Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
As of this writing, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts I & II are on cable and being played back to back. (I was beginning to wonder if they'd do that after showing Part I in the morning and Part II later in the evening.) I find that after I see movies repeatedly, things start to stand out more here and there.
One thing I noticed is that after the first movie, which followed the book very closely, the rest began to diverge to greater and greater degrees from the books. The worst of these, in my opinion, was the fourth, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The Weasley twins fighting after their failed attempt at fooling the Goblet of Fire into letting them enter their names for the Tri-Wizarding Tournament. In the book they just laughed it off. The maze was also a big disappointment. No obstacles in the maze? Why not? I was looking forward to seeing what a Blast-Ended Skrewt looked like.
Then when Voldemort is reborn, and in all the films that followed, he had ears. They digitally edited out his nose so as too make him look more snake-like, but left the ears despite the books' description of him not having any; just holes as a snake would. The folks working on the series Enterprise, the prequel series to the original Star Trek, did the same with the Andorians, an insectoid race that weren't supposed to have ears either since they had antennae. The creators of the original Star Trek simply had their hair cover them, but the new wizards of special effects somehow couldn't manage to do what they did 30+ years before. The same actor portraying Voldemort, Ralph Fiennes, was also Hades, another Dark Lord, in the remake of Clash of the Titans and its sequel, Wrath of the Titans.
They finally decided to split the last movie into two parts, which they thought of doing with the fourth and didn't. If they had, it might've been much better. The makers of the Twilight Saga did the same with Breaking Dawn, the last in that series, which has Robert Pattinson as Edward, after he portrayed Cedric Diggory in the Goblet of Fire. Both film series also have their own Bella's too.
The Deathly Hallows opens with Hermione using the Obliviate Memory Charm, (used by Gilderoy Lockhart in the Chamber of Secrets, using Ron's busted wand, with disastrous results for him), on her own muggle parents to erase all memory of her existence. She did this ostensibly to protect them. This wasn't in the book, and although her face subsequently vanished from all the pictures in the house. what about all the neighbors and other muggle relatives who'd remember the Granger's having a daughter?
After escaping the attack at the wedding at the Weasley's, Harry, Ron and Hermione appear on a different street from the book. They scoot off into an alley to change, Hermione pulling extra clothes out of her tiny handbag, explaining the use of an Undetectable Extension Charm (I believe it was called a Bag of Unlimited Holding when referring to St. Nick's well-known bag containing toys for all the children in the world in a GURPS {General Universal Role Playing System} game a couple of friends and I played a long time ago). While doing this, we hear a bunch of books fall over inside, apparently having remained stacked up to that point. I could only think that Hermione could've used a Kindle or iPad and saved the trouble of packing all those books.
Later on, after escaping imprisonment from Malfoy Manor with the assistance of Dobby, the former House Elf of the Malfoy's, who shoots off his big mouth to Bellatrix and ends up dead for it, they appear at the safe house. (House elves act a lot like children and, though fully grown, are short, like hobbits.) We see the apparition spell at work again, and thanks to the description in the books and the visualizations in the films, it looks like they're able to basically create their own personal, directed worm holes to their desired destinations. Quite handy, and no Star Gate or DHD (Dial Home Device) needed.
Harry asks Olivander about several wands they've obtained, and one of them is Bellatrix's wand. When they got to Gringott's though, and Hermione, looking like Bellatrix thanks to polyjuice potion, is asked to present her wand as proof of her identity, she doesn't have it. Why not? They had it at the house. Did they forget it? Does the bank have a wand master who could glean from the wand that it was no longer in the possession of its original owner?
Harry also has Draco's wand, having taken it from him. Dobby snatched Narcissa's wand as she was attempting to stop them from leaving, but then it inexplicably shows up in Draco's possession when he confronts Harry in the Room of Requirement.
They enter Bellatrix's vault when everything they touch starts multiplying. Unlike the book however, none of it burns them. They escape on a white dragon that was kept imprisoned in the bowels of the bank by the goblins. This reminds me of the white baby dragon in the TV series Merlin on SyFy (the new name of the SciFi Channel), who wasn't being watched closely enough by the adult dragon (voiced by John Hurt who portrays Olivander), and revives a dying Morgana. I'd like to think that they're the same, and this is his punishment for saving Morgana.
Snape is now Headmaster at Hogwarts, and at the start of the second film we see him from behind, standing in a window overlooking the grounds. From the back, with his long black hair and cape, he looks just like Darth Vader.
