Greetings readers, It is my pleasure to resume writing to you. A political post is in the works but for now some movie reviews:
Brave (Pixar):
I was rather pleasantly surprised by this movie. It's Pixar, so I expected high quality, but I was rather impressed by how memorable they managed to make each character.
When you look at most movies, the main characters tend to have a basic introduction of who they are, but most often that barely makes it past a job description.
Think about it, what do you know about McClane from Die Hard? He's a cop....and that's about it. How about Jake Sully from Avatar? Well, he had a twin brother who died, and he used to be a marine. No idea what his dating life was like back on earth, no specific details about how he lost the use of his legs, Hell we don't even know anything about his parents. Did he get along with them? Are they still alive? Totally unanswered. Because it's generally not important to the plot.
In Brave, the characters Are the plot. The movie is less about What happens, than Why it happens. The plot itself is simple standard fantasy. Things are kindof annoying, magic gets involved, things get terrible, heroes triumph, heroes realize "kindof annoying" is waaay better than "Horrifucking-awful".
The important part is the personal growth that happens to each and every character in the movie. I swear, every frigging character, even characters that aren't even named. There is a character that I can best describe as ridiculous bad-ass composed entirely of steroids. He's not a named character, he's mostly there for comparative humor. But even he gets to experience some personal growth and gets in touch with his softer side.
Aside from the interesting character growth, it's everything we've come to expect from a Pixar film. It's cute, funny, and memorable.
The Secret world of Arriety:
A Miyazaki film (Howl's moving castle, spirited away, etc) that branches out from it's own genre.
Most Miyazaki films focus heavily on Asian mythology, this one specifically focuses on western mythology. So that by itself was a startling change, but the movie was good so it's ok. Same as Brave it has all of the qualities you expect from a Miyazaki film. The only thing that concerns me about these two movies is perhaps they are staying too true to form. Miyazaki films always follow the same structure. Namely normal person interacting with the supernatural and exploring a different world.
Pixar for quite awhile was following a similar standardized formula (I.E. What if _____ was real and could talk?) In Cars it was that the cars replaced people, yet, were still cars. In Monster's INC it was "What if the monsters in your closet were real and had their own society?". Toy Story is almost the standard for their format "What if toys were alive and could talk?".
The one major shift from this format was Wall-E. In Wall-E everything did what they were already capable of doing. Robots did robot stuff, humans lounged around, and super-computers were evil. But the movie managed to tell an amazing story with very little dialogue, almost all of which had little to nothing to do with the plot. I hope that Pixar continues trying to break out of the mold that it's gotten itself into (UP was another good example of deviation.), and I really hope that Miyazaki gets himself out of his formula, because his movies are becoming very predictable.
John Carter (Disney):
This is a case of the Disney marketing dept dropping the ball off of a skyscraper.
John Carter is based off the book "Princess of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs (The creator of Tarzan). Princess of Mars is an incredibly important piece of science fiction because it sets the tone for science fiction for the next century. Asimov, Heinlein, Roddenberry, etc. All of the modern Sci-Fi writers based much of their work off of Princess of Mars.
So you'd think that re-introducing modern culture to this historic piece of work would be easy? Well, apparently Disney Marketing can't figure it out.
The movie itself is rather good, not exactly the same as the book, but adjusted slightly to make it more acceptable to modern viewers. At the time it was written, absolutely no-one knew anything about Mars. Now we've sent probes and such, we know about Mars. So the story needed to be adjusted to account for that. But as far as the plot itself is concerned, it remained very true to the original plot. With the only exception of combining multiple story arcs from the John Carter book series into the movie (Which most movies based on books do).
I am actually currently in the process of reading the books to compare everything, but because it was written back before we had CGI the book is heavy in descriptions. Which at the time it needed to be. Nobody had any concept of what an alien might look like. Now the genre is saturated with various aliens so our collective consciousness can fully form what an alien might look like.
Another important concept to consider is that some of the aliens in the book are non-humanoid. (I.E. would have to be a puppet or CGI if they appeared in modern TV/Film) and that was a major first in science fiction. Before then it was assumed that people from another planet would look very similar to people from this planet. Various creatures appeared in fantasy books before then, and that's where Burrough's drew inspiration from. What if life on another world was different than life here? A novel concept that launched the mass of Sci-fi works we have today.
Final comments on John Carter: It's a good movie, and an important piece of Nerd/Geek history. Unless you'd rather read an extremely detail-heavy series of books, I recommend the movie instead (which will likely make you want to read the rest of the books just so you can find out what happens next).
Friday, June 29, 2012
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Harry Potter: Protagonist?
Harry Potter: Protagonist?
Greetings my readers. Sorry for the delay between posts, real life got in the way. This post has been brewing in my head for quite awhile now, and I needed to share it with the world.
Harry Potter is a bad character.
Before you get upset, let me explain. The world of Harry Potter is rather interesting, an entire world of culture and mythology hidden under the "real" world. The problem is: Harry is the least interesting character in the series.
