to include.

There were some very nice effects (I liked the hippogriff in particular) and too much scenery that could have been better allocated to character time. The plot was tidy, tying up loose ends and holding together well.

One plot thing did surprise me, though: the movie makes clear, through the passage of seasons, that this Sirius Black scare lasts at least six months. If we hadn't gotten the weather scenes, it would have seemed like a few days. I did not see the rising urgency you would expect from "oh no, that murderer has been stalking us for months!". What was up with that? Did it come through more in the book?

And a nit: if time-travel is so dangerous, why the heck is the faculty letting Hermione use it to shave a semester or two off her studies?

Assessment: Much better than #2, not a rich as #1. I'll go to the next one.

We made extremely good time getting to the theatre, but were still surprised to be the first ones at this particular show. That's not really a win, though; it just meant we got to watch more commercials. Remember when you could spend pre-movie time just talking, with quiet music in the background?

Comments

[cellio]

I was referring to the thing with Lupin. Y'know, his dark secret about what he is (that's just his nature) is out, and people just wouldn't want someone like him teaching their kids, so it's time for him to move on. I assumed it was a shot at homophobic parents.

I haven't read the books and am not part of HP fandom; is this interpretation completely off-base or something?

[ian-gunn.livejournal.com]

I took it in the books as more of theme of showing the down side to prejudice in general then specifically homophobia. Perhaps this one is modeled on anti homosexual teachers but I did not specifically note it as that myself. There are several prejudice threads running through the books, against "muggles", half bloods, giants etc... the good guys, especially Dumbledore, are always shown as looking beyond the prejudices of their society.

[tangerinpenguin.livejournal.com]

There's a segment of fandom that likes to speculate (somewhat more so than the usual slash sillyness) about Sirius/Lupin; I thought there were several moments in this film that threw a bone to them, as it were.

But as ian_gunn and others have noted, the anti-prejudice theme is more general in the books, and gets more so. We've already seen it strongly in terms of "pure" wizard families (like the Malfoys) and "mudbloods" (wizards with Muggle ancestry, like Hermione.) That becomes a theme with common wizardling attitudes toward many other magical creatures ("house elves," which we've seen, gnomes like the bankers, etc.)

A related aspect I don't feel they've done as much with as they did in the books, which increasingly becomes significant, is the impact of politics in the greater Wizardling world. Lupin was not the first case - and will certainly not be the last - where Dumbledore has to deal with "the owls flooding in from concerned parents" - Malfoy likes to play that game, and is very good at it.

The next two movies will be key; this is the last one (IMHO) where Harry's conflicts are removed enough from the larger sociopolitical gameboard that we can get away without showing more of it in the film, without departing pretty drastically from the books.

[cellio]

A related aspect I don't feel they've done as much with as they did in the books, which increasingly becomes significant, is the impact of politics in the greater Wizardling world.

Oh yeah -- I meant to comment on that. That Malfoy's snit is able to turn into a death sentence for the hippogriff without Hagrid seeming to get to even present his side of the argument shows that the system is somewhat broken. I wanted to see more about what was going on there; the death sentence seemed to come out of left field, with inadequate explanation from Dumbledore.

[jducoeur]

IIRC, this is explored a bit more in the book, but not all that much. The key thing is to remember this book in context: we're seeing things from the 13-year-old view. From Harry's POV, things *do* happen for no particularly obvious reason save that there are a lot of Bad People out there.

Over the next couple of books, he starts interacting much more closely with those Bad People, and scenes like this start to make a lot more sense. Among other things, it gradually becomes clear that, in at least some arenas, Lucius Malfoy is significantly more powerful than Dumbledore. Perhaps even more relevant, the two hate each other with a deep and abiding passion. In the later context, the death sentence for the hippogriff probably has at least as much to do with embarrassing Hogwart's as with Draco's snit...

As tangerinpenguin says, the politics here are complex and deep. You're just seeing the surface at this point -- it gets significantly more depth in Goblet of Fire and *far* more in Order of the Phoenix. Indeed, my biggest concern with the latter is that there is so much meat in book 5 that I have no idea how they can do it justice as a movie.

Which isn't to dismiss your complaint -- some things do appear under-motivated from the POV of this episode. The problem, though, is that this really is structured as an epic, and a lot of stuff really is just there to be setup and foreshadowing.

(BTW, I really do commend the books. With the possible exception of Book 4, I've thought they were all quite good...)

[ian-gunn.livejournal.com]

I'm curious, what did you find less good about the fourth book?

[jducoeur]

I just found it fatty -- it felt to me like it would have been a much *better* book if it had been 200 pages shorter. Too many plots moving a little too slowly.

By contrast, I thought that Order of the Phoenix, despite being even longer, was absolutely ripping: tightly plotted and carefully structured, with everything paying off wonderfully. That's why I'm not grousing about her taking her time on Book 6: the evidence says that, when she takes the time to polish, she produces better work...

[siderea]

Haven't seen the movie, but in the book, it's made quite clear that lycanthropy is an uncurable, blood-borne disease which you can't catch through casual contact, but which everyone is deathly afraid of catching. It's not an analogy to homosexuality, it's an analogy to AIDS.

The theme of prejudices and bigotry becomes a big one, with many examples as the series progresses. Harry's getting slowly radicalized by his experiences.

[jducoeur]

The theme of prejudices and bigotry becomes a big one, with many examples as the series progresses. Harry's getting slowly radicalized by his experiences.

Actually, it's interesting watching this process, because it's neither simple nor consistent. For example, Hermione spends much of Book 4 annoyed at Harry (and pretty much everyone else) because they don't understand why *she* feels so radically about certain prejudices. If Lupin is the AIDS metaphor, Hermione is the black metaphor, and she's very sensitive to the issue.

Fascinating. I hadn't consciously twigged to it before this conversation, but prejudice does appear to be the single most-explored theme in this series. Anti-werewolf prejudice is the most minor of three major examples I can think of offhand...