In the first Harry Potter film it shown that Harry has in possession in absolutely massive amount of gold inside of a magical bank. Money that was entrusted to him by his parents.
Where did they get all the gold?
We'll never know. Maybe they had deals with the mafia, maybe they stole gold from a bunch of other people. Maybe they themselves where dark Wizards. It's a question we don't need answered.
And I'm wondering if all that gold was left there for therapy bills. This poor child at the end of it all is going to be an absolute distraught and miserable mess.
And not just from his magical years either.
He spent the first ten years of his life living in a broom closet with a group of cartoonishly despicable weasels masquerading themselves as human beings (and not even doing a good job of that.)
The uncle being played by the always wonderful Richard Griffiths.
I think I got more fun out of looking at all the Cameo appearances in these films than i did the stories themselves.
There are so many prominent British actors and actresses that pop up at some point playing some wind silly character. like John Cleese as a headless ghost.
So to get back to the abused Harry Potter. He's left on the doorstep of his immediate family after his parents were killed. Which is a horrible idea as these people are going to treat this kid like absolute crap.
And I'm wondering what the hell it is that's so wrong with these Wizarding people.
They know about Harry's life, they know what he can do, they have a sense of any time he uses magic. You'd think after they discovered he was living in a broom closet they would send someone in to take them away.
Now let's say you can't do that because magical people can't interfere with the real world or something.
I'm pretty sure you can make an anonymous phone call to Child Protective Services who would be able to take him out of that house anyways.
And I mean at this point who even cares.
He's a prodigal son who's being haunted by a master dark lord.
Put the kid in some better protective service.
Or does Voldemort not have the ability to track kid to live with normal people.
Or does he see the kid living in the broom closet and figures; ''Ahhh! that'll do. I don't need to harass the kid or to get my Vengeance when he's living such a miserable life. Let him stay in that closet. I can sit here living inside the head of this weird dark arts teacher.''
Speaking of the dark arts teachers. What a crappy profession that must be to get into. Every single teacher gets replaced in every single movie.
We keep making a big deal about how the old wizard is played by a different actor but at least they consistently get new people to kind of look like the previous guy.
If you're a dark arts teacher you're screwed.
You're going to suffer with werewolf problems or get attacked by magical beast from Beyond a different realm. You're possessed by the darklord to begin with.
Or there's the final guy with the weird eyeball he's not even evil, he just get screwed over and shoved into a massive pit for 90% of the movie.
I think he comes back in the later films which is good because he's way too funny character to just throw away.
But honestly I wouldn't want to go near that profession especially when you've got Alan Rickman wandering around with his dark arts magic teaching the kids how to use all kinds of weird stuff and constantly suspicious of you because of your profession.
All right let's get down to these movies. At first you have the Philosopher's Stone where do you think that the main villain is Voldemort in the back of the head of that dark arts teacher.
But this isn't the case.
It's Hagrid who's the real problem here.
If it wasn't for his insistent babbling and constant aloofness to the situation everything would have been fine.
Most problems in this movie is linked back to that giant of a man.
He's the one that let his guard down on his own guard dog. He's the one that constantly spills the beans about where everything is in the castle both to the kids and to the Dark Lord.
He's just a real problem.
But he's too darn lovable to dislike so I'll give him a pass and just say better luck next time.
It doesn't matter anyways there's nothing to amazing that happens in this story.
As a film it's nothing too spectacular. It has a lot of slow moments it's incredibly juvenile which isn't surprising given his target audience. And it just feels like it's padded out with a lot of pointless material. Like that entire scene with a troll. You could have removed that from the movie to begin with and you would have lost nothing.
Still despite any problems this film may have it is the only Harry Potter that has a feeling of whimsicalness to it.
Everything's very bright and colorful and just kind of Happy. It has a few dark moments towards the end. And of course there's the ad for mentioned child abuse at the beginning. But it doesn't take away from the spectacle of the film.Then we get the second Harry Potter movie. Whose title I don't remember. This one is questionable. It's a bit more reliant on the CGI and unfortunately it just didn't look good. Even at the time it didn't look all that good. You have a film series like Lord of the Rings that used CGI in such a way as to enhance its environment and they really tried to stick to their Motif. Harry Potter is a bit more willy-nilly with it.