Think about it. What has Harry really done for himself? Not much. Everything was either done by chance, dumb luck, or assistance from adults and friends.
Let's start off in book one.
Harry, random orphan boy is informed that he is a wizard.
Something that is decided by birth. He didn't choose to be a wizard, he was just born one.
He then discovered that he is a celeb in the wizard world for something that happened to him when he was a baby.
Yet again, through no action on his part.
He goes to Hogwarts, and meets hermione and Ron. Ron basically teaches him about wizard culture, and Hermione acts as his own personal tutor. Yet again, no real effort. Harry and Ron rescue Hermione from a Troll, which was their fault. And they save her using a magic spell that she taught them how to use.
So far it's random guy with two lexicon of knowledge characters.
Next Harry learns to ride a broom. A skill everyone says he must have inherited from his father. I'll give some acknowledgement here. I don't buy that his ability to fly skillfully was inherited. It's still unexplained and random, but I'll give Harry some credit here.
Fast forward. The three manage to stumble upon a mystery that was all but fed to them by every adult in the cast, and they go charging into the puzzle factory after the wrong villain.
First puzzle: three-headed dog. Already dealt with by the villain.
Second puzzle: vines. Hermione saves the day with her endless knowledge.
Third puzzle: keys. Harry uses his leet flying skills to catch the slowest moving key in the room. Not impressive. Anyone could do that. Give me a ladder and I'll get that frigging key.
Fourth puzzle: Chess. Well "lucky" for Harry, Ron is apparently a chess master. Thanks for being useful Ginger.
Fifth puzzle: Potions. Hermione saves the day again.
Now at the end Harry stumbles upon the mirror of Erised. Which he had "accidentally" found earlier. And it was already explained to him by Dumbledore. So Harry acquires the macguffin, through no ability of his own.
Then the real villain shows himself and attacks Harry. Then proceeds to melt. Apparently nobody every told Harry that his skin makes badguys melt. But apparently it does.
So end of book one, all we can tell is that Harry is extremely lucky and his friends can solve puzzles intended for 11-year olds.
Book two.
Alot of the same happens, only now instead of a stolen-object mystery it's a PG rated murder mystery. Yet again Hermione does most of the thinking and Ron provides the wizarding culture info. But let's fast-forward to the main event. Ginny is missing, Hermione is petrified. Harry and his brigade of ginger's must go rescue Ginny.
But what's this? Charlatan professor who was stealing Harry's limelight tries to pull a double-cross. Nevermind. Nevile's wand backfires and bad professor takes himself out of the fight. Another victory to dumb luck.
But now Harry is on his own. No wait, there is Tom Riddle who explains everything to him in true villain fashion.
Why must villains always explain their evil plans? Just kill the hero and complete your evil plan.
Anyways, giant snake appears and Harry reveals his second real skill: running away.
He runs and the Phoenix Fawkes appears and blinds the giant magic snake. Thank you outside interference.
Oh, forgot to mention. Harry also apparently speaks snake. This first appears in the previous book, but it's not important til now. Natural ability. He didn't go to snake translation classes or anything. Just another bit of dumb luck.
So snake is blind. The Phoenix gives Harry a hat to protect him from all the shitty plot raining down from the sky. The hat also happens to contain a magic sword. Yet again, dumb luck.
More running from the snake, the snake is about to bite him, and Harry does what you'd expect of a 12-year old. He puts his hands out between himself and the attacker.
One of his hands is still holding the sword. Which some how managed to kill the snake. Yet again, dumb luck.
But oh noes! Harry is bitten. He's dying, with his last ounce of strength he pulls the fang from his mouth and stabs the villain, freeing Ginny.
Oh, and Fawkes is back. The bird cries. Apparently phoenix tears can heal any wound. How fortuitous!
Oh, and the tiny bird can also carry six kids and one adult back to safety. Yet again, everyone is saved by the bird.
Moving on to book three.
"The adventures of Dad's old friends where Harry royally fucks up their plans."
Yea, so really, the book is about Sirius and Remus. Both are interesting characters with interesting backstories and semi-unique powers. Remus is a werewolf and Sirius is an animagus. Totally awesome right? Well Sirius discovers that the betrayer of his best friends is secretly hiding away in Hogwarts, pretending to be the familiar of Ron Weasley. So he breaks out of jail. It's somewhat dubious as to why he didn't break out sooner, but whatever.
He meets up with his good friend Remus and they make arrangements to get revenge on the bastard. Sirius is a wanted man so they need to capture the rat-bastard somewhere away from prying eyes. Remus takes a job at Hogwarts as the new Datda teacher (their 3rd one in as many years.)
And then things go wonky. The ministry of magic places Dementors all over Hogwarts to find Sirius (these are the same dementors that he escaped from in the first place, not the smartest idea to use the same inept guards for capture.)
The dementors are drawn to Harry because of the piece of Voldemort's soul living in his forehead. Nobody bothers to tell him this. But he just spends the whole book afraid of the damn things.
