The Harry Potter Marathon

Greetings and Salutations!

One of the Thanksgiving traditions that has grown in our family is for a group of us to go see a movie at the Saturday matinee on Thanksgiving Weekend. This year, it was to see the current “hot” draw, the 7th Harry Potter movie.

Wow (and not necessarily in a good way)

On the positive side, I will say that the CGI worked pretty well for me. Unlike some recent movies where the sole reason for the flickering lights on the screen were for the programmers to show what cool things they can do with computers these days, the CGI was only used to re-enforce and back up the “action” on the screen. It was ‘reasonable” in that it made sense that a particular power or effect would be used at a given time. I enjoyed the textures and scenery of the locations (both real and generated). The animated interlude of the Story Of The Three Brothers was quite well done, and had quite the Anime/Tim Burton feel to it. Since we went to a 15:30 showing at a small theatre, it was delightfully empty, so, not only did we have no problems getting tickets, but, we had our choice of almost any seat in the house. I do not think that the room was more than 20% occupied. Also, while I have not read the book, I am sure that the director has gone out of his way to include as much OF the book in the movie as is humanly possible, as the fan base really is critical of that.

Alas, though, it was not an unalloyed joy. When I finally escaped from the movie theatre at the end of this movie I felt as if I had been forced to run a marathon, with the dark shadows of nameless fears nipping at my heels all the way. This movie dragged on and on as tediously as the land speeder race in Star Wars. I do not mind dark and moody (which this movie has in abundance), but, it becomes tedious when it is really hard to care about the characters in the film. Since this is, essentially, a “Quest” movie not unlike “The Lord of the Rings”, let me take a moment to compare Harry with Frodo. In LOTR, even for those of us that had read and were familiar with the books, there was a real question as to whether or not Frodo will be able to push beyond the injuries he has suffered from the Nazgul blade and the almost overwhelming barriers of land and enemies between him and the goal of his quest. I, for one, did not feel that pressure as regards Harry Potter. Rather, it feels more as if he is the force of Light that is on an unstoppable path to destroy the Darkness that is the Yang to his Yin. In the process, it is quite possible that many, if not all, of his companions will be scraped away, destroyed as collateral damage, and, it is certainly possible that, in the end, the only way for him to destroy the Darkness is to destroy himself too. However, there is little question that, one way or another, we are building to an epic battle and nothing is going to get in the way of that event. To get back to LOTR, remember that even at the dramatic moment when Frodo is faced with the decision as to whether or not to cast the Ring into the fires, there is a REAL question as to whether it will be destroyed.

So…How would I make this a better movie if I were to re-edit it? That is sort of a hard question for me to answer. After all, It is not necessarily the length of time that we sit in the theatre that is a problem, but, rather, the connection we have with the characters in the movie and how we identify with them that helps determine how “long” a movie is. I have read LOTR several times in my life, and, so am quite familiar with all the characters and plot lines in it, and, identify with some of them quite strongly. I have read several of the Harry Potter books (and actually do like them quite a bit), but, have not read this last one, so, am somewhat disconnected with the characters and actions in the movie. That made it harder for me to really care about them and connect with them. Having thought about it a bit more, another issue I had with the movie is that it felt “disjoint” in its editing. While it is hard to put my finger on it, I felt throughout that I was not seeing a smooth narrative, but, rather a bunch of individual scenes cut together so as to get as much of the book into the movie as possible. In previous films, the directors have done an excellent job of including quite a bit of the book in the movie – and I recall overhearing a number of discussions from groups that had been to see them about how this scene was put in and that scene was left out and such, so perhaps this was the motivation for cutting in as much as they did.

Pleasant Dreams

BeeManDave

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