Harry Potter Book vs Film

There’s a lot of mixed feelings about the film adaptations of the Harry Potter series; some believe they’re a travesty and others prefer them.

The way I’ve always felt about them is that there are things they do better and things they do worse. For example, I never liked the way that the filmmakers felt the need to give Ron’s more heroic lines to Hermione, in order to make him into the comic relief. As far as the films went, this really stifled his character’s development throughout the series.

But to focus on the most successful of both the book and film series, the Deathly Hallows (love it or hate it) is where these differences either undermine any common sense that was present or make up for bits in the book where…err…any common sense that was present was undermined.

So let’s begin with the positive ones that I liked in the film.

The Ron/Hermione relationship.

This is done better in the film; well not really, but sort of. There’s more time given to developing the relationship in the book, but the circumstances under which they actually have their first kiss are a lot better in the film. To summarize, in the book, Ron suggests making sure that all the House Elves don’t die, which turns Hermione on to no end and in the film, they kiss after being attacked by a dying bit of Voldemort’s soul.

Now the problem with this in the book, is that while what Ron did to instigate their little snog did come after the a lot of other acts and speeches seemingly tailored to impress his future wife, it just comes across as him earning enough brownie points to get a kiss. The film, on the other hand, places them in a situation where death is seemingly imminent and allows them to do (after surviving it) what they had both been wishing they could do before.

This is a far more believable scenario and makes the characters more human and also…kind of gives off the impression that Hermione loves Ron for who he is rather than seemingly requiring him to converge to a number of her opinions before feeling the same way about him as he does about her.

The fate of the Elderwand:

This too is done considerably better in the film. Although Harry seemingly forgets to repair his own wand, making it’s destruction earlier in the film completely pointless, he does destroy the most powerful wand in the world. This makes far more sense than his solution in the book, where he puts it back in Dumbledore’s tomb. This is compounded by the fact that Rowling later revealed that Harry eventually became head of the Auror’s Office and job that would put him in danger of confrontation on a regular basis. Since we established that all you have to do to win the Elderwand is take (against it’s owner’s will) any wand that belongs to that owner, it really doesn’t make sense to leave the thing in existence. Rowling is telling us that Harry is going into a job that involves dueling as a primary skill and that he’s 100% never going to be disarmed or overpowered again. Add to that that Voldemort and Harry collectively told everyone present at the last battle that it was indeed the Elderwand, that’s a lot of people who might want that wand and (courtesy of Harry’s explanation) now know how to get it.

The Neville/Luna relationship.

The existence of a possible relationship between Neville and Luna in the film vs their seeming platonic friendship in the book, just works better. The issue here is that Rowling seemed to be building a relationship between them and then did nothing with it. Then she went further by detailing a future after the book in which they didn’t get together ever. Now that’s all very well, she’s the author and she’s allowed to do whatever she wants with her characters, but closing the characters out the way she did within the actual book just gave the impression that she changed her mind at the last minute about them. 

It also undermines it as an ending to their sub plot stories. Why am I supposed to care about Luna, when I’m told that she went on to marry a man who’s never been in the story and had no development or character to speak of. If this was truly the last in the series, why didn't Rowling just close out their stories by making them get together for simplicity’s sake?

Ok, some stuff that’s done better in the book:

Dumbledore. 

There’s a lot of criticism of the Dumbledore of the seventh book for being massively out of character and a contrivance for the sake of the plot. Respectfully, people who subscribe to this viewpoint, gravely miss the point that Rowling was making. Like Harry using dark magic out of necessity or just when he’s pissed off with Bellatrix or Malfoy, the Dumbledore of book seven is nothing more or less than human. The reason that he was never seen like this before is that he was alive to hide the various pieces of evidence that emerge about his less than admirable past. Further to this, it makes him far more plausible, after all Voldemort had to kill hundreds of people to become the most feared Wizard in the world, it makes sense that Dumbledore would have had to exist at least in the morally grey in order to posses a similar amount of power, knowledge and magical skill.

One particular thing that bothered me about the film’s portrayal of him was in the flashbacks of Snape’s past. In the book, the first meeting in which Snape becomes Dumbledore’s spy sees Dumbledore essentially playing games with Snape’s head, given that at this time Snape “disgusts” him. He throws out various suggestions that Snape turns on Voldemort to save Lily or that he offers him James and Harry on a plate in exchange for sparing her. But these aren’t genuine suggestions, he’s mocking the slippery, manipulative creature that Snape’s become, because quite frankly, he doesn't like him.

