Monday 20 July 2009

Harry Potter can fuck off

There, I said it. I feel much better for saying it. Maybe I’ve worked in a cinema too long, but I’ve had enough.

Don’t get me wrong, ok? I have read all the books, and I’ve seen all the films at least once. I can tell you everything that happens in the series. The problem is that the entire plot of the story can be summed up in the words “Sweet fuck-all”. Seriously, NOTHING whatsoever happens in these books. Let’s sum up, shall we?

SPOILER ALERT (Although, let’s face it, if you haven’t read them by now…)

Philosopher’s Stone: Harry gets told that he’s magic by a large bearded man who takes FAR too much interest in the personal development of an 11-year-old boy. He then travels to a magic school in Scotland, where he finds out that the most evil bastard in the wizarding universe hates his fucking guts, and what does he do with this information? Plays chess for a fucking academic year, and melts a guy’s face.

Chamber of Secrets: Harry comes back to Hogwarts (which by the way is the stupidest name for a made up school about witchcraft and wizardry) for a second year, armed with a fresh knowledge that the bad-arse evil wizard is still out there and has ways of fucking with his day. Knowing this, he decides that the best course of action is to get his best friend’s sister kidnapped and then stab a snake in the face. A snake. Samuel L. Jackson, for all his faults, took out several snakes without breaking a sweat.
Prisoner of Azkaban: Harry finds out that Sirius Black, the guy who supposedly betrayed his parents to the bad-ass wizard, has escaped from the maximum-security wizards prison. Apparently, incidentally, from the title of the film the prison only held him, and is now probably being used as a scouts’ hall. Anyway, he finds out that actually it was someone else who betrayed his parents, and suddenly he can trust Sirius Black completely without any sort of internal conflict. Believing he didn’t betray Harry’s parents? Yeah, I’ll swing with that. Being willing to move in with him immediately afterwards? Not a chance, it’d take time after spending the whole year wanting to kill the prick.

Goblet of Fire: See, once this book came out, it seemed like things might pick up. Ignoring the fact that J.K Rowling seems to insist on naming these books with some sort of dramatic name that makes people go “oooh, what’s the Goblet of Fire? Is it a goblet made of fire?” and other such enlightened guesswork. What an anti-climax when the Goblet of Fire turns out to be a glorified Sorting Hat, eh? Anyway, the bad-ass wizard comes back and kills a character that only really became important in this book. Apparently we’re meant to feel sad. Awwww. That good enough? Ponces.

Order of the Phoenix: The longest book by a country mile, so I’ll make it the shortest description. Harry FAFFS. A lot. Oh, and you find out that the bad-ass wizard was scared of a little crystal ball, the kind Richard O’Brien used to give out on a weekly basis to a team of gullible muppets for our entertainment.


Half-Blood Prince: Harry convinces a fuckwit professor to come out of retirement. Quite WHY he’s a fuckwit, you don’t discover until later on in the book. Harry finds a book belonging to someone called the Half-Blood Prince, and starts using the spells to fuck up people left right and centre. At this point, my interest was piqued, until I discovered that they wouldn’t just let Malfoy bleed to death. Snape kills Dumbledore, an act we have since found out was a homophobic hate crime.

Deathly Hallows: Harry manages to convince his two best friends to go on a suicide mission in order to take out the bad-ass evil wizard, along the way sacrificing a creepy old paraplegic teacher with one good eye. It fast becomes clear that rather than any sort of Deus Ex Machina ending where certain characters need to die in order to advance the story, J.K Rowling is just weeding out the characters she doesn’t want to write spin-offs for. Anyway, Harry kills the bad-ass evil wizard by doing ABSOLUTELY nothing, as most of the events that kill the evil bad-ass wizard have all been put into motion BEFORE HARRY WAS EVEN BORN!

Feel cheated? You fucking should.

1 comment:

  1. I love the smell of work-induced bitterness in the morning...

    ReplyDelete