Harry Potter: Classic Or Dud?

Oh hey another movie.

oh hey
dude

o hey it was pretty good but a bit anticlimactic

Half the student workers here are in 'seeing it tonight OMG' mode. (So is my aunt Cheryl, doubtless.)

yeah this was pretty good w/ a terrible ending

the scene where harry & ginny run after the dark wizards in the field was great i thought

ya

i liked teh way it looked a lot... good cinematography, even the quidditch stuff looked good

but what a weird tone... death doom and dating

also the "oh btw" reveal of the half-blood prince's identity was a bit... uhhhh

x-post -- How is that not most teens' angst ridden lives?

it's true!

it defly suffered from the whole--how can we cram as many major plot points into this amnt of time... so instead of any kind of padding btw ron & hermione/harry & ginny and all the scary shit, its just one right after the other

half-blood prince search in the book is a lot more involved

another killer scene--when harry is getting dragged down in the water and you see those huge underwater mountains made of bodies, and then come back up and dumbledore is being badass w/ the fire

i saw it on imax so i was wondering if the cinematography really was that impressive or if i was just O_O at how big and high-qual it was

no it really was good, i saw it on a relatively small screen but with really good projection. same dude who did amelie.

the whole... half blood stuff... it seems like it was way more of an obsession in the book. here it's just a very minor thing that comes back in the end. seemed a BIT weird.

getting harder and harder to believe that hermione is head over heels for ron but wv

yeah i got the feeling they would have dropped the whole subplot abt the hbp if it hadnt been, like, the title of the whole gd movie

btw pretty lucky that this series is set in britain where 1 out of every 3 people is an amazing character actor

broadbent, gambon, rickman, smith, across the board a+ even when they only had like 6 lines

lol also malfoy looks a lot like jw

totally

i mean
the actor thing

TEENAGE HORMONES

lol also malfoy looks a lot like jw

Whenever I would look at the actor who played Draco I thought he looked like somebody familiar, but I figured I was just thinking of another actor.

i thought this was pretty awful. it looked really amazing mind and most of the individual scenes were great (funny scenes were funny, scary scenes were scary) but the pacing was soooo awkward. whole thing felt like it was just "this happened and then this happened and then this happened" without really explaining the significance of any of it.

the half-blood thing was one... like snape didn't even get mad that harry used sectumsempra on draco (which was how snape even knew that harry was looking for the prince). in the book, harry got into a shitload of trouble for almost killing a kid but in this one, slashing up draco means he gets to run into secret room and snog ginny? wtf? really i am okay with them leaving out massive chunks of the books but why include stuff if it's not going to make any sense on a basic storytelling level?

haha yeah i was annoyed that he basically attempts to murder draco and theres no punishment at all but at some point its kind of hard to judge these "as movies" anymore as opposed to companion pieces to the books, sort of?

yeah true and to be fair, most of the movies have been pretty much like this anyway. i just thought that the change in tone from one scene to another was really bizarre and awkward in this one and would make absolutely no sense to people who either haven't read the books or forgotten most of it.

I mostly liked this but thought they completely botched the ending. The assault force on the castle just comes in, wreaks havoc, leaves. At least the kids got to fight back in the book.

Is it just me or is there a _whole_ lot of drug use/subtext in this flick? Multiple characters are visibly high or stoned, every other character downs a potion for some reason(knowingly or not), etc

Also, movie was great, shot beautifully, my fave since the 3rd, which was the last one I saw in the theater.

xpost definitely. There was a fairly nuanced approach to that and sexuality in this movie that managed to give it a bit of depth. The Felix Felicis scene was about my favorite in the film.

If Harry Potter has much literary merit (see: start of this thread) seems utterly beside the point to any kid who likes the books/movies. Harry captures their imagination. Maybe their imaginations are rather childish. Um. Duh.

Frankly, I can't recall why troll dolls were so fascinating to my peers in fifth grade, except I recall they were and the fact that they were apparently ugly useless senseless bits of plastic and garish nylon hair never really mattered a damn to me or any of my fellows. We liked them.

am i the only person who thinks that making the bankers in the first film disagreeable, short, hook-nosed trolls seemed a bit anti-semitic?

i've never seen anyone else write or say that, but it jumped out at me when i was watching the first film.

also, it seems unduly biased against short, ugly people.

yes that too

classic. the writing is dull and boring and, even in my elementary days reading these (obv being of the younger generation here on ilx) i grew annoyed that j.k. introduced characters like one had never before already been familiar with them. but it's an unbelievably imagined and well-thought out series. they're very fun and while the latter half of the series doesn't do so much for me as it approaches adult themes (with assumption that the reader has never been before initiated in these things, which is true for the majority of it's readers) the first and 3rd books are stellar works of story-telling.

movies are meh; dan radcliffe seems like a fun guy in real lyfe but is incredibly cardboard actor. granger and the guy who plays weasley are ace.

ok, maybe not "boring", but there is little frazzle in the actual literary aspect. maybe i mean more "plain" and "purely functional".

agree with all of the above^

30% of each book being either boring repetitive mcguffin or synopsis doesnt help. dumbledore basically wrong bout everything til he dies, too.

the starting each and every novel reminding the reader of the woes of living with the dudley family absolutely killed it as well. i really saw zero benefit or reason to consistently keep doing so, as they play an abysmally minuscule role in the potter-mythology nor do they even cross one's mind in the subsequent 5-7hundred pages.

in truth tho, i've thought about other ways to approach this and haven't really been able to come up with much. it would've made the 6th book a lot more emotionally rousing if harry had lived possibly with dumbledore or even his godfather instead but i almost feel rowling was fully aware of the incestuous implications she'd be ridiculed for by going w/ such a move.

I really wanted part of one of the books to be set during an exchange programme to one of the other cool European magic schools.

truth tho, i've thought about other ways to approach this and haven't really been able to come up with much

approach what, the overall series? oh, i think there would have been multiple approaches that would have been more interesting. focusing on ron as the central character, for example, with him having to balance friendship with, and jealousies of, harry (the "chosen one"). or making harry struggle instead of being a superhero, with him having to overcome feelings of inadequacy about being -- or even objectively failing in being -- the "chosen one."

not having them argue about the same thing (jealousy/mistrust of each other) in the middle of books 2-5 would actually have been an improvement, so tbh I disagree there daniel

i guess i didn't pay enough attention about the series. i still think ron would be a more interesting central character than dull-as-dishwater harry.

movie prob acting as an influence there

Neither books 5 or 6 have a particularly strong central mcguffin to focus the plot, so as a result feel somewhat like meandering backstory infodumps.

movie prob acting as an influence there

i'm sure it was. i can't read.

annoy fosters, get stolen away to hogwarts, new teachers are shit, grave danger reveal, harry unpopular cos of potter issues dumbledore senile enough, happy to let it work itself out, hagrid's a bit dim somwhere, omg snogs, the obviously evil adults were the bad guys, ok tho defeated them with the one spell we learnt this year, ere's a bit about voldemort, exams passed and quidditch one, several billion pounds please

your summary reads like billy joel's we didn't start the fire

he's a constant influence

he can't read, either.