Fuuuuck.
- Logical inconsistencies
- Canonical violations
- Missed opportunities
- Long, pointless scenes that tell us nothing new
- Rambling misdirections mistaken for ’suspense’
- Seemingly arbitrary character reversals
…plus your average features of the amateur writer:
- Deux ex Machina (over & over & over)
- “Telling not Showing”
- “On the nose” (ie, utterly lacking subtext; think “soap opera”. Ie, Sue says, “I’m going to Jane’s house to yell at her”. Scene: “Sue walks into Jane’s house, & starts yelling”. Gee thanks, I like my pablum well-milled.)
….sounds like your average fan-fic, no?
No wait– this isn’t happening… are you trying to tell me, THAT’S HOW IT ENDS?!!!!
Repeat after me–
“Dear J.K… We Expected More.”
…& please don’t trot-out the hoary rationalization, “hey, these are Children’s Books, they don’t have to be Great Literature”.
Um, here’s a quick list of “children’s books” which are enjoyed by both children and adults (& don’t suffer from that ‘list of shame’ above):
Lord of the Rings (books and movies)
Chronicles of Narnia
Original Star Wars trilogy
Xmen 1 & 2
So wtf happened????
Rowling got a little full of herself. This started around #4; the book suddenly tripled in size, filled w/ tons of overstuffed scenes which had been cut in #1-3… but now she was Famous & her editors got squelched.
Rowling got a little burned-out. By #6, she was just putting in time, blithely filling her pages with “I-meant-to-do-that-all-along” & seemingly unconcerned that characters literally millions of people have grown to love, were acting in utterly uncharacteristic ways. Earth to Rowling: we love characters who are real, & feel betrayed when they’re not being themselves… & esp. when ppl like you tell us, “no, wait, this really does make sense; this is how you should think”. No it doesn’t; no we won’t.
Rowling got Hollywood Envy. After watching ppl in a different country cut her books apart (& having her version of the screenplays summarily dismissed), she started packing her books with Hollywood Moments… Not once in the first 3 books was I thinking about movies; but come book 4, I start seeing scenes written not for character development, but for Production Value. And then by #6, it’s just pastiche of scenes & imagery directly lifted from LOTR, Xmen, & even Matrix 2, for bog’s sake.
All in all–
Harry Potter Jumped the Shark around book 4. #5 almost regains its footing, but #6 & #7 just disappear into the chum.
“So what?” you ask.
“Why all the dismay & angst?”
People– it’s call “missed opportunities”. We wouldn’t care if none of the books were any good; there’s whole sections of bookstores filled with rows upon rows of fantasy & sci-fi which are just regurgitated, cliched pablum with shiny covers.
But Harry #1-#3 are Quite Good; enjoyable, page-turners chock-full with the joy-of-discovery and the Wonder of a whole new, magical (literally) world to discover. Rowling created a terrific universe, & some fascinating characters to play in it. When she began, & was still full of inspiration & enthusiasm, she made something Larger than herself, & we all couldn’t wait to See What Happened Next.
In her own way, I’d call her series the book equivalent of “Star Wars”. The first three [ie, Episodes 4, 5, 6] have their faults, sure… but are much greater than the sum of their parts, & continue to inspire Delight in both young and old. But then came “Episode 1″, & all of a sudden it felt like the author didn’t believe in the magic of the first 3, or had perhaps forgotten. Joy, wonder, discovery… all gone, substituted for some bad behavior that was more ‘turgid’ than “dark”.
And as the characters flatten, Evil becomes hackneyed. Voldemort’s Death Eaters lose their mystery & act for all the world like board-room bureaucrats w/ petty rivalries; even Voldemort himself becomes just a johnny-one-note, “me so smart & I kill people”. This Won’t Do; the measure of a Hero is the strength, malevolence, & even brilliance of the Evil arrayed against him. In short, even a dork on a desert planet can become a Jedi Master when he’s up against a Dark Lord of the Sith, who’s very breathing sounds like the Earth is wrenching itself apart, & who commands mystical powers which can literally do just that.
Vader was brilliant, conflicted, mysterious, & had plans upon plans (& an incredible, tragic backstory). Voldemort is a snake-eyed 1/2-sane psychopath who Just Wants to Kill Harry & screams & throws tantrums when he’s thwarted. See the difference?
But not only does our Main Guy Potter step-back & let himself be forever ‘guided’ (even Obi Wan has to get outta the way for Luke to start to shine), but even his Guides themselves are puerile. Consider Dumbledore’s sudden new trope in #6, “me so brainy & I know what’s best for you”. No one’s ever called him “brainy” before, & now even Hagrid says it twice. Jeeesh– the frickin’ ‘partial Voldemort’ Riddle in “Chamber” had more characterization & depth than did Dumbledore in all his “I know best” & “I wish I had more time” scenes in #6 (let-alone #7, in that gawd-awful “in-the-Matrix” moment).