So time passes, pretty unremarkably. The only thing of note is that Hermione gets A GODDAMN TIME TRAVEL MACHINE that she uses to take extra classes. This is the only book that features the time travel, and it's only used effectively once. The time-turner could be used to great effect all throughout the rest of the series, but nope, apparently it's only used to compensate for over-achievers.
So all the action of the book happens at the end. Sirius and Remus finally manage to get their hands on the Rat (by kidnapping Ron). Harry and Hermione chases after them and interrupt everything, then Snape shows up and lets the Rat escape. gg everyone.
Then to make matters worse, Remus shifts into a werewolf (who the hell plans their attack for the one night in a month when you know you are a liability?) and the rest of the story is about mitigating damage.
End result: Bad guy escapes, but Harry realizes that Sirius isn't a villain. Sirius goes into hiding, and Remus loses his job at Hogwarts. Oh, and Remus manages to teach Harry how to perform a useful spell.
So the only things that Harry succeeds at in this book are through adult intervention, or the introduction of time travel to give himself a second chance because he fucked up the first try.
Book four: Now, with more adult intervention!!
So the tri-wizard tournament comes to town. Harry is 'somehow' enrolled in it through no small amount of cheating. Instead of ruling that Harry's entrance is clearly an attempt at cheating, the adults rule that he must compete anyways.
Test One: Lack pf preparation does mean failure!!
So all of the contestants cheat and find out about the dragons before they enter the arena. Rather than prepare with things like a "Use this spell to make a dragon fall asleep" or something, Harry just ignores his preparation, he is reminded last minute by an adult that he can summon anything to himself. He doesn't have the common sense to say "Accio GODDAMN EGG". Instead he summons his broom and goes on a ridiculous chase scene, wrecking large chunks of the school.
Test two. Breath under water.
Proof that wizards are idiots. Harry tries to find a spell or something to allow him to breath under water, but apparently has never heard of ASKING THE GODDAMN LIBRARIAN. You'd think they'd have some form of an index. "Excuse me miss magical librarian? I'm looking for something to allow me to breath underwater. Do you have any books on that?" "Of course we do, this is a magical library. All you have to say is 'Accio books on underwater activities' and it'll make a goddamn stack of books for you."
Yea, Wizards are idiots.
Hermione Granger is without a doubt the most powerful person in the entire series. She is a never-ending lexicon of knowledge because she spends all of her free time in the library learning new spells, you know, getting the most out of her education.
Eventually an adult interferes again and Harry is taught the most effective way of breathing underwater.
Test #3 The maze. Yet again, outside interference. One of the contestants is mind controlled and made to take out the other two so that only Harry will be able to complete the maze. Harry has a burst of courtesy and helps out one of his competitors, so both of them are whisked away from the maze to the graveyard. Voldemort is reborn, the blood wards no longer work. Cedric is killed for the hell of it. etc.
And yet again dumb luck saves the day. Turns out that Voldemort and Harry have matching wands, so they can't kill eachother. Harry escapes.
So end result: Harry is declared the winner Through excessive amounts of cheating, and life goes on.
Harry goes back to live with the Dursleys, which makes zero sense since the blood wards no longer works. The best solution would be to have Harry move in with Sirius, where he could be protected by the Fidilius charm (With Dumbledore as the secret keeper). But no, they don't do the logical thing, cause they are idiots.
Book Four: And introducing Queen Bitch of the universe!
Yea, Deloris Umbridge. Fourth DATDA professor, intent on making everything into a totalitarian state.
Children (through the urging of Hermione) decide to teach themselves how to do defensive magic. Harry teaches them all four of the defensive spells he knows over the course of a long training montage, eventually they are discovered, detention, etc.
Nothing else really happens until Harry has a nightmare where Sirius is being attacked in the dept of mysteries. He raises the alarm and his plucky heroes go to rescue them. This is of course a trap. The adults spring into action, and Sirius is killed in battle. (And to think that Harry thought that prophecies were bogus)
End result: Nothing really happened this book. It's just alot of "things are awful" going on. Sirius dies and Voldemort is proven to be alive. That's about it.
Book six: Cheating? It's not cheating if it's adult intervention!!!
Harry gets a new potions professor and a new potions book, complete with Cliff's notes on the better method of preparing a potion. For some reason Snape can write really effective notes in a book, but he has zero ability to provide these same notes in class.
Stuff happens, not much of it not worthy, eventually Draco helps Deatheaters get into the castle, and before being killed, Dumbledore FINALLY gives Harry his epic quest to destroy the Horcruxs.
Really, Harry doesn't do much in this book, he gets a ton of adult assistance (both knowingly and unknowingly). The real interesting people here are Draco and Snape. Both men are stuck in bad situations and must do awful things to protect those they love. Draco verges on redemption in this book, it's clear that he doesn't want to be evil. He's naturally inclined to be a douchebag, but not an evil douchebag.
Book Seven: The search for the MacGuffin!! And also camping.
The trio goes searching for the five remaining soul fragments. Ron destroys the locket (after unkowingly being assisted by Snape), Neville destroys the snake, Hermione destroys the Chalice, Harry destroys the Diadem, Voldemort destroys the fragment in Harry, and Voldemort somehow dies when the snake dies.
