u/miggovortensens

I finally watched “The Odyssey” as “Nolan intended” - there are few IMAX screens near me and pre-ticket sales for those showings were insane - but, while I was watching it, all I could think of was this did not look like the work of a confident director, but of someone that’s (way too) confident in his 'directorial brand'.

It's like Nolan KNOWS that we KNOW about his CGI-aversion (or was trusting we’d get the message from the A-list cast members who won’t shut up about it). So he storyboarded a film that looks more impressive when we’re removed from it than when we're absorbed by it. The shots at sea, for instance, are screaming for the audience to be in awe of the technical difficulties; he wanted us to think "wow, Matt Damon really had to earn his millions in this one".

But other than a couple of standout sequences – namely, the superbly staged act featuring Samantha Morton as Circe –, the movie itself is visually unremarkable and below Nolan’s standards. The visual symmetry of “Dunkirk”, a film that I respect but not quite like, is gone. The battle scenes are generically choreographed, and the mise en scène was lacking even in crucial interior shots, including the climax. (Did Matt Damon kill Mia Goth or is she still hiding under the table?? And don't get me started on Tom Holland's knife fight upstairs.)

Sadly, it seems the difficulty came at the expense of the execution, which is not nearly as refined as in his previous movies - even the editing pace, which was very "on brand" for a Nolan release, gave me the feeling of a director trying to save some subpar takes here and there. I won't go over the shortcomings of the script, which is in line with what I came to expect from Nolan as a blockbuster maker.

But I'll mention one element of the picture that clearly stands out: the elegance and precision of Ludwig Göransson's score, which Nolan's directorial achievement never quite matches. He can do better, and has done better.

Despite Joanne’s claim that the entire “Harry Potter” saga had been plotted carefully by her up to the seventh book, her world-building is inconsistent to the point of an additional website (Pottermore) being created to fix the holes - and failing miserably at it.

The more noticeable holes started to appear in the third book: the plot required “the prisoner of Azkaban” finding it difficult to break into the school, and because Apparation (basically teleporting from point A to point B) was already thing in this universe, Rowling had to include the never-mentioned rule that one cannot Apparate inside or onto Hogwarts. (Poor Hermione must remind the readers of this in every other book.)

But this info, plus other security measures disclosed in the third book, contradicts previous events: Charlie Weasley’s friends shouldn't have been able to fly their brooms to retrieve Norbet, the baby dragon, in the first book; and in the second book, Dobby, the House-Elf, shouldn’t be able to Apparate in and out of the school ground whenever he had a warning for Harry.

How Charlie’s friends entered the school undetected is still a mystery, but Dobby’s travelings are not: Joanne came up with the cover of “House-Elf magic is different, so they can Apparate there”. And just like that, the House-Elves went from the “mistreated enslaved creatures” seen to “creatures that experience human feelings, therefore deserving of kindness, but not really human”.

Thanks to this change, the House-Elves became Joanne’s favorite prop; not only because her new rules made possible for the Elves to reach places no other wizard could, but also because she could use them to measure the temperature of the human character’s morals. The bad guys are physically abusive to the Elves; the good guys that are not sharing Hermione’s misguided political awakening are either indifferent to the cause because they never had much contact with a House-Elf or because they own a House-Elf themselves but never go beyond "verbal abuse".

This is, of course, the case of Sirius Black, who pays the ultimate price when his enslaved House-Elf Kreacher, who we see parroting some blood-supremacist slurs learnt from his old mistress, turns to the other side. Because Sirius is a positive character, his negative traits – he’s reckless, he’s a thrill-seeker – are softened, and so is his behavior towards Kreacher: Joanne frames this as Kreacher, the slave, reminding Sirius, the slave owner, of how unhappy he was growing up in a blood-supremacist household.

By the next book, Harry inherits Kreacher from Sirius, therefore becoming a "hesitant" slave owner himself and unsure of what to make of this. The answer comes in the seventh and final book, when Sirius’s deceased brother enters the plot: Regulus, first presented as one of Voldemort’s followers and presumably an old-school villain, is revealed to having had a change of heart after his master left his beloved family slave Kreacher to die in a cave. (Lucky for Kreacher, House-Elves can Apparate anywhere!)

"See, Harry? Sirius, the good guy who was unkind to his slave died because of it; Regulus, the bad guy who chose kindness was willing to die for his slave. You know the way to go now, Harry! Being a slave owner doesn't define who you are; it's how you choose to act towards them that really matters! Freedom won’t make them happy, but saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ will make Kreacher’s day."

This was Joanne reaching the same mindset from when she first started going public against trans people and before she went full ballistic. I can almost break it down:

Book 2: “Everyone is deserving of basic human rights"

Book 3: "House-Elves [Trans women] are not exactly like humans ['real women'], but can Apparate into the castle [into women's bathrooms]"

Book 4: “It's important for the House-Elves [trans community] to be treated with dignity, but current activism doesn't give the matter the thoughtful consideration it requires, and the political discussion is short-sighted and one-sided."

Book 5: "Yet House-Elves [Trans people] are capable of making death threats against those who say something they consider unkind and offensive, without understanding how triggering their presence can be for the other party.”

