Some whiny thoughts about Harry Potter.

So the final trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is out and J. K Rowling has opened a new website in honour of it. All this has reminded me of a couple of things I didn’t like about the way the seventh book ended and thought I’d take this opportunity to whine about them.

1)    The Malfloys.

After Voldemort’s been destroyed and the good guys have won, there’s a bit that says that everyone was sitting around the great hall and the Malfloys were there looking as though they weren’t quite sure whether or not they should have been there…erm; they shouldn’t have been there. They should have been in prison, they aided and abetted several kidnappings and murders. Why the hell weren’t they arrested with the rest of the death eaters? Oh that’s right, because at the crucial time they switched sides and helped Harry…when they could gain something from it at least. Lucius Malfloy was there in the fourth book, when Voldemort came back to life; he regarded Voldemort as his master and served him willingly. I mean we’re encouraged to believe that he, his wife and son are acting out of fear in this book, but it’s made clear that that fear only existed once they had all failed to complete their respective missions set to them by Voldemort. They wouldn’t have helped Harry if Voldemort had still liked them. And wait a minute, didn’t Lucius escape from prison between book six and seven. He should already be completing a prison sentence, let alone what he should be getting for all the other shit he did in this book. It’s like Rowling was trying to use them to show how powerful fear is in making people complaisant, but it doesn’t work with their characters; the Malfloys were complaisant, before they were afraid. They were helpful to Voldemort right up until he refused to give them what they wanted. Further to this, does the fact that they helped Harry avoid detection by Voldemort, make any of the people they helped kill less dead? When people go along with something because they are scared (for example electing an obviously fascist political party  - as in V for Vendetta) they are forgivable, given that they are motivated by blind panic and fear, but when people aid and abet murder, kidnap and a political coup and only stop doing so, when it becomes a raw deal for them, they should be punished. What sort of justice system exists in the wizarding world, where one self-servient “good” act can write off a near lifetime of evil service?

2)    

The Epilogue

Ok, so Ron and Hermione have kids and Harry and Ginny have kids…what else? What is the point of this epilogue? We learn almost nothing about the three characters that have been central to the series since the first book. All we learn is that Harry’s godson is snogging Bill’s daughter and Harry’s kid is stressing the fuck out about going to school for the first time. Alright, so Harry has a family…anything else, what’s he doing with his life? Where does he work? Did he meet his ambitions? Did he ever play quiddich again? Is he now a talented ballet star? I don’t care about this little kid whose never going to have a book series constructed around him, why should he get more page space than Harry?

Oh, and I am aware that Rowling did release information on a website about what the characters did with their lives, but that DOESN’T COUNT. I shouldn’t have to go digging about on the internet for basic character information. In my mind, the excuse of saying, well she said what happened to them on a website is akin to the DVD of movie coming out with every third scene edited out, with just flashes of a notice saying, ‘see special features for missing scenes’.

Ok that me done…Happy Sunday everyone…

Hanna Review - slight spoilers but mainly opinion.

I know, something that isn’t Doctor Who… this is so exciting that I put a picture in...

This is essentially a movie about an individual with highly honed assassination skills hunting those responsible for said highly trained assassin skills, with very limited knowledge on why said hunting is occurring. Basically the Bourne Identity, with a blonde, teenage girl as the assassin.

However, while that comparison stands, the more the film goes on, the more you realise that it’s not the Bourne Identity with a blonde girl, it’s what the Bourne Identity could have been.

Don’t get me wrong, the Bourne Identity’s good, but this film schools it on how to be a CIA action-thriller.

It opens with a 14-year-old girl living with her father in the wild, surviving off hunting animals and living with basic necessities. It quickly becomes evident that this girl isn’t just trained in animal hunting, but a variance of martial arts, a mastery of almost every European language that exists (or at least the ones that’ll be needed for this film) and a honed sharpness paired with a near sadistic fascination with death (as seen through a nice shot of her saying what I bloody hope becomes a catchphrase, should this turn into a series of films).

In fairness, those who like the fast pace of the Bourne films are not going to be thrilled by the opening of this film. While in those films, there’s quite a lot of guidance to get the audience through the opening, the writers of Hanna prefer to keep the objects of her motivations as ambiguous as possible for almost 20 minutes of the film. This slow burn start does get a bit frustrating and I got the impression that it everything I learnt during it could have been conveyed a lot faster, with some choice editing.

But it was worth it!