So end result of the franchise:
Harry managed to destroy two fragments of the Villain, taught some people four spells, and was a pretty good flier. Everything else was done by someone else. Harry was saved by dumb luck throughout the series, a vast number of times if the stars hadn't lined up perfectly, he'd be dead. But somehow Harry potter always beats the odds and manages to get to the end of the book by accident.
He's not particularly skilled, he's not smart, he's just lucky, and has a shitload of people saving him.
If anything, the story should be about Hermione Granger, or Neville Long Bottom, or Remus Lupin, or Sirius Black, ANYONE except Harry Potter. Even Draco Malfoy would have made a more interesting main character. The narrative would be so much more interesting if it was told from Draco's perspective. Hermione would have been an amazing character by herself, she didn't need to be babysitting the mary-sue luck monster that is Harry Potter. In book six when he drinks the "Liquid Luck" I was worried that the entire universe would overload with too much luck invested in one person.
So yea, Final word:
The setting of Harry Potter is amazing, but the main character is useless. There is zero reason why the audience should have been forced to follow him. He's boring.
Greetings my readers. Sorry for the delay between posts, real life got in the way. This post has been brewing in my head for quite awhile now, and I needed to share it with the world.
Harry Potter is a bad character.
Before you get upset, let me explain. The world of Harry Potter is rather interesting, an entire world of culture and mythology hidden under the "real" world. The problem is: Harry is the least interesting character in the series.
Think about it. What has Harry really done for himself? Not much. Everything was either done by chance, dumb luck, or assistance from adults and friends.
Let's start off in book one.
Harry, random orphan boy is informed that he is a wizard.
Something that is decided by birth. He didn't choose to be a wizard, he was just born one.
He then discovered that he is a celeb in the wizard world for something that happened to him when he was a baby.
Yet again, through no action on his part.
He goes to Hogwarts, and meets hermione and Ron. Ron basically teaches him about wizard culture, and Hermione acts as his own personal tutor. Yet again, no real effort. Harry and Ron rescue Hermione from a Troll, which was their fault. And they save her using a magic spell that she taught them how to use.
So far it's random guy with two lexicon of knowledge characters.
Next Harry learns to ride a broom. A skill everyone says he must have inherited from his father. I'll give some acknowledgement here. I don't buy that his ability to fly skillfully was inherited. It's still unexplained and random, but I'll give Harry some credit here.
Fast forward. The three manage to stumble upon a mystery that was all but fed to them by every adult in the cast, and they go charging into the puzzle factory after the wrong villain.
First puzzle: three-headed dog. Already dealt with by the villain.
Second puzzle: vines. Hermione saves the day with her endless knowledge.
Third puzzle: keys. Harry uses his leet flying skills to catch the slowest moving key in the room. Not impressive. Anyone could do that. Give me a ladder and I'll get that frigging key.
Fourth puzzle: Chess. Well "lucky" for Harry, Ron is apparently a chess master. Thanks for being useful Ginger.
Fifth puzzle: Potions. Hermione saves the day again.
Now at the end Harry stumbles upon the mirror of Erised. Which he had "accidentally" found earlier. And it was already explained to him by Dumbledore. So Harry acquires the macguffin, through no ability of his own.
Then the real villain shows himself and attacks Harry. Then proceeds to melt. Apparently nobody every told Harry that his skin makes badguys melt. But apparently it does.
So end of book one, all we can tell is that Harry is extremely lucky and his friends can solve puzzles intended for 11-year olds.
Book two.
Alot of the same happens, only now instead of a stolen-object mystery it's a PG rated murder mystery. Yet again Hermione does most of the thinking and Ron provides the wizarding culture info. But let's fast-forward to the main event. Ginny is missing, Hermione is petrified. Harry and his brigade of ginger's must go rescue Ginny.
But what's this? Charlatan professor who was stealing Harry's limelight tries to pull a double-cross. Nevermind. Nevile's wand backfires and bad professor takes himself out of the fight. Another victory to dumb luck.
But now Harry is on his own. No wait, there is Tom Riddle who explains everything to him in true villain fashion.
Why must villains always explain their evil plans? Just kill the hero and complete your evil plan.
Anyways, giant snake appears and Harry reveals his second real skill: running away.
He runs and the Phoenix Fawkes appears and blinds the giant magic snake. Thank you outside interference.
Oh, forgot to mention. Harry also apparently speaks snake. This first appears in the previous book, but it's not important til now. Natural ability. He didn't go to snake translation classes or anything. Just another bit of dumb luck.
So snake is blind. The Phoenix gives Harry a hat to protect him from all the shitty plot raining down from the sky. The hat also happens to contain a magic sword. Yet again, dumb luck.
More running from the snake, the snake is about to bite him, and Harry does what you'd expect of a 12-year old. He puts his hands out between himself and the attacker.
One of his hands is still holding the sword. Which some how managed to kill the snake. Yet again, dumb luck.
