Random Harry Potter Rant/Analysis Thingy

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So I randomly made a Harry Potter rant/analysis/whatever thingamajig for no real reason. Decided to put it here so its somewhere online with hard-to-read font and pretty pictures that don't show up. if you wanna see more stuff like this, let me know:

So randomly I felt like straying from the norm a bit and do a more analytical essay-type thingy. I’m not sure why, but I assume because of my awesome AP Lang class. I also randomly felt like doing said thingy on my opinion on Harry Potter; probably because of fandom in said AP Language class. It’s also convenient seeing as 11/11/11 is when they’re releasing the last of the films. But anyway yeah. Warning though this is my own opinion and please don’t rage at it. Feel free to discuss your own views of course. Also for those of you that haven’t read and/or watched towards the end, this is a spoiler alert. Though I dunno why you would even read this then at all. Anyway…

Honestly, I have a quite different experience than probably most fans do. I’d assume anyway. The book series came out around when I was two and the movie before I realized live action can actually be watchable. Though there have been many a-trials into getting into the series. At first my brother read me the first book as a bed-time story…that we never finished. Later when I started to actually read novels, I tried to read it…and never finished. Years later after seeing the films a couple times on Disney Channel and after the 7 books were already released and conveniently all in our bookshelf, I finally buckled down and read them all basically in a row. I also tried something interesting in that after I’d finish the book, I’d watch the movie it was based on; though that obviously stopped as far as Goblet of Fire. My initial reaction was that I couldn’t put the books down.  For some odd reason they captivated my curiosity more than many other books can do for me. Not quite as well as some later books I’ve read, but still. I haven’t reread the books ever since then, nor re-watched the movies even. Though at the time I was a bit Harry Potter fan boyish; at least for a little while. These were actually books with no pictures that seemed interesting, which was saying something to say the least. From what I remember, the books were mostly equal as far as my interest level, though around books 6 and 7 I felt as though J.K. Rowling had run out of ideas. Especially Deathly Hallows, seemed to feel like a blood fest to me, killing off random characters as if she were shooting at a dartboard. It particularly got quite out of hand when the protagonist himself died before us, albeit only to be revived to beat the big baddy in the end. Also the lost potential of some characters in later books, such as Luna Lovegood and Dumbledore’s brother I can’t remember the name of, frustrated me a bit. Luna in particular I had a certain fondness for her character, and felt that she sort of wasn’t used enough. I understand the story sort of demands this, seeing as she is a lower-grade and a different House than the main cast at that. Also in fairness, it fit her character that we didn’t know much about her, but that only fueled my want to know more. Though the fact that she was in a different house than Gryffindor or Slytherin kind of made her an anomaly in itself. The idea of houses in general were a strange thing in itself as well. It is a strange idea for a school to litterally seperate the potential futures of their on students as if they were herding cattle. Though of course it was a great story-winding point. With such an idea you could easily seperate your antagonists and protagonists in a nicely wrapped manner. But of course then you'd have two more houses to fill the rest of the gap of mandatory-status quo classes; the nerds and everyone else not fitting in. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw seemed sort of put in the background and never really touched upon. Slytherin had the conniving antagonists, Gryffindor the brave protagonists, Ravenclaw had the intelligent mystery characters (or should I say character), and Hufflepuff didn’t even have anything. Hufflepuff in particular seemed like the worst possible thing out of them all. From the sounds of the other houses, Hufflepuff was merely the losers and weaklings of the school. Even if Slytherin had the baddies, evil isn’t always a bad route towards success. Gryffindor and Ravenclaw seemed sort of obvious goods, while Hufflepuff had the future failures in life. They weren’t smart enough, brave enough, or clever enough; all they really had were the "goody two-shoes" of Hogwarts actually. They were the kids too nice and too dumb to do anything about themselves or others. Honestly that’d be an interesting point to go through, a trio of hufflepuff house heroes, and seeing their tribulations of being the losers. Though that is too much for the series to go into, let alone give Luna, a Ravenclaw, more to do.

Its real tiger fur..wanna touch?

