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Inspector Gesicht posted:Order was the book that killed all my enthusiasm for HP when I was 11 years old. There didn't seem to be any arc to events, just a whole load of stuff happening. Harry's angst was understandable but we really didn't need all 750 pages rooted to his viewpoint. Can anyone sum up what happened in less than 75 characters? Harry poorly deals with emotions amplified by a connection to Voldemort.
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Jan 18, 2015 01:59
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I was bored in school a lot so OoTP was always my favorite, there is so much to READ in that mofo. Also all of Hogwarts banding together to throw out Umbridge was an amazing story that always felt really awesome to me, especially peeves running her out with the transfiguration teacher's cane. I felt like Harry was pretty much justified in his angsting in that one; everybody had been lying to and otherwise leaving Harry isolated; I felt like I would have been smashing Dumbledore's fancy wizard poo poo too.
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Jan 18, 2015 16:10
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OoTP was definitely a big sloppy mess, and felt like the first one where the phenomenon of the series blinded everyone (Rowling, her editor, her publishers) to what a good, clean story should look like. It's also still my favorite by margin. I loved that this was the first one where it felt like Harry had actual autonomy and didn't have Dumbledore or whoever watching over his shoulder making sure he got things right. Also him wandering around to do things on his own was both merited in a way that wasn't before while ironically also having real consequences this time around. Seriously, the first two books the kids are being ridiculously irresponsible with what they are doing and the information they're withholding from teachers, and likely should have been killed instead of lucking into victory. I also really liked how Rowling evolved Harry into an actual leader, and showed how his courage inspired people. I felt like this thread was mostly dropped through book 6 and didn't really pick up until they got to Hogwarts in book 7, where they found out that Neville was trying to stand up to teachers and act as a surrogate Harry, and how the students have been hearing rumors about the gang's exploits which has given them courage to fight back. I always thought this was a better way for Harry to beat Voldemort, since he inspires people through hope and courage while Voldy does through fear. I thought the horcrux hunt was a stupid MacGuffin, and they should have focused more on Harry helping people and inspiring them to fight back. I didn't mind the angsty stuff because while it was turned up a huge notch this time around, it felt like it was tied into the narrative. Everyone was hiding things from Harry, he was being straight up tortured by Umbridge, he was having these frightening visions and was linked into Voldemort's anger, he was failing wildly at Occlumency with Snape who as usual was being a tremendous dickhead to Harry with Dumbledore never explaining why he should trust this surly rear end in a top hat. I felt like the teen emotions were running just as high in HBP but the love triangle poo poo in that one felt completely tangential to the plot instead of being driven by it. So yeah it is an overlong rambling mess, but it still has some of my favorite moments in the series. It's the book I pick up the most often to read a single passage I have dogeared, or start a chapter in the middle of the book and end up reading to the end.
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Jan 18, 2015 17:28
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reignofevil posted:Also all of Hogwarts banding together to throw out Umbridge was an amazing story that always felt really awesome to me, especially peeves running her out with the transfiguration teacher's cane. It took me about four reads to notice this, but one of my favourite parts about Order of the Phoenix is how much Peeves there is in it, even before you arrive at the bits you remember straight away. Far more than in any other book, he's whizzing around causing mischief and people are having to dodge him as they go about their business. And not just because Peeves is awesome and I would happily have read seven books about him, but because he's the spirit of rebellion and misadventure, and so of course it makes perfect sense that he's all over Book 5, during Umbridge's reign of terror. It's a great subtle indicator of what her regime is doing to the school.
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Jan 18, 2015 18:39
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reignofevil posted:I felt like Harry was pretty much justified in his angsting in that one; everybody had been lying to and otherwise leaving Harry isolated; I felt like I would have been smashing Dumbledore's fancy wizard poo poo too. Honestly simply hitting the "selfish rear end in a top hat" part of the teenage years felt like enough of a reason for Harry to be the way he was, though I figure a hell of a lot of PTSD made it even worse. Even at his least sympathetic he still managed to form the DA and do that interview with the Quibbler, so he actually held together reasonably well overall.
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Jan 19, 2015 01:46
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MadDogMike posted:Honestly simply hitting the "selfish rear end in a top hat" part of the teenage years felt like enough of a reason for Harry to be the way he was, though I figure a hell of a lot of PTSD made it even worse. Even at his least sympathetic he still managed to form the DA and do that interview with the Quibbler, so he actually held together reasonably well overall. And, as if to drive the point home, they even show James being an rear end in a top hat at the same age. Being a massive, self-centered rear end in a top hat is simply an unavoidable part of being 15. Horrible, horrible age; wouldn't do it over again if you paid me...
