Harry’s phoenix tail-feather wand chooses him on this first trip to Diagon Alley, when he ventures into Ollivander’s. Here, the great John Hurt brings Mr. Ollivander to life:
Category Archives: Harry Potter Movies
RIP, Mr. Olivander
I really have no words for this. John Hurt was an astounding actor whose performance as Garrick Olivander was one of the series highlights for me. RIP, John Hurt.
My favorite Olivander scene…
Waiting for Pottermore DH2: choices, choices, choices
Note: While we wait for the Pottermore email, we continue our discussion of the DH2 movie…
But first… you need to know about the most deeply horrible, astonishingly EVOL poll in the history of humankind:
It’s the Anglophenia Fan Favorites poll, in which we are given the choice of voting between Alan Rickman and Benedict Cumberbatch or between Colin Firth and David Tennant.
In fandom terms, that translates:
Professor Snape (or Colonel Brandon/Alexander Dane/Hans Gruber/ Sheriff of Nottingham) VS. Sherlock Holmes.
and…
Mr. Darcy VS. Barty Crouch, Jr. / The Tenth Doctor
Yikes! Those are choices that really hurt – probably at least as much as the choices the filmmakers had to face in translating the second half of Deathly Hallows to the screen.
Choices that hurt
Let’s say you’re doing a book that fans are passionate about. There are moments that fans have been dying to see…
Fred’s death, for example. Or Snape’s loss of Lily’s friendship. Or Dumbledore’s backstory. Or Snape saving Lupin’s life and telling the portrait not to say “Mudblood.” Or Harry taunting Voldemort with Snape’s true loyalties and giving Riddle one last chance at remorse.
But you’ve got this other audience to account for… the audience that never reads the books and only sees the movies and that could care less about the intricacies of wandlore.
How do you make a movie that gives the book-fans enough of what they want to see and is still comprehensible for the movie-only fans? That’s the dilemma that the filmmakers were faced with. And they left every single one of those “dying-to see” moments out… yet managed to leave most fans feeling satisfied.
Let’s talk about a few of those choices…
The Mudblood Incident
One of the key complaints I’ve heard from one small corner of the fandom is that the film’s portrayal of “The Prince’s Tale” makes Severus Snape look like an innocent victim by failing to present the “Mudblood” incident or its aftermath.
Okay, I personally wanted to see this material on the big screen, but after giving it some thought, I realized that it presents a devil’s snare of potential difficulties. Here is what I wrote about it on the CoS forum:
I would have liked to see them include the “Mudblood” incident too, but in thinking it over, I realized that its inclusion is fraught with all sorts of potential difficulties for other characters – difficulties that I doubt the filmmakers wanted to unleash, particularly given the raw emotional power of Rickman’s overall performance.
As soon as Rickman’s Snape starts showing the depth of his pain, he’s got the audience in the palm of his hand. If the pain had started sooner, beneath the portrait of the Fat Lady [when Lily cut off their friendship], it could have swayed movie-only audience opinion in directions that the filmmakers would not have wanted – like against Lily, for instance. That wouldn’t be fair, since he used the word [Mudblood] on her, but film is an essentially emotional medium, and film audiences love redemption stories – especially when a character is in love. Film audiences generally want to see all but the most monstrous characters given a second chance after they’ve blown it in a big way.
In that context, the filmmakers probably made the right decision to cut the incident. They could not really tell which character(s) would get hurt the most by showing it, and filmmakers like to know exactly what audience impact will be.
There are additional problems with its inclusion as well. David Yates used a portion of SWM (“Snape’s Worst Memory”) in the OotP movie, but he did not incorporate the “Mudblood” incident. Adding it for DH2 would require re-shooting the earlier scene or working some digital magic to insert Lily into it. And that, of course, would mean casting a third actress to play Lily’s part – and getting Alec Hopkin (Teen Snape) back to utter the unforgivable word. (ETA NOTE: The additional material with a third Lily that was originally shot for OotP and then cut would not help since Harry is in the frame – in completely the wrong clothes and without all of the battle grime and gore that we see in TPT).
In addition, I think that the complaint that the exclusion of the Mudblood incident makes Snape look like an innocent victim is a product of very short-sighted thinking. What is most visually striking about the incident (and film is a visual medium) is watching James Potter and the Marauders launch an unprovoked attack on Severus Snape. In all likelihood, including the incident in the film would make Snape look even more like a victim.
