Harry Potter and the Wizarding World

[James]

No one has brought up politics yet - but based on past threads you can bet someone will soon! So I was trying to head that off with my warning.

BTW - not making fun of that anonymous emailer. But I've read a LOT worse stuff on the internet today about this. It'd be great if everyone on every side of the issue was as articulate and considerate as George was in expressing his opinion!

[Once Upon A Dream]

Dumbledore was gay? XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.
So that explain why he allways wanted Harry to be in his office XD.
This is hilarious XD.
Anyway this isn't importent at all since his sexuality dosn't take anything in the story,it's not even mention in the books-she just answered a question.
Anyway this is just funny and isn't importent at all,it's also very unexpected.

[Ben]

I wouldn't say this was unexpected. It can be read into the books if you want to or not.

I, personally, am just against anything that doesn't contain the relevant information within its pages or screenplay. As James says, if Dumbledore is supposedly gay, why is it not explained in the books, or very clearly alluded to? It's like the Star Wars movies: they should all stand and work as six stories as a whole, but now we need to see the Clone Wars to see what's up between two and three, and now there's another TV series to explain III to IV, etc.

Stories should have their facts, characters and histories contained within them. Anything else is just speculation and can not be counted as "canon". That the revelation here comes from the author herself is somewhat baffling. It sounds like a last second decision, thrown out there as others have said, for publicity effect. Ultimately, it doesn't matter one way or the other - as I said you can continue to read the books as you wish, but if this is supposed to be there there were ample moments when this could have been touched on in the text, especially in the last book.

I think, as George said, she's trying to extend her 15 minutes...just squeeze a little more out of this final book, which is what this tour is all about anyway, remember, so who's to say a little non-relevant chit chat that spikes up a bit of interest along the way is a bad thing for her? It's done the trick, right?

Is she "sending a message"? No. It wasn't in the books, plain and simple. If she intended it to start discussion, then she should have either made Dumbledore openly gay, but to make a <I>real</I> point it could have been one of the kids! Neville Longbottom? He could have been a candidate if she wanted to express a strong homosexual character. As it is, Dumbledore doesn't even "do it for me": he's a fairly underwritten part, mysterious while alive and then only having the required moments of his history filled in at a later date. And he's your basic Merlin figure...nothing particularly rounded about him until we find things out later, and even these are pretty standard betrayal plot strands. Merlin was probably gay as well! But does it really matter? Nope. If, alongside, death, desire, dealing with growing up, breaking away from your superiors, coping with peer pressure and all the other things the books bring up, she wanted to highlight the issue, she would have attributed this to one of the kids in a way that would have seen them dealing positively with the concept. Even then, one would have had to question if they would have been a "strong gay character" or if it had merely been thrown in there as another element she feels is general in all kids finding their way into adulthood.

But, as such, it <I>isn't</I> in the books, so why the big deal? There's plenty of other things for parents and kids to discuss as a result of reading these volumes and, as long as Albus doesn't suddenly lay one on Grindelwald in the eventual film adaptation, I think we can safely say that it matters not, one way or the other.

And, to pick up on a deleted scene from the first Back To The Future, "Why shouldn't he be happy?"



As for George's reply...I didn't have a problem with it. This topic obviously opens up a can of worms whatever your age is, and George's comments were, I thought, perfectly reasonable, mature and made some good points. I think I might have even made the "pub(l)ic" gag myself on a brave day - I've certainly come close to saying worse on these boards in the past and I mod them!

[Meg]

Great points, Ben, great points!

This really doesn't sound like anything but a publicity thing to me - like others have said, if she wanted a strong gay character, why was it never brought up in the books? It seems to me that deciding Dumbles was gay was something she thought up after finishing book seven! Pointless.

[Randall]

Who really thinks that JK Rowling feels like she needs more publicity?

All she did was answer someone's question regarding Dumbledore's love life. (It also came up when the new screenplay was being written, where she nixed a mention of Dumbledore's prior lady love.) She didn't issue a press release. In her mind, Dumbledore was always gay. Writers always know much more about their characters than what they put into writing. It wasn't anymore relevant to the story than the name of Snape's dentist, so it was never mentioned.