But oh noes! Harry is bitten. He's dying, with his last ounce of strength he pulls the fang from his mouth and stabs the villain, freeing Ginny.
Oh, and Fawkes is back. The bird cries. Apparently phoenix tears can heal any wound. How fortuitous!
Oh, and the tiny bird can also carry six kids and one adult back to safety. Yet again, everyone is saved by the bird.
Moving on to book three.
"The adventures of Dad's old friends where Harry royally fucks up their plans."
Yea, so really, the book is about Sirius and Remus. Both are interesting characters with interesting backstories and semi-unique powers. Remus is a werewolf and Sirius is an animagus. Totally awesome right? Well Sirius discovers that the betrayer of his best friends is secretly hiding away in Hogwarts, pretending to be the familiar of Ron Weasley. So he breaks out of jail. It's somewhat dubious as to why he didn't break out sooner, but whatever.
He meets up with his good friend Remus and they make arrangements to get revenge on the bastard. Sirius is a wanted man so they need to capture the rat-bastard somewhere away from prying eyes. Remus takes a job at Hogwarts as the new Datda teacher (their 3rd one in as many years.)
And then things go wonky. The ministry of magic places Dementors all over Hogwarts to find Sirius (these are the same dementors that he escaped from in the first place, not the smartest idea to use the same inept guards for capture.)
The dementors are drawn to Harry because of the piece of Voldemort's soul living in his forehead. Nobody bothers to tell him this. But he just spends the whole book afraid of the damn things.
So time passes, pretty unremarkably. The only thing of note is that Hermione gets A GODDAMN TIME TRAVEL MACHINE that she uses to take extra classes. This is the only book that features the time travel, and it's only used effectively once. The time-turner could be used to great effect all throughout the rest of the series, but nope, apparently it's only used to compensate for over-achievers.
So all the action of the book happens at the end. Sirius and Remus finally manage to get their hands on the Rat (by kidnapping Ron). Harry and Hermione chases after them and interrupt everything, then Snape shows up and lets the Rat escape. gg everyone.
Then to make matters worse, Remus shifts into a werewolf (who the hell plans their attack for the one night in a month when you know you are a liability?) and the rest of the story is about mitigating damage.
End result: Bad guy escapes, but Harry realizes that Sirius isn't a villain. Sirius goes into hiding, and Remus loses his job at Hogwarts. Oh, and Remus manages to teach Harry how to perform a useful spell.
So the only things that Harry succeeds at in this book are through adult intervention, or the introduction of time travel to give himself a second chance because he fucked up the first try.
Book four: Now, with more adult intervention!!
So the tri-wizard tournament comes to town. Harry is 'somehow' enrolled in it through no small amount of cheating. Instead of ruling that Harry's entrance is clearly an attempt at cheating, the adults rule that he must compete anyways.
Test One: Lack pf preparation does mean failure!!
So all of the contestants cheat and find out about the dragons before they enter the arena. Rather than prepare with things like a "Use this spell to make a dragon fall asleep" or something, Harry just ignores his preparation, he is reminded last minute by an adult that he can summon anything to himself. He doesn't have the common sense to say "Accio GODDAMN EGG". Instead he summons his broom and goes on a ridiculous chase scene, wrecking large chunks of the school.
Test two. Breath under water.
Proof that wizards are idiots. Harry tries to find a spell or something to allow him to breath under water, but apparently has never heard of ASKING THE GODDAMN LIBRARIAN. You'd think they'd have some form of an index. "Excuse me miss magical librarian? I'm looking for something to allow me to breath underwater. Do you have any books on that?" "Of course we do, this is a magical library. All you have to say is 'Accio books on underwater activities' and it'll make a goddamn stack of books for you."
Yea, Wizards are idiots.
Hermione Granger is without a doubt the most powerful person in the entire series. She is a never-ending lexicon of knowledge because she spends all of her free time in the library learning new spells, you know, getting the most out of her education.
Eventually an adult interferes again and Harry is taught the most effective way of breathing underwater.
Test #3 The maze. Yet again, outside interference. One of the contestants is mind controlled and made to take out the other two so that only Harry will be able to complete the maze. Harry has a burst of courtesy and helps out one of his competitors, so both of them are whisked away from the maze to the graveyard. Voldemort is reborn, the blood wards no longer work. Cedric is killed for the hell of it. etc.
And yet again dumb luck saves the day. Turns out that Voldemort and Harry have matching wands, so they can't kill eachother. Harry escapes.
So end result: Harry is declared the winner Through excessive amounts of cheating, and life goes on.
Harry goes back to live with the Dursleys, which makes zero sense since the blood wards no longer works. The best solution would be to have Harry move in with Sirius, where he could be protected by the Fidilius charm (With Dumbledore as the secret keeper). But no, they don't do the logical thing, cause they are idiots.
Book Four: And introducing Queen Bitch of the universe!
Yea, Deloris Umbridge. Fourth DATDA professor, intent on making everything into a totalitarian state.
Children (through the urging of Hermione) decide to teach themselves how to do defensive magic. Harry teaches them all four of the defensive spells he knows over the course of a long training montage, eventually they are discovered, detention, etc.