We learn more about Dumbledore in the last book in the series from quotes of Rita Skeeter's recently published 800 page biography. When will J.K. Rowling grace us with this book from the world of Harry Potter as she did with The Tales of Beetle the Bard; not to mention Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages.
J.K. also let slip that Dumbledore was gay. Too bad he wasn't portrayed by the openly gay actor Ian McKellan, who portrayed Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and is set to reprise the role in the forth coming trilogy, The Hobbit. He'd have been perfect; but then he was busy no doubt with the aforementioned Lord of the Rings, not to mention his role as Magneto in the X Men movies as well. (HE has saiid that fans have come up to him and addressed him as Dumbledore.)
After Harry returns to Hogwarts and Snape beats a hasty retreat when McGonagall confronts him, Harry tells McGonagall he needs time. She tells him to do what he has to do and proceeds to cast a spell with the words "Piertotum Locomotor" animating the stone knights and armor that adorn the castle commanding them to do their duty and defend the school. The is reminiscent of Eglantine Price in Bedknobs and Broomsticks animating armor to help fight the Germans in WWII using Substitutiary Locomotion, which was activated with the words: Treguna, Mekoides, Trecorum Satis Dee. Methinks English witches have a hankering for armies of animated objects.
At the end of the film, Harry snaps the Elder Wand in half and throws it off a cliff, apparently satisfied with Malfoy's wand. What?! Like Ron said, "It's the most powerful wand in the world." In the book, Harry uses it to repair his old wand that he was partial to, since the Elder Wand was the only one powerful enough to do it. He then retired it. The book says he put it back where it came from; that is in the grave with Dumbledore. That was more fitting. He also dropped the Resurrection Stone in the Forbidden Forest. Given that he didn't want to keep either the Elder Wand or the Resurrection Stone, it's a wonder he kept the Cloak of Invisibility he'd already had for 7 years when he learned that it was one of the Deathly Hallows!
Jump ahead 19 years when Harry, Ron and Hermione are all married with kids of their own taking them to King's Cross Station and Platform 9 3/4. Harry's youngest son is worried he might end up in Slytherin. Harry reminds him that he's named after 2 headmasters of Hogwarts,, Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape. His name is Albus Severus Potter, which means his initials are A.S.P. With initials like that, he belongs in Slytherin! What kind of grief could he expect from the other kids if he ended up in any other house?!
Those are some of my thoughts on Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows for now. I'll probably add more later as other things come to mind. Stay tuned.
One thing I noticed is that after the first movie, which followed the book very closely, the rest began to diverge to greater and greater degrees from the books. The worst of these, in my opinion, was the fourth, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The Weasley twins fighting after their failed attempt at fooling the Goblet of Fire into letting them enter their names for the Tri-Wizarding Tournament. In the book they just laughed it off. The maze was also a big disappointment. No obstacles in the maze? Why not? I was looking forward to seeing what a Blast-Ended Skrewt looked like.
Then when Voldemort is reborn, and in all the films that followed, he had ears. They digitally edited out his nose so as too make him look more snake-like, but left the ears despite the books' description of him not having any; just holes as a snake would. The folks working on the series Enterprise, the prequel series to the original Star Trek, did the same with the Andorians, an insectoid race that weren't supposed to have ears either since they had antennae. The creators of the original Star Trek simply had their hair cover them, but the new wizards of special effects somehow couldn't manage to do what they did 30+ years before. The same actor portraying Voldemort, Ralph Fiennes, was also Hades, another Dark Lord, in the remake of Clash of the Titans and its sequel, Wrath of the Titans.
They finally decided to split the last movie into two parts, which they thought of doing with the fourth and didn't. If they had, it might've been much better. The makers of the Twilight Saga did the same with Breaking Dawn, the last in that series, which has Robert Pattinson as Edward, after he portrayed Cedric Diggory in the Goblet of Fire. Both film series also have their own Bella's too.
The Deathly Hallows opens with Hermione using the Obliviate Memory Charm, (used by Gilderoy Lockhart in the Chamber of Secrets, using Ron's busted wand, with disastrous results for him), on her own muggle parents to erase all memory of her existence. She did this ostensibly to protect them. This wasn't in the book, and although her face subsequently vanished from all the pictures in the house. what about all the neighbors and other muggle relatives who'd remember the Granger's having a daughter?
After escaping the attack at the wedding at the Weasley's, Harry, Ron and Hermione appear on a different street from the book. They scoot off into an alley to change, Hermione pulling extra clothes out of her tiny handbag, explaining the use of an Undetectable Extension Charm (I believe it was called a Bag of Unlimited Holding when referring to St. Nick's well-known bag containing toys for all the children in the world in a GURPS {General Universal Role Playing System} game a couple of friends and I played a long time ago). While doing this, we hear a bunch of books fall over inside, apparently having remained stacked up to that point. I could only think that Hermione could've used a Kindle or iPad and saved the trouble of packing all those books.