Anytime you need to have something weird or magical happened they'll just throw it in. Doesn't matter if it matches up or not it's not like the kids are going to notice. Which by the way they did. we also get the horrible introduction of Dobby. The worst character that I've seen in Harry Potter thus far. He's just annoying little troll or elf. These incredibly annoying he doesn't look good and he's incredibly self-harming.
Like I didn't like watching him do that. I think it's supposed to come off as comical. The poor little creatures got issues and no one's going to help them.
We're also still pretending like anyone cares about the Quidditch game.
We have to have several different competitions there in a large amount of our time dedicated to it. And I'm more than happy that that becomes less relevant in the newer movies.
Especially because every time I see it it reminds me of the Phantom Menace pod racing Scene.
It has the same energy, the same fast fake camera movements similar CGI (although the Harry Potter one looks worse) and the exact same music because they hired the exact same composer.
Thank God they get rid of him in the later movies because holy God that man has a one-track mind when it comes to composing music.
Or at least that's what he's contracted to do. Maybe he could do something else but no one's going to let him. We need that famous Star Wars Home Alone feel. Even though we're in a completely different movie franchise.
And now we get to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The first properly good Harry Potter film. It's not even that the other films are bad or just kind of subpar. But I feel like they really stepped up their game here. The stories more put together the cinematography and prove somewhat and it just feels like there's proper purpose. Things that are introduced at the beginning of the film actually matter in the middle of the film and there's something of a character Arc not just for Harry but for every major character. And they Incorporated a time travel mechanic fairly well. That's a hard thing to do.
In a way I almost feel like you could start watching Harry Potter here and he'd be fine.
It's also just nice to deal with the legitimately scary Concept. In all the earlier Harry Potter movies he just fights big monsters. A giant snake giant chess pieces a big troll.
All kinds of interesting but kind of lackluster creatures. And this one you get the Dementours these kind of grim reaper looking creatures that literally suck out your soul. There are far more interesting concept.
And finally there's the Goblet of Fire*. It's the filler film.
You watch the first 20 minutes to get the set up to all these weird evil wizards working for Voldemort finally coming into the world and causing problems and then you get the last half an hour where Voldemort comes back and everything becomes incredibly grim and dark.
While the rest of the film was just a wasting competition story of Harry Potter a competing with a bunch of other people to win an award that he really doesn't care about. In a way you could have just saved himself a lot of trouble if you failed that last contest. Just lose at the maze. It's not like anything's going to happen. You got swept in by some Reeds and then you just come back later. And Voldemort wouldn't be alive in his most human form. Because you didn't touch the Quidditch world cup thing or whatever the hell it was called and they wouldn't have been able to do their blood sacrifice. How hilarious would that have been if it was just some random weird kid that showed up. Well sorry Voldemort I guess you're not getting resurrected after all.
Re-watching these movies has proven to be quite a bit of fun. Despite any negatives I might have about them they are entertaining. A little long.
I forgot that every one of these films has at least two and a half hours long. Which is a little ridiculous. Half of these earlier films could have been cut down by at least 30 minutes if not more. But it's still fun to return to this silly wacky Wizards World and watch The Prodigal boy marches way through all this problems with little to no real issues.
So in the Prisoner of Azkaban Hermione throws a rock at past Harry. Doing this causes pain not only to him but to present Harry as well.
So why is it when the Dementours are attacking Harry later on in the film that present Harry doesn't also feel the effects?
Massive plot hole! Film ruined no good!
*Or as I like to call it; ''Hunger Games the first draft''.
It was about as entertaining as the first Hunger Games.
Honestly sitting around in dealing with teenage drama. 'Yeah that's the reason I come to a Harry Potter film.'
I don't even know if it was all that bad, I just didn't want to see it here.
Especially when you have so many other real problems happening in the same film. If they just had Harry and his friends going to school that year with no endangering situation it might have worked out better.
They could have fully committed to it and just had a wizard drama movie. That might have been all right.
Comments
Post a Comment