Nothing else really happens until Harry has a nightmare where Sirius is being attacked in the dept of mysteries. He raises the alarm and his plucky heroes go to rescue them. This is of course a trap. The adults spring into action, and Sirius is killed in battle. (And to think that Harry thought that prophecies were bogus)
End result: Nothing really happened this book. It's just alot of "things are awful" going on. Sirius dies and Voldemort is proven to be alive. That's about it.
Book six: Cheating? It's not cheating if it's adult intervention!!!
Harry gets a new potions professor and a new potions book, complete with Cliff's notes on the better method of preparing a potion. For some reason Snape can write really effective notes in a book, but he has zero ability to provide these same notes in class.
Stuff happens, not much of it not worthy, eventually Draco helps Deatheaters get into the castle, and before being killed, Dumbledore FINALLY gives Harry his epic quest to destroy the Horcruxs.
Really, Harry doesn't do much in this book, he gets a ton of adult assistance (both knowingly and unknowingly). The real interesting people here are Draco and Snape. Both men are stuck in bad situations and must do awful things to protect those they love. Draco verges on redemption in this book, it's clear that he doesn't want to be evil. He's naturally inclined to be a douchebag, but not an evil douchebag.
Book Seven: The search for the MacGuffin!! And also camping.
The trio goes searching for the five remaining soul fragments. Ron destroys the locket (after unkowingly being assisted by Snape), Neville destroys the snake, Hermione destroys the Chalice, Harry destroys the Diadem, Voldemort destroys the fragment in Harry, and Voldemort somehow dies when the snake dies.
So end result of the franchise:
Harry managed to destroy two fragments of the Villain, taught some people four spells, and was a pretty good flier. Everything else was done by someone else. Harry was saved by dumb luck throughout the series, a vast number of times if the stars hadn't lined up perfectly, he'd be dead. But somehow Harry potter always beats the odds and manages to get to the end of the book by accident.
He's not particularly skilled, he's not smart, he's just lucky, and has a shitload of people saving him.
If anything, the story should be about Hermione Granger, or Neville Long Bottom, or Remus Lupin, or Sirius Black, ANYONE except Harry Potter. Even Draco Malfoy would have made a more interesting main character. The narrative would be so much more interesting if it was told from Draco's perspective. Hermione would have been an amazing character by herself, she didn't need to be babysitting the mary-sue luck monster that is Harry Potter. In book six when he drinks the "Liquid Luck" I was worried that the entire universe would overload with too much luck invested in one person.
So yea, Final word:
The setting of Harry Potter is amazing, but the main character is useless. There is zero reason why the audience should have been forced to follow him. He's boring.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Two do-overs to Review
Tron: Legacy and The Green Hornet
Tron- A worthy sequel to the original. Like the original it was all style and very limited substance. They follow the extremely simple plot and all of the standard tropes we expect in an action/adventure film.
SPOILERS!
Guy rescues dad, dad makes heroic sacrifice, enemy is redeemed, guy gets girl, and heroes escape.
The movie was very pretty as expected, and you walk out of the theater thinking "Man, I really want those batons that turn into motorcycles or jets. Hell yes."
Green Hornet:
A good idea. Horribly executed.
Honestly with the number of big names involved, I expected much better. Seth Rogen was the worst possible choice for the Green Hornet. His jokes stop being funny about two minutes in and you just want him to shut the hell up so that you can go back to watching Kato kick the hell out of people.
Kato was also less impressive than the TV show. To go from Bruce Lee to some Chinese Pop star is just not a fair trade. They did their best to make him impressive, but they had to give him every skill in the world along with reality-bending super powers to make him anywhere near Bruce. Bruce Lee's Kato was an interesting character. This new Kato is a Mary-Sue. Every problem in the movie is solved by Kato, the title character need not even show up.
For my money, it was a reasonable way to spend an evening, the car was cool, the explosions were cool, that's enough to make me stick around. But really, if there is anything else you'd rather see, go see that instead.
Tron- A worthy sequel to the original. Like the original it was all style and very limited substance. They follow the extremely simple plot and all of the standard tropes we expect in an action/adventure film.
SPOILERS!
Guy rescues dad, dad makes heroic sacrifice, enemy is redeemed, guy gets girl, and heroes escape.
The movie was very pretty as expected, and you walk out of the theater thinking "Man, I really want those batons that turn into motorcycles or jets. Hell yes."
Green Hornet:
A good idea. Horribly executed.
Honestly with the number of big names involved, I expected much better. Seth Rogen was the worst possible choice for the Green Hornet. His jokes stop being funny about two minutes in and you just want him to shut the hell up so that you can go back to watching Kato kick the hell out of people.
Kato was also less impressive than the TV show. To go from Bruce Lee to some Chinese Pop star is just not a fair trade. They did their best to make him impressive, but they had to give him every skill in the world along with reality-bending super powers to make him anywhere near Bruce. Bruce Lee's Kato was an interesting character. This new Kato is a Mary-Sue. Every problem in the movie is solved by Kato, the title character need not even show up.
