We finally saw the final Harry Potter movie last night, after investing several nights over the last month in watching the preceding seven movies of the saga. It's been semi-satisfying. I adore the story and have grown to identify the actors as personifications of their characters. It's difficult to imagine anyone but Daniel Racliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint as Harry, Hermione, and Ron, isn't it? Even Alan Rickman, a poor casting choice in my opinion, is forever Severus Snape. Yes, I've gotten used to it over the years!
However, as is often true, I have come to my blog to vent! I believe I've become so attached and invested in the Harry Potter world that I feel offended when they don't get things quite right. Or, let's be honest--when they totally botch it up. "Bloody hell!" as Ron would say.
I cannot believe, with the sheer number of folks involved in making the movie, that they don't have better end-stage review. The digital artists completely missed the boat. Oh my goodness...that scene where Voldemort kills Snape? His nose is nothing but a haze! They remembered to block the real nose of the actor, but then they didn't finish the digital one! Now, we did see it in 3D, so I pray that wasn't true for the 2D movie, or at least that they correct it for the DVD release--in which it won't be as noticeable.
What an extreme and most obvious, glaring mistake. Unbelievable.
But to me, that most obvious mistake was less chafing, less insulting than their casting of Lily Potter as a girl. One of the phrases we heard most often throughout the series was, "You have your mother's eyes." Right? Right? Those were the words on Snapes' lips as he lay dying, for heaven's sakes! So, of course, moments later we're transported into the past via the pensieve and meet Lily as a girl. Lily with small, brown eyes and wavy Weasely-red hair. Never mind Mama Potter's big blue eyes and something closer to strawberry-blonde straight hair, of course. And, most importantly, never mind that Harry Potter has big, blue eyes, too! How could they? I think the book specifies green eyes, actually, but I had no trouble getting past that. It was just such an insult to the audience's intelligence, to the consistency of the story line, for them to ignore the most-discussed identifying feature in the whole story line. I pray that it was a more unintentional mistake, that the girl was cast with an expectation of having her eyes digitally altered to be blue, minimally.
Whew! Those were the two most glaring and apparent mistakes, from my perspective. I don't think the other family members noticed the eye color problem, to my astonishment. In fact, Michael said, "I thought Harry's eyes were brown..." That had to be a joke, right?
However, Michael was thrown by the fact that Harry apparently decided to shed his robe while Snape fled Hogwarts' hall in that dramatic black whirlwind through the large windows. Yes, apparently he realized that he was a bit warm at that very moment. Disrobing must be easier for wizards, eh? One moment the robe is on, the next it's off--cast on the floor behind Harry (a later digital addition, to remedy the discrepancy in clothing?).
Whew...after those most annoying mistakes, there are smaller things I can still nitpick, of course. Just stuff that would have been nice to see a little better, but still subject to personal opinion and preference differences, as opposed to the above mistakes. Ron and Harry as parents were "brilliant!" of course. I loved the age progressions. They looked fabulously middle-aged (if that's what we are!). Hermione could have used a few more lines around the eyes, maybe, but Ginny still had a babyface. Not sure why the gals weren't anywhere near as convincing as the guys. Just a little disappointing, but no biggie.
On the other hand, Lily Potter, in the recreation of her death scene, looked to be in her 50's--as did Snape, for that matter. Come on! They were supposed to be young! Couldn't the digital artists have corrected that problem? And, you know, I thought that Harry's parents looked a bit old from the get-go. The memory shots shouldn't have been age-progressed to parents suitable for Harry's current age. His folks should have looked like they would have when he was just a baby. Ridiculous.
Yes, I'm invested. How awful that I just critique and criticize, when I love the movies so much! And the books, and J.K. Rowling! You just want them to be perfect, you know?
Rowling's depth as a writer truly humbles me. The mass of subtle mythological references and word plays extends past what I'll ever realize. However, she had inconsistencies through the course of her writing. It seems as though I did recognize some of those in reading the series, and I read an interview with Rowling where she said, to my tickled surprise, that devoted fans will remind her of the earlier discrepancies, and she'll have completely forgotten. "Oh really?" was her clueless response to their detailed explanations, as she truly had forgotten those earlier elements of the story! How very funny it is that the fans know it better than the author!
You know, Rowling claims that the story came to her all at once, sort of, while she was at King's Cross station. She didn't know where it came from and felt almost as though she were channeling the story. I feel a little that way about the stories I've written, as well--though elements brewed for a long time in the back of my mind from speculation and contemplation about real events and mysteries in my own genealogy (not that I adhered to history in the telling, however). But, anyhow, the correlation is that we don't exactly feel as though we're making it all up--almost that we're channeling from somewhere else and don't know where it all comes from. Sounds like nighttime dreams, doesn't it? It rather is.
Cornelia Funke in her 'Inkheart' series creates a most relishing scenario, in which an author's writing literally creates another universe. That is, it seemed to. Or was it that the author picked up on the existence of the other universe? The story becomes really powerful when the author himself gets sucked into the world. Issues of perspective really became powerful then. He regarded himself as godlike for creating the whole place, but the characters didn't generally have the same respect for him, and he became subject to their wrath. Yes, this is chocolate for an author's imagination!
Anyhow, Rowling's Harry Potter universe has become so powerfully real that countless folks have become truly invested in the stories and have imbued them with such psychically-laden force that we almost regard them as real. And, in a sense, they almost seem to be. What's more real to us--Harry Potter or the tens of thousands of victims that are currently dying from the drought in the horn of Africa? Tens of thousands of nameless victims, or a handful of imaginary folks? Whew...
My church friend Margaret suggested that Harry Potter has become a sort of religion, and I laughed at the analogy, at first. Upon further scrutiny, though, I'm not laughing quite so much. It's actually quite intimidating to consider the potential that certain stories carry--including the ramifications of many real, existing religions, which are comprised of stories, truly. Exclude your own, if you must, but consider all the others--which have generated wars as well as inspiring great deeds and societies. Pretty amazing, powerful stuff, stories can be...
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