i agree. the actor playing amos really nailed that scene.
on the flip side, dumbledore’s death in the movies was very meh for me. the book, though, good god. i knew it was coming, and i was still a sobbing mess. i really felt harry’s grief and horror, and his reflection after the funeral where he realizes no one else can stand between him and voldemort, how his parents and sirius and now albus could no longer defend him, just about killed me.
the movie scene just didn’t do it for me. to be fair, my expectations were quite high since reading it in the book was such an emotional experience for me, but it just didn’t get across what it was meant to, for me.
i see your point, but i actually enjoyed that aspect of slughorn’s character. he’s a true slytherin in that he tends to look out for his own needs, and sometimes flails when a dangerous situation arises (when ron is poisoned in front of him, he panics and is unable to help, leaving harry to be the one to save him. draco often reacts similarly, like when hermione punches him in prisoner of azkaban and he basically runs away crying). he’s not a saint, and he’s not meant to be. but he’s still a good guy, still on the right side. i only wish we’d gotten more slytherin characters like that, because slughorn(along with snape) seems to be the exception proving the rule that all slytherins all evil.
i did overall enjoy movie slughorn more than the book, mostly based on the strength of jim broadbent’s performance.
That part actually added some color for me. For me it represented a very powerful feeling I experienced at about that age. Adults, even ones you love and admire, are just as flawed as you are and just as likely to make bad decisions.
Hagrid was just such a comfortable friendly presence for Harry in his early years at the school, it almost seemed like he could do no wrong. It was sobering to see him through more mature eyes, he’s got his personal issues and can really screw things up. For me that signaled a shift for that was as big a part of his “coming of age” as anything else in the book. Notice after that Hagrid was no longer the pivotal emotional center for Harry and he began to adopt role models who were more practical for his new found acceptance of responsibility.
So yea I related, and I wouldn’t cut that part in the books for anything.
the thing about that is, hagrid’s been doing dumb shit since harry and co were first years. in sorceror’s/philosopher’s stone there’s the whole thing with having an illegal dragon(and the trio have to help him get rid of it), chamber of secrets, he sends ron and harry to talk to an army of murderous giant spiders, prisoner of azkaban he becomes a teacher and has his students working with dangerous creatures like the blast ended skewts, etc. etc. he got himself kicked out of hogwarts by keeping a dangerous creature(aragog) in the school, enabling riddle to set him up for opening the chamber of secrets, resulting in him being expelled. he’s never been one to make the best decisions, this was established long before grawp came on the scene.
also, in the very same book harry begins to discover some of his adult role models (james and sirius) were actually kind of asses when they were in school, quite draco-like in the way they treated snape. we’re already exploring the issue of flawed adults and role models with this, why the need to do it with hagrid too? i don’t see it. i still stand by my opinion that grawp was absolutely unnecessary.
hagrid represents one of the most powerful forces on earth: the ability to do what he thinks is right. i think j.k. rawling underscored this by making hagrid a half-giant.
I suppose that in English schools you don’t spend as much time with people in another house, but IMHO it would have made more sense and been more interesting to have the Marauders be sorted as follows:
James Potter - Gryffindor
Remus Lupin - Ravenclaw
Peter Pettigrew - Hufflepuff
Sirius Black - Slytherin
It would fit their characters better. Also it would have prevented the little discrepancy that JK Rowling has Hagrid say in Philosopher’s Stone: “Everyone that went to Voldemort’s side was in Slytherin”. Except for Sirius Black maybe? Whom everyone at the time thought was a Voldemort follower?
my fanwank for that is that i think hagrid’s memory isn’t always accurate. he also says in the first book that james and lily were head boy and girl while they were in school. i don’t think it mentions either way later on whether lily becomes a prefect, but we do discover later that lupin was made prefect, not james, probably for the purpose of keeping james and sirius in line.
I liked the fight at the coffee shop in Deathly Hallows (Pt 1), and the fight at Godric’s Hollow against Nagini. The magic finally felt right, and the battles had the intensity of a gunfight. There was serious shit going down, and it looked and felt lethal.
It was the scene itself that felt awkward. The opposite was true of Harry and Hermione. They were getting along too well. It seemed like a pointless and random injection of romantic something or other between them. If they needed to do that, do it in the scene where she’s conjuring angry birds. The scene should have just been the three of them vowing to find the horcruxes together.
the mightiest revolution in the saga was when harry chose to sit with ron in the same compartment the first time, let hermione join them. if the book described it well, the movie did even better.
I don’t think they really wanted a GIRL sitting with them, but she kind of invited herself in. “Oh, you’re doing magic? Let’s see it, then!” Put the boys on the spot right from the very beginning.
In Deathly Hallows, I wish they had made it clearer that they were snapping at each other at least partly because of the effect of the locket. The book describes the effect of having this thing and having to take turns wearing it as “like a demented slow-motion game of Pass the Parcel” IIRC. When Ron leaves, I kept waiting for either Harry or Hermione to say, “Stop! It’s the locket! It’s making us all crazy!” Maybe TPTB were afraid that it would sound too much like LotR?
Were any of them ever explicitly in a house? I think that Hagrid states that both of Harry’s parents were in Gryffindor, but I’m not sure that any of the rest of them were definitively sorted.
They were…Harry sees them all (James, Sirius, Remus, Peter, Lily and Snape) sorted when looking back through Snape’s memories towards the end of Deathly Hallows.
No, it’s that JK Rowling made a mistake and she owes me ONE MILLION DOLLARS for pain and suffering!
That on the other hand could be possible, why couldn’t someone become Head Boy even though he wasn’t a prefect beforehand? I never heard that the Head Boy must necessarily be someone that had been chosen as prefect in a previous year.
The way it works in real public schools, it would be extremely unusual for the head boy to have not been a prefect. But James could have been made prefect a bit later on.
Waht if the boy who was prefect was a werewolf and kicked out of school… Did Lupin actually finish his seven years at Hogwarts? Didn’t he leave after Snape discovered he was a werewolf when Snape was tricked by Sirius Black, crawled into the secret exit under the Whomping Willow, saw Lupin in werewolf form, and was rescued by James Potter? I can’t remember.
this is how i thought it worked, you’re made a prefect before head boy/girl. i don’t think james could’ve been made prefect later, though. they’re chosen before their fifth year starts, and notified by mail. and i think it’s two fifth years per house, right? one male and one female?