Not everything has to be a conspiracy or a publicity stunt.

[Josh]

It just seems to me that in the nine or ten years the Harry Potter books have been released, this news regarding Dumbledore - as popular a character as he is - would have surfaced before now.

[James]

To keep up the conspiracy theories that Rand loves so much , here's another!

She's said she will probably write a HP encyclopedia which means she needs little details to fill it. Now I know she probably has a ton of them, but she stills needs to round them out and fill in some holes.

At the same time she announced Dumbledore's coming out of the closet she also mentioned that Neville marries Hannah Abbott. But after book 7 came out and Rowling was finally answering questions she was asked about Neville and said that she felt a bit of a pull between him and Luna but left any resolution out of the epilogue because it was wrapping up things too neatly.

Why not mention Abbott then? Unless she is coming up with new stuff for her new book that she hadn't come up with earlier. How much of what she is saying now was just made up in the last few weeks?

[Ben]

Basically, the book sold tons of inventory in the first five minutes. Anyone that really wanted to read it has - at least by now, a good couple of months after publication.

So, she's on a book tour that's promoting a book that's already sold the most it's going to do, and she needs a few more column inches to not only promote that book tour, but shift a few more copies (of any in the series, and ideally all seven) to those who might have passed on them first time around.

Stirring up a little extra publicity is always a good thing - certainly a US book tour wouldn't get featured articles in the papers here normally, which is what has happened. I've had people asking my opinion who haven't read the books and whether they should read them!?

And it seems she can't let Harry go...another school text book, now an encyclopedia is being mentioned. This is her Star Wars. Harry <I>will</I> come back in a future book you can be certain too, within 10-20 years.

On Dumbledore's lady love, I can't remember her name, but there <I>IS</I> a remark made about how he shows a "warm smile" or a "tickle of a smile" or something like that, in remembrance of a relationship with a female character in one of the previous books.

So, as James says, this is all "new" stuff coming out to draw out her saying goodbye to the cash cow, though as Rand says too, if it's not in the actual story books, then why bother or <I>be</I> bothered?

The idea of an HP encyclopedia is a little grand, though, don't you think? It's not exactly as if she's created a Tolkein-esque world full of a myriad of species, extensive history and different customs and cultures. It shouldn't be a very thick book unless she starts coming up with the what ifs and howsabouts that she's laying the groundwork for here.

Unfortunately, as with Lucas' revisionist reworkings of Star Wars, I think there will be little details that slip through the cracks in her attempts to "fill in the [non-existent] holes"...

[Dacey]

Figured I'd bring this topic back from the dead, since "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is coming soon and all.

Here's an early fan review:

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=68974

As stoked as I am about seeing this film, I have one major concern, and that is David Yates directing. True, "Half-Blood Prince" was a much stronger film than "Order of the Phoenix" in many ways, but I still feel like Yates doesn't fully "get" Potter, and follows the books way too closely in a lot of ways.

True, the franchise hasn't had any stinkers--all of the films are good in their own right--, but if I were to rank the movies in order of quality, neither of Yates' chapters would make the top.

Still, very excited about this. The trailer released this summer was awesome, and I'm actually glad that they're splitting the book into two parts, even though a lot of fans were upset about that at first.

[eddievalient]

Here's the thing: The first two films are really good, close adaptations of the books that only left out the bare minimum. Starting with the third film, the movies kind of went off on a seperate track, telling the basic story but not really being the same (my biggest disappointment in any of the films was not getting to see the Quidditch World Cup match. It would only have added six or seven minutes to the runtime, so why didn't they?). I like the books and the movies, but I like them for different reasons. Here's hoping the last film will be more in line with the first two.

[Dacey]

Not seeing the actual game at the Quidditch World Cup was really my only major gripe with "Goblet of Fire," which remains the best film in the series. "Prisoner of Azkaban" is a close second.

[GeorgeC]

Frankly,

I'm done with Harry Potter.

Read all the primary books, saw the first film. and don't care to see the rest.

(I read the books when my old workplace had a more liberal reading policy... As long as you did your job on the nightshift nobody cared! I've since left that cage and moved on to something else... Got a lot of reading done during that year or two, though!)