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Jan 19, 2015 01:55
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Trin Tragula posted:It took me about four reads to notice this, but one of my favourite parts about Order of the Phoenix is how much Peeves there is in it, even before you arrive at the bits you remember straight away. Far more than in any other book, he's whizzing around causing mischief and people are having to dodge him as they go about their business. The movies were going to have Rik Mayall as Peeves and it frustrates me now that we'll never see Maggie Smith telling him that it 'unscrews the other way'. He would have been about as perfect a peeves as you could get.
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Jan 19, 2015 16:06
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MrFlibble posted:The movies were going to have Rik Mayall as Peeves and it frustrates me now that we'll never see Maggie Smith telling him that it 'unscrews the other way'. He would have been about as perfect a peeves as you could get. Apparently, he was Peeves, as in they filmed his scenes for the first movie and everything, but ended up cutting them out. They've never released as deleted scenes, either.
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Jan 19, 2015 23:18
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Davros1 posted:Apparently, he was Peeves, as in they filmed his scenes for the first movie and everything, but ended up cutting them out. They've never released as deleted scenes, either. He made all the kids laugh to the extent that they had have him perform in another room where they couldn't see him, but they kept corpsing.
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Jan 20, 2015 14:38
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What possible reason do they have for getting rid of Peeves for the films? It's not like he would take up a lot of screen time and they had the ghostly CGI for the other ghosts anyway.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:29
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Xachariah posted:What possible reason do they have for getting rid of Peeves for the films? It's not like he would take up a lot of screen time and they had the ghostly CGI for the other ghosts anyway. Cut for time, I'd assume. The first movie was already pretty long, and this was before (or just at the start of) The Lord of The Rings era where movies were allowed to be the lenght of an ice age.
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Jan 21, 2015 14:20
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What's your edition of the books? I had the first French edition, way back then, but I've never actually read the books in English. I found the Prisoner of Azkaban in English while shopping, I thought the cover was really good, pretty low-key.  I really hope I can find the others somewhere here. edit: though I have to say I think the POA cover is the best of the bunch, with the HBP cover. Not a fan of the OOTP cover. Kurtofan fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Jan 21, 2015 |
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Jan 21, 2015 14:47
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Bad Wolf posted:Cut for time, I'd assume. The first movie was already pretty long, and this was before (or just at the start of) The Lord of The Rings era where movies were allowed to be the lenght of an ice age. The Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring was only 20 minutes longer than the first Harry Potter.
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Jan 21, 2015 16:43
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bobkatt013 posted:The Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring was only 20 minutes longer than the first Harry Potter. "only". That's pretty long in movie time. Also, you're comparing the Potter extended version to the regular version of the Fellowship. Compare both regular versions and it's 26 minutes. To further my point, if you compare both extended versions, Fellowship was a whopping *49* minutes longer.
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Jan 21, 2015 17:37
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I ordered a box set from Amazon a couple of months ago and finally finished DH last night. I'd never read any of the series before but had seen, and enjoyed, all of the movies. Just want to say that it was a really excellent story to read 
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Jan 25, 2015 08:19
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el oso posted:I ordered a box set from Amazon a couple of months ago and finally finished DH last night. I'd never read any of the series before but had seen, and enjoyed, all of the movies. With the exception of all the plot holes and angsting moments, I hope. Rowling is not a good writer when it comes to teenage hormones.
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Jan 25, 2015 08:39
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Variant_Eris posted:With the exception of all the plot holes and angsting moments, I hope. Rowling is not a good writer when it comes to teenage hormones. I certainly noticed a lot of the plot holes and was frustrated by the storylines involving JK's thoughts on teenage angst/hormones (mainly manifesting in OotP) but I was also dazzled by the creativity and sense of adventure throughout the series that I could overlook the minor flaws throughout.
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Jan 25, 2015 09:11
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Variant_Eris posted:With the exception of all the plot holes and angsting moments, I hope. Rowling is not a good writer when it comes to teenage hormones. Yeah, god forbid anyone enjoy Harry Potter in the Harry Potter thread.
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Jan 25, 2015 09:58
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Variant_Eris posted:With the exception of all the plot holes and angsting moments, I hope. Rowling is not a good writer when it comes to teenage hormones. I actually thought she captured it pretty well, to be honest. I could relate so well to Harry when I read the latter books as a teen even though I thought he was a massive douchebag at times. Also nobody really cares too much about plotholes in Harry Potter because nearly all of them have been plugged since then.  "Why didn't they just use the Time-Tuner to defeat Voldemort as a kid you guys?"
