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I mean I still feel like the basic premise of the first film before they turned it into a proper prequel series about Grindelwald was great as a premise and notably it's those bits of the movie that actually cleave to it that are the good bits. "Put upon wizard and Muggle are forced by circumstance to have a buddy That's a fun, solid, great concept for a whimsical movie with some neat special effects, creature designs, and generally just a fun time with fun characters. Like it's still baffling to me given how Rowling was then at the height of her powers why/how she felt the need to Trojan Horse a Grindlewald series to WB the way she did. Surely if she came to them and said "I want to do a prequel film series to Harry Potter. It will focus on the First Wizarding War and in many ways be a repeat/reboot of the original franchise only different and without the problem of child actors." they would have been like "HERE'S ALL THE MONEY DO IT NOW NOW NOW." Like I don't get why there was the need to disguise it as a movie about Newt Scamander having wacky monster adventures.
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Oct 13, 2025 12:29
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Mazerunner posted:enh not really. This is one of those unreasonable standards thing I do think the magic got more boring as the series went on, though. Every wand fight in the later movies just became I Cast Force Push, often with no flourishes or even words said. Just people lobbing balls at each other.
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Oct 13, 2025 14:37
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:I mean I still feel like the basic premise of the first film before they turned it into a proper prequel series about Grindelwald was great as a premise and notably it's those bits of the movie that actually cleave to it that are the good bits. "Put upon wizard and Muggle are forced by circumstance to have a buddy Yeah, magical animals Gerald Durrell is a fabulous idea, and maybe it could even work with The Rise Of Wizard Fascism In The 30s if, you know, the author didn't seem to be on the side of Wizard Fascism or not have a clue what fascism is and does in the first place...
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Oct 13, 2025 14:56
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The Bee posted:I do think the magic got more boring as the series went on, though. Every wand fight in the later movies just became I Cast Force Push, often with no flourishes or even words said. Just people lobbing balls at each other. Wizard duels definitely needed more Flipendo!
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Oct 13, 2025 14:58
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Lol remember when she got backlash for naming the american school houses from native american mythology? There was like a wendigo house I think
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Oct 13, 2025 16:11
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She should have named the houses something from post-colonial times, like the hat places you in Paul Bunyan house
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Oct 13, 2025 16:12
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The american houses are Paul Bunyan, Racists, Hurricane Katrina and Harambe
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Oct 13, 2025 16:14
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caspergers posted:Lol remember when she got backlash for naming the american school houses from native american mythology? There was like a wendigo house I think Wait, there was a cannibal house?
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Oct 13, 2025 16:16
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Air Skwirl posted:Wait, there was a cannibal house? Not as far as I can tell, houses were 'Thunderbird, Horned Serpent, Wampus and Pukwudgie' which are all from wildly different Native traditions spread across the continent but no Wendigos. What got people up in arms was her twisting poo poo about Skinwalkers.
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Oct 13, 2025 16:19
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American Hogwarts should just be the Overlook Hotel
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Oct 13, 2025 16:21
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sebzilla posted:Wizard duels definitely needed more Flipendo! I mean, the final boss of the first game was moderately incentive. Flip the mirror around and Quirrel's death spells bounce back into his own face.
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Oct 13, 2025 16:30
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The Bee posted:I do think the magic got more boring as the series went on, though. Every wand fight in the later movies just became I Cast Force Push, often with no flourishes or even words said. Just people lobbing balls at each other. What do you expect when her main character is so incurious and dull that his go-to spell for all situations is a disarming spell. People are throwing around poo poo that melts your organs or activates every nerve in your body to only experience constant pain and transfiguring flocks of birds with feathers of broken glass, and he's fighting back with a schoolboy's prank. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Oct 13, 2025 |
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Oct 13, 2025 16:31
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Also Native Americans were doing fake magic so the British wizards had to go over and teach them real magic according to HP lore, unless that bit got retconned
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Oct 13, 2025 16:37
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bobjr posted:Also Native Americans were doing fake magic so the British wizards had to go over and teach them real magic according to HP lore, unless that bit got retconned holy moly how can anyone be that obtuse?