The film gives off the impression that Dumbledore wouldn't have attempted to protect Lily, James and Harry, had Snape not agreed to spy for him, which is simply not the case.

Dumbledore also explains himself in the book; the whole sub-plot of Dumbledor’s dead sister and his relationship with Gillard Grindlewald goes completely unexplored in the King’s Cross scene of the film. Dumbledore essentially gets no chance to tell his side of the story , which is essential to well…making him look less like a dick.

There are of course things that both the book and film do pretty badly.

In the film, people, such as Harry, block a fair few “un-blockable” killing curses throughout the final fight scene. I’m on the fence with this one, if the curses were un-blockable then it would have made for some pretty short fight sequences, also Voldemort’s using the Elderwand which supposedly isn’t working for him as he’s not it’s true master. Add to that the fact that he’s aiming the curses at it’s true master (Harry) Voldy’s failure to perform here may be explained.

The killing curse issue does give rise to a pretty significant hole in the book and possibly the film. Voldemort puts a super awesome protection spell around his pet snake to protect it from harm as it holds the last piece of his soul outside his own body. They need the sword of Griffindor to break through and – wait guys just use a killing curse….it’s…you know, un-blockable; no matter what kind of protection is on his pet snake, Avarda Kedavra will go straight through it and you can do it from like the other side of the room  - no need to get within striking distance of the snake or Voldemort himself.

Neville’s speech:

This is cheesy in both the book and film, but more so in the film. In the book at least Neville is Neville, whereas in the film he become generic supporting actor 1, with his monologue that could exist in literally any action/fantasy film ever made.

Malfoys:

I’ve written this one before, but all three of the Malfoys should have ended this series (book and film) serving out long prison sentences for, conspiracy to commit murder, aiding and abetting in kidnap, aiding and abetting in murder, trespass on government property with intention to burglarize, trespass on private property, bribing public officials and acts of terrorism. Neither Rowling nor the film writers seem to acknowledge that a near lifetime of hate crimes and corruption cannot be written off by one self-servient act of helping the good side and a failure to fight for either side in the final battle.

Well this has turned into a nice thing to do while waiting for Doctor Who to return.

I don’t Understand Women!!!

Ok the title is a red herring, let’s get that out of the way now. It’s more like there’re a few women I don’t get, both of whom have been writing things available on the internet.

The first of these is a lovely woman who wrote a piece for Yahoo Lifestyle entitled “I don’t regret tricking my boyfriend into having kids.”

This is one of the most offensive things I have ever read in my life…this woman is sick; very, very sick and so is the friend who helped her. Go and read it for all the details, but to summarize, she decided she wanted another child, having already had two (from a previous relationship) with her new partner, who had expressly told her that he didn’t want kids.

She and a friend went behind his back and had her Marina coil removed, meaning that they were then involved in a sexual relationship in which he was under the  impression that they were protected against pregnancy when they weren’t or to put it in her words “David and I were trying and he didn’t have a clue.”

The outrageous sickness of this woman is at it’s most potent, in the multiple examples of her attempts to justify her belief that his constant insistence that he didn’t want kids as meaning the opposite. She even attributes and car accident they were in to him being consumed by a desire to have a child. Yeah, given that that’s the only way that anyone ever gets into a car accident eh?

The thing that riled me so much about this was not so much the woman; crazy people are everywhere and a lot of them are concentrated on the Internet. But there were women in the comments section on Yahoo, in active support of her.

There were more than a few excuses made on her behalf that if she wanted another child with her new partner, it was up to her and no one else. These women need to pull their heads out of whatever misguided ridiculous thing-they-think-is-feminism and apply some fucking common sense.

At it’s most basic level, it is not fair to intentionally impose a financial and social burden on someone who has no knowledge that such a burden is being sought, let alone someone who expressly said they didn’t want it.

I have to wonder how these women would feel if the scenario was reversed, if it was David who wanted the kid and tampered with the contraception to knock up crazy lady (who in this scenario is sane) against her will. I guarantee you they’d be demanding his head on a plate.

To close this one out, she ends by saying everything is fine now; they have a son and he’s thrilled…err, given that this woman attributes car crashes to mean male broodiness and the word “no” to mean “yes please, manipulate me into impregnating you” I really have no confidence in her claim that he’s happy about the situation.

The second woman from the Internet that I’m having serious problems understanding is a mother who wrote a piece called “Just one little tattoo” in which she describes the horror of her 21 year old son getting a tattoo when she didn’t want him to and how it’s changed their relationship dramatically given that it’s a symbol of how he no longer cares about what she feels.

Lady, he’s 21, he can do what he wants; he can make decisions independent of you and regardless of what you feel about it.