Little James is puckishly cute as he runs through the halls tipping over his “victims'” school books.
This James, though, is hardly “cute” as he attempts to remove “Snivelly’s trousers”:
I would humbly submit that the filmmakers just didn’t want to go there with James, particularly given that they will later need to present him sympathetically in the Forest… and there’s really very little story to get the movie-only crowd to buy in to that sympathetic portrayal once the filmmakers re-unleash SWM. It’s hard enough already for many book readers to make the leap of faith into believing that James simply changed, and book readers have information that the movie-onlies don’t possess.
The choice the filmmakers made, then, was to make nobody look very much like the victim, and nobody look very much like the perpetrator. For purposes of the film, it was probably a wise choice.
Weasley Loss and Gain
Some book fans are angry at not seeing Fred die. And one big question many fans have asked is, “How the heck did Percy get there?”
That’s a good question! But there are actually other people whose return is a bit confusing – for instance Cho Chang (what’s she doing there in the Room of Requirement when she graduated the year before?) and Luna Lovegood (how’d she get there ahead of Harry, when she’d last been seen at Shell Cottage?). In the case of the Ravenclaw girls, my assumption is that they are there mainly to answer Harry’s question about the lost diadem. And yes, they are supposed to be there, even if the film never quite lets us know how they arrived.
Percy, though, has one of the book’s more dramatic entrances into the Room of Requirement, and we never see that drama in the film. I do think, though, that the filmmakers’ decision (while perhaps making Percy’s sudden appearance confusing for book fans ) actually makes matters less confusing for the general movie audience. Percy’s estrangement from his family has never become an overt plot point in the films. We do see Percy doing Ministry duties at cross-purposes to Harry and Dumbledore, but that’s about as far as that subplot goes. And let’s face it, without the subplot, many movie-only fans probably don’t really remember who Percy is anyway.
So, that nixes Percy’s big entrance because the big entrance would simply not make sense. And sorry, but if we nix Percy’s big entrance, we also nix witnessing Fred’s death. Yeah, we could still see Fred die, but we wouldn’t see it in the context of his welcoming Percy back into the family and later Percy throwing himself on Fred’s dead body.
If we remove Fred’s death from the context of Percy’s return, we may as well see Fred lying already dead in the Great Hall. And that is the choice the filmmakers made. Rather than go for overkill by showing Fred die on the screen and then show his family mourn, the filmmakers went the more subtle route of showing him already dead, surrounded by his family.
Whether we actually see Fred die or not, this scene still has tremendous emotional impact. I have not gotten past it once without breaking into sobs.
Dumbledore’s Backstory
King’s Cross is a big disappointment to many people. The wandlore, the backstory, Dumbledore’s remorse – all of it is missing.
Most of the essentials, though, were presented in DH1. And when the filmmakers decided (ACK!!!) to negate Grindelwald’s big moment of defiance and remorse, they couldn’t exactly go deeply into the Grindelwald plot in King’s Cross. In fact, I predicted in November that this would happen.
At least Ciaran Hinds’ fabulous performance – bringing to life Aberforth’s hundred years of bitterness – implicitly verifies the depth to which Albus Dumbledore had sunk in his youth. If we want to know more detail about the manner in which Albus’ choices sacrificed his sister’s life, we can always consult the books – or at least the nearest Potter fan. :)
Honestly, though, I did miss the King’s Cross wandlore. I suppose I experienced a bit of it vicariously through the interaction between Harry and Ollivander at Shell Cottage. But after all we’ve seen of the wand, would it truly have been too much information for the general movie audience if Harry had briefly discussed the Elder Wand with Dumbledore?
Well, at nearly 1500 words, this post has now gone on too long (thanks for making it this far with me!). So I think I’ll devote my next DH2 post entirely to the element I missed the most… and why I think it made sense for the filmmakers to cut it.
Until then…
Waiting for Pottermore DH2: The echo of a memory
Note: While we wait for the Pottermore email, we are talking about the DH2 movie…
DH2 covers my favorite half of my favorite book in the entire HP series.
We have the heist at Gringotts, the trip into Hogsmeade, the Battle of Hogwarts, the dip into the Pensieve, Harry’s walk into the Forest, the final duel with Voldemort, and 19 years later.