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Oct 13, 2025 16:48
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Also gotta love that apparently China AND India have a single accredited magic school between them. Assuming a similar proportion of the population are Wizards of schooling age compared to Britain, that's a graduating class of like 35,000 students
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Oct 13, 2025 16:55
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Asterite34 posted:Also gotta love that apparently China AND India have a single accredited magic school between them. Assuming a similar proportion of the population are Wizards of schooling age compared to Britain, that's a graduating class of like 35,000 students no you see the other areas dont need as many schools because they're inherently less magical than people from england
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Oct 13, 2025 16:58
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I like to think the "official" magic schools are just the ones set up by British people as some colonialist scheme back in the day and those are the only ones they consider worth counting. Like China's "magic school" is some shithole set up by some post-Opium War treaty that got bulldozed as soon as the gunships left and it only exists on paper while all the Chinese wizards learn from a curriculum based on Taoist Wuxing stuff
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Oct 13, 2025 17:06
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Asterite34 posted:Also gotta love that apparently China AND India have a single accredited magic school between them. Assuming a similar proportion of the population are Wizards of schooling age compared to Britain, that's a graduating class of like 35,000 students So Europe has Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang. Those greedy bastards. Also, Durmstrang is a uniquely germanic name but it seems mostly Eastern European students?
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Oct 13, 2025 17:08
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Krum (student at Durmstrang) flew for the Bulgarian national team so I assumed the school was in that general area.
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Oct 13, 2025 17:14
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I think hogwarts only has 350 some odd students? Typically 10 students per year, seven years, 70 students per house and four houses, although surely it's sometimes less or more than 10 students admitted each year; it would suck if some wizard kid got a letter saying "gently caress off we're full"
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Oct 13, 2025 17:15
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caspergers posted:I think hogwarts only has 350 some odd students? Typically 10 students per year, seven years, 70 students per house and four houses, although surely it's sometimes less or more than 10 students admitted each year; it would suck if some wizard kid got a letter saying "gently caress off we're full" The opening ceremony every year involves each individual student being sorted, which seems to take anything between 10 seconds and 10 minutes. If there was more than 40 students per year that poo poo would take forever.
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Oct 13, 2025 17:19
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I think Rowling herself has noted she’s terrible with numbers and it certainly shows in stuff like that, where, in the moment, you won’t think about it, but once you start to pull at the fabric of the world it quickly falls apart.
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Oct 13, 2025 21:11
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The Bee posted:I do think the magic got more boring as the series went on, though. Every wand fight in the later movies just became I Cast Force Push, often with no flourishes or even words said. Just people lobbing balls at each other. From memory the books were better about it than the movies, like how book 6 had the whole thing with the Prince's spell book and various potions.
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Oct 13, 2025 21:19
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Doctor Spaceman posted:From memory the books were better about it than the movies, like how book 6 had the whole thing with the Prince's spell book and various potions. This was a problem with the movies from the start. In Book 2, during Harry's and Draco's duel, Draco makes Harry's legs go crazy and Harry hits him with a tickling jinx. In the movie, they just do the aforementioned Force Push. And this trend would continue for all the films with all the spell variety vanishing. Although that was something I pondered over in my last run. During the literal battles of Books 5, 6, and 7, for instance, you would think everyone would just use the stunning spell. But sometimes people use Impedimenta, which just pauses the target for a few seconds. Obviously rendering your foe totally unconscious is superior to just making them freeze for a tiny bit. There are wand movements and even mental requirements for some spells of course but we don't know what most of those are. But my best and only guess is that Stupefy is a bit harder than other combat spells. Or it just doesn't actually make sense, which is more likely, and is just there for variety. But hey, "it makes the fight scenes more varied and interesting" is a legitimate reason to do something in a story. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Oct 13, 2025 |
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Oct 13, 2025 21:33
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Dumbledore: "Welcome to the realistic opening ceremony of Hogwarts school of Magic. I hope everyone has had a chance to go to the loo, we'll be sorting the first years now going by a 0,1% magical population on the whole of Britain." Ravenclaw groans in despair.
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Oct 13, 2025 21:43
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I just figure that even the most advanced fights we see are still basically amateurs slap fighting each other. Proper battlemages would presumably be casting The Ten Hells and Mend Butthole and Ultima, but we're just seeing a bunch of kids and soccer moms versus the B-team fascists.
