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Re: hmmm...

I was going to post a rant against the Harry Potter movie, but I see Peter
already took the words out of my mouth (which he does a lot).  I also felt that
they shoehorned in plot at the expense of character.  Ironically, this made me
appreciate the book *more*, because I sat there thinking, "you know, the
characters in the book were actually not this shallow".  From reading them,
I had thought them cute and engaging, but not particularly interesting, from
a character development point of view, but watching the film made me realize
there were more facets to them than we were seeing on screen.

However, there is one thing I wanted to add that *really* bothered me about the
film, and pushed me over the edge from merely feeling ho-hum about it to
actively *dis*liking it, and that is that they cut out the potions test in the
climactic sequence.  This bothered me for three reasons: one, it left Snape's
loyalties and trustworthiness *completely* unresolved; if you hadn't read the
book, the adults' insistence that Snape wasn't behind it all would seem
incomprehensible.  Second, I felt insulted as an audience member, because I
felt the filmmakers didn't trust me/us to be able to follow a logic puzzle.
And third, and most important, it totally undercut the strength of Hermione's
character.  In the book, she gets to use her *intelligence* to get through,
where Harry would have been lost.  There's a potion to go forward and one to go
back, and *she* chooses to go back and send Harry on.  They cut out her moment
of glory, and had *Harry* tell her to stay and take care of Ron (putting the
girl once again in the caretaker role).  So they took a female empowerment
moment and turned it 180 degrees around.  I found that absolutely unforgivable.
Especially since Hermione is my favorite character.

I won't be getting the DVD.  I'm still trying to decide whether I'm going to
get both DVD releases of Fellowship of the Ring, or just the four-disc edition
in November.  :-)
-- 
Don Smith                          Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu                                http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/

"In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd" - Miguel de Unamuno
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