Harry Potter – a general rant and the new movie
14 July 2007
I know this be an anime blog, but I just saw the fifth movie…Eheheh…
I commend David Yates, he’s actually made a decent, re-watchable, worthy of my $10.50 Harry Potter film. After fourth grade, I lost interest entirely in Harry Potter. After half a decade of hearing all of my friends rave and rant about the boy who lived, I’m actually thankful this whole obsession will be over after the release of the seventh book. Honestly, Harry Potter was a pretty good idea, it was cute, lil’ kid with his magic wand, the magical world living parallel to the muggle world. It was ingenious conceptually, actually. Rowling had one helluva an imagination and absolutely no skill as a writer. I’m not much of a writer myself, but I’m not exactly marketing my blog posts either. After a thousand pages of reading her boring, very dry, very monotone prose, I’m ready to kill myself. It baffles me how anyone can even remember what happened back on page twenty one, seven hundred pages later, much less three or four books ago. Why in the world would you devote so much time to a mediocre fantasy series that isn’t even that good? If you want a good fantasy story, read Neil Gaiman, read Artemis Fowl even.
My hatred for Harry Potter aside, I actually enjoyed the fifth movie. After watching the four previous movies, I was read to give up and suicide the next time Harry Potter made it to the big screens. On the verge of suicide, I took a gamble and saw it yesterday. And once again, I commend David Yates. It was a damn fine movie, considering that it was Harry Potter. When you sit there and you watch the dementers attack Harry and Dudley, Fred and George’s fireworks, that big ass dragon that came roaring down on Umbridge, the fight between the Death Eaters and the Order, Dumbledore and Voldemort, you have that feeling, you know that this is what a Harry Potter film should be. Grand, epic, bloody mind blowing and just big.
It was certainly more entertaining than the book. The fifth book, and the sixth book, bored me to tears. For one thing, I never liked Harry and I never liked Voldemort. What bothers me even more is that, after much consideration, he doesn’t really even have a personality. Rowling’s given Hermoine and Ron definite personality traits, so concrete one can also predict their actions. While Harry, her protagonist, is a leaf in the wind, unable to maintain a steady grip on anything. The extent of his personality and emotions is to be an angst filled teenager. Harry is not a goody two shoes like his mother or Hermoine, neither is he rebel like his father, Lupin, Sirius, or Remus. He’s not quite as dumb and dorky as Ron, he’s not outlandish or eccentric, he’s not a jerk, he’s not anything. He doesn’t do anything except brood and mourn over the death of his friends, toss and turn when he suffers from a nightmare, occasionally faint and show hostility towards Malfoy and become excessively angry for no apparent reason. Where the hell is his personality?! He’s worse than Hiyuu from Tokyo Majin, Akizuki from Iroha, even Darth Vader from Star Wars. At least the aforementioned had some purpose, some sense of humor, some values or morals (or lackthereof) to follow and believe in! Harry Potter is like bland rice pudding!
And another fundamental aspect of Harry Potter I despise, Voldemort. He’s a terrible villain. He’s been ‘dead’ for fourteen years, lived on the back of some guy’s head hidden in a turban for the majority of it, left a piece of his younger self in a demented journal, talks to snakes, lived in a rundown shack of a former home, has no nose and resembles at best an earthworm with birth defects and still thinks that he can take over the world. I’m terribly sorry to inform you, Dark Lord, but you haven’t got a chance! You’re in a stereotypical, mundane, pointless, children’s book series! You haven’t got a chance in hell of winning, so why don’t you sit your badass self down and shut the hell up about killing Harry Potter!
The most disturbing thing of all is that Rowling manages to kill off all of the good characters. The death of Sirius Black was so stupid! I hated her to pieces for doing that. Why the hell did she kill off the only good character she managed to create? Sirius Black, childhood friend of James Potter, the cool godfather that rescues Harry from depressive and teenage angst, the one interesting, noteworthy character from the entire goddamning series…falls into a black curtain and dies!? The one character that might’ve saved your series from total damnation you kill off?! And then! And then! She kills off Dumbledore as well. Why? I don’t even have anything to rant about, why?! Just answer me, why?