Book 6: "Now, some activists could even think Harry [me, Joanne] is a slave owner [TERF]."

Book 7: "But all House-Elves [trans people] should know that a kind slave-owner [a TERF] is willing to die for them [march by your side], and if you happen to lose your life as a consequence of a real human's political action, we'll be there to dig your grave."

That's her entire rationalization process. She acts like she has her emotional landscaped all figured out, like she claimed to have plotted the books carefully from start to finish; then her cracks started to show, and suddenly trans people became her "prop", just like the House Elves, to justify the conservative worldview and messy values.

In her "open letter" narrative, she was still sticking to "I care about you, I will march with you, I will do my best to protect you." Now, it's a different story. She's on an open fight against human rights.

Sirius chose to sit in Azkaban for twelve years because he felt like he deserved to be punished for his indirect role in the Potters’ deaths - suggesting to James that they used Peter as Secret Keeper instead – but he was charged with and convicted for a completely unrelated crime: murdering Pettigrew and causing the death of 12 Muggles in the resulting explosion. (The outdated information of Sirius being their Secret Keeper was only useful to present him as an ally of Voldemort.)

And even though Sirius knew Pettigrew was alive, he knew those 12 Muggles were VERY MUCH dead, and that their families would be grieving over them even if the Ministry was able to frame the crime as a gas explosion or whatever. After all, killing a Muggle is a crime in the wizarding world regardless of Muggle authorities investigating the case like a murder or a terrorist act. It’s up to the wizarding world to seek justice for the Muggle victims and their families.

I can't conceive the idea not once imagining the victims' loved ones and not feeling that the person responsible for their pain deserved to jailed for the rest of their lives. Choosing to do his penance in Azkaban was a selfish choice from Sirius part. He sat there because he wanted to be held accountable for his mistake, and this is framed like a 'noble' decision driven by a strong moral code. Well, I don't see it like that.

I'm not talking about their decision to spend a lottery prize on a family trip to Egypt, because I can understand how the struggling parents would see this as an opportunity to take a well-deserved break and provide a once-in-a-lifetime experience to their kids. I'm talking about their limited finances apparently not improving at all even though their circumstances changed.

Let's consider that Hogwarts is tuition free and families only have out of pocket expenses for personal school supplies – and families with many kids can always pass along some standard books and robes as hand-me-dows from kid to kid, and even wands in Ron’s case. By the summer of 1992, when Ginny first went to Hogwarts and Charlie and Bill had already graduated and were financially independent, Molly and Arthur were back to two mouths to feed, and we must assume Mr. Weasley moved up the corporate ladder in this 10 year period too, so their monthly income would have increased compared to when all seven children lived there.

And when the cost of supporting all those children when they lived at home decreased, so did Molly's duties as a homemaker: she could have easily found some time and way to make a little money on the side (sewing jumpers, for instance). Even if they chose to keep things as things were, the financial toll of providing everything to those kids year round was removed from the equation. Even if Arthur was vastly underpaid and if Molly kept her usual routine in the home, the couple should be leading a more financially comfortable life.

In the first book, Neville was always right there and got involved in the trio's first adventure (before Hermione even became friends with Harry and Ron, the four of them ended up getting locked outside the Common Room that night they stumbled into Fluffy); plus he left after hours to warn Harry that Malfoy had told McGonagall he and Hermione would be dragon-trafficking Norbert, and got detention with the rest of them, and he also tried to prevent them from leaving the tower again and got 10 points for his bravery to stand up to them, sealing Gryffindor's victory. It seems Neville was a bit of a loner and really saw Harry, Ron and Hermione as friends but they never really welcomed him into their clique. They seem more and more distant or indifferent towards him as the books went on (until OotP, at least).

Sirius makes it clear in PoA that he and James were suspecting there was a traitor in their inner circle when they went ahead with their secret plan to have Pettigrew as Keeper. We learn that Sirius suspected Lupin, and Lupin suspected Sirius. Therefore, when Sirius suggested to James that they changed it to Pettigrew in the very last minute - and James agreed to it -, they were coming from the mindset of “The traitor couldn't possibly be Peter, this dude idolizes us, we’re basically the currency of his social capital, and it will be a cold day in hell before Voldemort thinks to go after Peter or Peter goes after Voldemort.”

By deciding to make Peter Secret-Keeper, James and Sirius weren't trusting him. They were using him. Trusting Peter would be something like considering he could become a target and maybe not have the skills and the strength to not break under torture but still going ahead with the decision because they genuinely believed his values and his loyalty were rock solid. By going about this the way they did, James and Sirius were just proving to Peter that they saw him as unremarkable, unimportant, irrelevant.

I was just talking about it with a movie-buff that's not quite Gen Z but also not old enough to remember 9/11, and he shared a view that I've noticed in previous conversations with people that see "The Exorcist" under the influence of 'pop culture lore'.

They expect a scary, almost emotionally traumatizing experience, yet they pick apart the movie's technical achievements - the sound design, dubbing, and makeup that are doing major heavy-lifting in Linda Blair’s performance, all somewhat dated by today's standards - to say they were not scared by them. "It wasn't convincing enough, I wasn't fooled, I almost laughed".