For my money, it was a reasonable way to spend an evening, the car was cool, the explosions were cool, that's enough to make me stick around. But really, if there is anything else you'd rather see, go see that instead.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Lenopocalypse
So it's been a few months, and here is how the late-night wars stand:
Conan has been picked up by TBS to provide a lead-in for George Lopez. Looks like a good choice.
In late night Letterman has been failing badly and he's in last place. Nightline is ahead of him, and Leno is ahead of nightline.
AND ALL OF THEM ARE BEHIND "FAMILY GUY" RERUNS ON ADULTSWIM!!!!!
Seriously, just checked the numbers. Reruns of family guy get more viewers than new episodes of Leno or Letterman. Same timeslot and everything.
Conan has been picked up by TBS to provide a lead-in for George Lopez. Looks like a good choice.
In late night Letterman has been failing badly and he's in last place. Nightline is ahead of him, and Leno is ahead of nightline.
AND ALL OF THEM ARE BEHIND "FAMILY GUY" RERUNS ON ADULTSWIM!!!!!
Seriously, just checked the numbers. Reruns of family guy get more viewers than new episodes of Leno or Letterman. Same timeslot and everything.
Two movies to review
First up: "She's out of my league" Avoid this movie. There are moments of amusement, but mostly the movie is just awful. The awkward scenes are far too long, too frequent, and too goddamn awkward. It was almost more than I could bear.
Second movie: Starship Troopers 3. This was surprising. It was actually better than Starship troopers 1. But that's not saying much. Heavy religious bent throughout the movie, but still bearable. One major flaw of three vs one, is that is that there is zero fucking in the whole movie. Still not a good movie, but better than the first one.
Second movie: Starship Troopers 3. This was surprising. It was actually better than Starship troopers 1. But that's not saying much. Heavy religious bent throughout the movie, but still bearable. One major flaw of three vs one, is that is that there is zero fucking in the whole movie. Still not a good movie, but better than the first one.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell
Don't fucking watch this movie. Seriously, I have sat through both twilight movies, THIS IS WORSE! This is almost StarWars X-mas special-bad.
Plot is awful "The world has ended, all humans have either turned into mutants or gone feral. All of your livestock and housepets have turned into giant dinosaurs" This is legit, not making any of this up. All of the monsters are claymation horrifying piles of shit. And the basic theme seems to be "girl is minding her own business, guys attempt to rape her, hero guy rescues her from rapists, hero guy tries to rape her, she runs, into a dinosaur, hero guy rescues her again, repeat.
I almost started screaming at the screen they hurry up and rape her so we could all get on with our lives.
They seem to be constantly traveling, but have no destination, just continuing on to the next location and the next monster.
"B" movies are bad, some are soo bad that they become good, this one does not. I wouldn't even call it a "B" movie, that's too high praise.
Seriously, I cannot warn you away from this film urgently enough. If you want a good laugh, watch the first 5 minutes of it, it's like the old 50's movie commercial where a narrator tells you exactly what's going to happen. That's mildly amusing, but just in how bad it is.
Plot is awful "The world has ended, all humans have either turned into mutants or gone feral. All of your livestock and housepets have turned into giant dinosaurs" This is legit, not making any of this up. All of the monsters are claymation horrifying piles of shit. And the basic theme seems to be "girl is minding her own business, guys attempt to rape her, hero guy rescues her from rapists, hero guy tries to rape her, she runs, into a dinosaur, hero guy rescues her again, repeat.
I almost started screaming at the screen they hurry up and rape her so we could all get on with our lives.
They seem to be constantly traveling, but have no destination, just continuing on to the next location and the next monster.
"B" movies are bad, some are soo bad that they become good, this one does not. I wouldn't even call it a "B" movie, that's too high praise.
Seriously, I cannot warn you away from this film urgently enough. If you want a good laugh, watch the first 5 minutes of it, it's like the old 50's movie commercial where a narrator tells you exactly what's going to happen. That's mildly amusing, but just in how bad it is.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
What you missed this season in heroes..
Before you read any further, please be aware *SPOILER ALERT*
Ok, those of you who don't care about spoilers but do want the nerd-rage:
Claire suddenly becomes a lesbian, then in the last episode becomes the most poorly written character ever (after successfully hiding her identity as a super for 5 or six seasons, she suddenly decided to reveal herself on national TV).
Peter dates a deaf doctor and becomes friends with Sylar.
Sylar becomes a good guy after he and Peter spend 5 relative years trapped together in a telepathic prison.
Matt Parkman is still an awful character. With the death of Daphne last season he gets back with his cheating ex-wife and is now a stay-at home dad. He does the vast majority of his appearances this season in his own living room.
Noah Bennet starts dating Lauren, his former partner, whom he had an affair with but refused to leave his wife for. Now that his wife left him, he goes crawling back to lauren. We also discover that his dog-loving wife is actually his second wife. his first wife was murdered by a super and he joined the company to get revenge. The company also made him marry his second wife to become less of a psycho. Noah joins the ranks of extremely poorly written characters.