I've suffered a bit of Potter fatigue but don't wish ill on anybody else that wants to continue the ride!

Rowling's set for life regardless of the controversies around her politics and the bigger question of what she did or didn't appropriate from other author's works.

She's made her impact. Probably about the biggest impact in children's literature since the Wizard of Oz books.

The Oz books are far weirder and more allegorical than anything I've read in Rowling's books.

As the Disney film proved, a faithful Oz adaptation can be far creepier than anything you'll see in a Harry Potter movie.

Wonder what this says about the level of tolerance in kid's films today (aside from sexual identity politics)? As I recall, the original versions of many fairy tales were far bloodier and nastier than what gets read to kids today.

[Randall]

Starting with the third film, the movies kind of went off on a seperate track, telling the basic story but not really being the same... I like the books and the movies, but I like them for different reasons.

Exactly how I feel. The first two films were almost spot-on adaptations (almost too close to the source, with nothing new to add), but the third started to be an alternate timeline kind of thing. Important backstory got dropped, characters were being combined, and whole subplots ignored. It had to be done, but clearly the movies became their own thing, as the books got longer and the movies became shorter.

I thought that Goblet was a very skillful adaptation, losing at least 2/3 of the book, but still telling most of the essential story (but the quidditch match was sorely missed). The only movie I really thought missed the mark almost totally was the fifth (Order of the Phoenix), which to me had little of the feel of that book. Still, I looked forward to the next ones. I only recently watched Half-Blood Prince, and quite enjoyed it.

[Whippet Angel]

Wow... I feel so lonely being the only person in the world who liked "Order of the Phoenix" the most out of all the films.

[Ben]

The problem is that an average book won't make a good film. I'm not saying Rowling's writings are masterpieces, but they are good children's books, derivative as they are.

However, the films can only make use of what was good in the books, and as has been said, the first two were so slim in comparison to the later, sometimes bloated ones, that there wasn't a lot that could be left out (or put in) and so they were very good screen adaptations, even if they were only competently directed (no one is going to make the argument that Columbus is a visionary) and didn't really add anything to film that we didn't imagine from the books. Actually, I liked Chamber Of Secrets more than the first, because the book grew up a bit and Columbus took a few good choices there and was more comfortable second time around.

The third one was a better film, but for me the story remains weak and, as a consequence, there isn't a lot that actually happens, save for the intros and outros of a handful of characters.

The best one for me was Mike Newell's The Goblet Of Fire, which although we didn't see much of the Quidditch match, was a very tightly paced telling of the book, which was greatly expanded in size to the previous three. This, I think, gave the filmmakers a lot to work with, and they were able to make a good film as opposed to just a good screen version of a book. As to why they didn't include the match in the film: yeah, only six or so minutes to the running time, but a good few million dollars to the already burgeoning cost!

David Yates made his debut in the series with Order Of The Phoenix, his best one to date, but then again that's because he had some good material to work with. Also, by this point, the movies are pretty much making themselves and - from what I hear firsthand from a high up production head - he's been being given a lot of "help" from the producers, with a lot of crew joking that the Yates films were actually directed by "The Three Davids" (Yates, Heyman and Barron).

Weakest film for me so far has been Half-Blood Prince, but then nothing happened in the book either. It was all flashback and, basically, "prequel" stuff which filled in Voldermort's background to a large extent. BUT the film threw all but a couple of those episodes out and went off on a strange tangent, almost bypassing the book but for two or three key scenes. I don't think Yates is to blame, he's just a director for hire making these films for other people, but somehow the ball was dropped, big time.

Splitting Deathly Hallows into two films screams of Warners not being quite ready to say goodbye to their cash cow: there's no reason (especially given the previous trims) that the final book couldn't have made one movie, since it's mostly a big battle anyway and could be boiled down. On the other hand, it could mean that we get another pair of literal translations, with the screen time to put pretty much everything back on the screen. The worry is that this will feel weaker than the tighter past films, but again that's down to the Three Davids, not one of them in particular. I just hope they stick closer to the book and don't toss out valid stuff just in order to insert non-specific new inventions that don't add anything.

But I'm sticking along for the ride and, when the time is right, I'll pick up the inevitable megaset that comes out.