Monday January 16, 2006 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
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We did get to see the latest Potter movie this weekend, as I'd hoped on Friday. Very enjoyable. It's now got to the point where each new film feels like yet another installment (albeit a long one) in a favorite entertainment series. |
For example, you are expected to know who everybody is. They jump right into the story. No recap for those patrons who might have been living on another planet for the last four years. It really helps to have read the books but it also helps (in my case) to have forgotten the nitty-gritty details. Watching the film made them all flood back which was a bonus.
At times, I found myself forgeting that the special effects were not real. Okay, it was obvious for the mer-people in the lake, but the dragon battle and the coach with the flying horses were so wonderfully done and so well embedded in the real-world footage.
It was nice to see more British actors appearing in the film, that I grew up watching on TV (Eric Sykes and Frances de la Tour). The familiarity of the older performers is just another warm feeling I get from the Potter movies.
The three main kids (Harry, Hermione and Ron) are starting to look beyond their supposed ages now (14). That's going to be blatently obvious for the last three films (assuming they use the same actors, and I hope they do).
Lastly, I don't know which worries me more. Parents who take their young children to see a film like this or the fact that the kids don't appear to be visibily affected by it. There were several such families in the theater. Just in front of us were a Mum and Dad totally engrossed in the movie, with their two small kids (I'd guess six and four) in between them. There are a lot of violent episodes in the movie. For example, where Lord Voldmort is torturing Harry Potter who is being held by the Death Eater statue. I looked over to this family while that was going on. The parents were being enthralled by the action and so apparently were the kids.
Perhaps there is no emotional scarring going on here. Perhaps this is all water of a ducks back to the latest generation who are immersed in this sort of thing from such an early age. Perhaps the kids are able to happily separate fantasy from reality.
Personally, I think I'm going to go on being an over-protective parent for a few years more.
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