Saoirse Ronan acts her 17-year-old socks off nailing the role of protagonist Hanna, blending her sharp sadistic assassin-nature exceptionally well with her naivety and general lack of social ability. The main thing I liked about this character was the way in which she was well…a girl…I know, weird thing to like about a character but let me explain. As the action-thriller genre has been dominated by male writers for so long, when the task of writing a female protagonist arises, they generally end up fucking it up and just writing an androgynous character, who starts out in a kind of tom-boyish way, but by the end of the film seems to wholly be a man trapped in a woman’s body. Seriously, watch the Alien movies and consider whether the character of Riply would be majorly different if she were played by a man.

Cate Blanchett’s antagonist (professional CIA agent Marissa) comes across as a far better villain than the Bourne films ever produced (in fact I pretty sure that the whole trilogy has the same villain  - different people, same motivation, same haircut, seriously the three villains across the whole Bourne trilogy have exactly the same haircut, that’s taking unimaginative to a ridiculous level).  

The main strength of the character of Marissa is her humanity. While she occupies the position of the person responsible for the nasty circumstances in which the protagonist lives, she demonstrates some guilt over it, unlike the unrepentant “patriots” of the Bourne movies and the greedy, selfish super villains of the Bond films.

Eric Bana is good in his supporting role, but does occasionally turn up with little to do.

This is easily one of the best action-thrillers I’ve seen in a long time and it gains a stamp of highly recommended .

Doctor Who’s still gonna be watching this?

Ok, it started this year with the announcement that Doctor Who would have a mid-season break. This opened the door for a massive cliffhanger and a more American friendly format (as a fair few American shows do this). But now, news has trickled out that 2012 might not have a series of Doctor Who. Instead, it will play host to four feature length specials, two of which will no doubt be on Easter and Christmas.

Um…basically, I don’t get it. The specials didn’t work when they did them with David Tennant. I mean, even at feature length, there wasn’t nearly enough time to make any kind of character development, not to mention that the character development that the tenth Doctor did eventually make was both stupid and seemingly erased out of the final episodes. It also had the problem of focus being too direct on the Doctor, causing him to come across as arrogant, self-centered and royally dickish.

Also, the present writing team would do well to note that, since the departure of David Tennant the ratings for Doctor Who have seen a massive drop to the tune of 1.2 million viewers.  The people who stuck with the series, presumably being Doctor Who fans and not just David Tennant fans (which there’s nothing wrong with – stop writing angry comments), remained loyal, after the man who arguably surpassed Tom Baker in popularity left. This really doesn’t seem like a way to reward fans who’ve stuck with the show. Hence who’ s still gonna be watching this?

The departure of Tennant, pissed his fans off to the extent that many of them didn’t even give Matt Smith a chance, now those that did are going to be pissed off by the lack luster stories of this series, the Americanization of the most popular British series in the world and now the lack of that series all together once 2011 has passed.

Enough people have already lost interest in this series and making less of it is only going to make the situation worse.

I really hope that 2012 has a full series of Doctor Who, I hope this is all a publicity stunt or misunderstanding between departments of the BBC. Because if 1.2 million people wont stick around for a new actor, how many do you reckon will desert this show for a completely new format?

Doctor Who Series 6 Episode 7 Review.

Well that was a little bit disappointing, wasn’t it. Perhaps a better statement would be anti-climactic. But lets start at the beginning.

This episode has a strong opening; I really liked the whole Doctor not seen right up until the attack stages thing that was going on. It had the risk of turning into a Davies-esque worship session, but it was short and well managed enough to avoid such annoying and sanctimonious elements. And it was pretty cool to see the Doctor’s army forming.

The Headless Monks (first referenced in “The Time of Angels”) are a very good villain and continue the new Doctor Who tradition of light religion bashing, by suggesting that the ultimate in religious worship is to remove your whole head (and brain) from the equation.

Evil one-eyed lady now has a name (and it isn’t Rani, which is annoying), and she seems to be evil and locked in a war with the Doctor, because the plot requires her to be. She’s pretty well acted, coming across with an understated anger and hatred towards the Doctor, earning the series slight reprieve from the last female villain we had, who was just loud and crazy.

But like I said her motivation isn’t exactly clear. It could be something that going to be explained in Autumn or it could be that Moffat was hoping to ride the what’s the baby/who is River Song question out for the whole episode. I mean there is an explanation offered by River at the end of the episode, when she says that the Doctor simply makes everyone so scared, by being so awesome. Erm, I can see where that point comes from, but it doesn’t seem to make much sense, in terms of the way that the Doctor reacts, in that he seems to agree.