But the unsettling feel of the picture - that still creeps me out, even though I also wasn't fooled by the effects when I got to watch the movie for the first time - doesn't come solely from believing there's a demon, or The Devil with capital D, possessing this girl. It comes from the girl being subjected to graphic medical procedures in the first half, or from being keenly aware of the normalcy that surround the events. Like, Ellen Burstyn was really just having a cup of tea downstairs while the priests performed the exorcism and all that crazy supernatural shit was going on in the house!

Horror is a deeply subjective genre, and almost as time-stamped as comedy, but "The Exorcist" is one of those movies that I still find deeply unsettling regardless of how convincing the illusion still remains more than 50 years later.

It’s very, very clear to me whenever I read the books again that the first two volumes were made of the same clay. They are rooted in the Magical realism, early childhood tropes we get from Roald Dahl’s stories. I get it was part of Rowling’s intention to progressively make the tone of the books more mature to reflect Harry’s growth. I also often lump books 3 and 4 together – they’re marking the transition for a more realistic view on the recurring characters’ behaviors, their familial dynamics, and how impacted they were by the serious consequences of dark magic that we only fully get in the last 3 books. 

The Dursleys, to me, are central to this shift: in the first two books, they are written as cartoonish villains. They’re Matilda’s parents. And Dudley is Augustus Gloop from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” who similarly gets punished in amusing ways for being a brat; his gluttony is what dooms him in both “Philosopher’s Stone” – is given a pigtail for eating the cake – and “Goblet of Fire” – his tongue expands after Fred and George plant a treat for him to find.

As I’ve said, “Goblet” is the last book where there are hints of childhood tales. We don’t read this passage and feel the weight of Dudley’s panic or his parents thinking he will suffocate and his airways will get obstructed because his tongue keeps growing. (We know Fred and George’s pranks were harmless, but the Dursleys had no way of knowing that.) That’s a very different incident than the one we get in the first chapter of the next book, when Harry must protect himself and Dudley from a Dementor’s attack.

After the fifth book, the implications get serious and REAL. It becomes impossible for us not to go over the Dursleys’ early book behaviors towards Harry as straight up child abuse, even though their actions weren’t originally written to carry such a heavy atmosphere. But I tried to revisit this based on the new information we get – from Dumbledore himself, in this very fifth book - about the reasoning behind Petunia’s decision to take Harry in.

We find out that she learned from a letter that a) her sister and brother-in-law had just been murdered by the most dangerous dark wizard of their generation; b) that this wizard was apparently gone but left behind a herd of followers; c) that having Harry live with her family could guarantee the boy’s survival, which even the most powerful "good" wizard on their side couldn’t assure if the boy was left to raised elsewhere; d) that her choice of giving the boy a home, despite having zero magical powers of her own, was made without her EVER sharing her motives with her husband.

She tells Vernon “the boy must stay” after Dumbledore sends her a Howler and drops an excuse such as “if we kick him out, the neighbors will talk” – which is also a cover that we see her use before. This could possibly lead us to reinterpret her past actions: maybe she talked so much about “what the neighbors will say and think” because that was all she could come up with to convince Vernon to give Harry a home all those years ago. She would be scared out of her mind to tell him the truth. And how many of her actions that read to Harry as snobbish and indifferent could be part of the facade?

It's possible that Vernon's abusive ways towards his nephew also escalated over the years because he indirectly and unfairly blamed the boy for his wife's behavioral changes. And that Petunia went along with it because... what was she supposed to do? Share the truth with her husband and risk her family losing the magical protection that kept them all safe) if they kick Harry out, their house wouldn't be safe, just like it wasn't when the boy was bound to become of age in "Deathly Hallows"), or perhaps risking Vernon feeling so betrayed by this HUGE secret she kept from him and deciding to end their marriage and maybe take Dudley with him? (And who's to say any of the would be safe out of Privet Drive?)

But Vernon is too far gone: without the Roald-Dahl-like setting, his actions in every single book can't be possibly justified through realistic lenses. But Petunia's omissions - as in: she barely interacts with Harry overall, and doesn't join Vernon in bullying him when Marge comes to visit - at least gain a layer of depth if we consider how, based on the information she got, she was living in constant fear of Harry’s displays of magic bringing a hoard of murderers into her family home.

Petunia was wrong to try to repress Harry’s magical powers, of course. But let’s also remember that, in the first book, we are told some random wizards came to shake Harry's hand in the Muggle world when Petunia took him out to a department store. What if her insistence to keep the boy in the house or with Mrs. Figg came from her desperation to keep him - and the rest of her family - safe? If they were approached by one of Voldemort's followers instead of a Potter stan like Dedalus Diggle, who Petunia didn't know from a hole in the wall, odds were she and Dudley would be killed on the spot and the boy abducted.

Bottom-line is: the Dursleys are often put in the same category when their early-books' actions are reinterpreted under a different light. But Petunia's internal landscape is vastly different from Vernon's. We might not justify her choices, but we can at lest understand it.