When I saw this film – 3 times in its first 10 days – my mind, and my emotions, were so completely blown that I couldn’t even write coherently about it. I mean, how do you write about this? …
This spare musical theme plays over the opening title, drawing us into a Hogwarts surrounded by Dementors while a solitary Snape overlooks regimented rows of Hogwarts students marched grimly into the courtyard. Headmaster Snape – one of the “abandoned boys of Hogwarts” – oversees a Hogwarts that is no longer his, but Voldemort’s.
That much I got on first viewing. Then I learned the music’s name: “Lily’s Theme.”
The woman’s voice rising above the drone on the fundamental tones = Lily’s.
Her voice serves as the music of Severus Snape’s soul – his inspiration, the thing that keeps him going despite the darkness surrounding him. And it connects him with Harry Potter, Lily’s son.
In Snape, the Lily theme resembles the echo of a memory, but a memory very much alive inside him. When the lush, full-bodied string section picks up the theme at Dobby’s graveside, though, we see the theme’s full embodiment in Harry.
Lily’s voice returns, growing stronger as Severus Snape slips from life. And her voice again marks Harry’s victory over Voldemort, a victory set in motion by his mother’s sacrifice.
There is an inexpressible quality to all of this. The effect cannot be captured in words – at least not by a writer of my own meager skills. And the movie has inexpressible moments like this in abundance – that stark opening, Snape’s demise, the Pensieve memories – all underscored by Alexandre Desplat’s powerful, often impressionistic score.
This is why it has taken me this long to write about this film. I do analysis, but how do you catch hold of and dissect these moments of the sublime?
I shall attempt to come down to earth in my next DH2 post and just talk about what I liked and didn’t like… and then why the filmmakers may have made some of the choices they made.
Until then, I hope you enjoyed the music I linked to in this post. It truly sets the mood for much of this film.
The Remorse of Gellert Grindelwald
Credit: the fatal duel by *LoonyL
Well, I didn’t have nearly as dramatic a DH1 experience as Last Muggle did. No exploding cameras, no evacuated theaters, nothing! Actually, it was pretty uneventful.
We got into the theater with plenty of time to spare. We found great seats. And we saw pretty much the entire movie. Okay, I missed a couple of minutes during the camping sequence, right after the splinching scene, but thanks to the complete and utter normalcy of my viewing experience, I’ve had a couple of days to contemplate the film at my leisure.
I’ve been planning to look at several scenes in some detail, but I decided to devote this particular post to the one that really really bothered me in this otherwise EPIC WIN film… the scene in which Voldemort seeks information about the Elder Wand from Gellert Grindelwald.
As anybody who has read the series knows (and if you haven’t read the series, be warned that there are spoilers ahead): Gellert Grindelwald is the former “Most Dangerous Dark Wizard of All Time.” He was defeated by Albus Dumbledore in 1945 (as Harry learns from a Chocolate Frog card on his first trip on the Hogwarts Express).
Of course, the Dumbledore-Grindelwald story becomes much more complex when we reach DH. These two great Wizards were not merely adversaries. In youth, they were close friends (for a couple of months) before a three-way duel with Aberforth killed Dumbledore’s sister.
Dumbledore, we learn extra-canonically from JKR, was actually infatuated with Grindelwald during that time and was briefly seduced toward Dark Magic through that infatuation. The two young men sought the Deathly Hallows (the subject of The Tale of the Three Brothers), with Gellert having a particular fascination for the Elder Wand… which he stole from the wand maker Gregorovitch and which Dumbledore won from him in the legendary duel of 1945.
Because of the Grindelwald revelations in DH, Harry is put in the position of having to come to terms with Dumbledore’s past. He must recognize, as Sirius told him 3 years earlier, that the world is not divided up into “good people and Death Eaters.” Good people can have dark pasts. And apparently, even people who have committed dark horrors can find even a moment of light.
In the book, Voldemort visits Gellert Grindelwald (now an old, skeletal man) at Nurmengard prison:
Grindelwald: So you have come. I thought you would… one day. But your journey was pointless. I never had it.
Voldemort: You lie.
“Kill me, then!” demanded the old man. “You will not win, you cannot win! That wand will never, ever be yours – ”
And Voldemort’s fury broke: A burst of green light filled the prison room and the frail old body was lifted from its hard bed and then fell back lifeless, and Voldemort returned to the window, his wrath barely controllable.
