Out-of-character moments (was Misc. on CoS)

[Amy Z <lupinesque@yahoo.com>]

Sophia wrote:

> (Now, who was it that complained bout Harry's ugly ankle a while 
back? 
> There's nothing wrong with Harry's ankle. OK, so it's a tad hairy, 
but 
> that's what tends to happen when boys his puberty, what's wrong 
with that? 
> Besides, I thought the sock-scene was one of the more successful 
> book-to-screen translations of the movie. Instead of having us 
follow Harry 
> from taking off the sock (as we do in the book)which is the start 
of that 
> little incident, Kloves unravels the incident backwards, which in 
this case 
> works better--it's more "filmic"--whew! I don't have time to try to 
explain 
> why, but I'm sure you get my drift anyway. 

Yes.  I don't know if I'm the one you're responding to--I objected to 
this not on the grounds that it was un-filmic (you are right--this 
order was a great way to shoot it) nor that Daniel Radcliffe has 
unattractive ankles (is there such a thing as an attractive ankle?  
It's like the search for an unknobbly knee), but that the bit about 
actually flaunting it was OOC.  It was a small matter, but one that 
irked.  I think they could've accomplished what they needed to with a 
zoom/cut to a cuff that was pushed up enough to show that he was, in 
fact, barefoot.  I.e., we need to see it; Lucius needs to see it; 
Harry doesn't need to show it off.

I've meant to post about other OOC moments, and I know I'm repeating 
a lot of things people have said.  I'm really sorry and mean no 
disrespect to those who've already made the same points better.  I 
also really liked the movie, despite the impression the following may 
give.  This is just my List of Gripes post (be grateful it doesn't 
deal with the Quidditch scene).

HARRY.  One--sorry, Sophia--is the confession to the Dursleys that 
none of his friends has written to him.  I'm sorry, I just can't see 
Harry doing this.  He's proud, and Vernon is the last person on earth 
to whom he'd confess that the magical world thing wasn't working out 
so well.  I realize Kloves was dealing with the problem of how to let 
the viewer know something that doesn't appear in dialogue, but tough 
luck--he has to find a way to do it without changing the character.  
Cripes, if we *must* hear it and can't just get it from the later bit 
with Dobby, have him *say* it to Dobby.  Have him say it to Hedwig.  
Have him yell it out the window in utter frustration, but don't make 
him say it to *Vernon.*
    I agree with Sophia that he's a little too hard on Ron in the 
Forest.  (So are the filmmakers.  That spider thing just went ON and 
ON and ON . . . it should've ended when they first drove away from 
the clearing, IMO.)  He's a tad too hard on Dobby, too.  Most of that 
was straight out of canon, but again, his harshness to Dobby in the 
book is tempered by the narrative bits that tell us he feels terribly 
sorry for him; I didn't feel they came through quite enough in the 
movie.  They're in danger of making him too tough and not kind 
enough.  Harry has Edge, but he isn't *all* Edge.  He's a basically 
sweet kid.
    He's also smart, and the Harry in the Polyjuice scene is pretty 
dumb.  It's as if the moviemakers didn't think we'd remember that 
those two were actually Ron and Harry if they didn't *constantly* 
forget to act like Crabbe and Goyle.
    Another painful moment was his little exchange with Lucius in 
Flourish and Blott's.  They both suffer from having plot expo crammed 
into their mouths--"your scar is legend," puhleeze.  Lucius would no 
more say that to Harry than Harry would tell Vernon his friends 
aren't writing to him, IMHO.  But they wanted to tell us about the 
scar, so in it went; likewise Harry's (less OOC) retort that 
Voldemort was nothing but a murderer.  As long as I'm on LUCIUS, it's 
strongly anti-canonical and mildly OOC to have him say "See you at 
work" to Arthur.  Lucius does not work at the Ministry.  ("Busy time 
at the Ministry, I hear," ch. 4, makes no sense if he does.)  The OOC 
feel may be more about that Mugglish, even anachronistic, tone 
to "see you at work."  "See you at the Ministry" would've been ok 
(still uncanonical, but ok, and we might even be able to explain it 
away as meaning that he doesn't work there but spends a lot of time 
there on his various philanthropic and manipulative projects).

DOBBY's little folding of the arms and cute "harumpf" nod at the end 
also seemed anachronistic to me, as though I was in the vaguely 
medieval world of Hogwarts and Roger Rabbit suddenly came bounding 
down the hall.  This is hard to explain, because part of the humor of 
the books is the anachronistic tensions among quills and parchment 
and flying cars and MegaMutilation III; all I can say is that IMO, 
JKR always gets the balance right, whereas this little bit seemed 
Disneyish in a way that yanked me unceremoniously into 2002.

