“John Boot” isn’t as impressed with Harry Potter as he’s supposed to be:
Why don’t kids notice that their heroes get everything handed to them on a levitating platter? Because, I guess, they think it’s really cool to imagine themselves riding a dragon as a huge building collapses all around them. A better question is why so many adults seem so intrigued by all things Harry, lining up next to eighth-graders for midnight showings. The answer is: Because as kids have gotten more and more grownup, adults have become children. Tech companies like Pixar and Google fill their offices with game rooms and cereal dispensers. Soon your office will have a 17-year-old guidance counselor on staff to advise you on how not to be so, like, ancient.
I haven’t seen one since (I think) the third one. I haven’t read any of the books. But then, I was just never into magic, except the kind provided by a sufficiently advanced technology.
[Update mid afternoon]
Some commentary on the movie patrons, from Laura Ingraham:
Unless you’ve been contacted by the film’s casting director, there is no reason for you ever to come to a movie in costume. We don’t think you’re cute. We don’t think you’re artistic. We do think you’re a nerd. And the moment you leave the protective company of the other crazy people at the cineplex, you look like a complete idiot. The robe and the wand are not working for you.
For the record, I have never been to a movie in a costume. I actually hate costumes (and Halloween, which seems to have evolved from a childrens’ holiday when I was a kid to an adult one, apparently as a result of many of my age cohorts never growing up). Of course, I have also never seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I take no small measure of pride in that, after all these years. I was completely put off it by the rabid fans.
[Saturday update]
I know, I probably shouldn’t give him the traffic, but once again Mark Whittington displays his endless talent for hyperbole (and inability to actually detect people’s emotions or read their minds, despite his continuous attempts), fantasizing that I am “heaping disdain” on Harry Potter. And that I’m doing so to “pretend to be cool.”
Following up on an interesting observation by Rand, I also was never attracted to magic, even found it somewhat repulsive. The difference between magic and science (( leaving aside the question of whether it works, since a fair amount of attempts at science don’t work) is that in magic the intentions, desire, moral purity, et cetera of the practioner matter. Harry can’t get the spell to work unless he’s in the right frame of mind, really really wants it, is weeping for his mum, etc.
But science, you see, doesn’t care about your intentions. It either works or it doesn’t, depending on whether you do the steps right, and it will work whether you’re passionate or indifferent, pure of spirit or a sinner. Who knows why that cold but utterly reliable nature appeals to some, more than the warm emotional nature of magic? In miy own case I tend to blame a childhood in which the emotional currents around me were a source of dread –dangerously explosive –not, as theythey might have been in a different ho use, something sustaining.
Nature is unforgiving and cold, but she is never capricious, and never
… dishonest. (Just that word was cut off)
Now The Hobbit, that’s a different kettle of fish. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he should have stopped there, but it proves that if he had put as much care into the writing of LOTR as he did into the world building, it would have been much better. IMHO of course.
Titus: having reread your first comment, I see that you do indeed think her decision was based on nothing but crass commercialism. All I can say is — when I finish my novel, which happens to have a male protagonist, I certainly hope you won’t think I chose to write about a man instead of a woman was based on mere desire to make money. Oh wait — I actually don’t care what you think. My characters come to me in whatever shape, sex, age, etc., they want to. If I changed my character into a woman just to please some sort of politically-correct ideal of what women should write about, that would be dishonest.
On the subject of Niven works as movies: I would dearly love to see, if it was done right, Ringworld made into a movie. One thing that Niven does very well is give you a sense of scale. (Potential spoilers follow) The scene where Louis Wu is shown a picture with a light in the middle and a thin ribbon looped around it – and is then, almost casually, told that the light in the middle is a G5 star. And the scene where, having been previously told in a throwaway line, that their flycycles fly at Mach 2, we are told that CROSSING the Ringworld is going to take a fortnight.
He smashes you in the face with things at an utterly incomprehensible scale – again and again. And does it very well indeed. I severely doubt that Hollywood could do it justice.
Ah, yes. Fist-of-God Mountain and the Eye storm..
Speaking of SF we love… although I’m about thirty years past the peak of my love for/obsession with Star Wars, I still fondly remember the afternoon in the summer of ’77 when my oldest brother took myself (and my other brother- none named Darryl) down to the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd for a matinee of said movie. BEST SF GEEK KID EXPERIENCE EVER! The sequals were a bit of a progressive let down though. Fast forward oh-so-many-years (one of you smart guys invent a time machine so we can go back to better times, please), and as an adult, I would love to see another crack made at Starship Troopers- by a director that respects the source book (and it’s author), and utilizing cutting edge CGI to show the coolness that are the exosuits (isn’t that what Heinlein called them?). Another good one I don’t think anybody’s mentioned yet-does anyone else remember watching Silent Running as a kid? I bet I’m not the only one that used to cry at the end when the little robot is left all alone. Quit lying- you did too!