What strikes me about this woman is how self-centered she is; she seems to think that his getting a tattoo is a direct attack on her viewpoint rather than something he wanted to do. She seems to constantly be twisting events to make herself into the victim.

This attention seeking drama queen needs to step back and take a look at what she’s got. Her particular comment that she was experiencing grief (semantically likening this minor change to her son’s arm to his death) is just offensive. I know more than one person whose outlived their child and for this woman to try and lay some sort of claim to the type of pain that those people went and continue to go through, because her son had some ink injected into his skin is so insulting.

I’ll leave it here to avoid giving this woman any more attention of any kind.

Doctor Who Thoughts...

So Doctor who’s back soon so I thought I’d throw some thoughts out about where I think it should and shouldn’t go.

So let’s start with some reflection going back first to the 2006 final episode of the second series of revived who; David Tennant’s first finale in the role of the Doctor… it was so bad. The central problem wasn’t even the over crowdedness in the villain department; as stupid as having two villains who (at their core) are the same villain could have been saved by some inventiveness. I mean it wasn’t, but it could have been.

The problem lay with the fact that Russell T Davies loved the character of Rose Tyler too much. Now I’m not saying his failure to actually kill her like he said he would is what drags this episode from bad to downright awful, but the fact that he drummed her up as the Doctor’s one true love when there was really nothing to make her such.

Other than a capacity for getting irrationally jealous of every other woman that the Doctor spoke to and a belief that he had got to 901 years old and hadn’t made any other friends in his lifetime, Rose didn't really have anything to make her different for any other companion. The only thing that made her different was that T Davies made her and considered her better. And rather than build anything into her story or character to make her better, he thought he’d just tell us that she was better.

I raise this only because a similar thing seems to be happening with River Song. Now I like Alex Kingstone’s performance, but Moffatt is kind of making her take over the show the same way that Rose took over the T Davies series. This is a big DON'T; This can’t become the River Song Show; the centrality of the Doctor cannot be overridden.

Surely there’s enough left in 11^th Doctor that we don’t need to rely on other characters for all the development.

Also the exit of Amy and Rory can't be like the exit of Rose. Please Moffatt. I know you’re not T Davies but just in case; no slow motion falling, no extended screaming for twenty minutes and absolutely no last minute teleporting parents (good fucking god that was a terrible ending). The death of the Fourth Doctor’s companion Adric was 100 times more effective than the “death” of Rose, so something along those lines would be awesome.

Other than that the writers of Doctor Who can go wild!

Batman Year One Review

To someone who hasn’t read the comics or graphic novels (such as myself) this movie comes across as Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Sin City and LA Confidential in a sandwich.

By way of a synopsis, the film opens with the return of Bruce Wayne, to his home city of Gotham, after twelve years in self-imposed exile. At round about the same time, Lt. James Gordon is transferred to Gotham P.D following troubles in his last stationing.  

The majority of the film’s exposition is dealt with through first person internal monologues from the perspectives of Wayne and Gordon. While Gordon’s monologues give far more insight into the character’s motivations and background, Wayne’s come across a bit one dimensional, the resounding message being “I don’t like crime” (which happens to be true of most people). The only significant thing we see about Wayne from the what he tells us, is the suggestion that Batman as a concept is less about imparting his own fear onto others and more about the damage present in his own psyche. There’s even the suggestion that he believes that his father is directing him to become Batman from beyond the grave.

For me, the most interesting thing in this film, was the focus; the primary enemy in this film being Police corruption, with the Mob taking the role of secondary villains. I can’t help but compare this to the Nolan trilogy, where this is more or less reversed.

The further difference shown are in the personalities and abilities of the characters. While Gordon remains incorruptible in terms of your typical bribes and heavy handedness criterion, he’s certainly not the faithful husband and father of the Nolan films. He also happens to be a badass, capable of beating guys twice his size into unconsciousness.  

Batman too is very different, not possessing nearly as much confidence as any of his live action counterparts. At one point he even has trouble taking down three simple crooks, seemingly through sheer inexperience, something I don’t see the Christian Bale version ever falling victim to.

If nothing else, this film is a great comparative piece, allowing us to see perhaps how many liberties Nolan took in his trilogy. Gordon’s partner (Detective Flass) for example; in Batman Begins, he’s a fat incompetent, who moonlights as a Mob enforcer, in this he’s a former Green Beret, who seemingly makes enough money through taking bribes and enforcing the private interests of more senior (and equally corrupt police officers).

