by the fans for the fans

looks cool

JUST FOR THE RECORD... I SEE THESE MOVIES BECOUSE...











MY KIDS HAVE A SAY ON WHAT THEY ALSO LIKE TO SEE THIS SUMMER AND NOT JUST DADDYS MOVIES.

HEHEHE

I made the mistake of going to see one of the Harry Potter movies a few years ago because I thought it was going to be more matured, but it still was too childish for my tastes. I've vowed to never watch any of them ever again.

I know how you feel -- I've only seen a couple of Harry Potter movies, and was disappointed by their childishness, especially in comparison with the Lord of the Rings movies that were roughly playing at the same time.

But I was out at the mall today, picking up a copy of Wii Sports Resort, and Harry Potter was playing at the local cinema, so I decided to give it a go. This latest one was actually pretty decent. It wasn't spectacular, but it was alright. There are some major things that happen in this movie, which you'll obviously know if you've read the books (I haven't), but I won't spoil it for the rest of you.

So you might actually find this one worth checking out, as it sets up a lot of story action for the future.

Back when the whole Harry Potter craze first started, I got talked into reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by my sister by means of "Don't knock it 'till you've tried it". I gave the book a try and was honestly surprised when it turned out to be reasonably well-written light fantasy. I was even more surprised when the subsequent books turned out to be every bit as well written as the first, which is as unheard-of as an honest politician these days.

While light fantasy (and fantasy in general) is not really my cup of tea, I find the suggestion that the lighter tone of the Harry Potter novels makes them childish to be pretentious in the extreme. It's exactly the same sort of story as we find in Robotech... a narrative that can talk about more adult themes like death, war, self-sacrifice, and other such moral quandaries, while still remaining accessible to younger audiences. It's that sophistication that made the novels so successful, and the lack of that sophistication when the audiences expected it that made the movies such a bore.

Since my last girlfriend, my current girlfriend, and my sister are all rabid Harry Potter fans, it was pretty much inevitable that I'd get dragged to each and every Harry Potter movie. Not too long ago, I got dragged to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Just like the previous movies, I found Half-Blood Prince to lack a lot of the sophistication, subtlety, and pacing which made the novels a reasonably interesting read. The movies based on the longer books (Goblet of Fire and Half-Blood Prince) had their stories so severely truncated to fit the two-and-a-half hour runtime that it felt like the writers had only ever read the cliffnotes. Half-Blood Prince was a particularly bad example, lurching back and forth between the severely truncated primary story and oddly expanded secondary love/comedy storyline with a clunk every bit as sickening as a car downshifting from 4th to 1st without the aid of a clutch. The inexplicable addition of several scenes that weren't in the book and didn't really do anything for the story just left me scratching my head. Like so many movies out right now, Half-Blood Prince looks impressive, but doesn't really DO much, story-wise.