…and since this is a Mostly Filmmaking blog[sic], let me just say, I pity the poor bastard who has to shoot #6.
Ah gee, there goes Harry w/ his head in a bucket^H^H^H^H ‘pensieve’ again. “Harry the Ostrich”, watching everyone else live their lives. Watching as others do all the magic. Pissing & moaning as no one listens to him. Frozen stiff while his Mentor gets dead. Oh boo hoo I can’t play Quiddich or snog my BF’s sister. Hey, that right there’s one fascinating, dynamic, “take-the-world-by-the-horns” character to watch, isn’t it? “The Boy who Pouted”. Here’s my $10, lemme wait in line…
At least in #5, Harry steps-up & becomes a leader, creating & training the DA, & [finally] showing that his own courage, if not magic, is worthy of awe (if not for the first time better than Hermione’s).
But #6? Fully half the book is exposition, telling us Riddle’s life story… & it doesn’t ever tell us why he’s like who he is!!!! Um, so he’s a bitter bastard w/ a crappy childhood… Fine, just like everyone else in homeroom. And sure he wants to have everyone worship his ass… um, that’s normal teenage angst, & he already is “Best Boy” & being shortlisted for Minister. So, you’re still not telling me why does he decide to become so evil?! “Just Because?” Gee thanks!
And does the fact that Dumbledore is to BLAME for the rise of Voldemort ever once get addressed? Discovered him, brought him to Hogwarts, sheltered him, and never warned anyone he was a vicious bastard. For fuck’s sake– that’s pretty awesome angst right there; even a crappy author with that kind of setup could make some hints about “the nature of evil” &/or “the perils of hubris”… Um, Obi-Wan & Vader, anyone?
Worst of all– in #6 Harry is back to “I ain’t got no magic of my own”, obsessively relying on Snape’s potion-manual, & full of angst that all his powers are just leftovers from Voldemort’s curse. Is it just me, or has all the ‘character development’ from #5 kinda disappeared?
And now w/ #7, Harry is a passive character again, lead-around by the nose, & finally defeating Voldemort on a technicality, bolstered by an 11th-hour “he’s not really dead” moment. Shit. There was more passion, action, magic, catharsis, & even character-development in Mrs. Weasley’s waxing of Bellatrix… & that took 1/2 as long.
But I’m not bitter 
… let me leave w/ 2 good things to say about #7:
1) FINALLY the ‘good guys’ don’t have to be frickin’ victims all the time. #4-6 were like paeons to “evil guys get all the fun”, while the good guys just get caught, punished, tortured, & have crappy useless spells to protect them. In #7, the good guys finally let fly w/ some righteous magic, if not some of the 7 Unforgiveable’s.
2. Dumbledore is redeemed… however tacked-on & 1/2-assed the explanation, at least he’s not going-out as a whiny bitch blown over a battlement.
IN CONCLUSION:
There’s a fucking difference between characters with “shades of grey”, and inconsistent, cliched, amateurish writing.
I’m only pissed at myself that I didn’t have the sand to toss the book aside a la Dorothy Parker, when by page 30 the Big Reveal of the trussed-up person turned-out to be an inconsequential nobody, while meanwhile absolutely zero character development has happened. At least in #6, by that point we knew Snape was “bound” to do something nasty; here they’re all gibbering at a table, “we so evil”, & “here’s exactly what’s gonna happen next chapter”. That’s pretty great suspense, right there.
I never watched Matrix 3, nor Xmen 3, nor Aliens 3. I Knew Better, & steered clear… & thereby still am able to love Matrix 1, Xmen 1 & 2, & Aliens 1 & 2.
I wish I’d done the same w/ “Star Wars Episode 1,2,3″… they’re so awful they caused blow-back in my brain, & made me question if the original “Star Wars” (ep’s 4,5,6) were that good after all. But whew– they were.
And here? I wish I’d never read #6 or #7… I could leave w/ the idea of Harry swearing at the cruel world, & heading off into the forest to practice his Art & to one day re-emerge & tear Voldemort down. No pensieve bullshit, no “let me ask everyone else what I should do”, no pseudo-mystical ‘coming back from the dead’ & ‘this has all happened before’ bored network-writer’esque cop-outs I’ve seen before on “Matrix 2″ & “Alias”…
…just a straight “you killed my father, prepare to die”.
Sounds like a terrific fucking movie, right there.
