Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets: I Hope You’re Not Afraid Of Spiders

Harry’s second year at Hogwarts brings killer Basilisks and a look at what is to come.

So this is a much better film than the first, outside of the first half an hour which feels like its aimed younger than the later sections of the film, it all feels very in keeping with what I would say is the tone of the series.

Getting background information into Voldemort and seeing the first horcrux is also interesting and helps to flesh out the character beyond just the name. I do find it difficult that Harry did not know Voldemort’s name was Tom Riddle as surely there must be information available about him in the wizarding world and he would want to know who killed his parents, but anyway.

I like the mystery of who has opened the Chamber of Secrets and why are all these students being killed or turned to stone, it feels just the right amount of horror for a film like this. There is a creep factor to it without it being unsuitable for kids.

Overall, a better sequel.

3.5

Pros.

The horror

The tone

Setting things up for the future

Seeing more of the Wizarding World

Cons.

The first hour feels removed from the rest of the film

Too many side plots and angst

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Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone: Out Of Step

Welcome dear reader to the first in a series of reviews I am publishing over the coming few days which will explore the Harry Potter series a few decades on. We will be talking about contemporary issues with the franchise, mainly around the actors and we will be discussing it in depth. I have watched the series many times all the way through and hopefully we can have an interesting conversation along the way.

So straight off the bat I just want to say that I tried to not let my dislike of the actors particularly Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson spoil my enjoyment of these films. I fully stand with J.K Rowling in everything she has said and I think the fact that these actors, who would not have careers without her, so openly disparaging her is disgusting.

Summary

Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe, a young boy finds out he is a wizard.

So this is my least favourite of the Potter films for the simple fact that it feels so disconnected tonally to the others, and it feels like they don’t do enough to build up to the big Voldemort reveal at the end. Now obviously you are bound by the books, but I think that a scene showing more of the aftermath of the fall of Voldemort would have worked well here, we could also get a tease him being on the back of the teacher’s head.

As it stands it feels very generic fantasy, and that makes sense as it is a first film so clearly trying to find it creative voice, but I would have liked more references to the wider lore and world in this film. I suppose the film does introduce us to a number of characters and locations here so that very basic but necessary work is being done but I would have liked it to feel deeper.

Overall, a slow start and one that feels very disconnected from where the series will go tonally.

3/5

Pros

The effects mostly hold up

There are some enjoyable moments

The ending remains strong

Cons.

It needs more explanation of what happened in the world post Voldemort’s defeat

It feels tonally disconnected from the rest of the series

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Cinema Issues: The Fresh Half-Blood Prince

As many of you know the adult casting for the Harry Potter TV series is now out. Whilst there are some spot on casting decisions such as Nick Frost as Hagrid, there are also some impractical ones such as John Lithgow as Dumbledore, given the actor’s age, but one stands out above all as being ill conceived.

This of course is the casting of Snape, now Snape is the central character to the Harry Potter narrative. He is a half blood wizard, this will now be a problem, and severs as a minor antagonist throughout the series for Harry before eventually helping him out of love for his mother.

The casting of Snape is notable for one key reason, they have race swapped the character turning from Alan Rickman to a young black male actor. Now why did they do this well that’s pretty obvious? The cast was too white for modern day Hollywood and even though it is supposed to be the UK in the nineties which was predominantly white, you have to hit your quota.

The reasons this is problematic are four fold, he doesn’t look like the character from a book’s perspective, he undermines other key black characters from the books, it was done for the negative headlines, and the whole everyone is now a racist thing.

So firstly in the books they give a pretty good physical description for Snape, sallow skin, pale, long greasy hair hanging like curtains, so straight, and a hooked nose. Now clearly this is not describing a young black man, and the fact that both HBO and WBD have said they want this to be a faithful adaptation of the books means this is a problem. They cannot claim that with his major change that they are respecting Rowling’s books anymore, and it will only be the first of many changes.

Secondly, characters like Kingsley Shackelbolt and Dean Thomas who were prominent characters of colour in the books, could have been brought in and explored in more detail rather than race swapping a character. This is irritating as rather than explore these underrepresented characters both of which could do with some fleshing out, they are instead taking a well known character and just making him black which adds no new depth or anything like that. Honestly it feels gimmicky.

