Harry Potter
I recently saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix multiple times. It was so intriguing that I had to see it twice. I came to this conclusion.
The Harry Potter series, or as I've come to think of it as the characters get older, Magic Friends, seems to be becoming more predictable as they get into more adult problems. Sure, when they were children it was all cute and dandy, these children go to school to be trained as little wizards and witches. How adorable! But now that they're getting into their teen years and they're growing up dealing with more adult problems, it appears more like an episode of Friends, except they all do magic.
They have to deal with tension and situations between members of the opposite sex. They are trying to start dating and what not, but it's so awkward because they're all teenagers and they're all so fresh and inexperienced. And it just makes it all the more awkward that they all do magic.
Awkward Pimply Teenage Wizard: "Hey, Beth, do you want me to help you practice your spells after class?"
Awkward but Curious Teenage Witch Who We Now Know is Named Beth: "Tee hee! Sure!"
Awkward Pimply Teenage Wizard: "You can use my wand if you want. Huh, huh!"
Angst! Youth! Magic!
Give me a break.
The magic makes it a little more interesting than Friends, as they don't sit around in a coffee shop all day talking about each other and each other's love lives. But they do sit around in their common room, talking about what spells and what villains they have conquered and how the administration keeps them down. I don't know, I just feel like I've seen it before.
Here we are, five years into the series, and we just see the same characters as we have before, getting into predicaments and solving their problems, one episode at a time, except it takes a year for a new episode to come out. Every once in a while, a guest star will come in and play a disposable character for a movie.
"Next week, on Harry Potter, Howie Mandell stops in as the new Professor of the Dark Arts, but a new evil is lurking around, how long will he stay?!"
But then, when Howie Mandell shows up, the ratings soar, so they invent this story about how his character starts sleeping with one of his students, and then this whole drama ensues, including a court case, and a trial, and they get Billy Dee Williams to play the judge, and everyone knows how the verdict is going to turn out because as an African-American he doesn't like magic, but he can't feel too slighted because he was cast in two major science fiction superpower movie franchises. We all know how it's going to end.
I like Harry Potter, and as a business franchise, you have to commend J.K. Rowling for building it the way she did. It is brilliant. But as all science fiction entrepreneurs have discovered, the key to a successful science fiction franchise is installments. Look at Star Trek, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings, and to a lesser extent the Matrix. Installments are key. The average science fiction fan has an attention span far greater than that of a typical blockbuster movie-goer. And they have unprecedented loyalty. Not only that, but in the realm of science fiction, the author really is unlimited. No limits of reality hold their imaginations within the locked gates of nonfiction. If they come to a stopping point, they can just come up with a creative offshoot or way to keep going. J.K. Rowling predicted her limit at the very beginning at seven books, and she has probably made enough money to live comfortably for quite a while, but ultimately, if she needs some extra cash somewhere down the road, book number eight could be right around the corner, and the public will just eat it up.
As much as I do enjoy the Harry Potter series myself, I have some beef with it. The kids in school, though they might have to pick up the more difficult parts of life such as magic spells and fighting for your life against dragons at the age of thirteen, they get spoiled with some of the simpler things in life, and I, for one, do not find it fair. The children at Hogwarts don't have to learn the simple tasks of taking their papers and passing them back to the people in the desks behind them. At Hogwarts, the children's books and papers just float to them magically. Meanwhile, all of us muggles are going, "Back in my day, we had to pass each other's papers back to each other." Hogwarts children don't have to deal with packing or cafeteria food or getting picked last for kickball. If they get into trouble, they just call on their brooms and fly away.
And while all of us were in fourth grade reading our Goosebumps, we were all just wishing we had a Hogwarts to go away to every fall. And now kids these days have got their Harry Potter and their magical merchandise, and they're just rubbing it in people of my generations' faces. At least that's what it seems like to me from a Hollywood-generated two-hour movie perspective. I'm still blissfully unaware of the reading involved with following the book series. I'm sure there's far more character and plot development than the movies can do justice for. But my point still stands that these kids don't know how easy they've got it in this day and age. When I was a boy, I had to shovel ten feet of snow before I could even think about boarding the train to "magic school". And so forth. And it wasn't even a train, it was just a Magic School Bus, and all that ended up being was a lousy PBS series. I guess that wasn't so bad, but you know what I'm saying. These kids are spoiled.