Captain Mog fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Jan 26, 2015 |
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Jan 26, 2015 17:32
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Captain Mog posted:I actually thought she captured it pretty well, to be honest. I could relate so well to Harry when I read the latter books as a teen even though I thought he was a massive douchebag at times. Also nobody really cares too much about plotholes in Harry Potter because nearly all of them have been plugged since then. I just finished reading the series for the first time, and as a 32 year old male, I really appreciate how Rowling handled all of the hormonal and (understandable) angst issues. It's a YA series that actually wrote to the audience with respect and matured with the audience, and I can't believe how well she did it.
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Jan 26, 2015 17:54
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Captain Mog posted:I actually thought she captured it pretty well, to be honest. I could relate so well to Harry when I read the latter books as a teen even though I thought he was a massive douchebag at times. Also nobody really cares too much about plotholes in Harry Potter because nearly all of them have been plugged since then. Plot holes don't bother me so much (like the whole wand ownership thing makes no sense but whatever, not important) but when characters randomly appeared in front of the trio while they were camping and then discussed plot relevant stuff for no reason I felt a bit insulted. To be clear I really enjoyed the Harry Potter series.
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Jan 26, 2015 20:54
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MrFlibble posted:Plot holes don't bother me so much (like the whole wand ownership thing makes no sense but whatever, not important) but when characters randomly appeared in front of the trio while they were camping and then discussed plot relevant stuff for no reason I felt a bit insulted. JK Rowling absolutely overused the "Harry happens to wander across people saying exactly the right thing while invisible" thing. It made sense in Hogwarts where he'd usually be following people in a small (relatively) enclosed place but it was laughable during the camping trip where they ran across Griphook in the biggest coincidence of all time.
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Jan 26, 2015 21:15
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I've watched the movies and I was wondering, do they show Peter Pettigrew die?
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Jan 26, 2015 21:54
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Kurtofan posted:I've watched the movies and I was wondering, do they show Peter Pettigrew die? Sort of. They show Dobby hitting him and then he never appears again so you can assume he was killed by him.
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Jan 26, 2015 21:56
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Just an aside: I recently re-watched every single one of the HP films this past weekend with the boyfriend and I have to say this: for years I've been convinced (like most) that Prisoner of Azkhaban was the best film, followed by Order of the Phoenix shortly thereafter. But this time around, my mid-twenties self decided that Half-Blood Prince is the best by far and I can't for the life of me see why anyone would feel differently. I honestly love all of the movies but HBP is really the only one that, in my opinion, transcends itself and becomes an actual great piece of cinema. The way it is shot- in green-gray tones, with much greater intimacy than prior movies, with special attention paid to individual characters- makes it really stand out on from the other entries in terms of its cinematography. It's also absolutely genius in its character study of Draco, Snape and Harry and the one obvious scene near the end of the film still feels like a sucker punch to this day. It's kind of a black sheep in general because it's by far the darkest of all the books/movies (including DH) but I feel like time will vindicate it as the greatest of all of them honestly.
Captain Mog fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Jan 27, 2015 |
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Jan 27, 2015 03:24
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You know, I thought back to my childhood about harry potter, and why did they always send stuff with owls if that magic fireplace thing was faster
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Jan 27, 2015 04:20
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Hell dont they even leearn to teleport at one point
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Jan 27, 2015 04:20
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It's pretty inconsistent in general but the short answer is that the fireplace needs to be hooked up to a floo network and use floo powder which might (?) be expensive; and the teleporting magic is dangerous, plus can't be done in a lot of places like Hogwarts.
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Jan 27, 2015 04:31
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Also you need to know a specific address for the floo whereas you need someone's name to send them a thing by owl.
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Jan 27, 2015 05:01
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Which makes you wonder why the Aurors can't just send Sirius (or Voldemort and the Death Eaters, later) a letter and follow the owl, or send them a letter bomb / sleep enchantment etc.
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Jan 27, 2015 06:38
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I think there's a point during Hallows where they mention how they can't get owls anymore because of the protection spells Hermione's been using. It might just be implied, though? Seems like a pretty big hole otherwise, for lots of reasons.
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Jan 27, 2015 07:41
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zachol posted:I think there's a point during Hallows where they mention how they can't get owls anymore because of the protection spells Hermione's been using. It might just be implied, though? Seems like a pretty big hole otherwise, for lots of reasons. Also, aren't owls in severe danger of getting intercepted at that time, anyways? Since the Death Eaters control the Ministry and there are snatchers everywhere.
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Jan 27, 2015 07:58
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I just saw something posted elsewhere that had never occurred to me before.... it's been shown that exposure to horcruxes can influence your thoughts and darken your mind.... and the Dursleys were exposed to a horcrux for 10 years. (They still seemed awful before, and I'm sure this wasn't planned by Rowling, but... still, it kind of fits!)