Thirdly, you have the fact that if this wasn’t just done to tick a box it was done to make people angry and to get people talking. Hollywood is still under the belief that all press is good press and that if they get people angry and making content about their casting or other aspects of their productions that it will translate into more sales. This is wrong. I have seen many people say after the race swap that they won’t be watching the show, because as I said earlier this wont be the only change done to generate outrage, it will go further and it will go deeper, this is a symptom of a wider disease. Many people will stupidly think that someone not watching something over a race swap is racist, when in actual fact they can just see the red flag that something like that generates with regard to respecting the source material and making ‘changes’ and that’s all they need to stay away.

Fourthly in the world of Harry Potter you already have racism to a degree with the idea of half bloods and pure bloods, and now they are going to make this even more overt by having a black man be labelled the half-blood prince, and teach the dark arts it couldn’t be anymore on the nose. Moreover, Harry hates Snape all the kids do, is the show going to say they are all racist, all these white kids hate their only black teacher, seems like a school of bigots. Moreover, Harry’s father was Snape’s bully, and you are supposed to like him despite this, yet the tv show will now have all these kids picking on the half blood boy, or worse yet if Remus, Sirius, James and Peter are white, a group of white boys picking on a black boy. Again the optics are God awful.

There was no need for this change.

Maybe I am making things worse and giving them what they want by spending time writing about it, but I see a bad moon ahead, I see this series becoming a Rings Of Power esque situation wherein it has no resemblance to the source material anymore and just boils down to over produced fan fiction.

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Snow White: Disney’s Most Obvious Attempt To Court China Yet

Summary

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it is off to the Congress of Soviets we go.

So where to begin with this.

Firstly, I think the backlash to Gal Gadot being Israeli and having served in the IDF, as all Israeli’s have to do, is anti-Semitic and wrong. To make matters worse the disgusting and terrorist supporting comments made by her co-star Rachel Zegler, no doubt made the film set harder to be at for Gadot, as such not only should we support her but we should openly condemn Zegler. However, if there is any justice this film will flop and with it, after all the reports of how difficult she, Zegler won’t work again.

Secondly, what this film did to the Dwarfs, making them caricatures of themselves and making them look horribly uncanny, will be a badge of shame not just for Disney but for Peter Dinklage for the rest of his career. Remember they could have hired real actors that looked the parts, but because of Dinklage’s comments we got what we got.

Thirdly, this film hates the original and its message of hope, and replaces it with narcissism, divisiveness and some good old fashioned Disney approved communist propaganda, how else will it sell in China? The love story from the original is paired back, as is a lot of the songs that were tied to it, Snow White, Zegler, is now a rebel leader leading the oppressed workers against the evil rich factory owners, Gadot. If you thought Disney were done shoving political messages down your kids throats as you pay them to do it, then think again.

The film thinks it can distract from these glaring issues by adding cute animals to every scene, they can not.

Overall, in the glorious class struggle for liberation from tyranny the megalithic corporation wants you to think it is on your side, it is not.

0.5/5

Pros.

It has some unintentional hilarity

Cons.

Zegler’s open support of terrorists and terror sympathisers

The destruction of the hope and optimism of the original

The communist messaging

The bloat

The Dwarfs

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Lord Of The Rings The War Of The Rohirrim: The Death Of The Girl Boss

Summary

A footnote from an appendix gets a film made about them, as that helps fight the patriarchy.

So in a world where The Rings Of Power season two can be called ‘the best tv show of the year’, which even though I liked it more than some is simply wrong, we have this film. Hera, voiced by Gaia Wise, is not an overlooked character in the wider works, she simply isn’t a character she’s a throwaway line and that’s fine. The facts of the matter are twofold firstly, this film was only made for rights issues, and secondly that the only reason it focuses on Hera rather than Helm, Brian Cox, you know an actually important character is because of modern day girl boss identity politics.

Hera is automatically fantastic at everything and all of her male counterparts are either stupid or evil, or both. Moreover, the film throws things from the original trilogy at you such as Saruman, voiced by Christopher Lee, but this is little more than nostalgia bait. I will admit I showed up after hearing bad things about the film because of the respect I have for Lee and I wanted to see what the film would do with him, considering he’s been dead for almost a decade. The few lines, and I mean like two or three, are fine it sounds like Lee but sadly it is not impactful and just feels like more member berries.