Eliza Dushku is pretty awesome as Selena Kyle and her back-story of – spoiler warning  - being a prostitute and possibly having a lesbian relationship with her friend Holly is somehow more believable than the Anne Hatheway version in "Rises" and definitely the Michelle Pfeiffer version in "Returns."

There are a couple more differences that really shine through, but overall it follows roughly the same ground as the Batman Begins.

This might not be for everyone; some may question why it even needed to be made, in light of the live action films, but this film really gets to grips more with the characters. It also manages to bring the grit of Gotham to life at least as much as the Nolan films, which is saying something.

It’s good, but if you haven’t read the comics or novels, you’ll find yourself retreading bits of old ground and kind of wishing Morgan Freeman was there

Artemis Fowl: the Last Guardian Review

Well here we are at the end of the Artemis Fowl series. It goes out on a high, but certainly isn’t the best that Colfer’s produced.

The Artemis Fowl series started with an 11-year-old boy, who seemingly used nothing but pure logic and intellect to make decisions, with no concept of ethics or morality.

The core of the series has always been the personal development of Artemis himself, which started at the end of the first book.

The changes that have occurred to the central protagonist’s personality are fully manifested in this book, with Artemis’s intelligent conclusions coming second place to his more emotional concerns. He also experiences some loss of confidence in the face of being outfoxed.

One great contrast that Eoin Colfer throws in is between Artemis and his brother, who is, like Artemis in intellect, but has a twin, who he loves and could not survive without. We get the impression that Artemis could have saved himself a lot of repressed emotions, had he had something similar and not grown up alone and with little to no emotional input. To this effect, he grew into the near emotionless boy that kidnapped Holly Short in the first book.  

Right…now the bad bits.

Mulch Diggums is always welcome in any story, but the way he gets involved in this one is a bit contrived. He pops up out of nowhere and has an excuse for it that kind of undermines most of the character development he’s had in all the preceding novels.

The characters don't really develop much and some do take a couple of steps backwards for the sake of the plot's convenience. 

The intelligence gap between Artemis’s two brothers seems weird and a bit unbelievable. I still don’t get how Opal Koboi manages to escape, as the method does seem to rely on completely undermining the time travel rules established The Time Paradox, with an excuse that wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of Enterprise.

Moving on, at this point, the level to which Artemis is physically useless goes too far and the idea that he’s that intelligent, yet hasn't figured out a way to not be so dyspraxic loses almost all believability.

Overall, this isn’t bad, Artemis Fowl goes out on a high, but the ending is a bit clichéd. In my mind this book is at 7 on the quality list. It’s better than The Atlantis Complex, but the others clearly outstrip it.

Dark Knight Rises Review

Good, but not nearly as good as the other two. I found this film pretty awesome, but some major issues stuck out for me.

So this is a weird one to react to. The film was good; good story well put together, well acted, but there was something lacking.

After much time spent thinking in my procrastination cave, I’ve come to the conclusion that this film essentially lacked the underlining message of it’s predecessors. Now I’m not saying that the fist two Nolan films had the same message, but that they both had a message that manifested by the end of them. Batman Begins was about how Bruce Wayne had to learn that it wasn’t who he thought he was on the inside that mattered, but what he did about it that was his defining feature. The Dark Knight was about, seeing oneself become a villain or symbol thereof and by extension the dangers of power.

In this film, we get kind of half a message of not giving up in the face of a set back or initial failure, but that runs thin so quickly that by half way through the film, Batman has to be re-crippled so that he can seemingly learn the whole lesson all over again. This comes at the expense of the second act of the film, which, in itself, is the reason that this one drops below the other two on the quality scale. Too much time is spent retreading old steps and literally learning the lessons that have been learnt four seconds ago.

Another thing that really bugs me is Catwoman. Anne Hatheway does a sterling job in the role, but the problems come in the love interest element to the character. Namely that she’s more of a friend/begrudging enemy of Batman, up until the end where she suddenly decides she’s a love interest. Given the pretty significant reveal about the other main female of the film, it’s clear why she had to step up to the plate, but the rate that she goes from using Batman for safety and snogging him seemed a bit contrived, as though it’s been tagged on to the script very late on.

Christian Bale continues to deliver as both Batman and Bruce Wayne, bringing new elements to both. For example, he frequently dials back the Bat-voice while in costume, to be more recognisable to those who already know his secret identity, which, incidentally, seems to be almost everyone, and shows a far more damaged version of Wayne to the world.

YAWN….tired now, this is a good film, but the second act lets it down royally, but other than that, it does a fine job of completing the Nolan trilogy. Performances all round are good. Actions good and gadgets are AWESOME!