So Book!Grindelwald taunts Voldemort, rather than betray Dumbledore and the Wand. Or as Harry tells his deceased former mentor:
“Grindelwald tried to stop Voldemort going after the wand. He lied, you know, pretended he had never had it.”
Dumbledore nodded, looking down at his lap, tears still glittering on the crooked nose.
“They say he showed remorse in later years, alone in his cell at Nurmengard. I hope that it is true. I would like to think he did feel the horror and shame of what he had done. Perhaps that lie to Voldemort was his attempt to make amends… to prevent Voldemort from taking the Hallow…”
“… or maybe from breaking into your tomb?” suggested Harry, and Dumbledore dabbed at his eyes.
You know, I was looking forward to watching the one decent, courageous moment in Grindelwald’s life be realized on the screen.
So what did the filmmakers do? They had Grindelwald give up Dumbledore as owner of the Elder Wand, and even reveal the Wand’s location in Dumbledore’s tomb. And then they had Psycho Killer Voldemort leave him in peace!
Logistically, yes, we do need to know why Voldemort goes to Dumbledore’s tomb. We do need to know why he finds the Wand there. But having Grindelwald reveal Dumbledore’s ownership of the Wand is not the only way to accomplish that. In fact, here’s a scenario that would accomplish the same thing without violating Grindelwald’s character arc:
Grindelwald: Kill me, then! You will not win, you cannot win! That wand will never, ever be yours.
Voldemort: Dumbledore! He took the Wand, didn’t he, when he locked you up in here! You’re protecting him!… Avada Kedavra!
Why is this so important when the Dumbledore backstory is largely missing from the movie? Well, for starters, Dumbledore’s backstory probably won’t be missing from DH2, where we can learn more from his brother Aberforth and the King’s Cross sequence.
But even more significantly, Grindelwald’s refusal to help Voldemort plays into the entire redemption theme of the series… and into the whole question of remorse.
The “R” word is huge in DH. Dumbledore experienced remorse after the death of his sister. Snape experienced remorse after the death of Lily. And seemingly, even Grindelwald – a man who went much further down the dark path than either of these two men – was sufficiently remorseful to protect Dumbledore and the Wand.
Obviously, what Harry learns about Dumbledore and Snape is most significant to his understanding of the transformative power of remorse. Yet he also learns along the way that even Grindelwald – the former “Most Dangerous Dark Wizard of All Time” – was able to turn back at least just a little… and in the face of death. Gellert Grindelwald, in his last moments, performed one small act that showed his remorse.
I personally would not underestimate the significance of Grindelwald’s act for the DH plot. Given that Harry had discussed it with Dumbledore only an hour or so earlier, it is highly likely that the remorse Harry saw in the old man served as one inspiration for the moment of mercy he offered to Voldemort – giving the Dark Lord himself one last chance at remorse.
By having Grindelwald show the opposite of remorse, though, the filmmakers violate the character’s story arc in a rather profound way and undermine a key theme of the series.
So tell me… if it was so easy for me to figure out how to get Voldemort to Dumbledore’s tomb without violating Grindelwald’s character, why was it seemingly so hard for David Yates and Steve Kloves?
Here’s Your Deathly Hallows on IMAX
Click to see Severus Snape walking through the AWESOME gate
“These are dark times, there’s no denying”
I saw it this morning, in the IMAX theater at Tyson’s Corner. And, in a word, it was AWESOME!!! (like the WB promo shown above)
It’s hardly a secret that Deathly Hallows is my favorite Harry Potter book. It’s also not a secret that I found the Half-Blood Prince movie… disappointing.
In HPB, the filmmakers wasted precious time burning the Burrow, when they could have been giving us another Pensieve memory of Tom Riddle’s family background or some additional face time with the Half-Blood Prince’s Potions book.
I feared that, given the complexity of the DH narrative, director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves would trash the story, chop it up, render it incomprehensible in an attempt to simplify it for movie-only viewers. I wondered if, in the end, moviegoers would understand who Dumbledore was, who Snape was, and how the twin themes of redemption and remorse that play out in these men’s lives ultimately help Harry confront Voldemort with the things the Dark Lord doesn’t understand.
Well, we won’t know the answer to that question until we reach the end of DH2. But DH1 gives me good reason to hope that the filmmakers will capture much of the richness of this narrative… and offer up a successful resolution to the Harry Potter saga.