Not wanting to leave a bad taste in my mouth, the day after I finished Potter#7, I went-back & re-read Potter#1, “Sorceror’s Stone”. And you know what? It’s all there– fun, witty, joyous, discovery… & most of all, tightly-written. No long gushing ends-up-nowhere sequences. No “okay, sure, I guess that makes sense”. No need to ‘explain’. There are good things & bad things in this world, sure… but our hero(es) are capable, & are growing into their own.
But most telling? Nobody needs (or wants) to spend hours debating “what really happened” in book#1 (or 2, or 3, etc). What happened is right there, on the page, with real characters living, feeling, reacting, & we celebrate them for that.
But in #7, Rowling seemingly is satisfied to ‘coast’ on all that good will, & instead basically hashes-together a plot hinging on “why not do that”. Arbitrary plot-points after more arbitrary rationales… supplemented by jumbled, final-act exposition(!!). And always a huge sense of Rowling saying “I always meant to do that”, ie ‘plot spackle’. In short, I never got that sense of “oohhhh”, which you get when you experience a truly great story– even if you know how it’s going to end, you’re always surprised, & gratified. Delighted, even. And, you tend to walk-away quietly, letting that “A-ha!” moment reverberate thru your head, for days.
…it’s funny– after reading a literal ton of ppl’s gushing reviews of #7, I just think of what happened after all the build-up hype for “Episode One”. Nearly everyone I know, Star Wars fanatics all, were running around like teenagers in a new crush. And then afterwards, their smiles were a teensy bit forced, but they still gamely ‘explained’ why what they saw was “good anyway”. But you know what, now, years after Eps’ 1-3, the consensus online is solid: these 3 were a disaster, misguided, & most wish they hadn’t happened at all. I’m not saying (quite) that here, but I sure do wish Rowling had re-thought her “head-in-pensieve” plot for these last 2 books.
To sum up– there’s a difference between ‘negative capability’, & just being lazy. And Rowling is leaning towards the latter here.
And of the many disgruntlements #7 left me with, let me finish with just one: why oh why kill-off so many characters, oh so casually? Yes we know that ‘War is Hell’, sure we know that life is ”fired at us point-blank”… but even a somewhat-decent writer will allow the audience to pause, & get something from that [death]. If not Harry himself being affected, then perhaps someone else… let-alone giving us a little visibility on the scene(!!)… B/c after spending literally dozens of pages apiece in previous books developing truly interesting characters like Moody, Lupin, Tonks, & even Scrimjoeur, killing them off-screen is just a chintzy cop-out. Even Sirius’s oh-so-quick bow-out in #5 got more play…
These characters we’ve learned to love deserve a noble death, & we accordingly deserve a moment to appreciate their lives, & reflect on what they meant to us. By basically casting them aside (while evil dorks like Draco walk-away unpunished), Rowling is doing us a disservice. This isn’t irony; this isn’t ‘missed opportunities’; this is Bad Writing.
Potter, Finis. [even though the thought she "made a clear ending" is laughable; all the main characters are still there, & she has nineteen years to fill...]
whoa, cant believe you wrote this much about potter # 7. i have to be honest, i had fun reading it. i read # 6 right before and really wanted to find out how it ends so i read them both through. ending was fine, i already forgot it, as i always do. as for being a work of art – for the ideas, for the wit, for the fantasy, same like lotr etc – great. for the art of language, uhm, strictly speaking neither jkr nor jrrt were true masters of their art. yes jrrt even invented languages and was a sort of scientist in his approach to language altogether but did he write for the beauty of the language like you find it in a nabokov or shakespeare (still only really understand him when i see his works played) or capote or hemingway or hesse. the kind that makes you sigh because the words so perfectly fit the situation and your feelings about it, were they food, they had just the perfect texture and temperature in your mouth and would even supercede your own ideals in taste. so dont be too hard on jkr. as you already know what really disappoints us are our own expectations.
True enough; if I didn’t care about it so much I wouldn’t have been so disappointed. JKR is at her best when she creates that amazing, magical world… leaping from her [imagination] as-if fully-formed, it is a world/universe I’d drop everything to live in. I even use her (magical ideas) in my meditation classes all the time! But she just isn’t at her best w/ “the nature of evil”, from back-biting politics to the inner motivations of V, they seem puerile, childish in all the worst ways. Again, even Lucas (or Kasdan, rather) raised “Star Wars” to epic status when they delved into the inner motivations of Vader (another “V”) in “Empire”. Here, V just acts like a spoiled kid, even less dimensional than Draco(?!)