If WBD could move away from identity politics and accept that the blue hairs on X will never like Tolkien and that’s fine we don’t need them in the fandom and actually started properly adapting things like Unfinished Tales with respectful artistic license then they could have major hits on their hands, but they need to do better than this. It will flop like Furiosa did for them earlier in the year, and the take away lesson for them is this, the girl boss is dead the folks rose up and said no more to the stoic Karens and we now live in a post girl boss age.

Overall, a waste of time and money

1.5/5

Pros.

It shows us some classic book locations

The animation looks nice

Cons.

It is too long

Hera is a bland character

It is a girl boss narrative through and through

Canonically there are problems with it

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Wicked: We Must Never Let Cynthia Erivo Ever Be Erased

Summary

A beloved musical is rushed to the big screen in order to get a supposed ‘easy’ pay day, yet any magic has long been ripped out of this film.

As the trailers showed us this was the most generic film of the year, there was no substance to it at all, the poorly disguised racism sub-plot is the sort of thing you might have seen in a children’s cartoon about thirty years ago. It is obvious and has nothing new to say on the matter if you needed more.

The acting is terrible from both of the leads, not wanting Ms Erivo to feel like I am erasing her identity, I have made mention of her name in regard to this comment on poor acting. The fact that they cast women far past their teen years to play school girls is just a bit ridiculous, but hey if they could act well it wouldn’t be a problem. Both stick out in different ways but one way to describe it would be that is abundantly clear early on that you are watching a film, they take you out of it at every turn.

Moreover, and I would say perhaps most glaringly is the fact that for the budget the effects in this film are quite iffy. There are again a number of moments where you are taken out of the film by the effects as they look poor and make you question how they made it onto the final cut, but hey I guess they are still working out the kinks with AI so it will get better with time.

Overall, a needless film in many ways but hey this is Erivo’s moment in the sun and boy is it mediocre.

1/5

Pros.

It is funny bad

Cons.

The CGI

The acting

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Megalopolis: At Least Aubrey Plaza Seems To Be Having Fun

Summary

An old man believes his own hype and makes a mess he calls art.

For all of you who may defend this film and call it art don’t bother. Too often these days if a film flops or is a trainwreck there will be a small group of people, be they political bed fellows of the film’s message or just those wanting to seem cool by liking something everyone else doesn’t.

The issue with films like this is that it makes studios more hesitant to take chances on other big budget films in the future that might be a bit more risky and for what an old man’s vanity. The writing was on the wall for this film when it struggled to get distribution plus the fact thar Coppola’s last few films have been pretty bad.

Rather unsurprisingly this is a mess, it has neither fully formed characters or anything you could call a plot, it is just a series of people and things loosely tied together. The narrative post release is that it is art and supposed to be hard to understand and to figure out, but that just sounds like an excuse to be trash to me.

Overall, Coppola should have stuck to making wine.

0.5/5

Pros.

It is funny bad at times

Cons.

It makes no sense

It has no story

The cast are wasted

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The Rings Of Power Season Two Overview: Why Did It Have To Be Gandalf?

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

The Rings are back and now everyone is getting in on the action.

So as many of you know I have an up and down relationship with this show, I hated it to begin with then softened and now am growing to dislike it again. By no means, however, do I think this is a terrible show there are some moments of greatness scattered here and there about the place. I just think that this season ran with a lot of the worse aspects of the first season leading it to a doomed fate.

So firstly the shipping, the series does not want to be a serious representation of Tolkien’s work, it appears to want to try and bring in teen girls with a thirst trap as Amazon never learnt the age old lesson that is teen girls don’t watch The Lord Of The Rings related material for the most part. The shipping is annoying and it was one of the things I called out and worried about in my predictions post a few months back. Not only is Sauron, Charlie Vickers, and Galadriel, Morfydd Clarke, but also seemingly Sauron and Celebrimbor, Charles Edwards, just out of nowhere. It kills time and it drags on.

Couple that with the over stuffed cast and you have a real problem. I admire the show for trying to do a lot to flesh out its world but often times this results in things being skipped over, happening off screen, or not being given the proper time to develop. Nowhere is this felt more so then in the sub plot with the Harfoots. Things just seem to occur in a disjointed and odd way and we don’t spend enough time with the characters to actually get to know them let alone like them. Moreover, the Gandalf reveal at the end made me groan, it was so incredibly needless.

