Yah, but JK Rowling wrote the last 3 books with a lot less help from her ghost writer(s) than the previous novels and they turned out fairly shit.
What are you talking about? The writing from the first to the last books was uniformly bad and bad in exactly the same way. I’m pretty sure they were all written by the same person.
I think Seamus meant to type “editor(s)”.
Well, there’s a pretty big difference between an editor and a ghostwriter. Even then, it seems pretty clear to me that Rowling was never under the care of a good editor.
I believe the idea is that all the books would have been the same length if not for editing. Since the last books are longer, it’s assumed they were edited less.
Plus that jives with other observations: the more famous a writer is, the less likely editors are to challenge them and make significant changes.
I was trying to be nice as the last 3 were worse than the first four if that’s possible.
As for who wrote them, I’d say the same person(s). I have serious doubts JK Rowling wrote those books all by her lonesome. As it is, she was obviously influenced, but refuses to admit, by the movie “Young Sherlock Holmes” and a mid 80’s low budget horror movie called “Troll”.
Nope. I don’t think she’s capable of writing those books on her own. Perhaps JK Rowling would type editor(s), but wink wink, we know what she got more help than that. Although I agree with the notion that with more fame and high sales figures comes the ability for JK to not use her ghostwriters as much and try and write the last books on her own as much as possible.
I predict in 15-20 years, when people around the Harry Potter series have retired and need not worry about their jobs anymore, a lot of shit is going to come out on JK Rowling.
The hero of this film (“Troll”) is a boy named Harry Potter and he is surrounded by a fantasy world of witches, wizards and magic - eleven years before J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels swept the publishing world.
How’s about you cough up some actual evidence Seamus, because I hadn’t heard anything close to that.
Anyways, back to George. Anybody see the documentary “The People Versus George Lucas”? Or something like that? I have to agree with other authors who basicaly stated that they want their fans to be happy and do their best to write stories that will please them, but at the end of the day it is their creation. Nobody has any business showing up on an author’s doorstep and telling him/her how to write their stories. The only right the consumer has is to refuse to purchase the product.
Some people take way too much ownership over somebody else’s art.
I don’t blame George for “taking his ball and going home.” If people don’t like what he’s selling, why bother to continue making the product? I agree with others here who ask, what happened to the small personal movies he said he wanted to make. If I were George, that’s what I’d do. Go make the kind of movies/art where I don’t care if it sells $300million worth of tickets at the box office.
As an aside, I do think he might be going a little crazy. Seth Rogan was being interviewed on Howard Stern a couple of months ago when George Lucas came up. Speilberg invited Seth to a meeting to go over some projects he was considering and to see if Seth wanted to take any of them on (presumably with Speilberg as producer). For some reason George Lucas was there for the meeting too. Probably hanging out with his bud and decided to stick around. In the middle of the discussion George started talking about the end of the world. He was dead serious. George believes the world will end in 2012 and he starts talking about all these natural disasters that are going to happen and meanwhile Speilberg is rolling his eyes. Seth says to him, good thing the Skywalker ranch is off the fault line (or something like that) and George replies, “yaaaah, good thing”.
LOL. The man is mad as a hatter.
Just watch “Troll” and “Young Sherlock Holmes” (1986) and see for yourself. “Troll” has the story elements", “Young Sherlock Holmes” provides a similar boarding school and character look as the films.
“A powerful wizard wants to make a comeback and take over the world. A young boy named Harry Potter stands in his way. A kind witch looks after Harry and teaches him a thing or two about magic.”
Hmmmmmmm…
As for the books, I’ve read enough in my lifetime and seen enough of Jk Rowlings in interviews as well as her post Harry work that I feel very comfortable in saying she isn’t being honest when she says she came up with the story on her own and she also received help from ghostwriters.
Granted Chris Columbus wrote “Young Sherlock Holmes” and directed the first two Harry Potter films.
I have the opposite opinion. But that’s really beside the point. You’re arguing that they were “ghostwritten.” This doesn’t seem like evidence for that.
All writers are influenced by someone.
Based on what? Were you her freshman composition instructor?
How do we know that?
This is incoherent. You’ve already agreed that all the books were written by the same person. But if you say that for the last few books she did “not use her ghostwriters as much,” then they would not be written by the same person.
What actual evidence do you have for this?
Hmmmm … what? None of this is remotely evidence that the Harry Potter books were ghostwritten. In fact, it’s evidence of exactly the opposite. You’re pointing to her influences. Now, maybe you are constructing an argument that she’s a plagiarist, but plagiarism and ghostwriting are two completely different things. Indeed, they’re practically mutually exclusive.
