Going to see Harry Potter 5 tonight

[sinim]

I'll post about it tomorrow.

[Draxas]

Enjoy. I'll probably end up seeing it this weekend, or shortly thereafter.

[sinim]

AWESOME!!!! Great movie. My wife says she was a little disappointed in how they did the ending (she's read it) but since I'm only half way through the book myself, it didn't bother me. Well placed humor and great fight scenes made this a great movie that kept you interested from start to finish. It could have been a little longer though.

P.S. This particular theater had the new DLP picture and sound and stadium seating...really nice. We just found out that yesterday was part of their wednesday special they have. All admission prices are $4 and small popcorns are free. Incidentally, Razor, I think we should see Transformers there instead of waiting for the cheap theater. It's the same price...plus free popcorn. Next week maybe?

[N3B]

I don't know how I feel about HP.

I certainly loved the books when I started reading them in elementary school. But now, I'm skeptical.

The atmosphere of the books is very engaging and riveting, which is perhaps what I like most about them. Other than that, I've typically been the same age as Harry as the books were released (though now I'm a bit older, as publication slowed down a bit), so I was sort of feeling similar to how he and the rest of the crew were in the books, as I read them. 'Twas sort of interesting.

However, the plot pisses me off very often. For instance, I don't like how each book is its own little adventure arguably unattached to the rest of them. I've gotten irked with the formula of "Harry goes to school, finds out all sorts of new magic stuff, Voldemort/co put the school at dire risk, Harry acts the hero and goes after Voldemort at the end of the school year, and wins. Next book."

It also bugs me how Voldemort just keeps coming back and how Harry keeps ****ing beating him. I mean, that first time in Sorceror's Stone is excusable, because Voldemort had just been resurrected for the first time. But every other time? Come on. Voldemort's the big bad evil wizard who's killed hundreds of people. Harry's an angsty, pubescant teenager. And Voldemort has minions working for/with him as well.

I like The Prisoner of Azkaban, perhaps as my favorite, if only for the fact that it had pretty much nothing to do with Voldemort, although I've got a big bone to pick with the time-traveling thing (it would never have worked the way it did in the book). The Voldemort plot(s) seem cliched, like JKR has made that plot a cliche and keeps using it with little variation. It's started to finally develop with the end of book 5 and through book 6, but all the stuff in-between the beginning and end of those books can be irritating as well.

Take book 5: like 90% of it was about Hogwarts, which I was down with because I was getting tired of previous books and the movies not focusing much on the school. However, it seems like there's too much focus on the school and not enough on other stuff to push it forward. So basically I'm stuck with Harry being an angsty, cocky jackson while Umbridge plays the role of the new antagonist. And she's not even a good antagonist, because her character seems so flat and static that she's just not enjoyable to read/put up with. Take Vader, for instance -- that's a good type of antagonist. Umbridge, not so much.

Supposedly she's big on foreshadowing, but I haven't read the books in forever to know much. I suppose that's a good thing about her writing. Although it irks me how every year there's some new wizarding tradition that's always been around but we (the audience) have never heard about it. For instance, the Hogsmeade trips, we didn't know about them until Year 3 or whenever Harry became elligible to go; we never heard of the Tri-Wizard tournament until Harry was elligible. And other things irritate me, because they're introduced as common place in the wizarding world, but they seem to only be really introduced for gimmickry. JKR makes a big deal about them, but then they serve no purpose for anything at all.

And Harry's attitude pisses me off quite often as well. "I'm super awesome, even though I'm told that Voldemort is a big-bad evil wizard, I, a first year student, am going to confront him and try to stop him. I'm told that a basilisk is very deadly, with a one-hit-kill stare, but I'm Harry Potter so I'll go hunt it down. I'm told that Sirius Black is a vicious murder who has a bone to pick with me, so I'll go looking for them. I'm told that I can share thoughts with Voldemort, and something bad is going on at the Ministry of Magic -- I'm the ONLY ONE who can stop it!" I mean, he strikes me as being a real cocky, arrogant jerk all the time when it comes down to the critical plot elements of each book.

It just feels like everything is in a status quo and JKR doesn't want to break it. It doesn't feel like anything's really going anywhere, because each book ends where it started with one or two details changed, most of which won't make any difference until the very end anyway.


With that kind of a rant, it would surely seem that I don't like HP. But I'm not sure, because I'd have to say that while I'm actually reading them, they're quite fun. It's only when I'm done and looking back that I get irritated by them. Perhaps it's just that I had such a good time reading them when I was younger that now I have to see them through regardless. I dunno. Today, I would describe them as unremarkable; the actual writing is nothing to praise (though it's accesible to all ages, which is usually difficult to do), the plot seems to be quite imaginitive and creative, but again it gets aggravating and doesn't seem to go anywhere.

/meh.