So when it comes down to it, I read the books just to know what’s going on. Just so the week after in school I can nod and smile and nod some more when one of my friends starts blabbing nonstop about how this and that happened on page nine hundred thirty one and I’d just move on with my life.
I can understand why Harry Potter made such a big splash, a tsunami even, in the sea of children’s ‘literature’. I was, once upon a time, infatuated with the series myself, the third book being my favorite (and it still is.) The ideas behind the terrible plot and characters were truly, undeniably, well, cool. Rowling basically created a whole different world but at the same time kept intact the human influence. Magic, simply put, is just letting your imagination run wild with no boundaries, no restraints, no limits. Anything can happen, isn’t that magic?
I’m still a Harry Potter hater, I like Draco, I Ron and all of his brothers. I’d like to see Sirius come back to life. I’d like to see Voldemort shut the hell up and just die, seven books and countless hours it took for him to die, he’d better die. I’d like to see Snape get his ass kicked, learn his lesson and live. Snape was an excellent character, much well deserved hatred and loathing, with a tint of love, in his direction. I’d like to see Ron and Hermoine finally get together, for real, kiss and date and all that. Three or four books of sexual frustration for the only straight pairing I endorse in the sea of HP ships. I’d like to see Cho bitch slap Harry, that’s never happening, but it’d be so satisfiying. Harry and Cho was a horrible pairing. No chemistry, in the movies or the books. It was just plain unnerving and disgusting to see them kiss. Harry and Ginny, I don’t even know how that happened. Ginny, I’ve always hated Ginny, especially after the second book. I can’t see them together, I don’t want to. Luna and Neville, totally neglected, but cute. In short, I’d like to see some justice, something good happen in the end that I can applaud, a satisfying conclusion no matter how twisted the series was, I’d like a good ending, a good solid goddamn ending. That is all I ask for.
Hey, Akizuki is waaaaaay cute than either Harry Potter or Daniel Radcliffe. 😛 And waaaay waaaaaaaay waaaaaaaaaaaay cooler.
I’ve recently watched Harry Potter 5 myself, and I enjoyed it although it isn’t particularly memorable. On the other hand, the movies are ALWAYS more memorable than the books, so…
Like you, I don’t like the books. I remember reading the first book and thinking, what’s the big deal about? Tamora Pierce writes Young Adult with better character building. Meg Cabot writes popular Young Adult with popular style and does it well. L J Smith writes Young Adult with just as much creativity and much more flair. Robin McKinley writes Young Adult with more thought-provoking depth. Yet none of them are as popular as J K Rowling.
Of course, I can’t deny that J K Rowling does okay. Not exceptional, IMO, but okay. I just like the aforementioned YA writers a lot more than the Harry Potter saga. So much so that I’ve read the first five books exactly once each, and have yet to find the enthusiasm to pick up book 6 and 7.
Still, Rowling can do good characters. Snape is an interesting character, and so unpredictable that I’m actually interested in finding out whether he’s truly evil or not. Also, I have to admire the fact that she is ending the story instead of going on and on and on like some Nancy Drew series. As for writing… I guess it was originally intended for children, so simple writing would probably be the norm. On the other hand, how much children books kill off beloved characters?
Oops, sorry for going on and on. Books are a passion of mine, far older and fiery-er than animes. 😀 I read more than I watch anime, anyway.
Briar – HIIIII!!! XD Yes! Yes! Akuzuki is better than Harry Potter in a million ways!
I’ve read Tamora Pierce and boy was she good! I loved her stuff! Meg Cabot was alright, she’s never been a real favorite of mine, but I’ve gone through a couple of her books as well. I’ve never read LJ Smith or McKinley, though I do see a lot of their stuff in bookstores. I’m desperate for good books to read this summer, so me go to bookstore and buy book!! =D!
Gah, it’s really not worth it to read all of the Harry Potters. I heard someone was going to camp outside a bookstore for 11 days waiting for the last book. I really don’t understand why they’d go to such lengths for a book that’s not even going to be that good.
I like Snape, I just can’t understand him. Or maybe I haven’t given it enough thought to conclude anything substantial about his character. In any case, Alan Rickman makes such a good Snape.
I’d go on and on and on, too. You can go on as long as you want. Books and anime, and occasionally movies, are the loves of my life. XD