This is from reading “enough in [your] lifetime” and from watching interviews? That’s your basis for this? Do you actually know any writers?
I’m entertained by the thought of an unemployed 30-year-old single mother hiring a legion of ghost writers to compose her manuscript. (The 12 rejections were probably some kind of smokescreen to distract from the grand conspiracy.)
Seriously.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you are being serious about this, yet still a reasonable person.
BUT, this is exactly the type of reasoning employed by moon hoaxers, 9/11 “truthers”, birthers, and other conspiracy theorists.
It’s mostly “just watch THIS piece of ‘evidence’ and see if it doesn’t convince you”.
Well, I, for one, watched both “Young Sherlock Holmes” and “Troll” (and, unfortunately, the completely unrelated and execrable sequel “Troll 2”). Your argument is thin. Other than very superficial similarities in setting and/or magical elements (which also exist in literally thousands of other fictional works), there’s little thematically that really links the works. Heck, by your reasoning, Rowling cribbed the plot of “Teen Witch” at the same time. Or the book series “The Worst Witch” (also set at a magical boarding school but written earlier).
As for Lucas, you don’t get to complain this much about critics while also claiming you don’t care what they say. If he was serious about doing his own thing, it wouldn’t matter what the critics said. How many directors are like that?
Malick, Soderbergh, Oliver Stone, and several others? Sure, they look at criticism, but they’re not going out of their way to satisfy both critics AND a commercial bottom line. And it shows. George Lucas? He wants to have his 2 hr toy commercials and be heralded as a creative genius on top of that. Well, too bad. If billions of dollars isn’t good enough for you, maybe you should have focused just on film making, rather than a product placement and licensing empire.
Film critics respond to genuine efforts at putting a personal vision on screen. Sure, if the movie sucks, they’ll say something like “The idea and vision were pretty good, but the execution sucked”. That’s not the case with the last several George Lucas efforts. There’s been little clear motivating vision behind the movies, and it shows up on screen. And there’s plenty of stuff that was obviously done simply to pander (not aimed at but straight out pandering) to kids, toy companies, and critics.
So you got nothing.
I’ll give your opinion all the credence it deserves.
I can’t believe a hijack of a Star Wars thread, veering into where Harry Potter was ripped off from, hasn’t mentioned Harry was ripped off from Luke.
(… and Dorothy)
(… and Frodo)
(… and Arthur)
(… and Oedipus)
(… and Moses)
I liked the first Star Wars movie and the first Indiana Jones movie, both for the special effects. I did not particulary enjoy the following movies in those series because at some point the lack of substance led me to boredom. Boredom in movies that are supposed to be exciting is not a good thing.
Lucas has done a lot to develop special effects. The film industry is approaching the point where pretty much anything can be created. The bar has been raised, for it is no longer sufficient to rely solely on special effects to make a film that is riviting. In short, I expect more from a film than just whizz-bang. Action-adventure/special effects films now need to have more substance – for example, Christopher Nolans’ films, which at least have decent characters and intersting plots. Lucas’ popcorn films lack this – from the dialogue and character depth on up.
Lucas has done exceptionally well at producing films for teenagers, but unlike his original audience, he has not matured as a film maker, so I fully expect Red Tails to be just another shallow film with terrific and long fighter sequences – a remake of the HBO movie with a lot less substance and better whiz-bang. Perhaps I’ll see Red Tails on DVD someday, if that media is still in use when I get around to seeing it.
Lucas should relegate himself to providing special effects for better directors, rather than producing, but obviously that would be unsatisfying for him. I don’t know if he has the depth to step outside of the blockbuster genre. Good luck to him in going indie. For me, Lucas jumped the shark a long time ago, so I’ll wait and see if he can swim in the indie pond, rather then go out and watch yet another of his blockbusters that is unsatisfying for me.
Another conspiracy theory based around the head conspirator being an idiot. I’m not a Harry Potter fan, but if Rowling was ripping off a bunch of her ideas from a movie, she’d have to be a moron not to at least change the name of the main character. That’s kind of a dead giveaway. I agree the stories don’t look similar at all. Boarding school stories are a genre dating back to the 19th century or earlier. I don’t think Young Sherlock Holmes was the first murder story in a boarding school setting. (I was going to try to make that sentence look less ridiculous, but I can’t. It’s impossible.)
And 12 years before that, Harry Morgan played a character named Sherman Potter.
Hmmmmmmmm…