Finally we have to talk about the costumes and just how cheap everything looks. Take for example the rings themselves, they look like costume jewellery in the worst way and stick out for just how bad they are, it makes no sense with how much money Amazon sunk into this show

Pros.

It has a good start

It has some strong moments

It is better than the first season

Cons.

The shipping

It has too many characters

The cheapness

2.5/5

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Rings Of Power Season 2: Can It Be Saved?

Written by Luke Barnes

In this cinema issues article we are talking about The Rings Of Power and what I believe it needs to do in order to be a better second season and in order to set the series up for long term success.

Now as a Tolkien fan I have a very complicated relationship with this show, there is a part of me that thinks it shouldn’t exist, and when I watched the first few episodes of the first season I was convinced it was little more than current year trash. However, as I advanced beyond that I did think there were some good ideas there, deeply buried but there, and I began to warm to it more by the end of the first season. As such I want to suggest ways that the second season could improve on the first and turn the show around, because lets face it by Amazon’s own admission, in the end, the majority of people didn’t finish the first season.

Before we get into it I want to say this is all just my opinion, nothing to cry about, some of it will be changes they can make this season and some will be possible changes they can make before a maybe possibly season 3. The idea of if this show can even be saved will also be discussed.

I think the fundamental issue with ROP that was there in the first season and will be there in season 2 is the fact that those who make the show do not understand or like the IP. As such they inject other things into in order to try and get more people in whilst driving away people who might actually like the show, take for example the fact in the new season they are teasing a romance between Galadriel, Morfydd Clarke, and Sauron, Charlie Vickers which just shows that the creators do not know these characters. They are doing this in an effort to try and get social media shippers to care, and to appear like it is A YA show, they are doing this when they could just use Celeborn instead. Doing things like the YA shipping makes me think that the show can’t be saved.

Moving on I think the show needs to focus on less characters, the Harfoots need to go away as do the Numenorian’s, I would also cut out the Dwarf’s and just have it be about Sauron trying to corrupt different groups of people with Galadriel and Elron in toe to stop him. All the stuff with the Stranger too I would cut out, we just don’t need it, the show is trying to tell too many stories at once.

I would also hype up events rather than going look guys the first black elf, this is tokenistic and irritating virtue signalling. You should have natural diversity and not make a big deal of it just be like yes this is the world, you don’t need to show them off its weird. Look at how House Of The Dragon does it for example, much better.

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Lord Of The Rings Return Of The King Extended Edition: The Eagles Have Arrived

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

The King returns.

So this is probably my second favourite of the trilogy, it comes very close at times to being my favourite almost edging out Fellowship, but then I don’t like the ending. Now before you bring out the pitchforks let them explain, I am a book purist, for me the perfect ending to this trilogy would be what we got but also the Scouring of the Shire. I understand the reason why the films didn’t include this, likely time as they are already long, however I just think the symbolism of showing the hobbits leading their sleepy people to victory after being afraid themselves for a lot of the adventure is a beautiful bit of character development but I digress.

In many senses this film is easily has some of the best moments in the trilogy, perhaps even more so than Fellowship, however, I still give it to Fellowship overall. Some of my favourite moments are the attack of the dead men, and the I am no man scene, both of which hit just the right emotional balance and are also cool as hell. I am a big Witch King fan and would like to see him get his own prequel show, although with how Hollywood is now probably best not, but it is very interesting to see more of him in this film.

The visual spectacle of the final battle still holds up, and the for Frodo charge is a magical moment, and it does in many ways manage to top the Battle of Helms Deep. I would say for sure that this film has the best action of the trilogy.

I don’t like how much attention Gollum, Andy Serkis, gets here, you all know my problems with him if you have read the other reviews, I think of all the characters to give flashbacks to he was the one least in need. I can understand why they did it to show how Frodo, Ellijah Wood, was giving into the Ring and what he could become however, I would have still preferred they be cut out.

Overall, a near perfect film with just the ending and the Gollum flashbacks being the things to stop it from being a 5

4/5

Pros

Some epic moments

It gets you in the feels

The best action in the franchise

The effects hold up well

Cons.

The Gollum flashbacks

No Scouring of the Shire

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