Harry Potter Catch All

Blind_Evil wrote:

I didn't feel that way about the ending. Sets up the villain for the next film, no?

It might not have been well done, but I wouldn't call it pointless.

Spoiler:

I didn't realize til I read an article on the Ringer that the big reveal there isn't HEY Grindelwald! so much as HEY WE GOT DEPP! cuz I didn't recognize Depp.

Spoiler:

I assumed Grindelwald was involved, but I did not know it would be straight up like that and Depp was a nice surprise.

Saw the movie finally. As as has been said, a bit sparse on the world building, but an enjoyable romp anyway. I thought the CGI looked pretty good too. Ending was totally fine setup for future films in my book.

I'm currently reading LOTR as bedtime story for the kids (I remembered the Frodo & Sam bits in TT being boring, but good grief are they ever!) and after we're finished with that we're starting on the Potter books. Yay, it's been quite a few years since I last read them. Can't wait!

Suvanto wrote:

I'm currently reading LOTR as bedtime story for the kids (I remembered the Frodo & Sam bits in TT being boring, but good grief are they ever!) and after we're finished with that we're starting on the Potter books. Yay, it's been quite a few years since I last read them. Can't wait!

I read LOTR to my daughter in utero, or at least up to halfway through ROTK before she wasn't in utero in anymore! I say pish-posh to your "boring" assessment. But now Mrs. Gravey can't wait to start reading HP to her since the Signature edition box set arrived today.

I'm really happy with this edition, even more than those Pottermore Kindle covers. The dust jackets look classic and uncluttered, and are glossy with raised illustrations (so not the matte paper feel of a Hardy Boys book that you might expect from looking at them). The paper and print quality are decent, and each volume has a ribbon placeholder. Even the gatefold box is sturdy and nicely illustrated inside and out.

IMAGE(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/42351335/GWJ/Harry%20Potter%20box%20set.jpg)

Nice!

Jude Law to Play Young Dumbledore in ‘Fantastic Beasts’ Sequel (EXCLUSIVE)

IMAGE(https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/jude-law-dumbledore.jpg?w=670&h=377&crop=1)

Jude Law has been tapped to play young Dumbledore in the “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” sequel.

David Yates is returning to direct and Eddie Redmayne will be back to star alongside Johnny Depp, who will play the villain Grindelwald.

Jude Law as Dumbledore... good.

Johnny Depp as Grindelwald? Nooooooooooooooo.

Ugh. Heard about Jude Law a couple of days ago but didn't hear about the Johnny Depp news. Kind of disappointing as I find him to play the similar overdone eccentric character in every movie he's in.

I assume the full name of the fragrance is "Sauvagely Abusing Your Spouse."

I'd be less than happy about Depp even if his sudden insertion into the last movie hadn't been about as nonsensical as you can get, is what I'm saying.

I don't mind Depp, he's been cast in pretty formulaic roles for a long time now. He's got enough talent to do the character for sure.

In other news I'm sure glad to be done reading LOTR for my son (the Mordor sequences were as boring as I remembered), next up: The Philosopher's Stone. I haven't actually read it prior to this, I've listened to it twice though, read by Stephen Fry.

I really couldn't tell if that commercial was a parody or not.

Shifter wrote:

I really couldn't tell if that commercial was a parody or not.

Depp can be used well in doses just like Farrell can be excellent when not the only character.... Except step brothers. That just works.

I visited the Harry Potter worlds in Orlando this weekend. Fun stuff. Frozen Butterbeer is soooo good.

Awaken, thread!

WB Interactive label teams with Niantic to develop AR Harry Potter Game

Pokémon Go meets Harry Potter? Yes, please.

My wife is going to drop so much cash on this.... I got her addicted to pokemon go and she doesn't even like pokemon... She loves Harry Potter...

I did sign up for an email when it launches to check it out.

Feegle wrote:

Awaken, thread!

WB Interactive label teams with Niantic to develop AR Harry Potter Game

Pokémon Go meets Harry Potter? Yes, please.

What I would really, really like is an RPG in the Harry Potter universe. You can be a 1st year student, pick your house, learn spells, etc. They could put it somewhere between the founding of Hogwarts and Tom Riddle coming to the school and they could keep the stakes low (no whole world in peril type thing) so they don't need to explain why the story is not talked about in the books.