My bad reaction to #7 was wholly in response (reaction?) to all the knee-jerking JKR o’philes, kissing her every word. Even Stephen King went all ga-ga on her butt, when he himself has been known to write awesomely (“Green Mile”, “Rita Hayward”, “Shining”).
If I may be forgiven, here’s another filmic reference: compare Xmen 1 & 2, with 3. All 3 have basically identical action/adventure & special effects splendour… it’s just 1 & 2 were made by someone who really *cares* about the lot of a person forever misunderstood (ie, Singer)… & you can see it even in the smallest scenes. The action is secondary; the characters’ feelings are *primary*. However #3 was made by hackmeister Ratt, who’d rather spend $1M blowing something up than spend 1 minute asking (good) actors to dig deep, & *feel*.
JKR wasn’t ‘feeling’ anything in #6 & #7, or I’d bet you’d walk-away remembering that ending.
They have a saying in H-wood: “If it’s not in the script, it’ll never get on the screen”. Peter Jackson isn’t the best director in the world (cf. “Kong”), but there was *something* in JRRT that inspired literally 10+ years of work, & 3 nearly flawless films. Sure JRRT picked & chose from early Celtic myths & went a bit too gaga on impenetrable Elvish songs… but he created a similarly wonderous world, forever coloring our understanding of Good & Evil (a completely non-geeky acquaintance just referenced Sauron in a conversation w/ me yesterday!)… & better– gave us hope, inspiration, & wonder.
And I damn well love his words… I’ll trade him w/ Nabokov any day, even if he does read better in his native Russian.
alright how about kundera then? maybe iz me and i cling a bit too the old fashioned art of writing when i really shouldnt. after all i write in a different style, too, most of the time. and who knows, maybe jkr is bugged by thoughts of what she could have done, too, and one day we have an overworked version. will keep my fingers crossed for u:). nadi
Kundera is glorious. I totally agree w/ what you are saying– there are some writers who spend that extra time to get just the right word… & it just -sings- off the page. But far from being mere formalists, wholly interested in ’sound’ rather than ’sense’, these authors speak about things of deep[sic] meaning, & you walk-away still thinking. Kundera is simply brilliant in “Unbearable Lightness”; starting w/ a neo-Barthesian semiotics discussion of kitsch, then titillating w/ loads of sex; his true focus is “what does it mean to [only] be ‘light’? Is that possible? Or is ‘heaviness’ not a malady, but necessary in order to live life fully?” Wow. It’s like a full symphony for the senses; my ears, eyes, gut, heart, -and- mind are enrapt.
All that, & written w/ words that never distract as [mere] poetry-lite, but roll off the tongue & you find yourself repeating them for [years] afterwards.
Bukowski is on my short list. As is e.e.cummings. Etc. And, if you forgive me, Karl Edward Wagner (heroic fantasy in the vein of Robert E. Howard’s “Conan”)
Eh? Heroic fantasy(?!). Well, in UCBerkeley Comp Lit classes, they made a big deal of the distinction between “Literature” (capital ‘L’) -vs- “literature” (small-’L')… the former being the ‘classics’ & the latter being Danielle Steel. Some of the paradigmatic distinctions between the two would be focus & audience; whether there were lots of allusions to the Great Texts; & whether the author was addressing the Big Questions… but often it just boiled-down to whether the ‘critics’ liked the work, vs whether it was popular w/ the hoi polloi. Thus, I have no truck w/ self-consciously “Literature” like Calvino… but greatly appreciated the Comp Lit Grad Instructors who assigned texts like Gibson’s “Neuromancer” & Frank Miller’s “Dark Knight”, & then un-self-consciously had us compare them w/ Shakespeare, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, et al.
Literature (sound, sense, enlighten & delight) is wherever you find it… & the critics are usually last on the bandwagon.
Funnier still– Shakes, Chekov, & Fyodor were in their day “just getting by”, often popular writers, sometimes not, but all trying to get read. It’s only thru the distance of time can we (attempt) to attribute to them ’selfless’ qualities, as if they ‘wrote for writing’s sake’ rather than to bring home the bacon. Nothing so simple– the Great authors/artists speak to themes they feel passionately about, and they manage to translate those glimpses into clearer images the rest of us can see.
But they remain fixed on those passionate feelings, images, themes… & are never satisfied w/ kitsch. JKR, like King before her, manages to traverse the arc from discovery to boredom, in only 7 books. It took Whitman his whole life, re- & re-writing his essential “Leaves of Grass”, until he finally forgot his original inspiration. Compare his original version, vs. the ‘deathbed’ one, & you’ll see what I mean. Compare King’s “Shining” vs. anything he’s written in the last decade.
Or compare the first “Harry” w/ the last. ‘Nuff said…