The first comments go to the HP Fandom. Hopefully the two of you who actually read this blog will pass this along to other people–because I’m missing Azkatraz and can’t stomp all over them myself. But it needs to be said.
1. We are now 6 installments of a projected 8-part adapatation of the beloved (dare I say SACRED?) Harry Potter series. After SIX installments, the filmmakers STILL haven’t gotten the story 100% perfect, and I doubt they are going to start now. It’s really time to stop comparing the books to the movies. They are different entities entirely. One is JK Rowling’s vision, but the other is the collaborative vision of the people who put the film together: the director, the script writer, the effects team, the actors, etc. They are not JK Rowling and cannot pretend to be. The adaptation will always be different. Accept it and move on. If you have a problem with the adaptation, then for bloody hell, stop going to see the movies and encouraging them to make more!
2. Michael Gambon. He’s not Sir Richard Harris, and he’s going to play Dumbledore his way. Let’s leave him alone. He’s not playing Dumbledore BADLY. In fact, I think that OotP and HBP both include a spot-on Dumbledore. The most important thing to remember about Dumbledore is that he is Harry’s archetypal grandfather figure. Sir Richard Harris played a very nurturing, caring, soft Dumbledore, which was perfect while Harry was adapating to the Wizarding World, Hogwarts and his new powers. Come PoA, when Gambon steps in, Harry is 13 and needs a sterner figure to keep him in line. In the books, Dumbledore is this stern, but in a way that can be conveyed through words. When we watch a movie, how are we supposed to read Harry’s thoughts about feeling guilty from Dumbledore’s silent treatment without a voice-over narrative? We have to have a Dumbledore who will convey the physicality of a stern authoritative figure. And honestly, he’s much less abusive than in Rickman’s Snape. I’ll concede that Gambon’s performance in GoF was over the top, but put those performances aside and see the Dumbledore that Harry needs and not the Sir Richard Harris Dumbledore.
Now, last reviewer comments. the New York Times and Slate.Com both posted wonderful reviews commenting on the staleness of the franchise. As Dana Stevens puts it:
In 2007, I ended my review of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with the sentiment “I can hardly wait for school to start again.” Two years later, with the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Warner Bros.), I’ve come down with a bad case of senioritis. (A premature one, too. Now that the last book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, has been split into two upcoming movies, graduation night is a long way off.)
This is true, and I walked into the movie sharing the same sentiments. It’s difficult to keep a movie franchise interesting, especially when it invites stagnation and mildew on the story line. The last book came out 2 years ago (this month if you’re only buying paperback), and the only thing fans have to look forward to if, really, a couple more movies and a theme park. Even having the “Scottish Book” (the running euphamism for the supposed encyclopedia Rowling wants to write) won’t contribute to the story and the life of Harry. That is over. We could make up what happens post-Hogwarts Battle, and we can make up the story of the offspring, but really Harry’s story is over. Like Frodo’s, it was tied up in a nice little bow.
So just what did I think of HBP? It’s definitely a good movie and worth seeing. I think that the mythic element that makes HP so potent a story has long been absent from the films, and this installment is no exception. But having the movies is probably more essential to the visual nature of myth within pop culture than not having them at all. Without this visual element, HP would not be fully embodiable. I can already imagine a few mythologists disagreeing with me. Just wait until the Universal HP land opens. That will be the haven of embodiment, but until then, we have cons and movies. Without embodiment, the myth remains impersonal, and that leads to indifference in the participatory experience. And that makes us muggles.
July 20th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Hmmm… I’m curious…. Do you see imagination as an embodied experience? In other words, is it enough to imagine the books as they are read, or must one see the movies to experience embodiment? After all, isn’t part of the appeal of HP that he speaks to something inside so many of us, already embodied in our sense of self?
July 20th, 2009 at 10:53 am
More importantly, we need something outside ourselves to give it life, a la the alchemical process in the vas hermeticum.