Anyone see the new movie? I am thinking of going on cheap Tuesday night so I wondered

I can’t image that it can’t be worth $5 but ...

My wife and I took our kids to see it the other night. Overall I liked it, but felt it suffered from really lazy writing. It feels much more about pretty visuals and tossing familiar names to the audience than continuing character development.

I heard it was more meh of the first movie. Might get it on a free night from redbox.

PurEvil wrote:

My wife and I took our kids to see it the other night. Overall I liked it, but felt it suffered from really lazy writing. It feels much more about pretty visuals and tossing familiar names to the audience than continuing character development.

You went to see Star Wars?

Heh. Star Wars was far worse than this. Granted, both feel like a shallow money grab, but The Last Jedi was so horrible I literally lost interest in that entire universe and decided I would never give another dime towards the franchise as long as it was under Disney. I'd still be willing to give the next Fantastic Beasts movie a shot, so...

It really felt like they wanted to ride the big names of the original 7 books in an attempt to blind the fans with references, and hide the fact that they don't have much of a story. There's a twist at the end that is silly, because it goes against a family tree that is a particular topic of the main series, and it's completely unnecessary. I could seriously tear into the plot to a degree that it'd even ruin it for me, but I'll say that it was nice having a family outing with my wife and kids, and the movie (in that sense) was adequate.

I enjoyed Crimes of Grindelwald, but it really felt like the bridge connecting the first movie to the larger story, rather than a strong story in itself.

I’ve plenty of possibilities I’m excited about in future movies, I just hope they don’t let me down too much.

Saw it today with my wife and son. It was...ok, but we all came out baffled by some of the plot points, especially the ending.

Wow talk about a really late realization. I just rewatched Order of the Phoenix and after it was over saw Gary Oldman listed. I had no idea he was in it so I looked to see who he was and was surprised to see he is Sirius! Lmao, I never really realized who played him.

Hobear wrote:

Wow talk about a really late realization. I just rewatched Order of the Phoenix and after it was over saw Gary Oldman listed. I had no idea he was in it so I looked to see who he was and was surprised to see he is Sirius! Lmao, I never really realized who played him.

I did the same when he won some lifetime achievement award and it listed movies he was in. I was like wtf, Harry Potter? Then looked it up on IMDb and realization dawned.

He's unbelivably talented

I saw Crimes of Grundlebum.

God, I hated it.

Spoiler:

This was a genuinely awful movie in a lot of ways. There were three somewhat bright points, all of which were undone nearly immediately. Jude Law was outstanding as young Dumbledore. He was charming and confident. He was also wasted. There's a brief moment in which Grindlewald seems to have a compelling motivation (he saw how badly humanity was going to f*$k stuff up in WW2 and wanted to save us from ourselves), but literally minutes later, that was revealed as a farce, reducing him to a cartoonish villain played by an actor that seems to have abandoned anything other than shtick and hamming with his "acting", and that's setting aside the odd decision to cast someone with his recent history.

Other than that? This movie has no story that makes any sense. It supposedly revolves around a character that I'd completely forgotten from the first film, but lurches from scene to scene with breaks for massive exposition dumps that just exist to shove the movie along. There are characters that sacrifice themselves for no apparent reason, Queenie defects for the flimsiest of reasons so we can have that SHOCKING TWIST, there's literally a scene in which a toddler is murdered in cold blood that has no relevance to the plot, Grindlewald escaping from prison first is then is not a big deal (one character literally says at one point, "Well, he's done nothing wrong,"), the muggle appears in the film for no apparent reason, then does nothing to justify his presence, and finally, Newt's decision to choose sides carries no weight whatsoever.

In addition, there's a difference between connecting films together and lazy, rampant fan service. Nagini was a Asian woman once? Why? What possible indication was given to that in the books/films? She gets effectively no lines of note in the film, and just wanders around looking worried. Nicholas Flamel shows up for no other reason than for us to say, "Hey, I remember that name." McGonagall is the same thing. And the absolute worst is that final reveal, in which we're supposed to buy that Dumbledore had another brother. That was never mentioned. In any of the books or films. That's lazy writing, lazy plotting, and the worst kind of pandering.