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Oct 13, 2025 21:58
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Wingnut Ninja posted:I just figure that even the most advanced fights we see are still basically amateurs slap fighting each other. Proper battlemages would presumably be casting The Ten Hells and Mend Butthole and Ultima, but we're just seeing a bunch of kids and soccer moms versus the B-team fascists. Supposedly, Flitwick was a champion duelist. For all we know, maybe he was dropping Meteors and Flares offscreen during the whole battle of Hogwarts in book 7.
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Oct 13, 2025 22:27
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BigglesSWE posted:I think Rowling herself has noted she’s terrible with numbers and it certainly shows in stuff like that, where, in the moment, you won’t think about it, but once you start to pull at the fabric of the world it quickly falls apart. It's fun how this contrasts with Tolkien, who'd spend months agonizing over which phase the moon was in in any particular part of Lord of the Rings, and how far the characters could walk in a day
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Oct 13, 2025 23:03
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Wingnut Ninja posted:I just figure that even the most advanced fights we see are still basically amateurs slap fighting each other. Proper battlemages would presumably be casting The Ten Hells and Mend Butthole and Ultima, but we're just seeing a bunch of kids and soccer moms versus the B-team fascists. Well that's pretty accurate. When Dumbledore, Voldemort, or Snape are in a duel, they do all sorts of crazy impressive magic. The big battles I mentioned earlier are usually with kids or the B-team.
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Oct 13, 2025 23:07
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all i remember about the other magic schools is she used translation dictionaries and never bothered to consult anybody who might know better than her, that's why she ended up with shite like castle wizard, the castle who is a wizard
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Oct 13, 2025 23:13
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Wolfechu posted:It's fun how this contrasts with Tolkien, who'd spend months agonizing over which phase the moon was in in any particular part of Lord of the Rings, and how far the characters could walk in a day And calendars. There's an entire section in the LotR appendices about various calendars used by different peoples and how to reconcile them. (We should use the Hobbits' calendar irl.)
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Oct 14, 2025 01:37
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Wolfechu posted:It's fun how this contrasts with Tolkien, who'd spend months agonizing over which phase the moon was in in any particular part of Lord of the Rings, and how far the characters could walk in a day Truly he was the British Preston Jacobs
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Oct 14, 2025 05:40
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caspergers posted:So Europe has Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang. Those greedy bastards. Obviously, Durmstrang was in Eastern Prussia and ended up catering to the Soviet Bloc after the borders were redrawn in 1945. 'Durmstrang' is just the historical name, officially it was renamed the Kulagina People's Academy for the Advancement of Psionic Science.
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Oct 14, 2025 06:40
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caspergers posted:
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Oct 14, 2025 07:29
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Lazy world building from JKR where she lumps people from diverse cultures in a large geographic area together? Surely not.
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Oct 14, 2025 08:15
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Isn't one of the non-European school literally named "Magic School" in local language? In truly British way JKR does not give a gently caress when it comes to anything outside Britain.
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Oct 14, 2025 09:39
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the japanese magic school is called magic place and it is on iwo jima and we dont talk about world war 2
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Oct 14, 2025 09:48
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BigglesSWE posted:I think Rowling herself has noted she’s terrible with numbers and it certainly shows in stuff like that, where, in the moment, you won’t think about it, but once you start to pull at the fabric of the world it quickly falls apart. As has been said before that doesn't really matter in a whimsical kids' book, nobody cares about the economic feasibility of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory (well, OK, some ragebaitmonger on Youtube probably does, but leaving out Whipplescrumptious Georg), but it gets weird and unpleasant in the supposedly-more-adult later books/films/Pottermore throwaways,
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Oct 14, 2025 10:32
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Presto posted:(We should use the Hobbits' calendar irl.) I also share this thought. Such a great calendar.
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Oct 14, 2025 11:24
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Szarrukin posted:Isn't one of the non-European school literally named "Magic School" in local language? In truly British way JKR does not give a gently caress when it comes to anything outside Britain. The Japanese school, where all the Asian wizards go because that's how that works, is called Mahoutokoro (magic place), pronounced ma-HOOT-okoro. If you did even five minutes of research, you would know that is not even remotely how that's pronounced, but who cares about minor details?
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Oct 14, 2025 12:34
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