by Roger Bourke White Jr., July 2007
We are now up to number five in the movies, and number seven in the books. It's an exciting Harry Potter time. I saw Movie Five, the Order of the Phoenix, and found it well crafted. In particular, the director and producer have done an excellent job of taking the magical effects for granted -- no one in the movie looked amazed at the neat effects that we were seeing on the screen. The movie characters looked amazed at the creatures the special effects were portraying, not the special effects, which is as it should be. The actors did very nicely at playing their characters, as well. Where the movie lacked is in the story, which, sadly, gets weaker as Rowling tries to keep stretching out her initial premise.
Rowling's initial premise, the premise of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was a satire on the UK educational system using an entertaining magic world to highlight the issues. The first book was much the same as Jonathan Swift using Gulliver traveling to various countries to satirize English society of his day. Subsequent books have become more and more about Harry's world. They have explored the magic world more and used it for satire less. As this evolution from satire to epic story has taken place, inconsistencies have developed. This is not surprising, but it makes the reading frustrating and forgettable. Now when I read a Harry Potter book, I think, "Ho hum." which means it's not memorable, and I'm not going to read it again or think much about it.
Here are some of the inconsistencies I saw in book/movie five: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Lord Voldemort is back, which means the people of magicdom must take sides again: are they with Lord Voldemort, or against him?
This opens up the biggest issue of Harry's world that up to now J. K. Rowling has been able to avoid: What is it that Lord Voldemort offered to the people of magicdom in the first place? Why are there Death Eaters? What do they hope to gain? Up until this book, Rowling has been able to simply describe Voldemort and Death Eaters as "evil people" and this was sufficient. Just as in real life history we describe Hitler and Stalin as evil people, and this is sufficient. But now, Voldemort has changed from a Hitler or Stalin into a Fidel Castro or Kim Jung-il or Hugo Chavez -- he is now a contemporary leader, and why people follow him must be examined much more closely. This is a huge transformation.
This transformation from historical Voldemort to contemporary Voldemort also changes the focus of the Harry Potter world. The Ministry of Magic now looms much larger in the Potter story, and the people that work there are no longer distant people who affect Harry mostly through silly proclamations. The most striking example of this world enlarging effect is having Dolores Umbridge from the Ministry briefly become the chief officer of Hogwarts. Another example is having the conflict of opinion about Voldemort's return between the Ministry leaders and Hogwarts leaders.
Which brings us back to the big unanswered question: Why do some people of the magic world want to follow Voldemort?
Lets examine Lucius Malfoy as an example of this problem. Lucius was a Death Eater, a follower of Voldemort. When Voldemort fell, he was tried by a Ministry court and found rehabilitateable. He did not lose his property, and he is still a man of high position in magic society. Examples of how well Lucius was fitting into the Ministry-dominated world are his son, Draco, attending Hogwarts and he himself walking the corridors of the Ministry as a person to be respected. So, if Voldemort returns, what does Lucius gain? Why should he support him? This question is particularly important if Lucius is also an arrogant, power-hungry man himself, which he seems to be. How does he gain if an even more powerful, more arrogant, more power-hungry person -- Voldemort -- comes back into power? Rowling has not answered this to my satisfaction, and it has become a big, nagging question as I read the Harry adventures.
The second big shortcoming I see in Rowling's World is her handling of magic combat.
Perhaps it's my background which makes me sensitive to this. I've spent many years playing fantasy role-playing games (FRP games). FRP games involve playing in a Harry Potter-like world filled with magic, and most involve magic combat. This has given me hundreds of hours of experiencing what "good" magic combat looks like, and it's nothing like the combat scenes in Order of the Phoenix (or Half-Blood Prince, book six, for that matter). Here are some of the differences:
FRP magic combat evolved to deal with a wide range of magic spells, and the wide range of neat ways players came up with to use these spells. One of the weaknesses of Rowling's magic combat is that her high level magic users, such as Dumbledore and Voldemort, don't use very sophisticated spells. It's not that they shouldn't be throwing lightning bolts and conjuring elementals, but they should be doing these after they have laid out some more powerful area-of-effect spells, after installing protective warding spells, and, most important, after they have done some scouting. In Order of the Phoenix, there is no way that Harry and his school classmates should have been able to get so deeply into the ministry without raising alarms and having a fight long before they get to the final room. And Harry and his friends should not have gone in the ministry without doing a lot more scouting first. They should have seen the Death Eaters waiting for them before they moved in.
Three other noteworthy differences: first, face-to-face fights between high-levels, particularly high-level wizards, are over in seconds because the spells are so powerful. Second, there is always a lot of healing going on in FRP magic fights. Third mind control is always an important part of magic combat. None of these effects are seen in Harry Potter fights.
As an example of what difference these skills in magic combat make, here is how the final fight in Order of Phoenix, the fight in the storage room, would have played out if it was fought in an FRP magic world with experienced FRP players. First, the Death Eaters would have had a Wizard Eye (a high level spell for scouting) in the corridor and seen Harry and his friends coming. Second, as Harry and his friends searched the room, the Death Eaters would have quietly charmed them one-by-one (Charm Person is a common, low level spell for magic users in the FRP world). When Harry found the prophecy, he would have been attacked by Ron, Hermione, Nevell... whomever the Death Eaters had charmed while they were searching, as well as the Death Eaters themselves. The fight would have been over in seconds. So, by FRP standards, the combat sequences in Order of the Phoenix are being fought between blundering novices. This is disappointing. It wouldn't have been hard for Rowling to have consulted with an FRP gamer, and if she had, her combat scenes would have come out quite differently.
Overall, Rowling is having fun with her world, and I'm reading her stories and watching her movies. But, I find I do a lot of head scratching as I read, and I find them forgettable when I've finished. They don't leave me wondering about her world in a warm, fuzzy way. I wonder a lot more about Tolkien's Lord of the Rings world than I do about the Harry Potter world. Tolkien did some really good world building, and it is his stories that I enjoy reading again and remembering the details of.
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