Ahh, the wizard of the gaps theory. I’ve heard of that.
These movies would have been better (especially with the “a wizard did it” explanation) with lots and lots of Lucy Lawless.
I never read a single book and I’ve found myself completely fine with the stories. I can’t think of a single thing that has come up and I wasn’t able to understand it fairly quickly.
Never read the books, and I’ve seen two or three films. My eyes glazed over each time with boredom. As far as I can tell, I got everything, even, as Trunk suggests, if I didn’t really get the full significance. But the films do feel very sloppy and disjointed, and I always got the feeling it was Rowling’s fault – that the very existence of magic in her stories had given her license to paint herself into an illogical corner as often as she wanted and then just make it all OK by pulling a new spell or magical mojo out of her ass whenever necessary. Maybe I’m doing her a disservice. I’ll have to read at least one of the novels someday.
In the end, I’m envious as hell because Rowling now makes the Forbes billionaire list.
I’ve seen all the movies so far, and read none of the books, and I’ve never had trouble following the plots at all. A few times, I’ve thought some aspect of the movie was really dumb, and later found out there was some unexplained detail or backstory that was left out that explains it. The scoring in Quidditch is a good example of this. But a lot more frequently, I’ve thought some aspect of the movie was really dumb, only to learn that it was faithful to the books. The essential plot to Goblet of Fire was like this.
Watching the films, I’ve come to the decision that Harry Potter is worth investing a couple of hours every few years in the movie theater, but not worth the amount of time it would take to sit down and read the books. I very much doubt I’ll ever bother with them, at this point.
The scoring in quidditch doesn’t actually make any sense even in the books. It’s nice because it made Harry a hero in the first book, but I can’t imagine it being very satisfying in a real sport. If the game is low-scoring as it appears to be in the early books, then the seeker stultifies what’s going on in the core game by ending the game and securing enough points for the win at the same time. If it’s a high enough scoring game that the 150 points isn’t guaranteed to secure the win, then the seeker could potentially lose the game with his/her successful capture of the snitch, even if the rest of the team was still thinking about a comeback.
If one team was strong, but had a weak seeker, the opposing seeker could just let the game go on forever hoping his or her team would eventually close the gap. “Wait till next year!” in quidditch could refer to a single game!