They Knew Snape Was Heroic All The Time ~ Yeah, Right

[rattlesnakeroot]

Hindsight is really 20-20.
That goes for Fandom as well. Where Snape is concerned, I've been expecting it for years, but somehow people who always thought Snape was evil slithered out of admitting it.
Now that the final movies are being made, however, it seems that even the big-wigs are getting on the Snape Train all of a sudden. And I guess they

Comments

[chillit]

If there is one thing that I wish had been changed in the whole movie-verse, is that "Don't Call Me Coward", had in fact been added. In my opinion, that scene needed it! It's a brilliant line!

The way I see Snape, is that we are seeing Snape from the perspective of a youth. (with the exception of a few chapters that are not from Harry's POV). But the joys of fandom are that anything that could be perceived as unkind in Harry's POV, can in fact be woven to not be.

I'm off to read Klove's take on all of this...but I'm sure he'll make my head shake too!

[rattlesnakeroot]

I wish more fans shared your reasonable view of things!

[phantomtf]

Mr. Kloves' comments come off as ridiculous, but I'm not sure what's wrong with Melissa's. We don't see enough of Snape to get a true first-hand view of his actions, but based on his behavior in the last six books, he's probably not patting heads and giving out lemon drops. I'm sure he wasn't as bad as the Carrows, but he'd have to put on some kind of display for them so he doesn't appear soft. At the very least, he seems to be hunting down the DA, and allowing Carrows to perform torture to the point where kids have to hide to stay alive

[rattlesnakeroot]

Well, the problem with Melissa's statement is that she didn't see Snape's redemption coming and it's on the record in many of her Leaky podcasts. Also, the Snape fans were not exactly made ot feel welcome on her forum: I still remember the time Leaky put Snape on trial for War Crimes and they were allowing people to write all kinds of crap in the chat to persuade people to vote against him (and he was found guilty of course, but we knew he would).

[phantomtf]

Okay, this makes much more sense now, thanks. I guess there's a reason I'm a Mugglenet fan.

[sylvanawood]

Tsk.
JKR said that Snape isn't a nice man. She said so. So it must be so.
He's not nice to Harry. This is unforgiveable.
If you don't agree, you have no chance to ever beat Melissa Anelli's status as #1 sycophant.

(seriously, I've been laughing out loud about your links. Yeah, all these Snape fans, all of a sudden. STFU and fandom_wank will have to fine a new name for the old-school Snapefen.)

[rattlesnakeroot]

I'm glad you enjoyed this post - I think there will be more to come on this topic. We have another year of movie madness left to go, and Snape is supposed to be more prominent in the second DH movie. I'm looking forward to more Fandom hindsight - it makes blogging easy!

[rattlesnakeroot]

Hey, and why can't we be "uberfans"? LOL I want to be part of the "Uberfen" for a change. ;)

ETA: It must be like having the Elder Wand!

Sort of as an aside on the writing:

[bnmc2005]

Kloves comes across as such an arrogant ass. 'Yeah, I knew Snape was important Hero all along that is why I left 75% of his scenes out of ALL the films.' Yeah, that must be is why Alan Rickman was rumored to almost quit the series because Snape was getting SOOOOOO much in depth attention in the films that Rickman was just overwhelmed with work and the sheer gravity the films were putting into this character. * end sarcasm *

My aside: I have watched that first (only) scene in DH with Snape over and over and over again and have a couple thoughts about the dialogue.

"Severus, I was beginning to think you had lost your way, we saved you a seat."
"You bring news, I trust"

Voldemort's lines feel odd to me. Besides the overly-friendly passive tone he addressed Snape, I realized that there actually is a lot of um, irony(?) being used here.

"Lost your way" is such a cliché. It is usually used in as a euphemism to refer to a larger moral or philosophical crises, not just someone getting delayed. We are supposed to think that

Re: Sort of as an aside on the writing:

[rattlesnakeroot]

Nice analysis of the double meanings, espcially that last line!

I took Voldemort as a little threatening there, too, pointing out that everyone else was on time while Snape was tardy and maybe dragging his feet. Of course, Snape probably was hesitant to walk in there, and then he sees poor Charity hanging over the table when he walks into the room.

[spirit_serpenti]

Ummm...just to play the devil's advocate for a minute;) but Kloves DID include the "Don't call me coward!" line, although it was paraphrased to "Don't you EVER associate that word and my name again!" I have read the original screenplay by Kloves and found it much closer to the book than the movie itself. A lot of scenes he included in his script were re-arranged or left out during post-production. I actually quite liked the way he wrote Snape.

[rattlesnakeroot]

I recall reading the screenplay too, but not that line. Why would he make it sound so awkward by rewriting it?

Maybe it's true that he tried to put in the Snape scenes and was over-ruled by the WB team. But that doesn't mean he actually thought of Snape as heroic or good while he was writing the screenplays. ;) Just saying . . .

I guess I should fault David Heyman, too, although he seems to be a real Snape fan these days. His hindsight is 20-20 also. I don't know what the other producer, David Barron thinks of Snape - perhaps he dislikes him?

[bnmc2005]

I watched Half Blood Prince again yesterday and I was struck by how awkward some of the lines are why the movie displays no context. It's as if Kloves is trying to paraphrase the books when the original line would have worked JUST FINE. It's even arrogant, to me. It sounds like a a grade-school first research report. "Ok, the teacher said not to quote too much so I'll just take this quote and reword it to sound different but the same..." all the while showing very little understanding of the underlying message.

[shyfoxling]

This is an excellent way to put it. I understand that it would not have been feasible to keep everything from the books because the films would just get too long or would have to be split (except perhaps the first book - although I gather some people criticize the first two films for too literally following the books!). And a film is not a book in terms of pacing and what time you have to spend telling what parts of the story (you can spend paragraphs describing something that you can simply show on screen). But shouldn't you endeavor to keep the relation of the pieces to each other the same? I forget whose quote it is about "once we decided to cut everything that wasn't directly Harry's story, it all fell together" but by and large, that's already what the books are -there's already so much he misses, cutting even more of it just makes nonsense.