The next section contains my reaction to some of the PC stuff, so if you don't care about that, that's perfectly fine.

Spoiler:

But the most infuriating parts involved the way it treats gay characters, and what it has to say about characters who are Nazis in all but their name. JK Rowling has publicly said that Dumbledore and Grindlewald were lovers, but this film lacks the courage to do anything but hint at it briefly. Never mind the fact that it would make the "plot" of this film make a hell of a lot more sense than "I can't fight him because of a magic crystal that a niffler will later somehow know to steal".

Finally, there's this recurring idea that the fault in this movie lies with those damned aurors who have the temerity to not let these Nazi wizards have their rallies. In the wake of things like Charlottesville, I wasn't pleased with this movie placing the blame for the violence not on Grindlewald and his followers, but on those who were trying to stop these hateful, bigoted villains from doing their thing.

This movie gives us a nonsensical, lazy plot, characters with the depth of a mud puddle, a wheelbarrow full of lazy and unearned fan service, upends canon for shock value, and finally ignores gay characters and sympathizes with the fascists. I genuinely think the franchise is worse for this film existing, and it absolutely demolished my interest in the rest of the series.

trichy wrote:

I saw Crimes of Grundlebum.

God, I hated it.

Spoiler:

This was a genuinely awful movie in a lot of ways. There were three somewhat bright points, all of which were undone nearly immediately. Jude Law was outstanding as young Dumbledore. He was charming and confident. He was also wasted. There's a brief moment in which Grindlewald seems to have a compelling motivation (he saw how badly humanity was going to f*$k stuff up in WW2 and wanted to save us from ourselves), but literally minutes later, that was revealed as a farce, reducing him to a cartoonish villain played by an actor that seems to have abandoned anything other than shtick and hamming with his "acting", and that's setting aside the odd decision to cast someone with his recent history.

Other than that? This movie has no story that makes any sense. It supposedly revolves around a character that I'd completely forgotten from the first film, but lurches from scene to scene with breaks for massive exposition dumps that just exist to shove the movie along. There are characters that sacrifice themselves for no apparent reason, Queenie defects for the flimsiest of reasons so we can have that SHOCKING TWIST, there's literally a scene in which a toddler is murdered in cold blood that has no relevance to the plot, Grindlewald escaping from prison first is then is not a big deal (one character literally says at one point, "Well, he's done nothing wrong,"), the muggle appears in the film for no apparent reason, then does nothing to justify his presence, and finally, Newt's decision to choose sides carries no weight whatsoever.

In addition, there's a difference between connecting films together and lazy, rampant fan service. Nagini was a Asian woman once? Why? What possible indication was given to that in the books/films? She gets effectively no lines of note in the film, and just wanders around looking worried. Nicholas Flamel shows up for no other reason than for us to say, "Hey, I remember that name." McGonagall is the same thing. And the absolute worst is that final reveal, in which we're supposed to buy that Dumbledore had another brother. That was never mentioned. In any of the books or films. That's lazy writing, lazy plotting, and the worst kind of pandering.

The next section contains my reaction to some of the PC stuff, so if you don't care about that, that's perfectly fine.

Spoiler:

But the most infuriating parts involved the way it treats gay characters, and what it has to say about characters who are Nazis in all but their name. JK Rowling has publicly said that Dumbledore and Grindlewald were lovers, but this film lacks the courage to do anything but hint at it briefly. Never mind the fact that it would make the "plot" of this film make a hell of a lot more sense than "I can't fight him because of a magic crystal that a niffler will later somehow know to steal".

Finally, there's this recurring idea that the fault in this movie lies with those damned aurors who have the temerity to not let these Nazi wizards have their rallies. In the wake of things like Charlottesville, I wasn't pleased with this movie placing the blame for the violence not on Grindlewald and his followers, but on those who were trying to stop these hateful, bigoted villains from doing their thing.

This movie gives us a nonsensical, lazy plot, characters with the depth of a mud puddle, a wheelbarrow full of lazy and unearned fan service, upends canon for shock value, and finally ignores gay characters and sympathizes with the fascists. I genuinely think the franchise is worse for this film existing, and it absolutely demolished my interest in the rest of the series.

Thanks for saving me seeing it.