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Jan 27, 2015 20:31
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Guy A. Person posted:It's pretty inconsistent in general but the short answer is that the fireplace needs to be hooked up to a floo network and use floo powder which might (?) be expensive; and the teleporting magic is dangerous, plus can't be done in a lot of places like Hogwarts. Another important point is that the Floo Network has to go through channels that the ministry can monitor; so any message you send through the network is at least going to let the ministry know the metadata (who was doing the sending; when; to whom), meanwhile if you use an owl or a patronous charm the ministry actually has to already have you on a watch-list or have total control of your environment (Hogwarts) to go through your mail. Now obviously most wizards aren't crazy survivalists or worried at all about the wizard NSA so I am just gonna start waving my hands and say that not only do you have to buy the powder but the ministry of magic probably has a tax in place to stop you from wasting everyone's precious fireplace time with your howlers about Fudge's fascist political aspirations and your opposition to his updated transfiguration protocols.
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Jan 27, 2015 20:33
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Captain Mog posted:Just an aside: I recently re-watched every single one of the HP films this past weekend with the boyfriend and I have to say this: for years I've been convinced (like most) that Prisoner of Azkhaban was the best film, followed by Order of the Phoenix shortly thereafter. But this time around, my mid-twenties self decided that Half-Blood Prince is the best by far and I can't for the life of me see why anyone would feel differently. I honestly love all of the movies but HBP is really the only one that, in my opinion, transcends itself and becomes an actual great piece of cinema. The way it is shot- in green-gray tones, with much greater intimacy than prior movies, with special attention paid to individual characters- makes it really stand out on from the other entries in terms of its cinematography. It's also absolutely genius in its character study of Draco, Snape and Harry and the one obvious scene near the end of the film still feels like a sucker punch to this day. It's kind of a black sheep in general because it's by far the darkest of all the books/movies (including DH) but I feel like time will vindicate it as the greatest of all of them honestly. HBP is my favorite of the films to. It's really the only one where the kids are just allowed to just be kids, since there's nothing life threatening happening (that they're aware of). POA is actually one of my least favorites, mainly because there seems to be a too much slapstick humor that feels out of place. Plus, a couple of the Hagrid effects are just horrible, and it always jars me out of the film.
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Jan 28, 2015 00:40
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I like the whole thing with Slughorn, the guy is pretty sinister.
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Jan 28, 2015 01:03
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thexerox123 posted:I just saw something posted elsewhere that had never occurred to me before.... it's been shown that exposure to horcruxes can influence your thoughts and darken your mind.... and the Dursleys were exposed to a horcrux for 10 years. Yeah god knows that abuse victims have never been told they have an innate aspect of their very being that causes their abusers to hurt them and that they will end up hurting those who love them by their very presence before; and they need to hear that now from some stupid loving photo post on tumblr.
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Jan 28, 2015 02:28
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rchandra posted:Which makes you wonder why the Aurors can't just send Sirius (or Voldemort and the Death Eaters, later) a letter and follow the owl, or send them a letter bomb / sleep enchantment etc. They mentioned that in one of the books, and Sirius got out of it by hiding in a cave in his wolf form and retrieving letters there. That does remind me of a magic item in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archives though, it's called a Spanreed. Basically it's a magic quill that will write whatever its partner is writing. That seems thematically appropriate for the Harry Potter universe.
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Jan 28, 2015 02:39
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I always thought POA was the weakest movie in the series. Mostly because so much of it just... cuts important information in favor of pointless bullshit. The movie literally doesn't make sense unless you fill in a lot of gaps from the books, and the humor/aesthetic shift from the first two movies was really jarring considering Azkaban was a much darker story than the first two. Hogwarts is the Whomping Willow, a stone tower, Hogsmede and a weird wooden bridge they use for loving everything in that movie. Also introduced the giant pendulum clock which was just... why.
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Jan 28, 2015 04:50
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Zore posted:I always thought POA was the weakest movie in the series. Mostly because so much of it just... cuts important information in favor of pointless bullshit. The movie literally doesn't make sense unless you fill in a lot of gaps from the books, and the humor/aesthetic shift from the first two movies was really jarring considering Azkaban was a much darker story than the first two. I thought that the relocation and change in aesthetic and introduction of some of the more interesting recurring sets were the best things about PoA. Also, I refuse to believe that there isn't a deleted scene hidden deep within the WB vaults that contains a filmed, full explanation of the Marauders subplot. As you say, the plot is incomplete and I don't think anyone who hadn't read the book would fully understand it. I can't imagine that it was written that way. OotP is definitely the worst film though. Because of the density of the book, the cuts are so deep that it drains OotP of all its detail and leaves the film feeling like an outline.
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Jan 30, 2015 21:59
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