Later on, after escaping imprisonment from Malfoy Manor with the assistance of Dobby, the former House Elf of the Malfoy's, who shoots off his big mouth to Bellatrix and ends up dead for it, they appear at the safe house. (House elves act a lot like children and, though fully grown, are short, like hobbits.) We see the apparition spell at work again, and thanks to the description in the books and the visualizations in the films, it looks like they're able to basically create their own personal, directed worm holes to their desired destinations. Quite handy, and no Star Gate or DHD (Dial Home Device) needed.
Harry asks Olivander about several wands they've obtained, and one of them is Bellatrix's wand. When they got to Gringott's though, and Hermione, looking like Bellatrix thanks to polyjuice potion, is asked to present her wand as proof of her identity, she doesn't have it. Why not? They had it at the house. Did they forget it? Does the bank have a wand master who could glean from the wand that it was no longer in the possession of its original owner?
Harry also has Draco's wand, having taken it from him. Dobby snatched Narcissa's wand as she was attempting to stop them from leaving, but then it inexplicably shows up in Draco's possession when he confronts Harry in the Room of Requirement.
They enter Bellatrix's vault when everything they touch starts multiplying. Unlike the book however, none of it burns them. They escape on a white dragon that was kept imprisoned in the bowels of the bank by the goblins. This reminds me of the white baby dragon in the TV series Merlin on SyFy (the new name of the SciFi Channel), who wasn't being watched closely enough by the adult dragon (voiced by John Hurt who portrays Olivander), and revives a dying Morgana. I'd like to think that they're the same, and this is his punishment for saving Morgana.
Snape is now Headmaster at Hogwarts, and at the start of the second film we see him from behind, standing in a window overlooking the grounds. From the back, with his long black hair and cape, he looks just like Darth Vader.
We learn more about Dumbledore in the last book in the series from quotes of Rita Skeeter's recently published 800 page biography. When will J.K. Rowling grace us with this book from the world of Harry Potter as she did with The Tales of Beetle the Bard; not to mention Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages.
J.K. also let slip that Dumbledore was gay. Too bad he wasn't portrayed by the openly gay actor Ian McKellan, who portrayed Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and is set to reprise the role in the forth coming trilogy, The Hobbit. He'd have been perfect; but then he was busy no doubt with the aforementioned Lord of the Rings, not to mention his role as Magneto in the X Men movies as well. (HE has saiid that fans have come up to him and addressed him as Dumbledore.)
After Harry returns to Hogwarts and Snape beats a hasty retreat when McGonagall confronts him, Harry tells McGonagall he needs time. She tells him to do what he has to do and proceeds to cast a spell with the words "Piertotum Locomotor" animating the stone knights and armor that adorn the castle commanding them to do their duty and defend the school. The is reminiscent of Eglantine Price in Bedknobs and Broomsticks animating armor to help fight the Germans in WWII using Substitutiary Locomotion, which was activated with the words: Treguna, Mekoides, Trecorum Satis Dee. Methinks English witches have a hankering for armies of animated objects.
At the end of the film, Harry snaps the Elder Wand in half and throws it off a cliff, apparently satisfied with Malfoy's wand. What?! Like Ron said, "It's the most powerful wand in the world." In the book, Harry uses it to repair his old wand that he was partial to, since the Elder Wand was the only one powerful enough to do it. He then retired it. The book says he put it back where it came from; that is in the grave with Dumbledore. That was more fitting. He also dropped the Resurrection Stone in the Forbidden Forest. Given that he didn't want to keep either the Elder Wand or the Resurrection Stone, it's a wonder he kept the Cloak of Invisibility he'd already had for 7 years when he learned that it was one of the Deathly Hallows!
Jump ahead 19 years when Harry, Ron and Hermione are all married with kids of their own taking them to King's Cross Station and Platform 9 3/4. Harry's youngest son is worried he might end up in Slytherin. Harry reminds him that he's named after 2 headmasters of Hogwarts,, Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape. His name is Albus Severus Potter, which means his initials are A.S.P. With initials like that, he belongs in Slytherin! What kind of grief could he expect from the other kids if he ended up in any other house?!
Those are some of my thoughts on Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows for now. I'll probably add more later as other things come to mind. Stay tuned.
posted by Postmann | 11:54 AM
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