This thread isn't about the TV series; it's specifically about the story as told in the books and reflected in the movies, so if there's anything about the story you wish the books had done differently, now's the time to discuss it.
This thread isn't about the TV series; it's specifically about the story as told in the books and reflected in the movies, so if there's anything about the story you wish the books had done differently, now's the time to discuss it.
The idea is that it was just the British Wizards who saw him that way and to everyone else, the "War" was just an internal skirmish and not anything bigger.
I don't recall anything in the books that explicates this. Indeed, given Voldy's ambitions for wizarding kind, I don't know how other wizards could even feel that way. It's not like he was planning to stop with the UK.
The Bulgarians Wizards apparently didn't take him seriously, the Bulgarian Wizard who fought for him not only got barely a slap on the wrist but ended up becoming the Headmaster for the Bulgarian school.
This thread isn't about the TV series; it's specifically about the story as told in the books and reflected in the movies, so if there's anything about the story you wish the books had done differently, now's the time to discuss it.
You're right. My Bad. Somehow I conflated the two threads.
Yes, definitely. After the fourth book I expected Durmstrang and Beauxbatons or at least Krum and Fleur to have much bigger roles instead they were reduced to cameos.
I also thought Hogwarts would be ditched as the primary setting for book 5, Harry hadn't actually been safe there since book 1 and by book 4 Voldemort managed to literally kidnap Harry from the grounds so what was the point of keeping up the pretense? It felt like Rowling was expanding the world in book 4 to get away from Hogwarts and explore the wizarding world but then this simply didn't happen. Not even when the trio eventually got away from Hogwarts in book 7, they wandered the countryside a bit but there was not a lot of expanding happening, they visited a bunch of previously established locations and a few private homes.
Hmm, Harry Potter as a commentary on Britain's post-Thatcher decline and reckoning with no longer being the political and cultural center of the world. (See also, Jack Wade's snark to James Bond in GoldenEye.)
No, no, there's no way Rowling intended that reading. It's a clever idea and I like it (if that's what you intended), but, no, Rowling's Britishcentrism in the saga works against it.
The writer Andrew Rilstone wrote an essay that tackles this -- the differences between the Hogwarts-centric early books and the fuzzier later books -- almost twenty years ago. He ascribes an almost "A-plot/B-plot" dichotomy to it.
I also think the shift in focus comes about at the point where Rowling will no longer be edited.
Yes, the first 3 books clearly had an Editor who knew what they were doing. Tightly plotted, no padding, to the point.
Then in Book 4 suddenly the series becomes one of those typical bloated, convoluted self-indulgent series that comes from authors who had no one telling them to get to the point.
There's an odd symmetry between the final book of HP and the final book of The Dark Tower in that both involve our protagonists spending vast amounts of time journeying without a great deal really happening to them; journeys that might be perceived as lulls in the narrative by some readers.
To add to that symmetry, for me; I'm pretty sure I began reading the HP books because Stephen King suggested them in On Writing. I liked the first two movies well enough, but not enough to read the books upon which they were based. Prisoner of Azkaban was easily better than the first two films (and perhaps remains the one I consider the best executed overall), but I'm not sure whether I would have started reading the books solely based on the strength of that film. And then I found Goblet of Fire to be a disappointment, so if I hadn't already started the books I might have opted not to at that point.
To add to that symmetry, for me; I'm pretty sure I began reading the HP books because Stephen King suggested them in On Writing. I liked the first two movies well enough, but not enough to read the books upon which they were based. Prisoner of Azkaban was easily better than the first two films (and perhaps remains the one I consider the best executed overall), but I'm not sure whether I would have started reading the books solely based on the strength of that film. And then I found Goblet of Fire to be a disappointment, so if I hadn't already started the books I might have opted not to at that point.
Goblet of Fire is where the major problems all start to manifest. The stories become very contrived, the writing is unnecessarily bloated and loose, whole plotlines go nowhere and the characterizations go very wonky. Poor Ron suffers the most.
How cool would it have been to have Harry and his group of friends moved to a new school elsewhere for their safety? I mean, if you're The Boy Who Lived, special considerations would need to be taken to ensure the kid's safety, even if it means moving him around. Would be a logistical nightmare though.
I don't know if anybody here's read R.F Kuang's Babel, but that is set in an alternate history Oxford where there is magic, with translation at the heart of it, culminating in a message about colonialism and its effect on those under its thumb. It's a brilliant book.
To be honest, I was so engrossed with the story that was being told in the last couple books that I didn't
really care about the other schools or magical societies. The books were titled Harry Potter, not the wonderful wizarding world. So focusing on Harry's quest to eliminate Voldemort makes more sense than trailing off into something else.
I really wasn't that bothered by the later books, I thought they were at least better than Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets.
I don't think I've ever seen anybody actually call the Michael Bay Transformers movies good, but they still managed to make billions of dollars. There are often things other than overall quality that draw people to something. It wasn't a bad show by any stretch, but I still have to wonder if Game of Thrones would have still been as popular if it didn't have all of the graphic sex, nudity, and violence.
No, that would have made it even worse. It would an even bigger distraction and divergence from the story being told that what we got in the Deathly Hollows that we got. The series was also supposed to be about Hogwarts, and the fact that it spent so little time there was of my least favorite parts of Deathly Hollows,Soooooooo, getting back on track... I'm curious if anyone else expected or hoped that other nations' magical societies would play a larger role in the seven-year-story? As I recall, when Deathly Hallows came out, there was a fair amount of grumbling about the extended camping trip that made up a fair amount of the book's narrative and page count. Would anyone else here have preferred a visit to Beauxbatons and/or Dumstrang, or somewhere else, than what we got? Offhand, I can't think of any important new location the last two Years (books or movies) introduced other than the horcrux zombie cave and the grave of Harry's parents, and I'm not sure the latter even qualifies as "important."
As for the location of the final battle... I'm of two minds. On the one hand, I can't help feeling that having it be in Hogwarts was a boring and lazy choice that prevented the overall story from being an epic, because an epic fundamentally involves a long journey to a far-off place, with Mount Doom and the third Death Star being classic examples. What's more, having the ultimate battle of good vs. evil be decided at a children's school feels just plain silly. That said, Hogwarts is the center of the overall story, so I'm not sure where else it could have taken place. (Certainly not the dull and underwhelming underground Ministry of Magic!)
Maybe if the last year or two had built up to Voldy reclaiming, say, the hidden/lost castle of Camelot as the final step in his grand plan, that could have made a fitting site. Heck, doing so could have paid off the in-universe introduction of the historical wizard Merlin, from Harry's first train ride to Hogwarts.
"Camelot" by Alan Lee
I could have sworn there were refences at one point to Fleur and Bill Weasly working to get help from the French, and possibly Krum working to get help from Bulgaria.
This popped up on my feed. Fairly good summary of the different schools and why there's still much material that could be done with, namely the 3 unrevealed schools that practically scream to be made a series about.
there are probley some alternate earths in the multiverse where the harry potter books kept going along with the movies
and there are probley also more alternate earths in the multiverse where the harry potter rebooted into a tv series came out after the final movie of the harry potter anthology
and there are probley also more alternate earths in the multiverse where the harry potter rebooted into a tv series came out after the final movie of the harry potter anthology
Now don’t be inviting ASOIAF and its author into the discussion without a proper invitation and dinner, with extra descriptions of each course served, etc.
Cheers,
-CM-
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