For me, the DH movies carry the biggest stakes because they also carry the most profound part of Harry Potter’s story. I already knew going in to DH1 that the split would occur at Dumbledore’s tomb. And I knew just from watching the trailers that DH1 would include both Malfoy Manor sequences, the 7 Potters, Bill and Fleur’s wedding, the infiltration of the Ministry of Magic, the splinching scene, Ron’s confrontation with Harry, at least some of the visit to Godric’s Hollow, the destruction of the locket horcrux, the visit to Xenophilius Lovegood, and Voldemort’s retrieval of the wand.
Here are some other elements that I was hoping to see in DH1:
- Dudley’s attempt to reconcile with Harry
- Kreacher’s Tale (including a flashback to the Cave and Regulus’ heroism)
- Some of Dumbledore’s backstory (and Harry’s struggle to come to grips with it)
- Hermione’s conversations with the portrait of Phineas Nigellus Black (including a flashback of Snape catching Neville, Ginny, and Luna trying to steal the Sword of Gryffindor)
- Harry’s dialogue with Ron after Ron confronts his fears and destroys the locket horcrux
- Grindelwald’s refusal to betray Dumbledore’s possession of the Elder Wand to Voldemort
- The Tale of the Three Brothers
Okay, so one of those wishes came true. But we missed Dudley, most of Kreacher’s Tale, nearly all of Dumbledore’s backstory, Phineas’ portrait, and (alas) Harry’s awesome “I thought you knew.”
I understand some of those decisions. Really, I do. Flashbacks would have dragged out the film (no matter how gratifying I find those strands of plot to be). And Dumbledore’s backstory can be covered more fully in DH2 at the Hogs Head and in King’s Cross.
But why not include the Dudley scene or Phineas’ portrait or Harry’s dialogue with Ron? And why, WHY, WHY violate the character of Gellert Grindelwald? (more on that in another post).
Regardless, the movie overall does about as fine a job with DH1 as I could have hoped. Here are some of the highlights:
- An absolutely wrenching scene (told, not shown, in the book) in which Hermione obliviates her parents
- Nearly the entire opening sequence at Malfoy Manor – with stunning performances by Alan Rickman, Jason Isaacs, and – really – the whole Death Eater cast
- A truly creepy Bathilda Bagshot sequence
- A beautiful Silver Doe/Retrieval of the Sword sequence – almost exactly as I had pictured it
- The Tale of the Three Brothers – an EPIC WIN animation – including a narrative containing, I think, every word in the story
And of course, it sure didn’t hurt to be viewing all of this on an IMAX screen. I’ll be back later with a bit more analysis. But for now, I’ll just say that, overall, this film is TEH AWESOME!!! (And I wasn’t saying that after the last one).
The Bravest Man I Ever Knew
I did not expect to be reading Harry Potter, much less writing about it. But here I am, having now read the entire series and finished Deathly Hallows at 5:00am this morning. So how did this happen?
All I wanted to do was catch up with the movies. I had seen Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets, but none of the others, so I Netflixed the batch so I could watch Half-Blood Prince. By the time I’d gotten through Order of the Phoenix, though, Half-Blood Prince had just left the theaters. I’d run out of story… but not out of a fascination with Severus Snape.
Why Snape? Well, I can’t pretend that Alan Rickman is not one of my favorite actors or that he’s not brilliant in the role. Maybe if Snape had been played by some less exraordinary actor closer to the character’s age (31, I believe, when the series starts?), the portrayal would not be as interesting.
But it’s not just Rickman. It’s the character. Here’s a man who has a dark past, who is “not nice” to the kids, and whose loyalties seem questionable – but who is trusted by Dumbledore. I just wanted to know how he would turn out. I have read enough Quest literature to know that Harry’s going to turn out fine in the end, so even though I like Harry, I just wasn’t all that worried about him.
Snape’s lot, though, worried me. Would he turn out to be a hero or a villain or something in between? I knew I would never find out before the end of the final movie, but Google offered too many temptations. So I decided that I’d just have to read the series and find out for myself.
In the 18 hours since finishing, I have discovered that some Potter partisans are incensed that people dare to talk about Severus Snape. I would have to say that if JKR was able to create a character who can live off the page and spark the imagination of the reader, then why not talk? And anyway, Harry himself spoke of Snape to his younger son:
Albus Severus, you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin, and he was, probably, the bravest man I ever knew.
Expecto Patronum! 
