Posts tagged harry potter

“After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” – Albus Dumbledore

“After all, to the well-organized mind, end is but the next great adventure.” – Ashwin Saxena

Can you ever forget the joy of reading a Harry Potter book?

With recently released Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2, the epic saga that’s been running for 14 years comes to an end(:?:). Since the release of first Harry Potter book on 30 June 1997 to the release of last HP movie on 15th July 2011, everyone got hooked to the magical world of J.K. Rowling. Do you remember when you picked up your first Harry Potter novel? How magical it felt when you finally finished it? When you speculated the future of series? How you discussed with your friends about the illogical differences in books and movies?
I remember too! I am one of those people who read books first and watched movie later. I read the first book back in 2002 when I was 14. After that I read Harry Potter books multiple times. I used to troll around MuggleNet forums discussing theories, reading editorials and dissing people who believed Harry & Hermione will pair-up eventually. The fun days!

 

Yesterday I watched the final installment of Harry Potter movies – Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows : 2. The movie is great for those who’ve only watched HP-Movies till now. It summarizes the novel very well, but for novel fans like me, the movie felt rushed and had a number of logical inconsistencies. For example why Crabbe (the disgraced Jamie Waylett) was replaced as Malfoy’s henchman by Blaise Zabini in the climax’s Room Of Requirements sequence? The sequence in mystical King’s Cross feels too final, it seems ridiculous that Potter still has another big duel with Voldemort to come. What took an instant (Voldemort’s death) in book took 10 minutes in the movie. The battle of Hogwarts while had some awesome special effects, it didn’t feel as much epic. Where was Hagrid? Why add a throwaway line to create a romance between Neville and Luna?
Still I’m not disappointed with the movie. When it comes to book’s based movies, you can’t satisfy everybody. Some sequences in movie were clearly a work of art, Snape’s flashback, for example, is as emotionally devastating in the film as it is in the book, revealing him to be the greatest hero of the series in a sequence of ever-more-poignant vignettes. Snape did it all for love – which is the basic theme of the Harry Potter books. In fact if you ask me, the only love more stronger than his was of Lily Potter who died to protect her child.
Danial Radcliff, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson are fantastic actors and I hope they don’t meet the same fate as of Elijah Wood (Froodo of Lord of the Rings, where is he anyways?).

I was too happy to see the ‘After 19 years’ sequence in the movie. It gives the story a proper closing. But is it really the end?
J.K. Rowling made sure that people won’t be able forget Harry Potter so soon. With the The Wizarding World of Harry Potter™ theme park at Universal Orlando now open for public and the new Harry Potter themed social networking site by J.K. Rowling herself-  PotterMore coming this October, I don’t think potter-mania will go away anytime soon. J.K. Rowling has promised 15000 words of extra content, related to books to be available in PotterMore, that should keep most of the fans hooked.

In the end I would like to say that Harry Potter books were a great influence on me. Because of them, reading and writing became my passion and after them, I read many amazing novels, some even more satisfying than even Harry Potter books. If you have only watched Harry Potter movies till now- I suggest you go grab a book right now!