Loved silent running (sounds like a sub movie?) even though the premise was stupid. Cheating at poker? It’s only natural.
First, she made magic just a school subject, not something you need to be born with special powers to do, nor something you need to study in some fierce ascetic way, like Grasshopper studying kung fu in the shaolin temple. It’s just like algebra, something you can slog through to competence, even if you’re ordinary and your teacher doesn’t much like you
I haven’t read any of the books and have only seen one movie, but even I know better than that. In the Harry Potterverse, you have to be born a wizard. Ordinary people (who are called “muggles”) cannot acquire the power through any amount of education.
I don’t know who “john boot” is, but he sucks as a reviewer or a writer. I think PJM can do better. As several commenters note, it doesn’t appear the guy read the books and is reviewing the books based on the movie. If you want to say the movie was bad (I haven’t seen it, and I’ve only found the Chris Columbus directed ones to be good at all), then that’s all fine. But the movie is hardly the book.
I mentioned book 5 earlier. I thought the movie really glossed over some of the societal discourse discussed in the book. Indeed, the movie spent more time on the eye candy scenes rather than showing how students and parents initially distrusted Harry’s tale of Voldemort’s return and then later awoke to the fact that government not only was lying to them, but putting their families in danger by doing so.
I’ve stopped with the movie series at book 6. When the opening has Harry showing interest in some girl in a subway; I was totally disinterested. That scene wasn’t even in the book, and it took away from a key subplot in the book as Harry has growing interest in Ginny. And it’s key, because [spoiler] Ginny’s actions in book 7 are what save Harry. In many ways, she’s the hero in the final book.
Laura Ingraham is a prissy bore. I mean, lord knows I’ve mocked cosplayers in my time, but who died and made Miss Laura the queen? I mean, what business is it of hers what people dress up like?
In the past few years, intellectual puritans both right and left have been whining about the “infantlization of America” — the idea that it’s somehow wrong for adults to enjoy anything children enjoy. Although, the concept itself predates the term by quite a bit.
C.S. Lewis pretty much said it all when he was criticized for wasting his talents on children’s stories: “When I became an adult, I put away childish things, one of which was the desire to be very grown up.”
I haven’t read any of the books and have only seen one movie, but even I know better than that. In the Harry Potterverse, you have to be born a wizard. Ordinary people (who are called “muggles”) cannot acquire the power through any amount of education.
You’re correct about the first part. You have to be born a wizard. But whether or not you ever develop any skill in magic requires education. Then there are various specializations of magic. It’s a bit different than previous wizardry/magician type stories. For instance, the grounds keeper is a wizard, but his skill in casting spells is so poor that he doesn’t really have a wand (he uses an umbrella), but the grounds keeper learned how to take care of magical creatures.
But yes, saying you don’t have to be born with the gift, isn’t quite what I remember from the books or the movies.
Then there’s the Air Force Colonel in Tom Clancy’s “Cardinal of the Kremlin” who the senior generals smile at because he’s always trying to find the Coke machine at briefings where everyone else in drinking coffee. Smile at, never laugh at, because he happens to be one of the most brilliant scientists in the SDI program. In Clancy’s world, unlike Laura’s, that counts for something.
LOLZ! A man after my own heart, or I of his.
The first thing that Rowling did with Harry Potter was make him the epitome of the Sad Sack.
He’s an orphan. He wears ill-fitting, hand-me-down clothes. He sleeps in a cupboard under the stairs while his spoiled cousin has a second bedroom solely to contain his hoard of toys. He’s bullied, underfed and ignored.
The setup was completely over the top.
How can any kid that has ever been picked on fail to find interest in such an opening?
The books are masterpieces of story-telling on a very basic level. They are not exceptionally well written, but the writing is more than adequate.
Rowling finished the final book of the series and stopped. The pressure to continue cranking out further adventures must be intense. For that alone, she deserves much respect.
As I recall, in the Harry Potter books, there is a substantial minority of magic-talented people born to “muggles” or non-magic users, and one of the long-standing conflicts in the books’ background is driven by how some of the old-time magic-talented families are reacting to all these muggle-born and half-breeds (like Harry, Snape, and Voldemort) invading their world.
Rand is no scifi nerd, he even came to a virtual scifi convention in the virtual world of Second Life …… with an avatar that looks exactly like himself….
