James casting, good looks (was Lupin casting?)

[serenadust <jmmears@comcast.net>]

--- In HPFGU-Movie at yahoogroups.com, "sophiamcl <sophiamcl at h...>" 
<sophiamcl at h...> wrote:

 
> I haven't formed a firm opinion on Jame's height, but I saw Amy's 
comment as 
> a way to bring up a peeve I have not brought up here previously 
(though it 
> may have come up in earlier discussions, I don't know.) James and 
Lily, but 
> particularly James look way too old in PS! Should they not be the 
age at 
> which Harry was a year old? Snape is supposed to be 35-ish (though 
the 
> casting director chose to have him be older, apparently, but let's 
look at 
> canon) at the time Harry comes to Hogwarts. We also know Snape is 
about 
> the same age as Lily and James since they went to school together, 
give or 
> take a couple of years, perhaps. Either way, this means that if 
Harry's 
> parents would have been 35-ish when he first came to Hogwarts, 
they would 
> have been in their early twenties when Harry was born. The actors 
chosen to 
> be James and Lily look considerably more mature to me. Lily looks 
like she'd 
> be in her early thirties, James at least forty. Maybe they made 
this choice to 
> make them match the Snape casting, and perhaps it isn't essential 
to the 
> story how old they were when they had Harry, but....well, like I 
said--it's a 
> peeve with me.


I do agree, Sofia.  James and Lily in canon should be in their early 
twenties at the time of their deaths.  If Snape, Black and Lupin 
were their classmates, then they should be no older than their late 
30's in the timeframe of PoA.  However, for reasons we're not privy 
to, they chose to cast actors who appear much older as Harry's 
parents.  They didn't have to do that in the case of James & Lily in 
order to make them believable as contemporaries of Snape, since it 
would seem that the mirror would show them as they were in Harry's 
memories of them and not as they would be now.

In order to enjoy the movies, I just have to write this off 
as "movie dissonance", much the same way as I ignore that Harry's 
eyes and hair are different from canon, and that Emma Watson doesn't 
look much like the Hermione in the books.  I doubt that they will 
recast Lily & James at this point, so I've just decided to go along, 
but keep my own ideas of them from the book as the "real" L & J.


Jo Serenadust, who also knows that Alan Rickman is really too old to 
be Snape, but extends him special dispensation because he's just too 
wonderful