HERMIONE.  I don't mind their giving her a lot of Ron's lines, really 
I don't.  Most of them were things she might well know and say, and 
she gets little enough screen time in CoS (though she gets relatively 
little page time in the book, so it would've been perfectly faithful 
to have very little of Hermione in the movie).  So it would've been 
okay with me if Hermione had known what Mudblood meant.  But the 
welling-up tears were bad, bad, bad.  Hermione, with rare exceptions, 
is the kind of person who reacts to having her feelings hurt by 
getting angry, not by going all quiet and teary.  The dynamic with 
Draco through the books is definitely one where she's more ticked-off 
than wounded by his bigotry.
     They gave her one of Dumbledore's lines too ("Fear of the name 
increases fear of the thing itself"), which stood out mostly because 
I thought it was badly acted, but might have been okay except that I 
really like the fact that Harry, Dumbledore, Sirius and Lupin are the 
only ones we know who break away from the You-Know-Who convention.  
Again, it's as if the moviemakers suddenly decided to remind us that 
most people fear to say the name--which, at the risk of sounding like 
a broken record, they could get across by *having Harry say it* and 
*showing everyone else flinching* or even saying "could you say 'You-
Know-Who,' please?"  At the Burrow, for example.  

RON.  I haven't seen the whole movie with dh yet (he got ill and had 
to leave early the first time), but when we do, I'm going to poke him 
hard when we get to the Lockhart-clubbing and hiss "That isn't in the 
book!  Ron wouldn't do that!"  I just can't bear the slander.  It's 
such a gratuitous and mean thing for him to do, and as I've said 
elsewhere about Hagrid, Ron has a temper, but he isn't mean.  And if 
you think this isn't any different than kicking someone on the shins, 
just try getting knocked out by a blow to the head sometime instead 
of getting kicked on the shins.
    Like Harry, he's also not as stupid as he's made out to be in the 
movie Polyjuice scene.  Yeah, in the book his act wouldn't fool 
anyone (this scene is Exhibit A for the Draco-isn't-all-that-bright 
school), but he does manage to force a laugh when reading the article 
about his dad, and doesn't do anything more than clench his fists 
when Draco dreams of a dead Hermione.  This Ron is a complete idiot.  
Incidentally, we need *one* line after the Polyjuice scene to 
acknowledge that it was a complete dead end (not for the later plot, 
as we know, but for their attempt to find out who the Heir is).  If 
I'd never read the book I'd have wondered what it was all there for.
     They blew a great opportunity to lay the groundwork for Ron's 
insecurity about his poverty and Harry's wealth, too.  It's right 
there in the Burrow, and it's very simple:  instead of having him 
say, "It's not much, but it's home," have him say "It's not much..." 
and trail off and look at Harry.  Or have him say the things he says 
in the book, if they can spare the seconds.  But the point is, he's 
nervous about whether his friend will like his home and thrilled when 
said friend does.  Why the hell did they turn it around?

ARTHUR.  There's a lot of room for interpretation on this one, so I 
can't say they got it *wrong*; they just interpreted one line 
differently than I like to.  When Arthur's introduced to Harry and 
says "Good Lord, is it Harry Potter?" you *could* interpret it 
as "OMG, it's the Famous Harry Potter!"  The way I read the line in 
the book (and the way Jim Dale reads it), I get a little rise of 
frustration as I think that's his reaction, and then a little 
satisfying resolution as he turns out to be more excited about the 
fact that this is Harry Potter, Ron's friend than Harry Potter, the 
boy who defeated the Dark Lord.  In the movie it is definitely the 
latter, which is a shame because Harry much prefers the ordinary (but 
extraordinary to him) reaction of "Wow, it's Ron's friend, we've 
heard so much about you!" to "Wow, it's Harry Potter," and I like to 
think that he gets the much more human treatment from Arthur.

DUMBLEDORE, or whoever was responsible for the Hagrid lovefest.  That 
was awful.  But I could go on in curmudgeonly style for paragraphs 
about filmmakers who think the best possible ending to a movie is 
some kind of big graduation scene where we all get to clap, like Star 
Wars or Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (they just saved the 
universe!  Let's *clap,* everyone!).  It's as if they can't think of 
anything more richly emotional than a bunch of people applauding--
whereas, if they wanted to end on a We Love Hagrid note, IMO they'd 
have done much better to cut immediately after Harry's hugging him.  
Anyway, the whole thing is not only dumb, it's OOC.  Harry wouldn't 
declare his feelings in front of the whole school if he could mutter 
them privately to the person concerned; Dumbledore wouldn't listen in 
and then start clapping.  Just ugh.

The whole thing is making me worry about PoA, because PS/SS had fewer 
OOC moments than CoS, and if they keep drifting in this direction, 
Sirius is going to be a rock star, Pettigrew is going to be Mr. Burns 
(I *do* always picture him that way--too bad Mr. Burns is American, 
and also a cartoon character, or he could go for the role), and Lupin 
is going to be, let's see, will they decide to make him the Rambo of 
the classroom with a few satisfyingly macho nose-to-nose 
confrontations with Snape, or will they make him mild to the point of 
fainting?  I know, he'll turn into Robin Williams and twinkle at the 
students while quoting heartwarmingly from Whitman.  Ugh again.

Amy