Pottering around
So, last week- before my fiancee agreed to marry me, have I mentioned that happened?- ladyarkham and her sister and I went to see the latest Harry Potter movie.
Which was kind of impressively good! My only real criticism of it, at the end of the day, was that it was faithful to the source material... and the source material isn't all that good in places.
You've got your Camping Trip o' Doom, of course, but there's more to it than that. And watching the movie, I finally figured out why.
So, let's review what happens over the course of the film. Voldemort recovers the Elder Wand, kills or captures what sounds like several hundred wizards (including several named characters), takes over the Ministry and installs a puppet government, seizes control of the press, hounds Harry and his friends at every turn, destroys Harry's wand, and confiscate the sword of Godric Griffindor.
The heroes, meanwhile, are given the sword of Godric Griffindor- which they promptly lose- and destroy exactly one horcrux. Of seven. Oh, and, uh, they have a wedding, and do a lot of shirtless posing.
And they only get the sword because one of the bad guys gives it to them.
But why? At the start of the movie, the good guys still hold most of the cards. There are, relatively speaking, only a handful of Death Eaters; there are probably more names listed off as "killed" than Voldemort has in his entire force. Harry is personally winning every showdown he and Voldemort have; Voldemort even notes that he cannot kill Harry at the moment. The Ministry has been aware that Voldemort is back for... what, about a year, now? Further: they know where many of the villains are. It's not exactly a big secret that Lucius Malfoy is playing for Team Evil, and that man has a mansion, where various evil people tend to hang out.
They are holding all the cards. And with them, they... throw a party.
I mean, consider: at the film's start, there are several dozen hero characters who could posse up. They could blow Malfoy Manor to tiny splintered shards. They could hunt down the Death Eaters, like the Death Eaters are hunting them- heck, they might be able to fight Voldemort himself, as long as they keep Harry around. At a minimum, they should be able to Apparate wherever Voldemort's minions are causing trouble- or band together, and stay that way. Their ability to strike from the shadows only increases once Voldemort has taken the Ministry, and many of his high-placed henchmen walk to and from work every day.
But they don't. They don't even seem to consider doing so- because, see, to do that, they'd have to kill people, and deliberately seek out fights. And that seems to be fundamentally opposed to their ethos- opposed at a level so deep, we never even see the heroes consider striking back.
And I think that's a fundamental flaw in the book- one that cuts deeper than, and ultimately is responsible for, many of its other weaknesses (the slow pacing, the coupon plot, etc.). Part of being a "good" character seems to be a very, very passive approach to the world- an approach I can't help thinking of as sort of a liberal European mentality, though that may not be accurate. You can resist the bad guys as you run from them, sure, and attack their magical sources of power- but you can't kill them, or hunt them down, or gather up an army of your own to oppose theirs. Those are things that bad people do- good people either live their lives as though nothing is wrong, or go it alone so as not to endanger anyone else.
It's a fundamentally ridiculous position, and the work suffers for it.
Which was kind of impressively good! My only real criticism of it, at the end of the day, was that it was faithful to the source material... and the source material isn't all that good in places.
You've got your Camping Trip o' Doom, of course, but there's more to it than that. And watching the movie, I finally figured out why.
So, let's review what happens over the course of the film. Voldemort recovers the Elder Wand, kills or captures what sounds like several hundred wizards (including several named characters), takes over the Ministry and installs a puppet government, seizes control of the press, hounds Harry and his friends at every turn, destroys Harry's wand, and confiscate the sword of Godric Griffindor.
The heroes, meanwhile, are given the sword of Godric Griffindor- which they promptly lose- and destroy exactly one horcrux. Of seven. Oh, and, uh, they have a wedding, and do a lot of shirtless posing.
And they only get the sword because one of the bad guys gives it to them.
But why? At the start of the movie, the good guys still hold most of the cards. There are, relatively speaking, only a handful of Death Eaters; there are probably more names listed off as "killed" than Voldemort has in his entire force. Harry is personally winning every showdown he and Voldemort have; Voldemort even notes that he cannot kill Harry at the moment. The Ministry has been aware that Voldemort is back for... what, about a year, now? Further: they know where many of the villains are. It's not exactly a big secret that Lucius Malfoy is playing for Team Evil, and that man has a mansion, where various evil people tend to hang out.
They are holding all the cards. And with them, they... throw a party.
I mean, consider: at the film's start, there are several dozen hero characters who could posse up. They could blow Malfoy Manor to tiny splintered shards. They could hunt down the Death Eaters, like the Death Eaters are hunting them- heck, they might be able to fight Voldemort himself, as long as they keep Harry around. At a minimum, they should be able to Apparate wherever Voldemort's minions are causing trouble- or band together, and stay that way. Their ability to strike from the shadows only increases once Voldemort has taken the Ministry, and many of his high-placed henchmen walk to and from work every day.
But they don't. They don't even seem to consider doing so- because, see, to do that, they'd have to kill people, and deliberately seek out fights. And that seems to be fundamentally opposed to their ethos- opposed at a level so deep, we never even see the heroes consider striking back.
And I think that's a fundamental flaw in the book- one that cuts deeper than, and ultimately is responsible for, many of its other weaknesses (the slow pacing, the coupon plot, etc.). Part of being a "good" character seems to be a very, very passive approach to the world- an approach I can't help thinking of as sort of a liberal European mentality, though that may not be accurate. You can resist the bad guys as you run from them, sure, and attack their magical sources of power- but you can't kill them, or hunt them down, or gather up an army of your own to oppose theirs. Those are things that bad people do- good people either live their lives as though nothing is wrong, or go it alone so as not to endanger anyone else.
It's a fundamentally ridiculous position, and the work suffers for it.