That’s another thing about the series. It’s like it’s made to be tropes. As a lot of you probably know, Rowling made this whole concept in the streets homeless, and somehow it made her into one of the biggest selling authors in history. But in that case, it isn’t that farfetched that a lot of its characters and plot points are more archetypical. Though in my opinion it isn’t quite a bad thing, it still is a glaring point on the series and its characters. I assume it also sort of makes it part of the charm towards it. The story seems so complex, but it is made up of fantasy and mystery tropes, making the series look interesting, yet accessible. The characters are more cardboard cut-outs, but that of course gives audience more leeway to step in their shoes towards the reading. That point in particular is probably the only likeable thing about Harry himself. He literally has Jesus-status, and yet his personality is so bland in context. Yet he is surrounded by all these fantastic and amazing wonders around him to face as if he were a God among men. This is actually a genius idea once I think about it, because it gives the illusion that he is more interesting than he really is, and also gives extreme leeway to put you into the place mold of “The Boy who Lived.” In context, he is no real boy wonder, being his only real motivation is that he apparently holds the fate of the world on his shoulders. Even in his apparent favorite place in the world, he does grow into the doldrums of school just like any kid would eventually. He is the definition of the average kid, and while this holds very flat on its own, with the setting of him being a forced-upon-hero of legend is an idea used for many stories. The idea of this is to make you feel like your special even if you’re average. The irony is that nobody is as average as Harry, yet you fill in your own blanks on his character to make yourself feel more special. While I dunno if Rowling is such a writer as to notice this all right away, I do think it makes sense based on the situation she was in. She didn’t want to write about her problems, she wanted to get away from them all; and this small wizard-would-be sounded like a perfect escapism, even for a homeless mother. Even the writing style shows more of a lazy kid’s style of language and descriptions of things. It made it easier to read than most other novels, which all of these ideas together made the would-be selling point for book accessibility for adolescents.

That’s enough about the books; let’s talk a little about the movies. The films I hold more specific opinions on as far as their progression in the series. While the books remain about as well-written as they always were up until overkill literally in the last, the movies I found got worse as they went on. Again, these are my humble opinions, but my favorites were and always Sorcerer’s (Philosopher’s) Stone and Chamber of Secrets. Ironically enough, I am usually a huge advocate for interpretation of characters and story lines, but for some reason I find it annoying in the Harry Potter films when they stray from the books too far. The first and second movies are of course the most true to the original books being that they are the shortest books in the series. You can argue that Deathly Hallows Part 1 and 2 were as well, but I never saw Part 1 and Deathly Hallows is my least favorite of the series as I mentioned earlier anyway. However, the first two stories in general had the best wow-factors out of the book series in my opinion as well. The first film heeds true that sense of wonder and fantasy from the books, and captures that child-like escapism and wonder that are some of my favorite parts of the series in general. It really feels interesting and heart-warming when you can see these fantastic things from your imagination come to life on screen. This is however one of the strong points of all the movies as far as visualizing what you’d picture originally from the novel well and completely intact. The second movie in itself shows that this crazy idea of making movies coinciding with the books just might work, and does up the budget and action a bit from the first film. It also ups the stakes and has some of the most memorable points of the series history. The later films on the other hand, I’m a bit more negative towards as they go along. Starting from Prisoner of Azkaban and on, they start to annoy me with slight lack of book detail, and my least favorite thing about the movies: the actors. This is what ruined a lot of the films for me; they weren’t young enough. Because movies obviously take longer than books to make and they didn’t think ahead of time or other studio nonsense I’m sure, but I never liked teenagers to begin with. I didn’t mind as much in the books because I imagined him as the same Daniel Radcliffe as Sorcerer’s Stone, never really aging. In the movies, while if they did it gradually with one movie per year as was intended, it would have looked much more interesting than what it became. Instead it looks like adults trying to play children and it doesn’t work nearly as well. It zaps me out of the story so much more than any of the books or even earlier movies to see them so old. Eventually it became not quite as much a problem, but mostly because eventually you do stop growing as a matter of fact. And even towards Deathly Hallows Part 2 epilogue, it ironically looked like the opposite with them looking too young and very odd in that role. That specific part they obviously couldn’t do much with anyway though. Stuff like nudism with horses didn’t help either with preserving the magic of Hogwarts, though that’s fair territory for any Hollywood film.  The movies do good things as well though, specifically their use of foreshadowing and being ahead of the books in a way; the biggest example obviously being the character development of Ron and Hermione’s relationship. While the books started having romantic tension around Book 4 or 5, the movies started around 2 or 3. This also ironically is partly because of the older actors being able to play that better. It is also a good sign that the author herself works closely in the production of the films, giving it that extra potential of not straying from the formula and giving hints and cleverer hide-a-ways than the books could. But this has been enough harry potter rambling and ranting for one night/morning, so hope you enjoyed it, and please don’t burn me at a stake ;)

Also if you found this style interesting, feel free to say so and I’d love to do more stuff like this.