The Harry Potter series, or as I've come to think of it as the characters get older, Magic Friends, seems to be becoming more predictable as they get into more adult problems. Sure, when they were children it was all cute and dandy, these children go to school to be trained as little wizards and witches. How adorable! But now that they're getting into their teen years and they're growing up dealing with more adult problems, it appears more like an episode of Friends, except they all do magic.
They have to deal with tension and situations between members of the opposite sex. They are trying to start dating and what not, but it's so awkward because they're all teenagers and they're all so fresh and inexperienced. And it just makes it all the more awkward that they all do magic.
Awkward Pimply Teenage Wizard: "Hey, Beth, do you want me to help you practice your spells after class?"
Awkward but Curious Teenage Witch Who We Now Know is Named Beth: "Tee hee! Sure!"
Awkward Pimply Teenage Wizard: "You can use my wand if you want. Huh, huh!"
Angst! Youth! Magic!
Give me a break.
The magic makes it a little more interesting than Friends, as they don't sit around in a coffee shop all day talking about each other and each other's love lives. But they do sit around in their common room, talking about what spells and what villains they have conquered and how the administration keeps them down. I don't know, I just feel like I've seen it before.
Here we are, five years into the series, and we just see the same characters as we have before, getting into predicaments and solving their problems, one episode at a time, except it takes a year for a new episode to come out. Every once in a while, a guest star will come in and play a disposable character for a movie.
"Next week, on Harry Potter, Howie Mandell stops in as the new Professor of the Dark Arts, but a new evil is lurking around, how long will he stay?!"
But then, when Howie Mandell shows up, the ratings soar, so they invent this story about how his character starts sleeping with one of his students, and then this whole drama ensues, including a court case, and a trial, and they get Billy Dee Williams to play the judge, and everyone knows how the verdict is going to turn out because as an African-American he doesn't like magic, but he can't feel too slighted because he was cast in two major science fiction superpower movie franchises. We all know how it's going to end.
I like Harry Potter, and as a business franchise, you have to commend J.K. Rowling for building it the way she did. It is brilliant. But as all science fiction entrepreneurs have discovered, the key to a successful science fiction franchise is installments. Look at Star Trek, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings, and to a lesser extent the Matrix. Installments are key. The average science fiction fan has an attention span far greater than that of a typical blockbuster movie-goer. And they have unprecedented loyalty. Not only that, but in the realm of science fiction, the author really is unlimited. No limits of reality hold their imaginations within the locked gates of nonfiction. If they come to a stopping point, they can just come up with a creative offshoot or way to keep going. J.K. Rowling predicted her limit at the very beginning at seven books, and she has probably made enough money to live comfortably for quite a while, but ultimately, if she needs some extra cash somewhere down the road, book number eight could be right around the corner, and the public will just eat it up.
As much as I do enjoy the Harry Potter series myself, I have some beef with it. The kids in school, though they might have to pick up the more difficult parts of life such as magic spells and fighting for your life against dragons at the age of thirteen, they get spoiled with some of the simpler things in life, and I, for one, do not find it fair. The children at Hogwarts don't have to learn the simple tasks of taking their papers and passing them back to the people in the desks behind them. At Hogwarts, the children's books and papers just float to them magically. Meanwhile, all of us muggles are going, "Back in my day, we had to pass each other's papers back to each other." Hogwarts children don't have to deal with packing or cafeteria food or getting picked last for kickball. If they get into trouble, they just call on their brooms and fly away.
And while all of us were in fourth grade reading our Goosebumps, we were all just wishing we had a Hogwarts to go away to every fall. And now kids these days have got their Harry Potter and their magical merchandise, and they're just rubbing it in people of my generations' faces. At least that's what it seems like to me from a Hollywood-generated two-hour movie perspective. I'm still blissfully unaware of the reading involved with following the book series. I'm sure there's far more character and plot development than the movies can do justice for. But my point still stands that these kids don't know how easy they've got it in this day and age. When I was a boy, I had to shovel ten feet of snow before I could even think about boarding the train to "magic school". And so forth. And it wasn't even a train, it was just a Magic School Bus, and all that ended up being was a lousy PBS series. I guess that wasn't so bad, but you know what I'm saying. These kids are spoiled.
posted by Leland J. Fischer at 12:26 AM
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