[HPFGU-Movie] Chris Columbus on -- <gasp>Oh, No! -- Harry's eyes

[Jennifer Boggess Ramon]

At 1:01 PM -0700 10/23/02, Lilac wrote:
>
>So it was a time issue.  I always thought that the "no money" 
>argument didn't hold because of the gobs of money the movie made, 
>and they could have gambled on the future success of the film.  But 
>no time, I can understand that.

And the explanation about his eye shade changing depending on the 
lighting of the scene makes sense too.  Yay!

>~Lilac, who is leaning towards the belief that it's not the eye 
>color so much as the eye "type" (shape?) that is like Lily's eyes, 
>thanks to the discussions on this list.

Okay, I was sick in bed (strep and bronchitis at the same time, no 
fun) all this week, so I missed the lion's share of the infamous eye 
discussion.  Herewith, for what it's worth, is my two cents:

There are a number of magical abilities in the Potterverse.  Some of 
them - the Animagus transformation, for instance - are learnable. 
Others - Parseltongue is the one we've heard the most of, but perhaps 
the Seer's gift is another (a lot of Trelawney's dialogue tends to 
point this way, whether she intends it to or not) - appear to be 
inborn, or if they are gained after birth, they are gained by magical 
trauma or accident, not deliberately.

A number of the magical beasts in the Potterverse have magical 
abilities having to do with their eyes.  The Basilisk is the obvious 
example; the phoenix's tears would be another.

It does not seem unreasonable for there to be a magical ability, 
either learned or inborn, that would allow a witch or wizard to cast 
a spell (I imagine it would be a single spell, not any spell at all; 
else such a wizard would not need a wand) using only their gaze. 
*If* this is the case, and *if* Lily could do this, the green-ness of 
her and Harry's eyes would only be a signal that he had inherited her 
eyes, and thus the gift or the potential for it; the color is not in 
and of itself important.  Thus, I agree with those who claim that if 
the film Harry's eyes are blue, he can still have whatever the power 
of Lily's eyes are, provided that in the film continuity Lily's eyes 
are blue as well.

It does mess up the complex red-vs.-green, silver-vs.-gold color 
imagery from the books, but that's been muddied by the movie scarves 
anyway, so presumably that was a deliberate sacrifice in the 
translation to the screen.

-- 
  - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon			boggles at earthlink.net
=== Personal Growth Geek Code v0.4 ===
GG++ !T A-- M++s--- g+ B- C- P++++ a- b- h+ her++ E+ N n++ i f+
c++ S%++++&&># D R++ xc++ xm+ xi+ yd++ ys++(-) rt+ ro+ rp++++ rjk<+
ow+++ ofn+ oft++ op++ esk-- ey+ ek+++ pl++ pf++ pe++ U!