One more thing (I meant to write more but work is busy today so I guess I’ll just have to do my job instead of goofing off on the internet!) I don’t know where this “honor student” thing came from. Harry was no honor student — he was barely getting by in most of his classes, and his sweating over his finals (“owl” levels I think they were called in the books, a joke on the British “O-levels”) was one of the constant subplots throughout the books. Since that sort of thing is pretty boring, I think most of the movies glossed over it. Still, the honor student among the protagonists was Hermione. She could often be an irritating character, it is true.
My avatar doesn’t look “exactly” like me. It has more hair, and doesn’t wear glasses.
Aw c’mon, we know you. You’d do anything for Hipster Cred. j/k
Seriously, all you did was link to this guy’s review, and mention you haven’t read the books and aren’t into stuff about “magic” anyway. God forbid you link to someone else’s post just because you thought the post was interesting. That makes you a Believer Of The Post! It’s in the Internet Troll Manual, I believe.
Oh wait, no, you linked to Whittington’s post, which means you believe his post, which means…
Gosh, this endlessly recursive stuff is painful. Also it’s dark in here inside the Worm Ourobouros. (Did I spell that right? My book is at home.)
OK, back to work.
Careful, Andrea, next he’ll accuse you of being filled with rage, and leaping the length of your chain.
McGehee – Also notable is the fact that he noted the difference between Ringworld meteorology and that of Earth. Specifically the fact that the Coriolis effect does not apply on Ringworld; instead, anything moving spinward is slightly heavier than it would be if static, and if moving antispinward slightly lighter. Hence the completely different shapes of weather systems.
Spoiler again: The revelation in the second book of just how the Ringworld defence laser works is a treat.
Possible paraphrase: “Louis, I have some information for you. Just before we went into stasis, there were some odd magnetic anomalies followed by a solar flare.” “OK. And then what?” “Then it lased in violet.”
Another problem Hollywood would have is that some of the incidents in Ringworld would make the movie adult-rated. I rather doubt that they would want to touch the subject of rishathra, for example.
Whoof woof artrghhh bark argh grrrr woof! *YANK* *thud* cough cough hack hack
Uh, what now? (Dang stupid choke collar)
Mark is naturally sensitive when it comes to criticisms of magic. After all, he’s depending on it to make his space program and economic system work.
🙂
Late to the party…
Laura Ingraham: if I were to interview her, I’d ask her if the notion she has a beef with is a) wearing costumes to a movie theater, or b) adults dressing up like characters in childrens’ literature, or c) both.
If b) or c), she may have a beef with my blog 🙂
(So far, none of my fellow evangelicals have complained about me associating law bloggers with the Dark Arts.)
Ringworld movie: Great idea, but there’s the ever-present danger of sequels. I cannot see how moviemakers can make Ringworld Throne interesting.
One other problem with sequels: one of them (forget which) introduces a bit of trivia about Kzinti – the females are sub-sapient, with severely limited vocabularies. Let’s see someone make THAT movie without attracting cranked-to-eleven ferocity from the NOW gang. Hell and Kzin space hath no such fury…
Eggheads who denounce “infantlization of America”: A lot of them must be movie makers. There’s not enough effort to make films that appeal to broad age ranges.
J. K. Rowling: She succeeds because (among other reasons) she merges fantasy with the everyday stuff of her audience’s world. growing up One rule for storytelling, and not just sci-fi/fantasy: the more alien, the smaller the audience. People groove on characters and storylines they can relate to. Harry Potter is about real-life growing-up issues, with some extra stuff thrown in.
I couldn’t agree with the quote from C.S. Lewis more. I haven’t read any of the books, but my wife – a successful doctor who graduated with top honors from medical school – deeply enjoys them and I’ve seen all the movies with her.
I didn’t go expecting high cinema. I went because the characters are engaging, the movies are well-cast, and the story is fun. I can get “serious” elsewhere when I want it.
I have seen and heard some of your interviews. I am QUITE confident you aren’t trying to be cool. QUITE CONFIDENT!
Forget HP. I spent all these years waiting for Hermione to reach legal age and now I’m too old to enjoy her.
What I *really* want is a Serenity sequel. [I was at DragonCon last year and saw the Browncoats Redemption movie. I appreciated the effort but it was lacking in a lot of areas.] Umm, preferably with clones of Wash and Book.
I’m not sure I could bear to see a remake of Starship Troopers. Paul Verhoeven’s version was awful.
I would like to see The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress made well, but then again, I think it’s really hard to put Heinlein on the big screen.