I mean there’s two ways of looking at that reaction, one is to ask if Moffat seriously trying to get the audience to reflect upon the many times that the Doctor has killed the Daleks, or the Cybermen or any other villain, and consider whether he was doing something wrong. This would lead to the conclusion of someone from the BBC having to say “Steven, go get yourself checked out for Russell-T-Davies-itus...seriously, it can lead to stage two career cancer.”     

The other way to look at it is to consider that this series has been running for almost fifty years and in its whole canon, the Doctor has never once agreed with the Timelord policy of never interfering with the Universe. This could be seen therefore as the first time that the Doctor has been made to look upon his actions and consider that perhaps it was not pomposity that led the Timelords to that policy but the fact that the whole Universe would eventually want a piece of their power and abilities and wage as many wars as it took to get them. I prefer to look at it this way, as it paints the Timelords as characters, and not simply the morons who didn’t see the wonder of the universe like the Doctor could. So the Doctor’s viewpoint that his race should be perfectly entitled to interfere and save/defeat whomever they like, is smacked right in the face, by the events of the episode.

But therein lies the problem, the Doctor really hasn’t done anything to make ordinary people scared. Why is the one-eyed lady so evil? River insinuates that this fear of the Doctor is wholly to blame for the events of the episode. But outside this episode, he really hasn’t done anything to make everyone fear him. Yeah, he’s the guy who can make whole armies turn and run away, but he only ever does that when they’re in the wrong. So anyone who’d be afraid of the Doctor would already be evil to start with. Now that doesn’t make River’s point any less valid in relation to those people, but the suggestion that all the good the Doctor had done by defeating evil armies, can be written off because it’s resulted in the events of this episode is kinda stupid. I mean yeah, I’m sure everyone’s really upset about the baby being stolen by evil one-eyed lady, but I really can’t get behind a motion that the Doctor should have allowed the universe to be taken over by the Daleks or enslaved by the Master or in any other way changed by some evil force, simply because it would have avoided this situation. The fact that evil people are afraid of the Doctor (based on his awesomeness) does not make him responsible for the actions of said evil people and to suggest that it does, makes me consider whether River’s IQ has taken a serious nose-dive since last time she was on screen.

And so, the little girl is River and she’s also part Timelord. Right, River I could buy (in fact Amy being her mother accounts for that sudden drop in her IQ), but part Timelord. How the fuck did that happen? She was conceived while the TARDIS was in flight.

Huh… the Doctor isn’t the only time traveller in the universe; there are plenty of people that one-eyed lady could have employed to get it on while travelling through the time vortex. I mean if that’s all it takes to make a Timelord why aren’t there loads running around?

I really hope that this gets elaborated on in Autumn and if it doesn’t I may call the police and look into whether they can visit Steven Moffat’s house to make sure that Russell T Davies isn’t hold a gun to his head and forcing him to write plot lines like this.

Right…so now we come to it, the baby is River Song. River Song is the baby. I wanted the baby to be the Rani goddamnit! Really don’t have much to say on this other than, it was, strangely enough too obvious to be the answer. Now I’m not trying to make excuses for not even putting the River/baby theory in my “Doctor who’s that little girl” post, I’m just saying that I thought, given the amount nostalgia and classic series canon clarification that Moffat is known for, both the child and the River would not turn but to be something linked exclusively to the revived series, but something that would call far back into his past. And also, is the Doctor porking River? That’s horrible man; there’s age difference, then there’s AGE DIFFERENCE. He held her as a baby!  And he once made out with her mum!

However, given the apparent regeneration ability that this gives her, this does mean that River Song could potentially be played by anyone in the upcoming episodes, given that her appearance would be different. I mean that would also make sense. No offence to Alex Kingstone, but she does appear to be a bit older than Matt Smith and the idea of him going after a younger version of her would seem to make sense…I’m not trying to be ageist here, but honestly look at the companions he’s had a romantic connection with. They’ve always been younger than him.

Well writing this is hurting my head now, so I’m going to summarize.

Not exactly a good episode; definitely one of Moffat’s lesser achievements. The River Song reveal is a bit disappointing, but hey, what can you do, other than mail a box of human excrement to the BBC.

One more thing before I go; baby exploding into goo, on family show…ALWAYS AWESOME!