Tracy Strauss (like the 4rth incarnation of the same actress) still isn't dead, basically she can't die, she just turns into water. She's also vaguely enamoured with Noah, making her like the 4th love interest in him during the series.
Hiro gets his brain tumor removed and finally reunites with his beloved Charlie, however she was dumped back in the year 1944, so she's now very old and has a family so hiro can't just go back in time and bring her back to the present.
Ando is still a sidekick and still gets to use his power about once a season. But now he is engaged to Hiro's sister, so he's happy.
The Haitian still appears and disappears only when the plot calls for him. He appears every few episodes whenever one of the main characters needs their memory wiped.
Characters that died and stayed dead:
Nathan Petrelli (Finally)
Previous versions of Tracy Strauss
Artist-boy from season one
Peter's Original girlfriend
Hiro's dad
Hiro's mom
Nathan and Peter's dad
Matt's Dad (well he's trapped in a telepathic prison, but he's been gone from the show ever since)
The "I can do what I see on TV" girl
The brother of the death eyes girl.
Claire's birthmother
Daphne
Immortal guy who hates hiro (really did like that character and was irritated when they killed him off)
People that randomly disappeared from the series:
Mohinder (vanished like 4 episodes ago and has not been seen since)
Claire's 1st boyfriend
Claire's 2nd boyfriend
Claire's 3rd boyfriend
Death eyes girl
"I can talk to machines boy" (rescues Tracy last season then disappears)
Peter's Irish girlfriend who gets stuck in the alternate future.
So after all of the bizarre story arcs and ridiculous cast changes, I really hope this show gets cancelled. It's like crack, it's not a good show and the writers should be dragged out and shot for having a worse story arc than Dynasty, but it's very hard to stop watching the train wreck.
So for the good of everyone else, NBC, please stop making this show. It's entirely too fucked up, convoluted and confusing for anyone to enjoy. The only way to even know what's going on is to have watched every single episode from the beginning of season one. And if you have watched every episode then the constant plot resets will make you very, very angry.
Ok, those of you who don't care about spoilers but do want the nerd-rage:
Claire suddenly becomes a lesbian, then in the last episode becomes the most poorly written character ever (after successfully hiding her identity as a super for 5 or six seasons, she suddenly decided to reveal herself on national TV).
Peter dates a deaf doctor and becomes friends with Sylar.
Sylar becomes a good guy after he and Peter spend 5 relative years trapped together in a telepathic prison.
Matt Parkman is still an awful character. With the death of Daphne last season he gets back with his cheating ex-wife and is now a stay-at home dad. He does the vast majority of his appearances this season in his own living room.
Noah Bennet starts dating Lauren, his former partner, whom he had an affair with but refused to leave his wife for. Now that his wife left him, he goes crawling back to lauren. We also discover that his dog-loving wife is actually his second wife. his first wife was murdered by a super and he joined the company to get revenge. The company also made him marry his second wife to become less of a psycho. Noah joins the ranks of extremely poorly written characters.
Tracy Strauss (like the 4rth incarnation of the same actress) still isn't dead, basically she can't die, she just turns into water. She's also vaguely enamoured with Noah, making her like the 4th love interest in him during the series.
Hiro gets his brain tumor removed and finally reunites with his beloved Charlie, however she was dumped back in the year 1944, so she's now very old and has a family so hiro can't just go back in time and bring her back to the present.
Ando is still a sidekick and still gets to use his power about once a season. But now he is engaged to Hiro's sister, so he's happy.
The Haitian still appears and disappears only when the plot calls for him. He appears every few episodes whenever one of the main characters needs their memory wiped.
Characters that died and stayed dead:
Nathan Petrelli (Finally)
Previous versions of Tracy Strauss
Artist-boy from season one
Peter's Original girlfriend
Hiro's dad
Hiro's mom
Nathan and Peter's dad
Matt's Dad (well he's trapped in a telepathic prison, but he's been gone from the show ever since)
The "I can do what I see on TV" girl
The brother of the death eyes girl.
Claire's birthmother
Daphne
Immortal guy who hates hiro (really did like that character and was irritated when they killed him off)
People that randomly disappeared from the series:
Mohinder (vanished like 4 episodes ago and has not been seen since)
Claire's 1st boyfriend
Claire's 2nd boyfriend
Claire's 3rd boyfriend
Death eyes girl
"I can talk to machines boy" (rescues Tracy last season then disappears)
Peter's Irish girlfriend who gets stuck in the alternate future.
So after all of the bizarre story arcs and ridiculous cast changes, I really hope this show gets cancelled. It's like crack, it's not a good show and the writers should be dragged out and shot for having a worse story arc than Dynasty, but it's very hard to stop watching the train wreck.
So for the good of everyone else, NBC, please stop making this show. It's entirely too fucked up, convoluted and confusing for anyone to enjoy. The only way to even know what's going on is to have watched every single episode from the beginning of season one. And if you have watched every episode then the constant plot resets will make you very, very angry.
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