so i just marathoned all the harry potter movies
 

... with no prior knowledge of the movies or the books. all i knew is it had emma watson and at some point 'snape kills dumbledore'.

i went in really cynical, not only coz its kid stuff but big budget family movies sort of have this dumbness about them. but i was surprised to find none of the movies too condescending... first movie aged the worst though. cgi was laughable in some parts, the soundtrack was loud and never seemed to shut up. second movie is when things started clicking with me and i got a general feel for what kind of story it is.

but as early as the third movie things didn't make any sense and that sort of plagued the rest of them. just really hard to make sense of what was going on alot of the time. alot of supporting characters were ignored and when it was their time to die it didn't really affect me like it probably should have. i guess these things are par for the course in an adaptation.. but what kind of irked me about the story itself is after voldemort came back the fifth and sixth movies were kind of filler... you know shit's going to hit the fan but the narrative just sits on it until the seventh movie.

i have to admit i got kind of sad when it was about to end. and even though i knew alot of characters were going to die and things would go batshit i was still sort of aghast when it finally happened. i walked away a fan.. even though i'm glad i waited for all the movies to come out and i would never care enough to read through all that.

8.5 out of 10. would buy from them again

Interesting.

Yeah the books are absolutely superior, particularly the fifth which is almost 800 pages condensed into a 90 minute film. The whole thing is really kafkaesque and I'm surprised you even picked up on that just by watching the film since it did such a shitty job of building to the climax. After the fourth one, the movies fail to recreate the feeling of the books. There's tons of downtime between events and subtle nuances which affect the narrative.

What would you say was your favorite, if any

hrm thats a tough one. chamber of secrets seemed to have the best balance of the fantasical and dark material, probably had the most sound and paced plotting. so gun to my head i guess i would have to say that but they all work as an ensemble. ... which is something i was going to say, i'm surprised the movies kept a fairly consistent feel considering it had different directors and was filmed over the span of 10 years or whatever. thank god most of the actor were the same that really would have taken me out of it

i would say deathly hallows is the best but its kind of a different beast being the finale and all

I thought

1 was aight
2 was terrible
3-4 were good
5-8 were more good

i liked prisoner of azkaban because i think alfonso curon is a budding genius

chamber of secrets i think is the tightest of all the books, most of the time you're plunged into a mystery in which the answer is invariably "voldemort did it" but the second one did the best job of obscuring it. tom riddle's diary was a super creepy concept.

i would say to read the books if you liked the movies. they are surprisingly good pop fiction.

fun fact, the guy who played the werewolf in prisoner was also the nattering ninny in maude lebowski's apartment

"What the fuck is with this guy?"
"EHEHEHEHEHEHEHE!!!"

another minor gripe i have is why he stays with that fucked up family until the last movie when they get out of dodge. like, wouldnt the most famous magical student manage to find a different guardianship in all that time? like couldn't he stay with ron or something

scenes with the family were funny though

I just acquired the first five to attempt to do this. I can't marathon movies but I liked the first one a lot.....guess it's on to the next!

prisoner was up there with me but at point it kind of had that "we're going to crank these movies out of an assembly line" feel and some of the epicness wasn't there. i can't really articulate why

how dare you

The books were farrrrrrrrrrrrr better than the movies.



Loved the books and read each one immediately as it came out. The movies never did much for me. Obviously had to leave a lot out of them and the pacing in all of them was way too fast. Harry Potter would have been much better suited as a series on HBO like Game of Thrones where each season is a book.

They get progressively darker which is awesome. My problem with the later ones is all the shit they changed, which mostly was necessitated by their written length. Mostly. 7 was very well done, particularly part 1. It's impossible for me to judge the movies objectively.

