maul2 wrote:One of my favorite moments of this was the "Hey I'm Bill Weasley, you were supposed to meet me three movies ago but I wasn't deemed important enough, but I'm here now!"
Yeah. Not to mention that he couldn't have been much older than Harry, even though he's supposed to be a good 10 years older.
maul2 wrote:Now, in the movie, the Marauders map is granted a piece of old parchment...about 3 inches thick once it's all folded up.I mean seriously, has anyone counted just how many little fold out doodads and thingamjigs make up that "scrap of parchment", I mean seriously people! And once activated it's a map of Hogwarts granted (That when unfolded is about 6 foot square, very convenient for sneaking around at night, no?)except that everything is all unnecessarily fancy, the entire map is made of words and the names of the people are scrawled out halfway across the thing in weird curling letters. Really? This is the map that 4 misfit boys would have made at school? Really?
While it sounds fine in the books, I'm not sure how a foot-square piece of old parchment could hold the entire grounds of Hogwarts simultaneously and have it all be legible. The fold-out part makes more sense to me, looking at it.
As for the 4 misfit boys, it's unclear how certain enchantments work. Obviously the map generates new information constantly, based on what's around it -- the boys can't very well have programmed "Harry Potter" into the map, after all. For all we know, when you enchant a piece of parchment to display text, it's automatically going to display it in the fancy writing. Maybe you have to do different charms to get different typefaces and the fancy one is the easiest.
maul2 wrote:Now The Ministry of Magic. In the book it's described as...well a government building...your local city hall, with a few small improvements (Flying letters, fireplaces etc. etc.).
Not exactly:
The door of the telephone box sprang open and Mr. Weasley stepped out of it, followed by Harry, whose mouth had fallen open.
They were standing at one end of a very long and splendid hall with a highly-polished, dark wood floor. The peacock-blue ceiling was inlaid with gleaming golden symbols that were continually moving and changing... The walls on each side were paneled in shiny dark wood and had many gilded fireplaces set into them... halfway down the hall was a fountain. A group of golden statues, larger than life-size, stood in the middle of a circular pool... hundreds of witches and wizards...strode toward a set of golden gates at the far end of the hall...
Harry followed Mr. Weasley through the gates into the smaller hall beyond, where at least twenty lifts stood behind wrought golden grilles.
(Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, American Hardcover edition, pages 127&129)
A kid's jaw isn't going to fall open at your local city hall. It's clearly meant to be an opulent and fantastical space ("hall" as in open gathering place, not hallway) that has become mundane to the wizards who work there but to an outsider is, apparently literally, jaw-dropping.
It's not entirely unreasonable for a government building, either. The halls of the U.S. Congress are pretty impressive, with all the marble and such everywhere. The Ministry hall looks like a combination government building and British Underground station (they're big on the tile). It's just...moreso. Which is well in line with Rowling's description (via Mr. Weasley) of the wizarding zeitgeist as he expresses it at the Quidditch World Cup:
"Always the same," said Mr. Weasley, smiling. "We can't resist showing off when we get together..."
It's not at all that Rowling's vision of the magical world is one just as mundane as ours, but with flying paper airplanes instead of interns couriering memos. The magical world is totally fantastical -- but everyone who lives there is completely desensitized to it. Except Harry, who mostly gets used to it as the years go by but can still be surprised -- as when he first sees the Ministry entrance hall.
I agree that that was the problem in the early (Columbus) films -- any time someone so much as said the word "wand" the music would swell and they'd blow wind and smoke in everyone's astonished goddamn faces. But I really think that starting with Cuaron they've curbed that impulse for the most part, and the big magical moments in the movies pretty much match the ones in the books.
Although I agree that they are racing so fast through the plot that they miss the emotional beats of the story -- and are also hindered, as you point out, by not having sufficient set-up. After his intro in Chamber of Secrets, Dobby appears in books 4, 5, 6, and 7 and provides crucial help for Harry and his friends every time, so in book 7 it feels right that he's helping and it's emotionally wrenching when he gets killed. I think, reading the book, I cried hardest at Dobby's death. But we haven't seen Dobby in a movie in eight years, and last time we did he was kind of annoying, so when he just shows up and then dies right away it's kind of just a hollow moment that feels tacked on.
