I went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire over the holiday weekend with my family and my sister-in-law and her two boys. It was definitely an action-packed movie, easily overcoming the slow-pacing problems of the first two movies. There were plenty of times when watching the first two movies in the series where I wanted to say, “Oh, just get on with it already!” These movies tried, perhaps, to be too faithful to the books. Granted there were a lot of characters and themes to introduce, but the first two were almost unwatchable. Prisoner of Azkaban was much better in this regard. With GOF, however, the problem has nearly reversed from the beginning of the series.
This time around the movie moves forward in sudden leaps that omit big chunks of the story. The omissions aren’t crucial to the story, but anyone who hasn’t read the book is likely to find themselves a bit confused as to why certain things happen, or at least ignorant of some of the backstory that makes certain scenes more significant. My nephews, who hadn’t read the book yet, enjoyed the movie but for them it was just one big action sequence and they were missed details that made GOF the best Potter book (IMO) so far.
Speaking of missing things, what is it with theater sound these days? The past few movies I’ve seen in a theater have been uncomfortably, even painfully, loud. It’s as if they want you to feel as well as hear the movie. What I feel like is that my ears are bleeding and my internal organs have been rearranged. When Tiger Lilly and I went to see Revenge of the Sith I actually staggered out to the lobby – after the previews and the opening minutes of the movie – to ask one of the attendants to have someone check out the sound level. I don’t know if it actually got turned down or not because my eardrums were numb before my third handful of popcorn. This trend continued with GOF, but even with the volume there were large sections of dialog that were the equivalent of an audio smudge to me. Perhaps it was a combination of my age, the background sound drowning out the actors, and the sloppy teenage diction and unfamiliar accents of the actors. I soon gave up saying, “What did they say?” to my daughter because she couldn’t hear me anyway. I guess I’ll have to wait for it come out on DVD where I can turn on the subtitles. Given that I think the decrease in my audio acuity is due at least in part to the abuses of my younger years (cranked stereos and sitting front and center at rock concerts for so long that my ears rang for three days afterwards) I’ve got to wonder about the long-term (and even short-term) effects of this entertainment.
Are there other harmful effects of Harry Potter? I know there is quite a bit of debate in evangelical Christian circles about whether the Harry Potter books and movies are seductive evils that spur an interest in the occult. My position is that I’m completely in favor of parents deciding what is appropriate for their children to see or read. If a parent makes a decision that Harry Potter isn’t for his or her kids, I won’t criticize it. I’ve always been very protective in what kinds of books, music, television and movies my kids could be exposed to and I had my concerns about the Potter books when they first came out. After reading them, however, I didn’t think these were inappropriate for my kids who have more than a Sunday School foundation in spiritual matters. In fact, one of the things that I pointed out early on to them is the similarities we as Christian families share with the wizarding families in the books.
For example, we deal with “the world” in much the same way magical families deal with “Muggles”, and we can suffer the same mistreatment and mistrust as they do. We both have powers that others can’t or won’t tap into. We send our children to private schools where they learn how to develop and control these “powers” and we each have our own heroes, traditions and jargon that the Muggles/World can’t relate to, and we’re both aware there is a definite battle between good and evil. Even though my girls now beat me to reading the books as they come out, I continue to read each just to stay on top of things. I’ve also been blessed by reading resources that explore the Christian themes that can be found in the stories, such as Looking for God in Harry Potter, and I’ll probably read The Gospel According to Harry Potter: Spirituality in the Stories of the World’s Most Famous Seeker by Connie Neal as soon as I can get to it. (HT: LaShawn Barber).