My biggest gripe with the films is when Harry tries to use sectumsempra against Snape and calls him a coward, Snape gets SUPER pissed and starts yelling with his caps lock on, cause he routinely had the shit bullied out of him by Harry's father and was embarrassed in front of Harry's mother who he loved until his death, which he felt responsible for, and really he was the bravest character of the series. He needed courage not only to get through the day but later on when he's caught up in the death eaters like some kid who gets jumped into a crack gang. He was driven to the dark arts at least partially because he was outcast by his peers for being weird, and then has to deal with Voldemort and constantly hide his true feelings. And of course Dumbledore knew this, and Snape is scared shitless about having just killed Dumbledore, cause then he's on his own. For some reason they cut that outburst of emotion from Snape out of the film. Yeah he's generally this cold, condescending, stoic dude but he does have very intense emotion including anger and sorrow and that is the only time you ever see it, and they removed it from the film.

They also cut the battle in the school after Dumbledore dies. They totally fucked that sequence and it's things like this that interfere with my judgement of the films

Also, when Harry kills Voldemort it is supposed to be in front of pretty much every character in the series, they're all supposed to be watching when it happens. Granted I was pretty trashed when I saw that one, but they also added some dumb fistfight between Harry and Voldemort on a broomstick and that was quite strange.

That's the end of my nerd rant but in general I would agree with you 8.5/10.

You mean the Dursleys? The fat Uncle?

The house is protected because the aunt is Harry's mother's sister as I recall. Something about ancient blood magic that has to do with his mother sacrificing herself to save Harry as a baby

I think Mr. Weasley's affiliation with the Ministry of Magic probably grants him some extra protection. Plus they're not a rich family but they're well connected and have a history. Also I don't think any other families would take on the risk of sheltering Harry.

yeah i feel like they could've developed snape better. seemed to kind of just be there .. though i was still pretty touched when deathly hallows revealed what he really went through

snape is the shit in the books i read most of them just to know more about snape

I love how at first all we know about him is that he's mean and creepy and maybe the villain in the first book, and then eventually we see why he's so bitter, and then that he does have a legitimately dark side at least in his past. Such an awesome character.


Another fun fact the movies neglect is that the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher was literally cursed by Voldemort when Dumbledore denied him the job, and that's why each book/movie has a new teacher

-Quirrel had Voldemort in his head and I think died from the complications of that
-Lockheart turned retarded cause his memory charm backfired or something
-Lupin obviously didn't work out cause of the werewolf thing
-Moody was actually Barty Crouch Jr.
-Umbridge was a fascist cunt and Dumbledore got her ass out of there as soon as he could
-Snape. Epic foreshadowing. Dumbledore gave him the job cause he knew Snape always wanted it and knew this was going to be his last year anyway.


Speaking of fascism, the fifth book had heaps of political overtones that the movie completely ignored. Granted it was more relevant in 2002 or 2003, whenever that was written

was there a reason they couldnt use the time travel charm after that one flick because it always seemed like it couldve come in handy

i'm pretty sure it gets used again in the books but i don't remember

knox harrington? the video artist?

the very same

IT'S SANDRA

I'm surprised that Netphoria by and large approves of Harry Potter.

My favourite book used to be Azkaban because it was a big turning point for Harry's character, but after having a reading marathon of the series I decided that the fourth, sixth and seventh were my favourites. There were only four books when I first started reading them and the fourth one significantly increased the scope. Those three in particular also broke away from the formula of the previous books.

The fifth has always been my least favourite. Too angsty and too long.

is the fifth one where harry's all moody and stupid for just one book

i would argue that the formula was never broken until deathly hallows

the formula was basically school year starts and you go through all the seasons and holidays until you get to the end and the whole caper is solved just in time for summer holidays

Yeah but moreso because he gets visions from Voldemort and it fucks him up.

That is true, 7 was the biggest breakaway and it is one of the best for that. Number 4 had something else to revolve the story around other than the school year, and before the start of number 6 he'd just learned about the whole prophecy thing.

i haven't read these books

is it true there's a flying car

Don't be ridiculous, there's no such thing as flying cars